CBS and ESPN Quarrel Over Size of Sports Streams

Abstract: The streaming of live sports events drew two media conglomerates, CBS and ESPN , into a Friday fracas — one that may sound silly but that underscored how important the business has become as people increasingly watch games away from their TV screens. Through its CBSSports.com division, CBS has found great success by streaming the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament under the March Madness on Demand rubric. It is free to any user with a broadband connection. ESPN is using the World Cup to fuel the power of its ESPN3.com online network, which streams 3,500 sports events a year, including baseball, the N.B.A., college football and cricket . It is free to anyone whose Internet service provider compensates ESPN. “The World Cup is a breakthrough event for what we’re trying to do in digital media,” said John Kosner, senior vice president and general manager for ESPN Digital Media. “It’s making watching games on a P.C. a mainstream activity.” On Thursday, ESPN said that the 1.1 million unique visitors who streamed the United States’ victory over Algeria the day before represented a record for a live sports event. On Friday, CBS said ESPN was wrong. CBS insisted that the 1.15 million visitors who streamed Brigham Young’s double-overtime win over Florida in a first-round tournament game in March stands as the real record. ESPN then went granular to try to prove that its World Cup game was the true sports stream king. Citing time spent by each fan watching the game, ESPN calculated that the United States victory over Algeria was seen by an average of 328,000 viewers a minute, while the N.C.A.A. game was seen by just over 200,000. CBSSports.com stood firm, saying it “has confirmed” that the Florida-B.Y.U. game “is the single largest online sports event in terms of total audience in 2010.” This little battle raises an intriguing question: isn’t 1.15 million visitors for a first-round tournament game an astonishing feat compared with a soccer game featuring the United States team playing in an event marketed by ESPN as it never has any other? Both were shown during the day, when fans are more likely to be at work than at home, increasing the likelihood that they are watching on a computer, not a television. But while the two tournaments are similar in structure, they are different to an American audience. The 1.15 million streaming the N.C.A.A. game illustrated the annual mania that surrounds the basketball tournament in small and large markets. Yet it takes the quadrennial presence of the World Cup to get large TV or online audiences for soccer in America. Still, the size of the crowd that surfed to the United States-Algeria game on ESPN3.com cannot be discounted; it represented the equivalent of about 16 percent of the game’s TV audience. ESPN3.com streams live sports 24 hours a day, unlike CBSSports.com, which streams parts of the Masters golf tournament live, or NBC, which streams “Sunday Night Football” live and the Olympics (some live, some delayed). MLB.com streams games but charges subscribers a seasonal fee. Its technology infrastructure began to stream ESPN3.com’s many offerings in April. Currently, ESPN3.com is juggling live streams from the World Cup, Wimbledon, the College World Series, Australian rules football and Major League Lacrosse. ESPN3.com (formerly ESPN360.com ) was begun as the online equivalent of a cable channel, but one that “theoretically had an infinite capacity for live events,” Kosner said. But it operates much like an ESPN cable channel, collecting advertising and subscriber fees. The cable sports empire did not want to give its content away free. “That didn’t make sense,” Kosner said. “The more people who watched, the more you’d pay for bandwidth costs and you’d be totally dependent on advertising.” In seeking fees from Internet providers, like cable and satellite operators, for ESPN3.com, it has run into some who have refused, like Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, who have also said no to carrying the NFL Network. Maureen Huff, a Time Warner Cable spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message that the cable operator did not like the ESPN3.com business model. “We’ve always said that we think that the content has an appeal to sports fans,” she wrote, “but we believe that our customers ought to be able to access the Internet without being forced to pay for programming that they might never watch.” ESPN3.com has about 52 million subscribers but is free to more than 20 million college students connected to campus educational networks and to on-base military personnel. It recently expanded its audience with a deal to stream its events through Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles; it will be available free to subscribers of the Xbox Live membership service. “When Microsoft did research about their audience,” Kosner said, “they found a greater preponderance of sports events than it expected.” He said that ESPN3.com — built with the digital rights negotiated with TV and radio rights — was a profitable service now experiencing “significant advertising growth.”

ESPN
CBSSports.com
Television
Computers and the Internet
World Cup 2010 (Soccer)
Athletics and Sports
CBS Corp


On Offer in China: ‘Fried Swarm’ and Other Tasty Translations

Abstract: If Michelin gave stars for unintentionally brilliant dish names, an eatery in Pingyao, China, might well be the world’s top restaurant. It has a large sign outside showing some of its tastiest dishes, with English translations: “In Bowl,” “You Flour Silk,” “Beef Cat’s Ear” and a noodle dish in broth known as “Sauce on My Grandma.” The Chinese and English languages are so completely different that you often see awkward translations like these. They may make English speakers chuckle, but Chinese officialdom is not amused: When major international events come to China, the state tries to clean up the most egregious ones. Before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, for example, 400,000 signs and 1,300 menus were revised, including “Racist Park,” a permanent cultural exhibition that was rebranded as “Minorities Park.” Still, a stroll through just about any Chinese city will reveal the joys of eating in China: A restaurant menu in Xian offers “The Smell of Urine Dry Noodles.” Shenzhen is proud of its famous “Gollum Shrimp.” A Beijing restaurant serves “The Hand That Grasps the Cowboy Bone” and “Fried Swarm.” Public institutions don’t do much better with their signs: One warns travelers in Shanghai to “Beware Wallet/Carefully Slide” (it means to suggest that you should watch your wallet and your step on the slippery floor). In Beijing, some wheelchair-accessible bathrooms are marked “Deformed Person.” And it is worth a visit to the Ecstasy retail clothing chain on the island of Taiwan just to see what is posted out front. Apparently unaware that its trademark is also a street name for the illegal drug MDMA, the store has signs saying, “Welcome to the Ecstasy World” and “The Ecstasy Family Make You Crazy.”

China
Translation
English language
Language
Signage
Chinese language
Food


Former Redskins Executive Casserly Likes Snyder’s Patience With Zorn

Abstract: Late last week, Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins , was preparing for his weekly lunch with Coach Jim Zorn. On the outside, speculation swirled that if the Redskins were to lose to the Detroit Lions on Sunday, Zorn would be gone after just 19 games. But Snyder had a different take: he watched the Dallas Cowboys lose to the Giants the previous weekend and concluded that the Giants looked awfully good, so maybe the Redskins’ struggles against them in the season opener did not signal a dire situation after all. “We’ll be all right,” Snyder said. The Redskins are not all right after losing to the Lions in such a horrible display that an article on the team’s Web site began: “No brains, no heart, no courage.” But on Monday morning, Zorn was still the coach. Just when the N.F.L. became used to Snyder’s sometimes impatient management style, just when nobody would blame him for taking action, he is going with a measured approach. Charley Casserly knows all about Snyder’s old quick trigger. Snyder fired Casserly, then the Redskins’ general manager, just months after Snyder took control of the team in 1999, a move that Snyder later admitted was a mistake to Casserly himself. The Redskins have been through quite a few crises since then, but none were as captivating as the current one is. And proving that the N.F.L. makes for strange bedfellows, Casserly says he approves of how Snyder is handling this one. “I don’t believe in in-season moves,” Casserly said Monday morning. “Anytime you have to contemplate a move, you have to ask, Do we have a better alternative here, and do we have a long-term solution to the problem? That’s the thought process you go through if you make a move. It’s rare that an in-season move works.” A few teams — St. Louis, San Francisco and Oakland — tried it last season. Only San Francisco, which put Mike Singletary in the top spot, where he remains, might have found a long-term solution. The Redskins’ problems will probably not be fixed with a coaching change. The Redskins’ talent level — which Clinton Portis last week declared to be the best in the league — is not good enough, and hasn’t been for years, despite the Redskins’ annual race to “win” free agency. Zorn’s record is 9-10. That’s identical to Joe Gibbs’s record after 19 games in his most recent incarnation with the Redskins. And it’s identical to Steve Spurrier’s record after 19 games. That kind of consistent mediocrity suggests deeper issues than who is in the head coach’s office; it suggests that the roster is not up to snuff and that even a Hall of Famer like Gibbs cannot win with it. Casserly lays out Snyder’s current conundrum perfectly. Snyder hired Zorn after a circuitous process in which Zorn was first hired as the offensive coordinator, only to be elevated two weeks later after Snyder had considered a bundle of other head-coaching candidates, with at least two of them withdrawing from consideration. Zorn is not only the head coach, he is also the play-caller and the mentor of quarterback Jason Campbell. Maybe that’s too much responsibility for a guy who was never more than a quarterbacks coach before he got the Redskins job. His play-calling has raised plenty of eyebrows in the first three games, although the team moved the ball better against the Lions, but it’s also too many roles to fill if Zorn is sent packing. Who would replace him? It’s not as if Greg Blache’s defense is performing well, considering it allowed the Lions to score on drives of 99, 86 and 85 yards. And Mike Shanahan, the most likely target of Snyder’s ardor for next season, is not coming off the golf course right now to jump on this tire fire. Can Zorn hang on until the end of the season? That probably depends on what happens between now and Nov. 1, the Redskins’ bye week, the best time to make a midseason move. In the meantime, Casserly knows what has to be done: a whole lot of self-scouting. “You step back and analyze,” he said. “Changing players is impractical. You have to take an analytical view, just as Jeff Fisher has to take an analytical approach to being 0-3. You take a hard look at everything. Teams can bounce back. It is imperative to keep things focused on going forward. Players are over this thing fast. They get on with it faster than anybody. Things are never as bad as they appear when times are bad and they are never as good as they appear when times are good.” Maybe not. On Monday afternoon, Zorn said that he had not spoken much yet with Snyder, although he expected to spend plenty of time with him this week. And he said he did not think he had lost the locker room. “In the big picture, things are progressing,” Zorn said. “We’re getting better. It’s not coming in the win.” It better start soon. Owens Reverts to Old Ways Cataclysmic changes abounded in Week 3. The Lions finally won a game. The Pittsburgh Steelers finally lost in Cincinnati. New Orleans finally has a defense. Need proof? Forget the stat sheet or the roars that came from the Saints’ locker room Sunday night when the game ball was presented to the coordinator Gregg Williams, whose defense allowed no points by the Bills’ offense. We know the Saints now have a defense because in one day, Terrell Owens was transformed from good soldier into, well, Terrell Owens. The Saints ended Owens’s streak of having at least one reception in 185 consecutive games — pretty amazing, no matter what you think of Owens — in their 27-7 victory over Buffalo. They also ended Owens’s streak of being a quiet contributor in his first season with a new team. On Sunday night, Owens fast-forwarded to his preferred role as disgruntled superstar. Or, as the former New England Patriots safety Rodney Harrison called him on national television, “a straight-up clown.” (That prompted a Twitter response from Owens suggesting that Harrison, who once was suspended for violating the league’s performance-enhancing-drug policy, send Owens some steroids. Ouch.) Wearing an outfit that made him look like a Miami Beach tourist, circa 1955, Owens channeled his San Francisco-Philadelphia-Dallas self after the game. “I’m just going with the plays that are called,” Owens said. “Doesn’t matter if I like them, I’m just going with the plays that are called.” Paging Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb and Tony Romo: Trent Edwards needs your advice right now. In the meantime, the Saints suddenly look like a complete team (they even have a running game) and a serious Super Bowl contender, instead of just a video game starring Drew Brees. This is not ideal timing for the Jets, who will visit the Saints on Sunday. The Jets are 3-0 and a darling of the young season. But an N.F.L. adage is that it takes three games of tape for an opposing team to break down a player, and now Williams has three games on quarterback Mark Sanchez. Williams proved Sunday that he could be flexible. The Saints normally play a 4-3 defense, but on Sunday they switched to a 3-4 to counteract the Bills’ no-huddle attack. And Williams deployed zone blitzes nonstop. With the defensive line overwhelming the Bills, Edwards had no time to allow downfield passing routes to develop. The Saints had 4 sacks (and 14 unofficial quarterback hits) and held the Bills to 243 yards of total offense. Considering that the Jets’ pass protection has been spotty in the first three weeks — Alan Faneca gave up a sack for the second straight Sunday — and that the offense looked best on Sunday when it ran the no-huddle, the offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer has his work cut out for him. Saints Coach Sean Payton said of the Bills game, “We made a big emphasis this week on the defensive line, and I felt like we had an edge in that area.” It will be bad news for the Jets if Payton is saying the same thing next week.


In Olympic Soccer, Mexico’s Beauty and Brazil’s Failure

Abstract: LONDON — Mexico, quite understandably, is reveling in the glory of being the Olympic men’s soccer champion. Brazil is going home to yet another inquest into how its players fell short of the only title that it has failed to win over the past half-century. Astonishing. This is either the beauty of sports, in which nothing should ever be taken for granted, or the failure of a true giant to apply itself in the one arena where its history is less than golden. The enduring postgame image of Wembley Stadium on Saturday was of 86,162 spectators bewildered by a final in which Mexico, with a third of the ball possession, defeated Brazil, 2-1. The sun shone, so that was no excuse. The field was pristine. Conditions were ripe in every way for the Brazilians, with many of them already conditioned to Europe through the clubs that hire their talents. Yet there was Neymar, acclaimed as the most gifted 20-year-old playing the global game right now, lying face-down on the turf, distraught in his failure. And then there was Oribe Peralta, a 28-year-old journeyman pro in the Mexican league; he transformed himself into a poacher whose brace of opportunist goals gave Mexico its victory. Afterward, Peralta spoke as befits a man who has played the majority of his soccer in the relative shadows of some of these heralded young Brazilians. He talked about how team performance, rather than individual striking, was the key to the achievement. He also said: “We knew that the Brazilian players lose their heads really quickly when you keep the ball away from them. That’s what we managed to do. We were able to keep our shape and calmly play our football.” The game statistics do not bear that out. Brazil dominated the ball, but Mexico, after it was gifted the opening goal just 29 seconds after the start of play, defended compactly and with disciplined resolution. Fair enough. Defense is a part of the game, and togetherness will usually overcome disparate individuality, which this generation of Brazilians relies upon. Going forward, there has to be real concern for Brazil. It went into these Olympics with a squad closer to the best that it can find because, even though the Games are ostensibly a tournament for players 23 or under, Brazil has no real competitive matches between now and 2014, when it hosts the World Cup. It will stage the Confederations Cup next year, but that is essentially a rehearsal, a warm-up for the teams and a test of the facilities in readiness for the following summer. So Mano Menezes, Brazil’s coach for the past two years, had to take this chance. He had to use the Olympics to test the progress of his players under tournament pressure. They came up short. Yes, before the final, Brazil had won five consecutive games, and scored three goals in each of them. Yes, Mexico has something of a hex over Brazil, having won six, tied two and lost four of its previous dozen meetings against Brazil. It is even true that there has been no correlation between Olympic soccer and the World Cup since Italy held both titles concurrently way back in the 1930s. But from the first minute, when Rafael, the Brazilian who plays right back for Manchester United, dithered indecisively with the ball and then passed it sloppily to the opposition, it was clear that either nerves or carelessness was afoot. Peralta was the predator then, and again after 74 minutes when he was allowed to rise without challenge in the Brazil goal mouth to head the second goal. In between those stolen moments, Mexico, rather than Brazil, threatened to score again, and Hulk’s consolation goal for Brazil at the very end was precisely that, a strike when the match was already lost. With so many Brazilians — Hulk, Marcelo, Thiago Silva, Juan, Sandro, Pato — all employed by leading European clubs, and so few Mexicans known outside their own country, this cannot be put down to stage fright. But most worrying of all was the ineffective display of Neymar. That he is talented, and wonderfully so, is not in dispute. That Neymar is lightweight in physical terms should also not be in debate because Lionel Messi, the most accomplished player on the planet, is also no Adonis. What does come into question is the relative inexperience of Neymar. By the time Messi was 20, he was on the big stage with Barcelona. By that age the Ronaldos — the Portuguese Cristiano and the Brazilian Ronaldo de Lima — were also proving their adaptability as well as their skills week in, week out, at the fierce end of European soccer. It was argued that Neymar is fortunate to have been born in a new era, one in which Brazil’s rising economy can afford to throw at his feet all the riches and fame that he needs to blossom at home. The argument is a fine one: He is with Santos, the club where Pelé grew into the most lauded player in the world. And Santos, with help from major Brazilian companies, can sustain him and help Brazilians for once to see the blossoming of a talent on home soil. Great. But when Santos played Barcelona for the Club World Cup in Japan last December, Neymar looked like a lost child on a team overrun by Barcelona’s greater brilliance. And when Brazil played the Olympic final on Saturday, Neymar was part of the problem rather than the solution. He stayed for the most part out on the left wing and attempted to be indulgent with back flicks and tricks that didn’t work. He tried spontaneity in all the wrong moments, with minimal support and with little conviction of how to apply his talent. Others, like the new playmaker Oscar, were crowded out by Mexico’s greater team play. Brazil will question, and perhaps remove, coach Menezes. But that would involve another change of direction, another panic in the short time available to Brazil before 2014. The good news, as London has just demonstrated, is that a nation playing at home can raise its game considerably. The unseen side of that is the striving, in Britain’s case over seven years, to put the best athletes in a position to be at their best when it counts.

Soccer
Mexico
Brazil
Olympic Games (2012)


F.B.I.’s Critique of Hillary Clinton Is a Ready-Made Attack Ad

Abstract: Hillary Clinton may not be indicted on criminal charges over her handling of classified email, but the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, all but indicted her judgment and competence on Tuesday — two vital pillars of her presidential candidacy — and in the kind of terms that would be politically devastating in a normal election year. The silver lining for Mrs. Clinton is that this is not a normal election year. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is built on the premise that she has the national security experience and well-honed instincts to keep Americans safe in the age of terrorism, and that Donald J. Trump does not. Nearly every day, she seeks to present herself as a more thoughtful and responsible leader. She has spent months describing Mr. Trump as “reckless,” “unprepared” and “temperamentally unfit” to be president, and she has pointed to her four years as secretary of state and eight in the Senate as unparalleled preparation for becoming commander in chief. Yet in just a few minutes of remarks, Mr. Comey called into question Mrs. Clinton’s claims of superiority more memorably, mightily and effectively than Mr. Trump has over the entire past year. And with potentially lasting consequences. Video The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Tuesday that the agency was not recommending charging Hillary Clinton in her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Credit Credit Cliff Owen/Associated Press To her charge that he is “reckless,” Mr. Trump may now respond by citing Mr. Comey’s rebuke: that Mrs. Clinton and her team “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” To her promises to defend the United States, Mr. Trump may now retort with Mr. Comey’s warning that “it is possible that hostile actors gained access” to Mrs. Clinton’s email account and the top secret information it contained. And to her reproofs about his temperament and responsibility, Mr. Trump may now point to Mr. Comey’s finding that “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes” on handling classified information — though Mr. Comey said that other factors, like Mrs. Clinton’s intent, argued against criminal charges. Worst of all was the totality of Mr. Comey’s judgment about Mrs. Clinton’s judgment. She is running as a supremely competent candidate and portraying Mr. Trump, in essence, as irresponsible and dangerous. Yet the director of the F.B.I. basically just called her out for having committed one of the most irresponsible moves in the modern history of the State Department. And a day that should have been one of Mrs. Clinton’s best of the campaign — as she stumped alongside President Obama for the first time and received his hearty endorsement — ended up as one of her worst. What We Know About the Investigation Into Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server The F.B.I. recently uncovered new emails potentially related to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Her clearest selling point — that she, unlike Mr. Trump, can manage challenging relationships with allies and adversaries — has now been undercut because she personally mismanaged the safeguarding of national security information. These were only Mr. Comey’s words, of course: He did not recommend federal charges against Mrs. Clinton or any of her aides, which came as a huge relief to Democrats who feared worse. Still, as the Republican strategist Russ Schriefer put it on Tuesday, “Any time a campaign is using ‘Well, at least she wasn’t indicted’ as a cause for celebration isn’t a good day for the campaign.” As bad as this looks for Mrs. Clinton, with voters reminded once more of the history of scandal that shadows the Clintons, she could still rebound quickly. She is no longer “under investigation,” after all, and Mr. Trump could very well bungle the political gift he has just been given. Image Donald J. Trump in Raleigh, N.C., on Tuesday, along with Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times A more conventional Republican nominee would probably already be using Mr. Comey’s remarks to churn out new attack ads and bombarding television and radio audiences until every voter had heard the phrase “extremely careless” more than he or she could count. A typical nominee would have allies memorizing Mr. Comey’s best lines and repeating them on cable news and at local political events — assailing Mrs. Clinton’s judgment and experience to exploit and deepen the mistrust that many Americans feel toward her, and to drive up her unfavorability ratings in public opinion polls. But Mr. Trump is not typical. He has reserved relatively little television advertising time in swing states. He prefers to launch attacks over Twitter and at campaign rallies rather than to use commercials or surrogates as force multipliers. And he has a tendency to choose the wrong targets and overcomplicate his arguments. On Tuesday, for instance, he chose to attack Mr. Comey for not bringing charges against Mrs. Clinton, writing on Twitter, “The system is rigged.” A few hours later, Mr. Trump issued a longer statement full of insinuations and conspiracy theories: “Our adversaries almost certainly have a blackmail file on Hillary Clinton,” he said. He argued that her lawyers and former President Bill Clinton were up to no good, and contended that Mr. Comey’s findings disqualified Mrs. Clinton from the presidency, a popular Republican talking point. But he did not attack her judgment, which could influence undecided voters, until Tuesday evening at his rally in Raleigh, N.C. “Her judgment is horrible — look at her judgment on emails, who would do it?” Mr. Trump said. But he did not prosecute the argument in any depth, and quickly moved on. Latest Election Polls 2016 Get the latest national and state polls on the presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. This is exactly what the Clintons hope Mr. Trump will continue to do: denounce the investigative process, which few voters understand. Beat up on a relatively unknown figure like Mr. Comey, who is not running for anything. And overreach politically, by playing up conspiracy theories — delighting some voters but causing many others to roll their eyes. As long as Mr. Trump continues to do so, Mrs. Clinton and her advisers believe that she can weather Mr. Comey’s public reprimand without sustaining much long-term damage. “The issue now for Trump is to make a case against Mrs. Clinton that, even though she may not be charged with a crime, do you want a president who was extremely careless and incompetent in handling the most important top secret materials?” said Edward J. Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist who is working with a group supporting Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Guilty, no; incompetent and arrogant, yes!” But Mr. Rollins said he was not sure whether Mr. Trump was capable of making that attack consistently and effectively. Even as Democrats cringed listening to Mr. Comey deconstruct Mrs. Clinton’s sloppiness, they consoled themselves by expressing confidence that the moment would pass. “The vice-presidential picks, conventions and debates will overtake this news before long,” said Bill Burton, a former adviser to President Obama. “And a presidential race is a choice. And if the question is judgment, Donald Trump would be a pretty stupid answer.” While Clinton advisers were skeptical that Mr. Comey’s remarks would sway many undecided voters, they also said relatively little publicly to avoid fanning any flames — preferring instead, they said, to wait and see if Mr. Trump might stumble and say something to take the heat off her. Mr. Trump has had weeks of unrelentingly negative news coverage, most recently about whether a Twitter post was anti-Semitic, and Clinton advisers said that they were counting on him to make some kind of flippant remark about Mr. Comey or the F.B.I. that might boomerang on him. But there was no avoiding the conclusion that Tuesday — which had held much promise for Mrs. Clinton, thanks to Mr. Obama’s much-anticipated endorsement — was instead one of the lowest points of her campaign so far. After eight years of a relatively scandal-free administration, voters listening to Mr. Comey describe the intricacies of the F.B.I.’s email investigation received a bracing reminder that things tend to get complicated with the Clintons.

Hillary Clinton
Email
Classified Information
Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
James B Comey
FBI
Campaign advertising


A Rejuvenated Tenant in a Renovated Hotel

Abstract: Arthur Pass sat in the penthouse of a majestic building in Manhattan, his inner entrepreneur speaking volumes in the form of a shaven face, neatly combed hair, a deep, stately voice and crisp business attire. A brief encounter with Mr. Pass would provide little evidence of the path he traveled to get there or why he is an ideal candidate to become one of the people Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is counting on starting today to combat the persistent problem of chronic homelessness. Mr. Pass, 67, keeps a reminder of how far he has traveled in his pocket, a photo of a man with a bony face with gray stubble and eyes that gazed without a purpose. “I feel that maybe what I went through had to be,” Mr. Pass said. A stable middle-class home, a love for learning at a young age — they were not enough to keep Mr. Pass productively occupied. The first step toward combustion came at age 15, when he started drinking. That led to alcoholism, detention in juvenile facilities, a brazen attitude and, ultimately, the streets. A crack cocaine addiction, which came years later, only served to magnify Mr. Pass’s hopelessness. By the time James McCloskey, an advocate for the homeless, first encountered him on the streets of Midtown, Mr. Pass was already past the breaking point: he had swollen legs that created an awkward gait, clothes that were dirty and fit poorly and out-of-date glasses that made him squint. He also had an arsenal of snide and cynical remarks, byproducts of his drug and alcohol abuse and attachment to street life. Mr. McCloskey could not have envisioned the day he would be calling Mr. Pass his colleague. Mr. Pass certainly never saw it coming, either. Things changed last year. Mr. Pass, saying he was fed up with street life, checked into the detoxification center at St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan. It turned out to be more than just another one of Mr. Pass’s countless stints in rehabilitation. He said he has been alcohol- and drug-free since January of last year. More important, he has his first stable home in roughly 50 years. Now, Mr. Pass is trying to do for others what Mr. McCloskey did for him. Mr. McCloskey is the deputy director of a nonprofit agency called the Common Ground Community, which seeks to house the homeless. Over the past several weeks, Mr. Pass has been training with 56 others to become a counselor for Common Ground, which is expanding its efforts to get the most chronically homeless — people who have been on the street persistently and have shunned the city’s formal system to help the homeless — into permanent housing. Mr. Pass was one of the program’s first clients. Although the number of single homeless adults in the city has decreased by 15 percent over the past two years, the population of homeless families reached its highest point in two decades in May, according to city statistics. Common Ground tries to assist single homeless adults and had concentrated its work in Times Square and the surrounding area on the West Side. It canvasses the streets in the wee hours of the morning, documenting the homeless population and then trying to persuade those who spend the most time on the streets to seek permanent housing, even if they still have drug, alcohol or medical problems. Some of those involved in the issue of homelessness consider Common Ground a pioneer in this approach in the United States. Critics say that this type of outreach program can be difficult because some homeless people are comfortable on the streets, the program does not focus enough on ending dangerous habits and does not address the growing problem of homeless families. And, they say, the goals might be too ambitious. Mr. Pass, as much as anyone, understands the importance of a nice home. Visiting the Prince George Hotel — an elegant early 20th century hotel on East 28th Street that sank into squalor and became the city’s largest welfare hotel and was later transformed into permanent residences for the homeless and low-income tenants — for the first time was a defining moment in his recovery, Mr. Pass said. “Not in my wildest dreams did I ever believe I would be in a building like this,” said Mr. Pass, who got a tour from Common Ground in the spring of 2006 and moved in that fall. “I told them I didn’t want to go anywhere else. This was it.” Mr. Pass lives on the 10th floor. Common Ground’s headquarters is in the penthouse. The agency’s approach to tackling homelessness earned it one of four contracts issued by the city as part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to drastically reduce homelessness by the end of 2009. Common Ground is expanding its efforts to other parts of Manhattan as well as to Brooklyn and Queens. This aggressive outreach “focuses on accountability and results,” said Robert V. Hess, the commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services. Dennis P. Culhane, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in homelessness and has worked as a consultant for the city, said housing chronically homeless single people should be a priority because they are the homeless who are most susceptible to injury and death. They are also the most tangible indicators of a city’s homelessness, he said. “Their visibility tends to give people a sense that the problem is intractable,” Mr. Culhane said. “So demonstrating success with the most visible population is important for sustaining the political will to address the rest of the problem.” These days, Mr. Pass is the type of visible figure that Common Ground is proud of. He is a poster child of sorts, one of the first clients of its chronic homelessness program to be employed as a counselor. He has gone from a sidewalk to a 10th-floor studio, from a wardrobe of rags to one of more than two dozen blazers. “It really is the whole thing coming full circle that we have people like Arthur,” said Rosanne Haggerty, who founded Common Ground in 1990. “It’s the ultimate kind of proof that what we have needed here has been a culture change.”

Common Ground Community
Common Ground
Homeless Persons
New York City
Hotels and Motels


Lawyer Accuses Justice Thomas of Groping Her at Party in 1999

Abstract: WASHINGTON — An Alaska lawyer has accused Justice Clarence Thomas of groping her at a dinner party in 1999, a claim that Justice Thomas called “preposterous.” The lawyer, Moira Smith, who was a 23-year-old Truman Foundation scholar at the time, told The National Law Journal that Justice Thomas had “sort of cupped his hand around my butt and pulled me pretty close to him” as she was making final preparations for the party, in a Washington suburb. Justice Thomas, continuing to squeeze her buttocks, urged her to sit next to him at the dinner, Ms. Smith said. She declined. He asked if she was sure, Ms. Smith recalled. “I said yes, and that was the end of it,” she said. Through a court spokeswoman, Justice Thomas told The National Law Journal that the episode “never happened.” The spokeswoman, Kathleen L. Arberg, said she had nothing to add to that statement. Justice Thomas, 68, took his seat on the court 25 years ago after a searing confirmation battle that also featured accusations of sexual harassment. Ms. Smith, who is now general counsel of Enstar Natural Gas, declined a request for an interview. But in a statement, she said that while she had felt powerless at the time of the groping, “17 years later, it is clear that sexual harassment, misconduct and assault continue to be pervasive, having an impact on all women.” She added, “I choose to speak out now in the hope that this will change.” In the National Law Journal article, Ms. Smith said her public accusation was prompted by the disclosure this month of a 2005 recording in which Donald J. Trump boasted about kissing women without their consent and groping them. She said she might have been flattered by the attention of a Supreme Court justice had he not been so aggressive. “But it felt somewhat menacing, and I felt vulnerable,” she told Marcia Coyle, a reporter. Three of Ms. Smith’s former housemates and her ex-husband said Ms. Smith had told them about the episode soon after it happened, according to The National Law Journal. But several guests at the dinner — held by the head of the Truman Foundation, which awards scholarships to young people who plan to pursue a career in public service — said they had no recollection of any inappropriate behavior. In Justice Thomas’s confirmation hearing in 1991, Anita Hill, a law professor who had worked for Justice Thomas before he became a judge, said he had tried to date her, used sexual innuendo and described pornographic movies in vivid detail. Justice Thomas, then a federal appeals court judge, responded to the accusations with fury. “This is a circus,” he said. “It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching.” The new accusation is not plausible, said Carrie Severino, a former law clerk to Justice Thomas. “A justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was the guest of honor at a tiny event, surely attracting the sort of swarm the justices tend to attract, yet not a single witness can corroborate Smith’s outlandish story,” Ms. Severino said. Mark Paoletta, who worked in the White House Counsel’s Office during Justice Thomas’s confirmation hearings, said the accusations were motivated by politics. “Justice Thomas has hired more than 30 women law clerks over the years, has worked closely with them day in and day out, and none of them has ever accused him of any inappropriate conduct,” he said. “In fact, they hold him in the highest regard. I do not consider it a coincidence that this Democratic smear on Justice Thomas comes as he celebrates 25 years on the court, and in the heat of a presidential election.” On Wednesday, after hearing of Ms. Smith’s accusations but before they were made public, Justice Thomas was interviewed at the Heritage Foundation . He was generally upbeat and expansive, but he turned serious when asked about his confirmation hearings. “I think that we have decided that rather than confront the disagreements and the differences of opinion, we’ll simply annihilate the person who disagrees with us,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to work in a republic, in a civil society.”

Clarence Thomas
Moira Smith
Sexual harassment
Supreme Court,SCOTUS


If Planet Nine Is Out There, It Tilts Our Solar System

Abstract: Most people think the eight planets in our solar system orbit the sun along a straight plane, like a disc on a record player. But actually, that plane is slightly tilted, and now astronomers think they know why: The elusive Planet Nine. Earlier this year Michael Brown , a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, presented evidence that there may be a massive planet beyond Neptune orbiting the sun. The so-called Planet Nine is thought to be about 10 times the mass of Earth and about as large as Neptune. At its farthest point it is about 155 billion miles away from the sun. At that size and distance, this planet’s mass would have large effects on the other planets orbiting the sun. “It’s so far away that it essentially gets this huge lever arm on the solar system, and it slowly tilts the planets in its direction,” Dr. Brown said Wednesday during a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences and European Planetary Science Congress in Pasadena, Calif. “It can tilt the solar system.” The eight planets (sorry, Pluto) orbit the sun along a plane. From our position on Earth, it appears as if the sun is tilted at a six-degree angle against that plane. But according to Dr. Brown, it’s actually the planets that are tilted, because of Planet Nine’s gravity. He said it was one of many effects that the elusive planet had on the solar system, and a clue to proving its existence. Video An animation explains the case for the presence of a ninth planet-size object deep in the solar system, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Credit Credit Michael E. Brown/Caltech “It’s really hard for me to think that the solar system could be doing all that it’s doing without there being a massive planet out there,” he said. Renu Malhotra , a planetary scientist from the University of Arizona, also presented clues at the presentation that point to the existence of Planet Nine. She said there are four objects deep in the Kuiper Belt, which is a minefield of ice and debris beyond Neptune, that orbit the sun in a synchronized pattern, or orbital resonance. Dr. Malhotra said the only way these extreme Kuiper Belt objects could orbit in the pattern that they do is if “they are in resonance with an unseen massive planet.” Astronomers know that it takes those objects about 10,000 years to orbit the sun. If her findings are correct, that would mean that Planet Nine orbits the sun about once every 17,117 years. Dr. Brown said he thinks that Planet Nine is within the reach of giant telescopes and that astronomers will find it sometime soon. “By the end of next winter,” he said, “there will be enough people looking at it that I think somebody will track this down.”


Ordering at Cafe Dizain

Abstract: Dear Diary: Daily Roast Daily Brew House Blend Latte Cappuccino Flat White Macchiato Breve Pike Willow Willow Café au lait Espresso Espressino Doppio Moka Skinny Mocha Mochaccino Columbian Sumatra Verona Allongé Americano Roma Green tea Black tea White tea Oolong Half Caff Lemonade Hot Chocolate Coolatta Eastern DR Congo Kenya Decaf Reduced Fat Low Fat Non Fat Almond Dream Almond Soy Almond Breeze Frappuccino One Percent Two Percent Fat Free Whipped Cream Squirts Shots Syrups Cinnamon Sweet n’ Low Frothed Caramel Coffee with Marshmallows Hazelnut Coconut French Vanilla Red Eye Black Eye Blonde on Blonde Barista Grande Venti Trenta Long Tall Small Short Stevia Truvia Equal Splenda Grande Venti Trenta Long Tall Small Short


Angela Brown Brings ‘A Woman’s Life’ to Copland House

Abstract: SINCE her stunning debut as Aida at the Metropolitan Opera in 2004, Angela M. Brown has been portrayed as the latest in a line of powerful African-American sopranos, a reputation she enhanced last season with outsize performances in Richard Danielpour’s song cycle “A Woman’s Life” with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra. But Ms. Brown has another side to her artistic personality, one she promises to reveal on March 27, when she and the pianist Michael Boriskin, a distinguished interpreter of Mr. Danielpour’s work in his own right, take the stage together in the premiere of a distinctly more intimate version of “A Woman’s Life” at Copland House in Mount Kisco. “I try to connect with my audience, even when I’m doing ‘Aida,’ ” she said, “but you can connect better when you don’t have all the lights, the trappings of grand opera in front of you.” Ms. Brown and Mr. Danielpour began connecting in 2005 when she replaced Jessye Norman in the world premiere of “Margaret Garner,” a Danielpour opera with a Toni Morrison libretto. Ms. Brown’s performance was so strong, he said, that he decided to follow up the effort by writing a song cycle for her. In the spring of 2006, Maya Angelou joined the project, contributing eight poems tracing the arc of a woman’s life. In due course, Mr. Danielpour set seven of them to music. Revisiting the poems recently, Ms. Angelou stressed their universality. The poems’ content ranges from a young girl’s fears to an older woman’s affairs. “They’re about all women’s lives,” she said. Ms. Brown, who had asked Mr. Danielpour to pursue Ms. Angelou as the writer on the project, said that she drew distinctions between her life and the situations depicted in some of the poems, but that she related to the poems collectively. And Mr. Danielpour’s treatment of the narrative, while demanding at the lower end of her vocal range, was, she said, “speaking straight to my heart.” Mr. Danielpour said that his research on “Margaret Garner,” the story of a fugitive slave, helped lay the groundwork for “A Woman’s Life.” Both deal with the African-American experience, and he was able to draw from the musical language he had developed for the earlier piece. Mr. Boriskin, the artistic and executive director of Copland House, said Mr. Danielpour’s score had “hints of jazz” and an “urban, spiky energy that is definably American.” “He writes in a dramatic, colorful, richly expressive idiom,” Mr. Boriskin said, “which seems to appeal to listeners even when they hear a piece the first time.” The appeal of the piece’s orchestral version was clear at last season’s performances, which immediately won over critics and audiences. And though an equally enthusiastic reception for the piano reduction is hardly guaranteed, Mr. Danielpour, who is a pianist, said that symphonic compositions by pianists tend to translate relatively effectively into keyboard works. Since this will be the first performance of the piano arrangement, Mr. Boriskin said he was leaving nothing to chance, subjecting the piece’s smallest components to scrutiny while treating the piece “as a theatrical whole.” For Ms. Brown, what may be lost in a scaled-down version is less important than what may be gained in dramatic impact in the 100-seat salon at Copland House. “A Woman’s Life,” she said, seems tailor-made for such a space, where a singer, buoyed by the piece’s robust syntax, may feel a heightened urgency to reach out and tell the story. “It’s something that you really have to be intimate with,” she said. “You speak into the people and explain it to them.”


Yemen: Militants Kill 32 Soldiers

Abstract: Islamist gunmen killed at least 32 government soldiers on Monday in a raid on a military position in southern Yemen , a military official said. The militant group Ansar al-Shariah, which is tied to Al Qaeda, said the attack was a response to recent statements by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi that he would defeat the militants, who have been emboldened by more than a year of political upheaval. The attack came hours after an American drone strike killed two men in a neighboring province, including a suspect in the bombing of an American warship in Yemen in 2000. The military official said that gunmen attacked Yemeni troops outside the city of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan Province, killing at least 32 servicemen and wounding at least 40. The militants captured a number of soldiers and made off with weapons and ammunition, he added. Above, soldiers patrolled Lawdar, Abyan, on Monday.

Yemen
Defense and Military Forces
Drones (Pilotless Planes)
Hadi Abdu Rabbu Mansour
Muslims and Islam


Yankees Lead Rays by 4 Games After Beating Indians

Abstract: CLEVELAND — Danger lurked everywhere during the Yankees ’ six-game Midwestern trip. One ball hit Derek Jeter on the helmet, and another was headed for Rafael Soriano’s throat Sunday before he blocked it with his bare hand. Earlier in Chicago, Manager Joe Girardi came within feet of getting into an altercation with a fan that could have resulted in disciplinary action, and all the while the Tampa Bay Rays were chipping away at the Yankees’ once-formidable lead in the American League East. But after the Yankees were swept by the White Sox in Chicago, they rebounded to win two of three against the Cleveland Indians , including a 4-2 victory Sunday. With all the agonizing that had taken place over the Yankees’ dwindling lead, they headed back to New York having lost only one game in the standings during the trip. “It’s really fortunate,” Girardi said. “We need to turn around and play better when we get home and have a good homestand and continue to win series.” The Rays, who had climbed to two and a half games back of the Yankees on Thursday, were idle Sunday because of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., so the Yankees’ lead in the division crept back up to four games. That is one fewer than it was after they beat Boston the previous Sunday night at Yankee Stadium. The Rays had become one of the major leagues’ hottest teams, winning 16 of their first 21 games this month. But then they lost two in a row before their Sunday off. While the Yankees went 2-4 on their Midwestern swing, the Rays lost three of five at home to provide the Yankees a measure of breathing room. Nick Swisher had three hits, including a run-scoring single in the Yankees’ three-run second inning, and Curtis Granderson hit his 33rd home run and the 200th of his career in the sixth to provide insurance for the bullpen, which pitched four and a third scoreless innings. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Yankees are the only team to have eight players with at least 200 home runs: Granderson, Alex Rodriguez (644), Andruw Jones (433), Mark Teixeira (337), Raul Ibanez (267), Derek Jeter (253), Eric Chavez (245) and Nick Swisher (204). “It’s pretty neat,” Granderson said. “It speaks a lot about what the organization is doing and wants to do by assembling that many guys who have done it all at one time.” Even before Granderson’s homer, Girardi was managing the game as if it were the playoffs. He pulled starter Freddy Garcia with two outs in the fifth and the Yankees leading, 3-2, and relied on his top three relievers to close it out. He skipped Cody Eppley and Clay Rapada, who have been effective all season but are relatively inexperienced, and went right to his big three. Boone Logan got five outs and was awarded the win. Dave Robertson got four outs, as did Soriano, but one of Soriano’s was almost costly. With one out and a runner on second in the ninth, Jason Kipnis hit a line drive back to the mound. Soriano, who was injured by a ball off his head six years ago, threw his hands up to protect himself, and the ball struck him on the meat of his right hand. He then scrambled to pick the ball up and threw out Kipnis. After a visit from the trainer, Soriano continued to pitch, getting Asdrubal Cabrera to line out to end the game. “I wasn’t scared, because I didn’t see it,” Soriano said of the ball that hit him. On Aug. 29, 2006, Soriano was struck behind the right ear by a ball off the bat of the Angels’ Vladimir Guerrero. Soriano was carted off the field and spent a night in the hospital for observation after sustaining a concussion. He did not pitch the rest of the season. “Vladimir, he called me the next day because he was so worried,” Soriano said. Soriano said he was also hit directly on the front of his right leg by a line drive by Vernon Wells. The Yankees dodged another scare Friday when Jeter was hit on his helmet by a 92-mile-per-hour fastball from Corey Kluber. But like Soriano, he said he was unhurt and stayed in the game. In Chicago, Girardi barely avoided a serious confrontation when he yelled back at a heckling fan during a postgame interview just moments after the White Sox had completed a three-game sweep. On Sunday, his mood was far more cheerful as he leaned back in a chair in his office and answered questions about his successful use of the bullpen in a critical game. “These are important games,” Girardi said. “We’re going down the stretch here, and they were rested. I am never going to abuse a guy, never. But they were rested and I felt I could do it today.” With that the Yankees walked out of the clubhouse, headed for the team buses. Jeter and Soriano were upright, Girardi was relaxed and happy, and the division lead was back to a more comfortable number. Danger, for now, was averted.

Cleveland Indians
Baseball
New York Yankees
Cabrera Asdrubal


Ford Foundation Executive to Lead Consumer Reports

Abstract: Consumer Reports has hired an executive from the Ford Foundation with an interest in social media and advocacy as its new chief executive. Marta L. Tellado, who is vice president for global communications at the Ford Foundation in New York and started her career working for Ralph Nader, the consumer protection activist, will join Consumer Reports this fall. She will succeed James A. Guest, who is retiring. Ms. Tellado, 55, said that she was looking forward to expanding Consumer Reports beyond a media brand and moving the organization closer to its advocacy roots. “Consumer Reports is really about rebuilding a movement for consumers and reintroducing the power of consumers to generations that aren’t familiar with it,” Ms. Tellado said in an interview last week. She said it was also important to her that Consumer Reports expand its presence on social media and become more visible at conferences like Re/code and the Clinton Global Initiative. Diane Archer, the chairwoman of the search committee for the Consumer Reports board, said that Ms. Tellado’s digital skills helped sell the board members on her. “We do need to work to move increasingly into the digital space, and Marta has the skills to move us there,” Ms. Archer said. “We also need to reach and engage new audiences, and Marta has the skills to help us do that as well.” Ms. Archer said she was not concerned that Ms. Tellado did not have a background in running media companies, because Consumer Reports is unique. It is a nonprofit organization that does not accept advertising for its print edition. A spokeswoman for Consumer Reports said it has eight million subscribers to its flagship magazine, website and other magazines. Public filings show the organization had $259 million in revenue in 2013, up from $249 million in 2010. “Our revenues are in excellent shape,” Ms. Tellado said. “We have no debt.” Ms. Tellado said that she bought Consumer Reports on the newsstand and subscribed to Shop Smart, one of the organization’s other publications, on her iPad. She said she had recently been using Consumer Reports to research cars; she now needs one to drive to her new office in Yonkers.

Ford Foundation
Consumer Reports
Marta L. Tellado
James A. Guest
Magazine
Appointments and Executive Changes


Steel Industry Will Signal Recession’s End

Abstract: The steel industry, having entered the recession in the best of health, is emerging as a leading indicator of what lies ahead. As steel production goes — and it is now in collapse — so will go the national economy. That maxim once applied to Detroit ’s Big Three car companies, when they dominated American manufacturing. Now they are losing ground in good times and bad, and steel has replaced autos as the industry to watch for an early sign that a severe recession is beginning to lift. The industry itself is turning to government for orders that, until the September collapse, had come from manufacturers and builders. Its executives are waiting anxiously for details of President-elect Barack Obama ’s stimulus plan , and adding their voices to pleas for a huge public investment program — up to $1 trillion over two years — intended to lift demand for steel to build highways, bridges, electric power grids, schools, hospitals , water treatment plants and rapid transit. “What we are asking,” said Daniel R. DiMicco, chairman and chief executive of the Nucor Corporation , a giant steel maker, “is that our government deal with the worst economic slowdown in our lifetime through a recovery program that has in every provision a ‘buy America’ clause.” Economists in the Obama camp said the president-elect’s proposals to Congress will include significant infrastructure spending that draws on heavy industry. New spending should provide an immediate jolt to the steel business, which has already gone through the painful makeover now demanded of automakers. Steel mills were closed, companies were consolidated, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs and the survivors agreed to concessions. As a result, productivity shot up and so did profits, to record levels in the first nine months of this year. Even as the economy wobbled, steel held its own. But then the recession hit in force. Steel goes into nearly everything made in America, from homes and office buildings to cars, appliances and light bulb sockets, and as construction and manufacturing wound down, so did the output of steel, plunging 50 percent since September. The steel industry’s collapse closely tracks the alarming late-autumn swoon in the national economy, as the housing bust and the credit crisis converted a mild downturn into “a severe one that has much further to run,” says Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at IHS Global Insight, offering a view increasingly shared by forecasters. Through August, steel production was actually up slightly for the year. The decline came slowly at first, and then with a rush in November and December. By late December, output was down to 1.02 million tons a week from 2.1 million tons on Aug. 30, the American Iron and Steel Institute reported. The price of a ton of steel is also down by half since late summer. “We are making our steel at four mills instead of six,” said John Armstrong, a spokesman for the United States Steel Corporation , adding that two mills were recently idled and the four still operating are running at less than full capacity. “The third quarter was one of the best in U.S. Steel’s history,” Mr. Armstrong added. “And it has been a very precipitous drop from there.” The cutback has been particularly hard on workers at the big integrated mills like those at U.S. Steel and Arcelor Mittal USA, with their blast furnaces and coke ovens converting iron ore and other materials into steel. Operated at less than full capacity, these mills are less efficient than the equally large “minimills,” like Nucor, whose electric arc furnaces can be operated efficiently at lower speeds. So the plant closings have been mostly at the integrated mills, whose 50,000 workers — roughly 40 percent of the nation’s steelworkers — are represented by the United Steelworkers. The union says that early this year it expects 20,000 workers to be on furlough. Ten thousand already have been. Kathleen Loepker, a millwright and mechanic, is among the most recent to join their ranks. She was laid off on Dec. 19 from the U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Ill., which shut, putting more than 2,000 employees out of work. With nearly 30 years seniority, Ms. Loepker, 48, has worked through bankruptcies, union concessions and consolidations during which her mill was acquired by U.S. Steel in 2003. Her income today is tied more to incentive bonuses than in the past. On layoff, she is collecting $20 an hour, which is 80 percent of her base pay of $25.12 an hour. That base pay, rather than rising significantly, is fattened by incentive bonuses tied to amounts of steel produced and to profits. It had been averaging an additional $7 an hour — money now gone until the mill reopens. “No one knows when that will happen,” said Ms. Loepker, who lives by herself in a four-bedroom home she bought in nearby Belleville, three blocks from a married sister. “The company tells us the end of March, but they don’t know either,” Ms. Loepker said. “The uncertainty has everyone fearful.” Not since the 1980s has American steel production been as low as it is today. Those were the Rust Belt years when many steel companies were failing and imports of better quality, lower cost steel were rising. Foreign producers no longer have an advantage over the refurbished American companies. Indeed, imports, which represent about 30 percent of all steel sales in the United States , also are hurting as customers disappear. The industry, in response, is lobbying the Obama transition team for infrastructure projects that would require big amounts of steel. Mass transit systems are high on the list, and so is bridge repair. “We are sharing with the president-elect’s transition team our thoughts in terms of the industry’s policy priorities,” said Nancy Gravatt, a spokeswoman for the American Iron and Steel Institute. The Obama team has not yet revealed details of the president-elect’s soon-to-be-announced recovery plan other than to indicate that most of the package will probably go into infrastructure spending rather than tax breaks. “If the president-elect really follows through, he’ll fund a lot of mass transit projects,” said Wilbur L. Ross Jr. , the Wall Street deal maker who put together the steel conglomerate known as Arcelor Mittal USA. “All the big cities have these projects ready to go.” The sharp slide in steel production has several causes. Construction and auto production have fallen sharply; between them, they account for 57 percent of the steel bought each year in the United States, according to the Iron and Steel Institute. Appliances, machinery and other electrical equipment account for an additional 13 percent, and the fall-off in production of these goods has also reduced steel orders. Then there are the wholesalers, known in the steel industry as service centers. They buy in huge quantities from the mills, building up inventories and selling to customers like a construction company that needs I-beams to build a shopping center, or a manufacturer of auto parts in need of steel tubing. Until recently, the inventories were bought on credit, and the service centers constantly replenished these stockpiles as steel was sold to end users. But now the service centers, unable to borrow money easily and reluctant to borrow anyway in these hard times, have stopped buying from the steel mills. They are selling off their inventories instead, raising cash in the process. It is a tactic that annoys Mr. DiMicco, the Nucor chief, no end. “They don’t want to be without cash when they go into whatever the black hole is that is being created by the financial crisis,” he said, and faulted the nation’s lenders for collecting billions in government bailout money and then, in his view, refusing to lend it to the service centers on reasonable terms. “Credit completely dried up,” Mr. DiMicco said, “and it is still hard to get.”

Economy
US Economy
Steel Iron
Recession and Depression


Early Worries That Hurricane Sandy May Be a ‘Perfect Storm’

Abstract: Hurricane Sandy, which on Thursday was barreling through the Bahamas as a Category 2 storm, may be taking aim at the northeastern United States and could make landfall along the Atlantic coast early next week. If so, forecasters say, the storm could become, to use a technical term from meteorology, a whopper. “It really could be an extremely significant, historic storm,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami , explaining that conditions are similar to those that created the famous “perfect storm” of 1991. Hurricane prediction is, of course, an iffy business, said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the National Hurricane Center, who noted that the storm was still days from the East Coast and could weaken drastically or even shift course and race off into the Atlantic. The chain of events that would make Hurricane Sandy develop into a grave threat to the coast involves a storm system known as a midlatitude trough that is moving across the country from the west. If the systems meet up, as many computer models predict, the storm over land could draw the hurricane in. “Now you’ve got this giant storm complex with a lot of energy,” Mr. Feltgen said. The combined systems could produce high winds, heavy rains and storm surges that would cause extensive damage. New York was beginning to prepare for trouble. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told reporters that the city activated its coastal storm plan on Thursday morning and that it had already opened its Office of Emergency Management situation room. He also said that important city agencies had been meeting regularly and that the storm was discussed at Thursday’s senior staff meeting, “just to make sure that everybody knows they should, you know, start getting out the plans, which we’ve worked on very hard.” Joseph J. Lhota , the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority , said in a radio interview on WNYC on Thursday that the agency was discussing contingency plans to move buses to higher ground if necessary. Last year, the authority carried out an unprecedented shutdown of the entire subway system ahead of Tropical Storm Irene . “I don’t think we’re looking at anything like that for what’s happening next week,” Mr. Lhota said. Such storm combinations have happened before: one that occurred 21 years ago developed into what is now known as the “perfect storm” off the coast of New England . That disaster was memorialized in a 1997 book and a 2000 movie by the same name. “Essentially, all of the major models are now showing some form of phasing event similar to the perfect storm occurring sometime next week,” said William A. Komaromi, a graduate student at the University of Miami who posted an essay online on Thursday comparing Hurricane Sandy to the 1991 event. Mr. Feltgen said that “everybody along the U.S. East Coast needs to be paying attention to this right now,” though he added that “we’re not telling people to rush to the grocery stores.” It is a time, he suggested, for watchful waiting. “Let’s not go overboard with this thing,” he said, “but you should at least start becoming aware of it.” Mr. McNoldy said, “You want to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.” Even if the storm’s wind power weakens substantially, as Hurricane Irene showed, “rainfall can still be extremely high.” Mr. McNoldy’s posts on Twitter about Hurricane Sandy now bear the label “frankenstorm.” The storm is approaching in the middle of preparations for next month’s presidential election and could disrupt plans for early voting in some areas, with unpredictable results. Mark McKinnon, a former media strategist for President George W. Bush who went on to found No Labels, a group promoting bipartisanship, said that the hurricane brought to the campaigns something they both dread: uncertainty. “Campaigns are all about control,” he said. “So in the closing days, they fear any external events that could disrupt the game plan. Ain’t no leashes for Mother Nature.”


Borrowed Hearing Aid Opens New World to Teenager From El Salvador

Abstract: He thought he was the only one. There were no other deaf people in Cuyantepeque, El Salvador, the isolated farming village where Vladimir Gongora, 17, lived for most of his life. Nestled between mountains, the town also had no health center and, until recently, no road access for cars. For Vladimir, there was also no school: Because he could not hear or speak, teachers shut him out, his family said. For years he lingered by the school doors at recess, waiting for other children to exit, waiting for playmates. He communicated only with his two sisters and grandparents, using hand signals they had invented. No one informed him that other deaf people existed. And so in 1997, Vladimir’s father, Jose Gongora, left for the United States. First, he aimed simply to make money for his growing family. But as he learned more of his son’s seclusion, a new, unshakable goal emerged: He would bring Vladimir to New York, where his son could get help. “He didn’t hear, he didn’t speak,” Mr. Gongora said, speaking in Spanish. “But the understanding was there. I thought: ‘He wants to be something. Something — yes.’ ” Since immigrating, Mr. Gongora has risen at 5:30 a.m. to work for a landscaping company, spending tens of thousands of hours laying sprinklers and hanging Christmas decorations. In 2003, he brought his wife, Dolores, to New York. And then in May, after more than a decade away from his father, Vladimir walked through the doors of the family’s apartment in Flushing, Queens, and into the arms of Mr. Gongora. Video Vladimir Gongora, a deaf teen from rural El Salvador, came to New York in May. Since then, he has begun learning to sign, read and write, and has started to make friends for the first time. Since then, Vladimir’s world has exploded into an ever-expanding kaleidoscope of communication. In October, he began attending the Lexington School for the Deaf in Jackson Heights, Queens, which often helps hearing-impaired children from outside the United States. There, he is learning American Sign Language. He has begun to read and write. He has made other hearing-impaired friends. And, for the first time, Vladimir has met deaf people with professions and families of their own. “He’s signing more, with the expectation that people are going to understand him,” said Julia Schafer, a caseworker at Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York who works closely with the family. When Vladimir began school, his family realized that to practice new words, he would need an inexpensive computer. Through Catholic Charities, one of the agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, Ms. Schafer helped the family apply for a $440 grant from the fund, and the Gongoras bought a laptop. On a recent Tuesday, Vladimir opened the laptop to reveal a program designed to teach sign language. His father stood by, and the two began discussing Vladimir’s trajectory. They have adopted a hand language that is uniquely theirs. Their arms began to fly. At school, “there are so many children that don’t speak, just like him,” Mr. Gongora said. “He felt like he had company.” And after knocking on the doors of the hearing community for so many years, Vladimir has finally found an opening. A test recently revealed that he has 30 percent hearing in one ear, and the Lexington School lent him a hearing aid. But at the end of each day, he must leave the device behind. It opens up the possibility that Vladimir could begin to speak. Mr. Gongora wants desperately to buy one for his son, but he has no idea when he will be able to raise the $1,500 needed for the purchase. His monthly earnings at the landscaping company, typically $2,400, disappear quickly once the $1,550-a-month rent and other bills are paid and food is bought for Vladimir, his mother and his 2-year-old sister. Anything extra goes back to El Salvador, where Mr. Gongora and his wife have two teenage daughters. “He asks me, ‘¿Cuándo?’ ” Mr. Gongora said. “ ‘When are we going to be able to buy one?’ ” For now, that goal is out of reach. “He says he wants to work here,” said Mr. Gongora, who never went to school, “and later get a car. He dreams a lot, right? “ ‘Everything in time,’ I tell him. ‘Step by step.’ ”

Deafness
Sign language
New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Jackson Heights Queens
Philanthropy


With Time Growing Short, New Offense Has Giants’ Attention at Last

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — When the Giants were slow to adjust to the up-tempo pace demanded by their first-year offensive coordinator, Ben McAdoo, during organized team activities, no one expressed concern, because so much time remained to learn his system. When the offense lacked rhythm and crispness in the early days of training camp, there was still no cause for alarm: There were five preseason games — one more than usual, thanks to the Hall of Fame Game — to smooth any rough edges. On Saturday night, although the Giants defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers , 20-16, at MetLife Stadium to improve their preseason record to 2-0, the team finally voiced some urgency. Eli Manning, the scrutinized leader of the sputtering attack, played four series and was held without a completion. After the offensive starters generated one first down, Rashad Jennings, a sixth-year running back whom the Giants signed as part of an off-season overhaul, said, “We’ve got a lot of growing to do very quickly.” Coach Tom Coughlin also had a trace of impatience in his postgame comments. “We’ve practiced this a lot, and I think, quite frankly, it does need to have more rhythm,” he said. “It does need to have more speed with it. But we have some more time to work on that.” Coughlin indicated to reporters in a conference call Sunday that he might give the first-string offense more playing time in this week’s preseason game at Indianapolis. “What you are trying to do is put some consistency together,” he said. “You struggle some, and you’ve got to work through it.” Manning, who did not come close to connecting on either of his two pass attempts against Pittsburgh, had never been held to fewer than two completions in a preseason game. In the 11th year of his career, he said he was looking forward to getting the opportunity to rebound. “These games are important for me to get a live rush, movement in the pocket, those types of things, and reacting when everything is real,” Manning said. “So these next weeks in practice and games will be very important to us.” To some degree, time is growing short for Manning and his teammates to find their groove. Coughlin may be reluctant to play Manning extensively in the Giants’ preseason finale, at home against New England on Aug. 28, to protect him for the regular-season opener, at Detroit on Sept. 8. Manning typically receives his most significant time in the next-to-last preseason game, when starters are customarily allowed to play into the second half. This year, that game will be Aug. 22 against the Jets. Manning dropped back on the first play from scrimmage Saturday, but wide receiver Jerrel Jernigan had his back to the throw, a glaring example of the poor communication between the quarterback and the receivers that Coughlin complained about. “I would like to see this cleaned up, and I think it will be,” Coughlin said. Two plays later, on a third-and-2, Manning rolled right and looked for Larry Donnell, a tight end McAdoo hopes can play a large role. Donnell could not shake free, forcing Manning to throw the ball away. Jennings provided one of the few bright spots with a 73-yard scoring dash to begin the second series. The Giants began the third series at their 12-yard line, though, and their field position only got worse, as Manning was sacked for an 8-yard loss on first down. That offered a reminder of the work still to be done on the revamped offensive line. “Those people need to play,” Coughlin said. “They need to work together. They need to communicate.” In addition, guards Brandon Mosley and Geoff Schwartz were called for holding on consecutive plays on the fourth possession. Manning still needs practice and game time to develop a rapport with wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., drafted 12th over all in May with the expectation that he would team with Victor Cruz to form an explosive tandem. Beckham has missed extensive time with a hamstring injury and will be limited to individual drills to open this week.


Questions and Answers on Benghazi and the Fallout

Abstract: Eight months after four Americans died in a terrorist attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, a House committee held another hearing on Wednesday to examine whether the Obama administration mishandled the tragic events. What follows is an update on what is known about the Benghazi episode and why it has become such a political flash point: Q. Why is the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform holding a new hearing on Benghazi? A. Committee investigators found two State Department officials who previously had not spoken publicly — though their testimony has been previewed in the news media in recent days — and who are scathingly critical of the administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack. Gregory Hicks, who was serving as deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in Tripoli at the time, is expected to testify that a far more aggressive American military response could have been mounted on the night of the attack. Mark I. Thompson, the deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, has told committee staff members that he argued unsuccessfully that an emergency support team should be dispatched. Some of their colleagues disagree with their views on what more could have been done. Q. But haven’t the inadequacy of security measures at Benghazi and other shortcomings already been addressed in a major report? A . Yes. In December, an independent review led by a retired veteran diplomat, Thomas R. Pickering, and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was severely critical of the State Department. “Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies resulted in a security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” the report said. But a more recent “interim progress report” by the Republican leaders of five House committees, released on April 23, suggested that Obama administration officials had covered up the truth about the failures, and that the Pickering-Mullen report had misleadingly blamed lower-level officials while shielding their superiors. “The committees’ review shows that the leadership failure in relation to security and policy in Benghazi extended to the highest levels of the State Department, including Secretary Clinton,” the interim report said, referring to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who left her post in February. Q. So how great a role is partisan politics playing in the Benghazi debate? A. A big role, it is fair to say. Mrs. Clinton, who is at the center of the controversy, is, of course, the leading Democratic prospect for president in 2016. A lethal terrorist attack on Americans overseas — and the accusation that the Obama administration has tried to hide the truth about it — has struck a powerful emotional chord, at least with Republicans and conservatives. Fox News and conservative talk radio continue to give the issue intensive coverage. Especially since the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon on April 15, which killed three people and wounded more than 200, the alliterative pairing of Benghazi and Boston have been featured in attacks on the Obama administration for counterterrorism failures. Q. What about the dispute over whether President Obama and his aides refused to apply the “terrorism” label to the attack, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans? A. Mr. Obama applied the “terror” label to the attack in his first public statement on the events in Benghazi, delivered in the Rose Garden at the White House at 10:43 a.m. on Sept. 12, though the reference was indirect. “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” he said. “Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.” He repeated similar phrasing the next day. Q. So why was there such controversy over what Republicans call the administration’s deep reluctance to label the attack terrorism? A. The “act of terror” references attracted relatively little notice at the time, and later they appeared to have been forgotten even by some administration officials. In the vice-presidential debate, for instance, Representative Paul D. Ryan declared , “It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack.” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did not directly contradict the charge. What attracted more attention was a series of statements by administration officials, notably Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, that appeared to link the Benghazi attack to a protest against a crude anti-Islam video made in the United States that was circulating on the Web. Q. What exactly did the administration officials say that prompted the Republican criticism? A. Several officials emphasized that the attack appeared to be spontaneous, not planned, and linked it to the protests over the video that had taken place in Cairo and other cities. Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said on Sept. 14 about the Benghazi attack, “We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” On Sept. 16, based on “talking points” supplied by the intelligence agencies, Ms. Rice said, “What this began as was a spontaneous, not a premeditated, response to what happened, transpired in Cairo,” where protesters angered by the video stormed the grounds of the American Embassy. Hedging her remarks by saying that her information was preliminary, Ms. Rice also said, “We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people, came to the embassy to — or to the consulate, rather — to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo.” That initial protest, she said, “seems to have been hijacked” by “extremists who came with heavier weapons.” Q. Who wrote the “talking points” and how were they edited? A . The talking points were prepared by American intelligence agencies, but exactly who may have edited them and why remains a point of dispute. David H. Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director, testified in a closed-door hearing in November that intelligence officials wanted a reference to Al Qaeda dropped from the talking points to keep from alerting militants who were the subject of the investigation. But the Republican report last month declared, “In the days following the attacks, White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the intelligence community in order to protect the State Department.” Q. Mr. Obama vowed last September that the perpetrators of the attack would be brought to justice. Has that happened? A. Not yet. Libya remains a volatile and dangerous place, and the F.B.I.'s progress in investigating the attack appears to be slow. Last week, the bureau released photographs of three men it was seeking for questioning; the F.B.I. did not call the men suspects but said they “were on the grounds of the United States Special Mission when it was attacked.” No one has been charged — at least publicly — with the murder of the four Americans.


New Hampshire Holds Lottery for Moose Hunt

Abstract: CONCORD, N.H. — “Oh my God,” cried Alice Jenness, fanning her overheated face with both hands. She had just won the lottery. The lottery for a permit to hunt a moose, that is. Ms. Jenness, 51, has been entering her name in New Hampshire’s moose-hunting lottery since it began in 1988. She had never won, and this year, she, like the other hopefuls, faced ever-greater odds at the drawing on Friday. More than 13,400 people entered the lottery this year for a permit to each hunt just one moose; 275 would be chosen . The number of permits is down, in part because the size of the herd is about where state officials want it and because excessive numbers of ticks, spawned by warmer winters, appear to be killing more moose. So Ms. Jenness, who was packed with about 150 people into a room here at the State Fish and Game Department for the drawing, was astonished when she heard her name called after a computer selected the lottery winners. Thousands were listening on live radio or watching as the event streamed on the Web. Ms. Jenness, who works at a supermarket deli, said that she grew up hunting deer with her father, who died in 1983. The moose hunt, which will take place in late October, will be a tribute to him. “I’m going to use my dad’s .308,” she said proudly. “It means a lot to me.” At the same time, she will be gathering her favorite entree. “It’s the very best,” she said of moose meat. “We even take roadkill.” New Hampshire is one of only a few states with enough moose to allow a hunting season, and the lottery is an annual rite that captures the attention of hunters in state and out. Maine, a much bigger state than New Hampshire, with thousands more moose, also has a lottery, to be held later this month. The drawing there has become so popular that a whole weekend of activities has grown up around it. New Hampshire’s lottery has grown in visibility and interest over the years — on Friday, the departing governor, John Lynch, presided over it, and the hosts of morning talk on WTPL-FM (107.7) read all 275 names live on the air. But the declining number of permits has only intensified the competition and decreased the odds of winning. The permits are down in part because of the successful management of the herd. As much as moose can be thrilling for hunters, tourists and wildlife biologists, they can be annoying to others, like farmers and paper manufacturers, and they can be dangerous, if not fatal, to motorists. Since moose re-established themselves here a half century ago, the state has tried to manage the interests of all sides. One thing beyond the state’s control is the increase in moose mortality — the result of a complex chain reaction involving warmer winters and a corresponding increase in winter ticks, which are not the ticks that cause disease in humans. The herd in New Hampshire has dropped to about 5,000 from about 7,000 a few years ago, said Kristine Rines, who has been the state’s moose project leader at the Fish and Game Department since 1985. Normally, a moose might carry 30,000 ticks, Ms. Rines said. And normally, the ticks drop off in the spring into the snow and die because the snow prevents them from reaching the ground, where they breed. But when there is no snow, the ticks breed more easily and multiply at a rapid rate, so that one moose might carry as many as 120,000. The ticks can cause anemia and blood loss, just as the moose are emerging from winter and are at their weakest. “We call April the month of death for tick-laden moose,” Ms. Rines said. “My concern is that normal winters are going to be a thing of the past,” she added. Moose like the cold, but they still have been wandering south in recent decades, including into Connecticut and Massachusetts, where they have established populations, but not enough to sustain hunting. The climate and other factors are so variable in these regions that it is not clear whether the tick problem in New Hampshire could occur further south, said Mark Ellingwood, a wildlife biologist for New Hampshire. “But it seems unlikely,” he said, “because there aren’t enough moose in southern New England to host an abundance of winter ticks.” In Minnesota, the moose population in the northeastern part of the state has plummeted to half its size in just a few years, researchers have said, with parasites and climate change among the possible culprits. But regulated hunting is still allowed because it is not seen as a major cause of the decline. As the lottery here ended, Ms. Jenness and two other winners who had attended the drawing found themselves flooded with phone calls from friends and family who offered congratulations. One person who was not so excited was Ms. Jenness’s son, Shawn, 28, a supermarket cashier, who accompanied her to the drawing. He said he did not like the idea of killing animals, and he has no interest in eating moose meat. His dinner of choice, he said, is pizza.

New Hampshire
Lotteries
Moose
Hunting and Trapping


In 2008 Race, Little Ones Go on the Trail With Daddy

Abstract: DES MOINES — Emma Claire and Jack Edwards, 9 and 7, were on their umpteenth campaign trip earlier this month, this time through small towns where their father was decrying rural poverty and the power of lobbyists. The two children barely listened. They scampered away from speeches as fast as their parents would allow, to vending machines and arcade games and swimming expeditions, a campaign bus stocked with Oreos and DVDs, and for a glorious half hour, a trampoline next door to a speaking event. And they treated an interviewer the way politicians surely wish they could at times, refusing at first to remove their iPod earphones for a discussion of life on the trail. “I don’t want to do this,” Jack protested to his father, John Edwards , the Democratic presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator. “I don’t care whether you want to do this,” Mr. Edwards replied. A moment later, Jack hid his face in his hands. “Mr. Jack, do we need to go in the back and have a conversation?” asked Mr. Edwards, lifting his son’s head. The boy sat for a few more minutes, fidgety but obedient, before being freed and happily bounding with his sister to the fort they were building in the back of the bus. This year, John and Jack Edwards are far from the only parent and child negotiating the awkward intersection of family and campaign life. No fewer than five presidential contenders — Mr. Edwards, Senators Christopher J. Dodd , Sam Brownback and Barack Obama , and the almost-candidate Fred D. Thompson — have children under 10, a circumstance historians say has no recent precedent. It is a case of campaign demographics colliding with larger ones: some contenders are running for president at relatively young ages, while others — like many voters — are having children later in life. That leaves politicians agonizing over how often to leave their children, who should care for them and how much to shield them from the spotlight. Each candidate calls family a top priority, but that can mean different things. Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama represent poles of the debate — Mr. Edwards has upended his children’s lives for the campaign while Mr. Obama is determined to keep his daughters rooted at home with their routines intact — while the others fall somewhere in between. Though the candidates are upbeat and say their families are doing fine on the trail, they or their spouses sometimes hint of concerns about raising their children in the harsh environment of a presidential race. Michelle Obama, for example, told a crowd in Council Bluffs, Iowa, this month that when she and her husband considered his candidacy, they knew that “nothing would have been more disruptive than running for president of the United States.” Then there are the logistics: car seat requirements that vary in every state and the kind of sudden illness that kept Mr. Thompson’s family away from the Iowa State Fair (Samuel, 9 months old, had an ear infection). Mr. Dodd’s daughter Christina, 2, tends to wake up for the day between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. and sometimes undoes her diaper in public. (Last month in Iowa, Jackie Clegg Dodd, her mother, replaced it as she was giving a speech to voters.) Grace Dodd, 5, has life-threatening allergies, meaning her parents must either bring or shop for special meals — and keep her away from the foods that have sent her into anaphylactic shock several times. Some parents and campaign staff members describe moments of unexpected delight involving candidates’ children on the trail, such as when voters at a house party serenaded Malia Obama on her birthday last month, and when the singer Paul Simon, a friend of the Dodd family, amused the girls on the campaign bus by improvising new verses to their favorite songs. Leaving the children behind too often means heartache. “There’s nothing like your 5-year-old saying please don’t go” on another campaign trip, said Mr. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. “She sees you put that tie on and that coat, and those are all the signals I won’t be around.” Mr. Brownback, Republican of Kansas, said he was feeling guilty recently about missing the first day of the school year for his two 9-year-olds, Mark and Jenna. “You just end up missing a lot,” he said. “You do a lot of parenting over the phone.” Mr. Edwards, who lost his oldest son in a car accident 11 years ago, is determined to avoid regrets like the one Mr. Brownback described, even if it means dragging Emma Claire and Jack through thousands of miles and stump speeches. Back in North Carolina, the Edwards family lives in a 28,000-square-foot pleasure palace, with a basketball court and a room dedicated to arts-and-crafts projects. This fall, the children will not be there much; instead of their routine of school, sports and friends, they will travel with their parents, spending days on buses and nights at Comfort Inns. Their mother and a tutor will school them on the road, a plan hatched, Elizabeth Edwards said, even before she learned that her breast cancer had recurred and would not be cured. “That’s the way I grew up, moving around, seeing lots of different ways of life,” said Mrs. Edwards, whose father was in the military. To hear the couple talk, it will be an enriching, madcap adventure that will allow their children to learn things on the road they might not in a classroom, and it will fulfill their highest priority: being together. “We are physically bonded with our children,” Mr. Edwards said. “For long periods of time to not see my children is not good for me,” he said, adding a beat later that it did not benefit them either. “This has to do with our continuing relationship with them,” Mrs. Edwards said, “with them understanding how important they are to us.” Traveling together, though, does not always mean being together. On a recent Iowa trip, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards were busy with voters, interviews and phone calls, and the children spent good chunks of the day in the care of their baby sitter. It is a familiar life for them. When Mr. Edwards was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, Jack spent Halloween walking the aisles of a campaign plane in a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger costume, collecting candy from the press corps. This fall, his parents say, he will be sorry to miss playing on his sports teams at home. Asked what she would miss, Emma Claire sounded alarmed. “How will I get to see my dog?” she asked. In contrast, the Obamas have pledged to keep their daughters’ lives in Chicago intact, especially during the school year. “Our kids thrive on stability and routine and consistency,” Mrs. Obama said in a recent interview in a scuffed storage room where the family had just eaten lunch. “If we talked about pulling them out of school for this, they would be miserable,” she added. This summer, with no school to attend, Malia and Sasha Obama, 9 and 6, took seven campaign trips, but Mrs. Obama said that birthday parties and day-camp field trips came first. She said she tried to limit her solo trips to twice weekly and arrive home by bedtime. When she is gone, her mother, Marian Robinson, who recently retired from her job as a bank secretary, fills in. Malia and Sasha see their father one day a week most of the time, twice if they are lucky. They recently resorted to catching glimpses of each other by Web cam. Nobody in the family is thrilled with the arrangement. “He really is interested in having his kids grow up like we did, not like he did,” said Craig Robinson, Mrs. Obama’s brother, in an interview earlier this year, referring to Mr. Obama’s absent father and long period of separation from his mother. In his 2006 autobiography “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama was blunt about what his ambitions had cost his family, writing about missed soccer games and his sense of being an outsider in the universe that his wife and children had created. Nearly a year after that book was published, his schedule is far busier. Mr. Robinson joked recently that it would be years before the real impact of the race on Malia and Sasha was clear. “We probably won’t know how well it’s going until the kids are older and they come back and say, I wish you didn’t do this,” he said. The family’s recent visit to the Iowa State Fair, which was supposed to be a highlight for the girls, looked as uncomfortable up close as it did delightful in pictures. While Mr. Obama grinned and munched with gusto, his daughters looked alternately impassive and spooked by the cameras, reporters and onlookers that pressed in on them. At the petting zoo, no one paid any mind to the baby pigs or goats: Malia and Sasha had become the small, nervous-looking creatures on display. Squeezing out of the exhibit, Mrs. Obama leaned in to a reporter. “This is not quality time,” she said. The girls brightened when they got to the rides. Malia picked one that suspended her and her father several stories in the air. It was a choice that kept her safely above the hungry crowd but also supplied the photogenic moment it craved. All of the candidates use their children to charm voters. The children are the tiny Ed McMahons of the race, warming up the audience before the main pitch. This summer, Mr. Brownback’s children introduced him over the bus public address system at campaign stops. Mr. Thompson, a former Republican senator from Tennessee, made a video for an antiabortion group that began with cameos by his 3-year-old daughter, Hayden, and Samuel, his 9-month-old. (His older sons, from a previous marriage, are neither in the video nor a family portrait on his Web site.) The Edwards children are the most visible of all the candidates’, pictured on the first frame of their father’s Web site and often seen standing with their parents at the start of events. Last week, when they filed into a deserted ice cream parlor in Perry, Iowa, their orders were recorded by five photographers and four reporters. Asked about the scrutiny, Mr. Edwards said his children were used to it, while Mrs. Edwards said she was watching for signs of anything amiss. Later that week, Mrs. Obama gave almost the same answer. “Every day we take a measure,” she said. Soon she will cut back her campaign schedule for the start of the school year, and will increase it again once the girls are settled. Malia, meanwhile, is determined that she and her father will finish the latest Harry Potter book together, in person, even if she is the last 9-year old on the planet to find out how the saga concludes. “When Daddy has time, we’ll finish,” she told her mother. After all, Malia said, “This isn’t a race.”

Edwards John
Presidential Election of 2008
Children and Youth
Dodd Christopher J
Brownback Sam
Obama Barack
Thompson Fred Dalton