BP Describes Race to Fix Well as Obama Warns of Oil Damage

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — BP prepared Monday to install a shutoff valve on one of three leaks gushing from an oil spill off the coast of New Orleans , in a bid to stem what President Obama called a "potentially unprecedented environmental disaster." The effort comes as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the oil slick appears to be drifting toward the Alabama and Florida coasts, including the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana ’s southern tip. President Obama visited Louisiana on Sunday afternoon for a firsthand look at the response effort, while officials for BP described in detail their desperate efforts to seal the gushing well. “The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our gulf states and it could extend for a long time,” Mr. Obama said. “It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home.” On Monday, BP said it would pay “all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs" from the disaster. "BP takes responsibility for responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We will clean it up," the company said in a statement. BP was leasing the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded on April 20. Two days later, it collapsed into the gulf, and the oil began leaking. BP, working with an array of government agencies and private companies, has been unable to stop the flow of crude from the well. Bob Fryar, the company’s senior vice president for operations in Angola, who was brought to a command center in Houston for the engineering effort, said that on Monday, BP hoped to install a shut-off valve on one of the three leaks. That may stop some of the oil flow, Mr. Fryar said. But the biggest leak, at the end of the riser pipe, which Mr. Fryar said was the source of most of the spewing oil, cannot be shut off this way. The company intends to address that leak by lowering a containment dome over it and then pumping the oil to the surface. That effort is still at least six days away, Mr. Fryar said. Another containment dome, for the third leak, which is on the riser near the wellhead, would follow two to four days after the first. The root of the problem appears to be a towering stack of heavy equipment 5,000 feet below the surface of the gulf known as a blowout preventer. It is a steel-framed stack of valves, rams, housings, tanks and hydraulic tubing that is designed to seal the well quickly in the event of a burst of pressure. It did not work when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded. Mr. Fryar and Charlie Holt, BP’s drilling operations manager for the gulf, described an audacious plan to confront the blowout preventer problem. In this approach, they would seal the well by cutting the riser at the wellhead, sliding a huge piece of equipment called the riser package out of the way and bolting a second blowout preventer atop the first one. The risk in attempting such a maneuver — which would be performed, as all the undersea work has been, by robotic submersibles tethered to support ships 5,000 feet above — is that the pressure of the oil rising from the well could be overwhelming, and the well could gush oil at a far higher rate. Mr. Fryar said a pressure gauge would be installed soon to determine if it was safe to attempt the operation. Speaking of the accident, Mr. Fryar said the blowout preventer “has lots of redundancies, there are lots of opportunities to shut these off. None of these worked.” Whether the equipment was faulty or it was damaged in the accident was unclear. Officials still plan to drill relief wells, which would allow crews to plug the gushing cavity with heavy liquid. Drilling of a first relief well was set to begin “as soon as the weather clears,” Mr. Fryar said. Drilling for a second well was expected to begin in two weeks. The relief wells, however, will take months to execute. Cleanup efforts were hampered again Sunday by bad weather and 7- to 10-foot swells, which prevented planes from dropping chemical dispersants and oil skimmers from corralling the slick on the surface. Mr. Fryar said that for a second day, crews were injecting chemical dispersant into the oil as it flowed from the main leak. Dispersant, which is more conventionally used on the water surface, breaks the oil into small droplets and reduces its buoyancy, so it will sink to the bottom. Mr. Fryar said technicians were trying to determine whether it would be possible to inject the dispersant directly into the riser deep under the water so that it would mix better with the flowing oil. “We think this dispersant is highly effective,” he said. “We’re hoping the oil won’t make it to the surface.” The impact of chemical dispersants on deepwater ecology is unclear. Closer to land, crews continued to put out booms to stop the oil and were training volunteers in Mississippi and Florida to help minimize the impact if the slick reaches the beach, said John Curry, head of external affairs at BP. Speaking to reporters in the rain in Venice , La., after talking with response teams that have amassed on the coast to try to stem the tide of oil lapping the shoreline, Mr. Obama vowed that the government would keep up the pressure on BP. While he did not criticize the company in his public remarks, Mr. Obama’s comments reflected increased frustration in the administration with BP’s inability to plug the oil leak. The president again reiterated that American taxpayers would not foot the bill. “BP is responsible for this leak — BP will be paying the bill,” Mr. Obama said. Mr. Obama had initially not planned to visit the region until later this week at the earliest, White House officials said Friday afternoon. But by late Friday night, with criticism mounting that the government’s response was too slow, White House officials decided that the president needed to make the trip to the gulf on Sunday. White House officials sent two Cabinet officials to appear on the Sunday television talk shows with the message that the administration was doing everything it could to take control of the spill and that it had been involved from the beginning. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Fox News Sunday that the government had an “all hands on deck” approach to the disaster. For Mr. Obama, the widening environmental calamity in the gulf is made even more complicated, politically, by the fact that the spill occurred just a month after he announced he was expanding offshore drilling . He now says that no new leases will be approved until a thorough review of the causes of the BP leak is complete. “Every American affected by this spill should know this: Your government will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes to stop this crisis,” Mr. Obama said after his briefing by federal and state officials. He said the spill endangered the “heartbeat of the region’s economic life.” Mr. Obama met with Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana upon the arrival of Air Force One in New Orleans. Then he went to Venice for two hours — by road, rather than helicopter, because of inclement weather — to look at the response. He stopped to speak to several fishermen, assuring them that BP would reimburse them for lost earnings. But reimbursement may be one of the largest battles to come, given that federal law sets a limit of $75 million on BP’s liability for damages, apart from the cleanup costs. “It’s going to be extremely tricky” to reimburse fishermen and others if economic damages tally above $75 million, said Stuart Smith, a New Orleans-based lawyer who is pushing for Congressional action to amend the law. “They may not be obligated to pay more than that unless they agree to do it.” There is a federal fund, generated from a tax on oil, that may cover as much as $1 billion in damages.

BP
Wells
Offshore drilling
Oil and Gasoline
Accidents and Safety
Gulf of Mexico
Explosion
Transocean


Rabid Pet Is Among Dogs Flown Here From Iraq

Abstract: An effort by good Samaritans to rescue abandoned dogs from Iraq and bring them to the United States has led to a national public health warning after a puppy named Crusader was belatedly found to have rabies. Crusader was among 24 dogs and 2 cats that arrived on a flight to Newark Liberty International Airport on June 5, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. In its “ Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report ,” the center said the flight was part of an international rescue operation intended to reunite American soldiers with pets they had adopted while in Iraq. The rescue mission, Operation Baghdad Pups, was organized by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International, which has brought scores of Iraqi strays to the United States since 2007. One cat became sick, though not rabid, during the trip and was immediately euthanized. The other animals were quarantined, as is normal, at the Newark airport. Three days later, Crusader, an 11-month-old black Labrador mix that had been adopted by a soldier on a military base in Baghdad seven months earlier, was hospitalized with signs of illness, including fever, diarrhea, wobbly gait, agitation and crying, the report said. On June 10, the remaining animals were shipped to 16 states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Texas, Virginia and Pennsylvania, according to the federal report. The next day, Crusader was euthanized, but delivery of specimens to a state lab in New Jersey was delayed, so its illness was not diagnosed as rabies until June 18. That was a week after the other pets, which may have been exposed to the rabid dog, had been sent to their adoptive homes across the country. All pets imported to the United States are supposed to be vaccinated for rabies 30 days before they arrive, according to Dr. Nina Marano, a C.D.C. veterinarian. The dogs and cats in this shipment got rabies shots only a few days before the flight, however, and as a condition of shipment, prospective owners had to sign agreements to keep them at home for a month to prevent the potential spread of undetected disease, Dr. Marano said. Once Crusader’s illness was diagnosed, C.D.C. officials grew concerned about the possible exposure of anyone who came into contact with the other dogs, including people who attended events welcoming the pets. Rabies is almost always fatal, and is transmitted by saliva. A spokeswoman at the C.D.C. said there were one to three cases of human rabies in the United States each year, generally from exposure to bats; about 45,000 people a year get preventive treatment. Dog-to-dog transmission of rabies has been eradicated in the United States, the C.D.C. said, although there are occasional cases of transmission from wildlife to dogs; the number of rabid dogs here declined to 79 in 2006 from about 5,000 in 1950. Rabies is still common in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and parts of Latin America, killing about 55,000 people a year, most infected from dog bites. “Travelers should be aware of the risk of rabies exposure when traveling to countries where rabies is common in dogs and should not import animals to the United States without properly vaccinating them against rabies and adhering to animal importation laws,” the agency said. Federal and state authorities tracked down the 23 Iraqi dogs and the cat that had been dispersed around the country. They were vaccinated and are now being held for six months in quarantine, where they are being monitored for signs of rabies, the report said. So far none have become sick. Thirteen people have also been advised to get preventive treatment for rabies. C.D.C. reports generally keep identities confidential, and the report did not name the soldier or Crusader’s destination. Dr. Marano said that a new shipment of dogs from Baghdad was expected to arrive this week at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, and that the S.P.C.A. had been required to present proof of 30-day-old vaccinations before the dogs board.


Indiana Hostage-Taking Ends in Suicide

Abstract: VALPARAISO, Ind. (AP) — A man looking for someone he said owed him money took hostages in a real estate office Friday, then fatally shot himself several hours after releasing them, the police said. Two loud bangs were heard Friday afternoon before SWAT Team members broke windows and rushed into the Prudential Executive Group Real Estate office in Valparaiso, where the police said the gunman had locked himself. Chief Michael Brickner of the Valparaiso police said the man shot himself twice in the head. His name was not released, and he died at a hospital. “He has some history here, but we believe he’s from out of state,” Chief Brickner said. The police received a 911 call about 10 a.m. reporting that a man with a gun had entered the brokerage. Sgt. Michael Grennes said there was a “brief exchange of gunfire” when officers arrived. He said that there were fewer than 10 people in the building when the confrontation began, and that the last two hostages were released unharmed after 3 p.m. SWAT Team members stormed the building less than two hours later.

Indiana
Hostages
Suicides and Suicide Attempts


Benefits

Abstract: Lunar New Year THURSDAY -- A dinner celebrating the Lunar New Year at Pier 60, Chelsea Piers, will raise money for the free legal services and civil rights advocacy of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Former Mayor David N. Dinkins will present an award to Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law professor, who will be among those honored. Cocktails at 6. Tickets, $600, from (212) 966-5932. Preserving Electronic Media THURSDAY -- Tom Brokaw will be the host of a black-tie dinner honoring Bob Wright, the chairman and chief executive of NBC Universal, and the cast and creative team of "Saturday Night Live" at the Waldorf-Astoria to aid the Museum of Television and Radio, which has spaces in both New York and Los Angeles. The proceeds of the evening will support the museum's preservation efforts, its education classes for schoolchildren and its special public programs. Cocktails begin at 6:30. Tickets, $1,000, from (212) 621-6753. For Public Service THURSDAY -- Andrew Cuomo will speak at a cocktail party at Cipriani 23d Street, 200 Fifth Avenue, to support the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that encourages careers in the government for the nation's most talented college graduates. The evening begins at 7:30 with cocktails and a buffet dinner. Tickets, $125, from (212) 938-1032. Daytime Stars on 42nd St. FEB. 6 -- Members of the casts of "All My Children," "General Hospital," "The View" and "One Life to Live" will perform at the New Amsterdam Theater, 214 West 42d Street, to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and the social service programs it supports for people with H.I.V. or AIDS. The show begins at 7:30. Tickets, $60, from (212) 840-0770, ext. 268. Support for Citizens FEB. 6 -- Tom Brokaw will be among those honored at a black-tie dinner and dance at the Waldorf-Astoria to raise money for the Citizens for NYC and the volunteer community and neighborhood groups it supports. Cocktails begin at 6:30, with music by Peter Duchin and his orchestra. Tickets, $750, from 212 989-0909, ext. 554. Orchid Dinner FEB. 7 -- A dinner-dance at the Rainbow Room will raise money for the New York Botanical Garden and the research it conducts on the evolution and genetics of orchids. Drinks begin at 7:30. Tickets, $1,000, from (718) 817-8773. For Inwood House FEB. 9 -- A preview of the Photography Show 2006 at the Seventh Regiment Armory will aid Inwood House, which provides teen pregnancy prevention programs, support services for young families and youth development. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will be served throughout the evening, which begins at 6. Tickets, $50, from (212) 861-4400, ext. 232. E-mail: society@nytimes.com Information: (212) 556-1141

ASIAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND


Olive Garden Improvements Help Darden Top Estimates

Abstract: Darden Restaurants reported quarterly profit that topped Wall Street estimates as menu changes and improved service at its Olive Garden restaurants helped lure more diners. Darden’s sales at established Olive Garden restaurants were up 2.7 percent in the first quarter, helped by a long-hoped-for increase in traffic. Excluding items, Darden earned 68 cents a share from continuing operations. Analysts on average had expected earnings of 58 cents a share.

Darden Restaurants
Restaurant
Olive Garden Italian Restaurants
Earnings Reports


Thompson Captures First Major, Beating Wie

Abstract: Lexi Thompson went after it at the Kraft Nabisco Championship in Rancho Mirage, Calif., smashing driver on every hole she could. Michelle Wie reined in her power, hitting conservative fairway-metal stingers and only occasionally letting loose with the driver. Thompson ended up cannonballing into Poppie’s Pond late Sunday afternoon in the traditional victory leap, while Wie was left to wonder about her strategy. “I play this course very aggressively,” the 19-year-old Thompson said. “I didn’t want to change the way I played the last few days because my driver won’t get me in any trouble on a lot of the holes. So, laying back wouldn’t really make sense.” Thompson closed with a bogey-free, four-under 68 for a three-stroke victory over Wie, birdieing four of the first nine holes to open a five-stroke lead and parring the final nine. “This is what I’ve worked so hard for,” Thompson said. ”This was one of my goals coming into the year, to win a major. I’ve always seen myself winning a Kraft Nabisco. It’s such a huge honor with all the history behind the tournament.” Wie birdied the final hole for a 71. She used her driver only four times, choosing to hit fairway woods on the other 10 driving holes — leaving her as much as 60 yards behind Thompson. When both hit 3-woods, Thompson also had the advantage. “I stuck with my game plan and I think it was the right play,” Wie said. “Who knows? In hindsight you would do something here or do something there, make a putt there. That’s the way golf is. I just couldn’t get anything going today.” Image Matt Jones after his 42-yard chip-in on the first hole of a playoff at the Houston Open. Credit Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto Agency Thompson finished at 14-under 274 at Mission Hills for her fourth L.P.G.A. Tour victory. She opened with a 73, shot a tournament-best 64 on Friday and had a 69 on Saturday to tie for the lead with Wie at 10 under. Five years after she first played the event as a 14-year-old amateur, Thompson became the second-youngest major winner at 19 years 1 month 27 days. Morgan Pressel set the mark in 2007 at Mission Hills at 18 years 10 months 9 days. Stacy Lewis, the 2011 winner, had a 67 to finish third at seven under. A WIN AND A TRIP TO AUGUSTA Matt Jones of Australia earned his first trip to the Masters with a remarkable 42-yard chip-in on the first playoff hole, outdueling Matt Kuchar on his way to winning the Houston Open in Humble, Tex. The win is the first on the PGA Tour for Jones, who made a 46-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole to reach the playoff. He ended it one hole later, chipping over the right front bunker on the 18th and watching it roll in. Kuchar, who bogeyed the final hole of regulation, then missed his bunker shot to give Jones the win — earning him nearly $1.2 million and a trip to Augusta National. Jones, who began the day six shots back of Kuchar, shot a final-round six-under 66 and was with Kuchar at 15 under for 72 holes. In September, Jones lipped out an 8-foot birdie putt on the last hole of the BMW Championship — a putt that would have earned him a trip to next week’s Masters by sending him to the Tour Championship. Sergio García finished third at 13 under, and Cameron Tringale was fourth at 12 under. Rory McIlroy matched the low round of the tournament with a 65, finishing tied for seventh at eight under.

Lexi Thompson
Golf
Houston Open
PGA Tour
Masters Golf,Masters
LPGA


Michel Montignac, a French Diet Advocate, Dies at 66

Abstract: Michel Montignac, the self-trained French diet promoter who wrote best-selling books and built a business based on the idea that losing weight depends on what you eat, not how much, died Sunday at a clinic in Annemasse, France. He was 66 and lived in Juvigny, France. His daughter Sybille confirmed his death on her blog but did not specify the cause. Mr. Montignac, who was overweight as young man, was an executive for a pharmaceutical company in the 1970s when he began looking for ways to lose pounds. Although he had no medical training, he used scientific papers to create a diet that divided carbohydrates into good or bad, depending on their glycemic index — the amount of glucose, a sugar, they release into the blood. Thirty years later, the author of “ The South Beach Diet ,” Dr. Arthur Agatston, adopted a similar approach. Testing the idea on himself, Mr. Montignac lost more than 30 pounds in three months, according to his Web site , montignac.com . Mr. Montignac contended that counting calories to lose weight is a “scientific swindle.” He argued that a “survival instinct” leads the body, after an initial weight loss, to store fat. Instead, he proposed that dieters cut back sharply on foods known to raise blood sugar, and he developed rules detailing which foods may be eaten with others to aid digestion. On that basis, potatoes, white bread, white rice, corn, refined flour, corn flakes and carrots are bad. They should be eliminated, Mr. Montignac said, because they contain starch that is converted into glucose. Glucose prompts the pancreas to pump out large amounts of insulin, which drives blood sugar into the body’s cells. When glucose is excessive, the body lays down fat. In the good category are whole wheat bread, beans, lentils, whole wheat pasta, green vegetables, wild rice and dark chocolate with a cacao content of more than 65 percent. Mr. Montignac’s theory was that though these foods also contain starch, their high fiber content slows its conversion into glucose so that less is infused into the cells at one time. In 1986, Mr. Montignac published at his own expense “ Dine Out and Lose Weight ,” aimed particularly at business executives who eat out frequently. It sold 550,000 copies in France. A year later, he published “ Eat Yourself Slim ... and Stay Slim! ” a layman’s version that by 2005 had sold more than 16 million copies in 40 countries, including the United States, according to his Web site. Mr. Montignac also opened diet stores, spas and restaurants throughout France. “All traditional methods of dieting have amounted to a myth as big as Communism, and like Communism, they are destined to collapse,” Mr. Montignac told The New York Times in 1993. Despite Mr. Montignac’s success, his method has had many critics. “The diet is basically a delightful, joyous swindle,” Dr. Marian Afpfelbaum, a nutrition professor at the Bichat medical school in Paris, said in 1993. Dr. Jules Hirsch, director of the Laboratory of Human Behavior and Metabolism at Rockefeller University in Manhattan, said that “almost every dietary possibility has been tried, with alterations in the amount of fat versus the amount of carbohydrates.” He added, “Interesting as these possibilities have been, the verdict over the decades seems to be that regardless of the components in the diet, the total caloric intake is the more important factor in prevention or treatment of obesity.”

Weight
Diet and Nutrition
Deaths (Obituaries)
Montignac Michel


Ancestors of Humans and Kangaroos Split Even Earlier, Fossil Indicates

Abstract: The split between placental mammals and marsupials may have occurred 35 million years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study. Zhe-Xi Luo , a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, and colleagues have discovered a 160-million-year-old fossil in China that is the earliest known ancestor of today’s placental mammals, which include humans. He and his colleagues report their findings of the fossil, Juramaia sinensis , in the current issue of the journal Nature. Until now, the oldest known ancestor to placentals was a small mammal that dates back about 125 million years, to the Cretaceous period. The new fossil has a well-preserved skull with teeth intact. Based on the teeth, the researchers determined that the mammal was more closely related to modern placentals than to modern marsupials. About 90 percent of modern mammals are placentals. They provide nutrients to their unborn young through a placenta that allows for extensive growth and development. Marsupials, by contrast, generally have a shorter gestation period and give birth to relatively undeveloped young. The newly identified mammal was small, weighing less than a chipmunk. Based on its claws, it appears to have been an active climber. “This was a skinny little animal, eating insects,” said Dr. Luo. “We imagine it was active in the night and capable of going up and down trees.” Its discovery helps reconcile fossil evidence and molecular analysis. Modern molecular studies, which use DNA to estimate dates of evolution, also put the emergence of placentals at about 160 million years ago. “This hard rock evidence coincides and matches with the molecular evidence and gives us independent corroboration between fossils and DNA,” Dr. Luo said.

Fossils
Mammals
Nature
Animals
Nature (Journal)


Court Opens Campaign Law to Challenges

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The Supreme Court, ruling on Monday in an important campaign finance case, opened the door to a new round of legal challenges to the limits Congress placed four years ago on election advertisements paid for by corporations and broadcast during the weeks before federal elections. The court's opinion was surprising, coming only six days after the argument. It was unsigned, barely two pages long and unanimous. It may, however, have considerable impact, given that two years ago the court itself appeared to foreclose further challenges to the "electioneering communications" part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The court upheld the law, usually called McCain-Feingold after its Senate sponsors, in a 5-to-4 decision that considered multiple free-speech challenges to the statute "on its face" rather than in particular applications. The court ruled on Monday that both the government and a special three-judge Federal District Court here had misinterpreted its earlier decision as foreclosing future challenges to the advertising restrictions as they applied to particular advertisements or corporate sponsors. The justices vacated the lower court's opinion and ordered it to consider the merits of an anti-abortion group's argument that the statute, if applied to an advertisement the group sought to broadcast on Wisconsin television stations beginning in the summer of 2004, would violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government. In upholding the electioneering-communication provision "against a facial challenge in the 2003 decision," the justices said, "we did not purport to resolve future as-applied challenges." The disposition of the case bought the justices, who are closely divided on campaign finance issues, some time during a period of transition, and might have represented a strategic choice that appealed to both sides. The same might be said of the court's unanimous opinion last week in an abortion case from New Hampshire. Many people who heard the argument in the campaign case last week came away with the impression that given the imminent departure of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who might not have been able to cast a final vote, the decision could well have been a 4-to-4 deadlock. Election law specialists said the likely impact of the decision, Wisconsin Right to Life Inc. v. the Federal Election Commission, No. 04-1581, would be to reopen the issue of how to administer the law. It invites new litigation, they said, over whether specific advertisements fall under the law's definition of those that may not be broadcast within 60 days of a federal general election with money from a corporation's treasury. Under the definition, an "electioneering communication" need not use words like "vote for" or "vote against." Rather, the law covers advertisements that refer to a clearly identified candidate for a federal office and are "targeted to the relevant electorate." Corporations must pay for such advertisements with money raised through a political action committee, which is subject to strict limits and reporting requirements. In its lawsuit, Wisconsin Right to Life described itself as a grass-roots lobbying organization and said the advertisement it wanted to broadcast was part of a constitutionally protected lobbying effort. The advertisement urged Wisconsin residents to call their senators, Herb Kohl and Russell D. Feingold, both Democrats, and encourage them not to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees. Mr. Feingold was seeking re-election at the time. Wisconsin Right to Life has a political action committee, but it had only $13,000 in its account at the time, and the group sought to use money from its general treasury. Edward B. Foley, an election law specialist at Ohio State University, said in an interview that while the court's action on Monday appeared narrow and procedural, it was actually neither in its practical impact. The Supreme Court was telling the district court to define both the scope of a constitutionally required exemption from the law and the standard for winning such an exemption, Professor Foley said. If the standard proves "unworkable and messy," he said, that might give the law's opponents on the court a basis for re-examining the 2003 precedent itself. Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the decision on Monday created new uncertainty about the court's campaign finance jurisprudence. "It puts the Federal Election Commission and the courts back in the business of evaluating the subjective intent of each ad," he said, adding that the law's sponsors had hoped to avoid that possibility by writing a broad but clear definition. James Bopp Jr., who argued the case for the anti-abortion group, said the lower court "must now confront the real merits of this case, namely, that there is no constitutional justification for prohibiting grass-roots lobbying about upcoming votes in Congress just because we are in an election season."

SUPREME COURT
ELECTIONS
LAW AND LEGISLATION


Kentucky Clerk in Gay Marriage Dispute, Kim Davis, Joining G.O.P.

Abstract: Kim Davis, the clerk of Rowan County, Ky., who was embraced by Christian conservatives because of her resistance to same-sex marriage , said Friday that she would shun her Democratic Party roots and become a Republican. “She has come to the conclusion that the Democratic Party has left her,” Mathew D. Staver, a lawyer for Ms. Davis, said in a statement. “She has decided to switch her voter registration.” Ms. Davis, whose choice became public hours before she was scheduled to appear at the Values Voter Summit , a conservative gathering in Washington, was elected last year as a Democrat. But amid the legal battle this summer that led to Ms. Davis being jailed for five nights for contempt of a federal court, many party leaders, including Gov. Steven L. Beshear, distanced themselves from her. Mr. Beshear, for example, rebuffed Ms. Davis’s requests that he call the Legislature into special session to consider amending Kentucky’s marriage laws. Meanwhile, many Republican luminaries rushed to support Ms. Davis and to give voice to her argument that her religious liberties as an Apostolic Christian were being trampled by directives from the governor and the courts that she issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. On the day she was released from jail, two Republican presidential candidates, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, met with her in Kentucky. Although Democrats and Republicans alike had speculated about whether Ms. Davis would switch parties, Mr. Staver said Friday that “the issue of religious freedom in this case is not a partisan issue.” “It is neither Republican nor Democrat,” he said. “It is an inalienable right and what makes America the land of liberty.” Image Kim Davis, the clerk for Rowan County in Kentucky, on her first day back to work after being released from jail earlier this month. Credit Ty Wright/Getty Images Mr. Beshear’s office declined to comment, and the chairman of the Rowan County Democratic Party did not respond to a message. The chairman of the local Republican Party could not be reached. Word of Ms. Davis’s choice came one day after her lawyers used a court filing to criticize Mr. Beshear and argue that Ms. Davis had become embroiled in litigation “in significant part” because the governor had “refused to take elementary steps to accommodate Davis’s undisputed, sincerely-held religious beliefs about marriage.” Ms. Davis’s legal situation remains fluid, particularly after her announcement last week that any licenses issued by her employees would not carry her authorization. She also ordered the paperwork for marriage licenses to be modified — for instance, licenses now say they are issued “Pursuant to Federal Court Order” — and questioned whether the altered documents were valid under Kentucky law. (Mr. Beshear has said they will be recognized in Kentucky.) Judge David L. Bunning of Federal District Court, who this month ordered Ms. Davis jailed, has not said whether the modified licenses violate his order that she not interfere with the licensing process in Rowan County. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented couples who sued Ms. Davis this summer, has said the changes created “an unconstitutional two-tier system of marriage licenses” and breached Judge Bunning’s instructions. The judge, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, has said that public officials are not allowed to pick and choose which laws and court orders they obey. “We expect at the end of the day for the court’s orders to be complied with,” Judge Bunning said at the hearing where she was ordered to jail. “That’s how things work here in America.”

Rowan County
Republicans
Kim Davis,Kentucky Clerk
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
US Politics


Rangers Fall Flat at the End of a Lost Weekend

Abstract: After a game to forget Saturday in Boston and a lackluster third period Sunday, the Rangers find themselves suddenly mired in a rare losing streak. Alex Ovechkin and Jason Chimera each scored twice in the Washington Capitals’ 5-2 victory over the Rangers at Madison Square Garden. The Rangers lost in regulation for the fourth time in seven games, dropping consecutive games in regulation for the first time since Jan. 27 and 29. Kevin Hayes and Derick Brassard scored the Rangers’ goals, and Cam Talbot stopped 26 shots. “We really haven’t had this feeling for a while,” said defenseman Ryan McDonagh, the Rangers’ captain. “Collectively, our preparation and our focus and our execution has to be better here.” The consecutive losses have come since the Rangers clinched a playoff berth Thursday in Ottawa. The schedule will not become easier as they hit the road for games against Winnipeg and Minnesota, two teams in playoff spots in the Western Conference. After the Rangers took a 2-1 lead late in the first period, the Capitals scored the next four goals, including two third-period goals from Chimera, who had not scored since Feb. 6, a span of 20 games. He had his first multigoal game since Dec. 23, 2011. His goal at 4 minutes 41 seconds of the third period broke a 2-2 tie, and he added an insurance score 2:59 later. Both goals came off turnovers by Rangers defensemen, with Keith Yandle and Chris Summers, who was called up from the American Hockey League before the game, coughing up the puck. “There’s no doubt in the third period, it didn’t seem like we had a lot of gas in the tank,” Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault said. “That certainly seemed to affect our execution on the ice. A lot of the mistakes, we made in the third from the back end. There were some obvious better decisions with time.” Ovechkin entered the game seven goals ahead of Rick Nash for first place in the N.H.L., with 47. Nash scored his 40th during the Rangers’ 4-2 loss to the Bruins on Saturday, his first goal in eight games, and rejoined Brassard and Mats Zuccarello on the Rangers’ top line Sunday. But it was Washington’s reshuffled first line — with Ovechkin skating alongside Evgeny Kuznetsov and Joel Ward — that wreaked the most havoc. Ovechkin netted his 48th goal 4:32 into the game, snapping a shot between Dan Girardi’s legs and past Talbot’s stick. Capitals goalie Braden Holtby was on his game early, making 10 first-period saves, including a couple of highlight-reel stops. He used his stick on Hayes and his glove on Tanner Glass to keep the Rangers scoreless. “I thought Holts was very good early,” Capitals Coach Barry Trotz said. “We gave up way too many chances and unforced errors, sloppiness.” Washington’s sloppiness led to two late first-period goals as Hayes and Brassard scored 1:01 apart. Hayes netted his 15th of the season, sliding a one-handed shot around Holtby on a breakaway after taking John Carlson’s turnover. Hayes has 39 points, tied with Islanders forward Anders Lee for fifth place among rookies. Brassard broke the tie with 49 seconds left in the period when he took a drop pass from Zuccarello and whipped a shot past Holtby’s glove, giving the Rangers a 2-1 advantage after one period. But after the Rangers outshot Washington, 12-8, in the first period, the Capitals clamped down, limiting the Rangers to just 13 shots over the final 40 minutes. “I don’t think we had enough shots,” Nash said. “Everything opens up after a shot. That didn’t happen tonight.” Washington also killed five Rangers power plays, two of them shortened by four-on-four action. “It’s not nearly good enough,” Vigneault said of the man advantage. “Without a doubt, we’re going to look at some tape here and make some adjustments.” While the Rangers’ power play scuffled, Washington’s league-best man advantage capitalized when Ovechkin netted his second goal on the power play. Ovechkin’s slap shot deflected off Dan Boyle’s skate and trickled past Talbot, tying the game. “That’s a character win,” said Holtby, who made his N.H.L.-best 66th start and earned his 37th win. “We developed our chances, developed goals. It’s a blueprint.”

Rangers
Washington Capitals
Madison Square Garden
Kevin Hayes
Cam Talbot
Playoffs
Ice hockey
NHL


A Free Spirit Who Merits a Look for the World Cup

Abstract: At the start of this week, which will go a long way toward deciding who plays at the 2010 World Cup, one player who outshone the entire collection of Real Madrid’s new galácticos was apparently not even close to selection for Spain. Yet so fast was Jesús Navas, so potent in scoring the first goal and setting up the second for Sevilla when it became the first side to beat the new Madrid on Sunday, that he surely must be worth consideration for the World Cup — if he wants to be. Navas is small and slight, but brave and strong. He may scale no more than 60 kilograms, or 132 pounds, but there was no way that Marcelo, Madrid’s Brazilian left back, could get anywhere close enough to him. He may be a mere 1.70 meters, just 5-foot-7, but that didn’t stop him rising to head the first goal of the night. Real Madrid, for all its nearly half-billion-dollar turnover of playing stars this season, has no one like Navas. The Spanish national side, for all that it is Europe’s champion and has the best chance in its history of winning a World Cup, might lack just one thing: a truly dynamic, direct winger on the right of midfield. Yet in naming the squad for this weekend’s World Cup qualifying games, which are immaterial to Spain because it has already reached the finals with eight wins from eight matches, the coach, Vicente Del Bosque, said that, barring injury or unforeseen circumstances, this is his squad for South Africa next summer. Within days of that declaration, one of his prime goal scorers, David Villa, cried off with hamstring injury. Villa is a striker who can, and does, give his team the option of using his pace and industry wide on the flanks, predominantly the left. He is swift, but ideally you would want him in the center, sniffing out goals as he does par excellence alongside Fernando Torres. You would want them both in the penalty box, feeding off the service that comes through the middle from Barcelona’s pass masters Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta. But if you had a true winger who could beat the fullback on either flank, wouldn’t you want that, too? The question is blend, and adaptability. There is, or there has been, a very specific reason why Jesús Navas has failed up to now to follow up the scintillating form he displayed as a youth for Spain’s Under 21s. It is that he doesn’t, or he didn’t, travel well. In fact, there was a time when Navas, now 23, did not travel at all. He suffered from acute homesickness, from anxiety and panic attacks whenever Sevilla spent any length of time on the road. Summer camps, and notably a pre season trip to the United States in 2007, scared the daylights out of him. It wasn’t that he was unwilling to confront his demons, but rather that the more that Sevilla, with his help, reached the later stages of European tournaments, the more the coach at the time, Juande Ramos, wondered if the undoubted skill was worth the absenteeism. When a coach builds a team, talent is the first consideration, compatibility with the group is the second. Under Manolo Jiménez, the successor to Ramos, Navas has reached greater consistency, home and away. Jiménez, a former international defender, coached Navas in the Sevilla youth ranks, though the boy with the turbo boost of acceleration, and with a shot in either foot, has played more than 40 first team games in each of the past four seasons. Sevilla, like any other top side, fast-tracks the special players. This one is so special that Madrid, without the injured Cristiano Ronaldo, had nobody to compare to him. Navas is so gifted that three years ago, Chelsea made a deal to take him to London, but the Navas family knew that he was not ready. Family is key. Navas is a gitano, a Gypsy. A year ago, an enlightened article, “Los gitanos y el fútbol” by J.A. Muñoz, was published by the Unión Romaní, the Spanish sector of the International Romany Union. Muñoz debunked the racism and discrimination and stereotyping in Europe’s media toward the Romany. He talked about Gypsy integration into so many facets of life: artistic, athletic, academic. “The funny thing is,” he wrote, “that most soccer fans do not know that many of their admired idols are Gypsies.” He listed them, too many to count, but including fantastic players like Eric Cantona, Hristo Stoichkov, Gheorghe Hagi, and back in the 1950s, the legendary Telmo Zarraonandia, or Zarra, who scored 20 goals in 20 games for Spain. And today, across Europe, the Dutch playmaker Rafael van der Vaart, the Italian Andrea Pirlo, the Portuguese Ricardo Quaresma and any number of Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian players are coveted in big European club sides. To say they are different, nonconformist perhaps, might be a virtue. Why should a player with touches of fantasy not light up a team the way that famed Romany dance the flamenco, play the guitar, paint or write poetry? Artistry isn’t a sin, though there are coaches — Louis van Gaal or José Mourinho, for instance — who stubbornly suppress flair. Del Bosque, the Spanish national coach, isn’t one of them. He loves an individualist, provided the individual shares the ball and turns his skills to the team effort. Navas does that. Here’s the conundrum. The World Cup is nine months away. Spain has a harmonious group, not short on invention and — something Spain has dreamed of — not lacking in collective self-belief. To add a Navas might just be the final element, the thrust in a tight contest. Or, if he’s pining for home, it might be a corrosive element in a monthlong camp in an African winter. Del Bosque will ponder it. There is an opportunity to add Navas to the squad now that Villa has dropped out. Navas would, incidentally, be the second Gypsy in the camp, joining the Fenerbahce forward Daniel Güiza. So there is no predisposition to mistrust a newcomer because of his background. What is in question, and what Navas has been working on with professional help for some months, is his dread of being away from Andalusia. “I am working, and if the call comes, we’ll see,” Navas answers to journalists asking if he is ready for Spain. “Being able to enjoy playing for the national team and going to the World Cup would be the ultimate. Right now I am focusing on being relaxed.”


Assembly Speaker Finds Fall Guy: Another Sheldon Silver

Abstract: To Sheldon Silver, the powerful speaker of the New York State Assembly, it was nothing but a simple case of mistaken identity. In the 1970s, Mr. Silver, a Democrat, worked with a new nonprofit group, the United Jewish Council of the East Side, to block low-income housing on a large, barren site in his district on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the beginning of a decades-long effort that was described in a recent article in The New York Times. Those actions, Mr. Silver insisted after the article was published, were actually taken by another man: Sheldon E. Silver, a Minneapolis-born lawyer who moved to Brooklyn in the early 1970s and died in 2001. “I was forever confused with this guy,” Mr. Silver said at a breakfast he hosted on Thursday at the state Democratic Party convention. “Even after he left there, I got phone calls from people who I knew.” Mr. Silver’s spokesman, Michael Whyland, said in an email that the other Mr. Silver “was a counsel to U.J.C. in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.” “You can understand why he would be upset,” Mr. Whyland said in a subsequent telephone call. But the documents cited in the article make clear that Speaker Silver — a master at distancing himself from controversies and scandals in his chamber — was in fact the person who pressed New York City officials to allow an international mall to be built on the site, instead of low-income housing. The letter quoted was written on his official stationery from the Assembly. And minutes of the meetings with city officials clearly identify Mr. Silver as the lawmaker, not the similarly named lawyer from Brooklyn. After Mr. Silver’s office saw those documents, it dropped its request for a correction on which Mr. Silver pressed for the mall in the 1970s. But the office held on to one claim of mistaken identity: The “Sheldon Silver Esq.” identified as counsel to United Jewish Council on the group’s letterhead from all those years was not the assemblyman, but the other Mr. Silver. As evidence, the office produced two one-sentence letters from 1973 to the Internal Revenue Service from the council signed by Mr. Sheldon E. Silver. Image The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, center, at the New York Democratic Party convention on Thursday. Credit Christopher Gregory for The New York Times Enter Shoshana Silver, the widow of the deceased lawyer. Ms. Silver, now 66, said her husband did briefly hold a job with the newly formed United Jewish Council right about the time he was admitted to practice law in New York, in June 1973. He was let go by the group by early 1974. If anything written on behalf of the council had Mr. Silver’s name on it after 1974, it had nothing to do with her husband, she said. “It was only six or nine months, a very short period of time,” Ms. Silver said. “They needed him because they were just starting up, but once they got up and going, I guess they didn’t need him anymore.” She recalls it clearly, she said, because they had been recently married when he lost the job, and the United Jewish Council gave him a set of Mishnah Berurah, or Jewish law books, as a parting gift. “Once he left, he had no ties with them whatsoever,” she said. Speaker Silver said Mr. Silver’s widow was mistaken. “He didn’t work there for a few months; he worked there, for, you know, several years,” the speaker said, adding for emphasis that he did not serve as the group’s counsel. The council’s comptroller, Norma Klein, confirmed that the speaker’s office asked if there were any records that would show that Sheldon E. Silver had worked there. She said she found nothing other than the two letters from 1973. Throughout the late 1970s, United Jewish Council’s stationery lists the counsel as Sheldon Silver, Esq. — exactly how Speaker Silver, who has no middle name , listed his name in his official registration with the state court. The other Mr. Silver is registered as “Sheldon E. Silver.” Had the lawyer from Minneapolis been the group’s counsel through the early 1980s, he would have made acquaintances with some of Speaker Silver’s closest and longest allies. The board members listed on United Jewish Council’s stationery during those years included Speaker Silver’s rabbi , Yitzchok Singer of Bialystoker Synagogue; the board president was Harold Jacob, one of the speaker’s closest associates (his wife, Esther, has been an employee of Mr. Silver’s Assembly office since 1978). Together, Mr. Silver, Mr. Jacob and Rabbi Singer were the co-founders of a nonprofit housing partnership between United Jewish Council and Bialystoker to build apartments for seniors. Judy Rapfogel, the assemblyman’s chief of staff and an employee of his office since 1977, also served on the group’s board. Her husband, William E. Rapfogel, who was a longtime associate of Mr. Silver’s and worked with him to fight housing plans for the empty swath of land, pleaded guilty in April to stealing over $1 million from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. Among other examples of the assemblyman’s ties to the United Jewish Council, one lawsuit stands out. In 1979, the council and about a dozen families sued a local synagogue to block its planned sale to a Buddhist temple; Mr. Silver was their lawyer. He filed an affidavit arguing that United Jewish Council should have standing to sue in the case because it represented “the entire organized Jewish community of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.” A judge did not agree. As the case reached its conclusion seven years later, Mr. Silver wrote to the court that he had met with the aggrieved worshipers at United Jewish Council headquarters to discuss their wishes. And he left little doubt which Mr. Silver he was. “I am also the assemblyman for the district in which the synagogue is located and have a keen interest in having the plaintiff congregants continue to use their synagogue in the future,” he wrote. Mr. Silver’s office continues to say he was never counsel or lawyer to United Jewish Council. “It is not surprising that he worked with this major community group in his district many times over 40 years in office,” Mr. Whyland said. “In fact, it would be more surprising if they had never worked together.” Sheldon E. Silver’s family finds it a little humorous that his three decades as a work-a-day lawyer in Brooklyn somehow muddled the résumé of the powerful Assembly leader. That other Mr. Silver was the son of nonobservant Jews. In 1961, he was admitted to practice law in Minnesota. He moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to pursue a life with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. He built a small law practice, as a public defender and in smaller-scale commercial litigation, and rarely, if ever, worked outside Brooklyn, said his son Moshe K. Silver, now a lawyer himself. Shoshana Silver, who works as a special-education teacher, chuckled when told the politician insisted her husband had met with officials and a prominent developer in the mid-1970s to push for the construction of a large mall. “I guess he doesn’t want to take responsibility for those things,” she said.

Sheldon Silver
United Jewish Council of the East Side
Housing
Affordable housing
Lower East Side Manhattan
State legislature
Real Estate
NYC


Militants Down Egyptian Helicopter, Killing 5 Soldiers

Abstract: CAIRO — Islamist militants shot down an Egyptian military helicopter in the Sinai Peninsula with a surface-to-air missile over the weekend, raising new alarms about the terrorist insurgency that developed there in response to the military takeover last summer. The attack — described by witnesses, documented in a video released by the militants, and confirmed by three people briefed on the Egyptian government’s investigation — validated longstanding fears that such weapons would spill into Egypt and beyond after the Libyan civil war tore open Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s fearsome arsenals. Known as manpads, for man-portable air defense systems, the missiles can bring down commercial airliners if they are flying at low altitude, as during takeoff and landing. They also strengthen Sinai-based militants’ hand against the Egyptian Army, and there is concern that the militants might seek to use the missiles on the Egyptian mainland, where terrorist attacks have become more frequent. On Saturday, four bombings killed six people in greater Cairo. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a militant group based in Sinai that has claimed responsibility for an escalating series of attacks on police and soldiers, said in a statement posted on jihadist websites that it had succeeded in “downing a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile and killing its entire crew in the area around the city of Sheikh Zuweid” in North Sinai, near the border with Gaza. The group, which quotes Al Qaeda leaders in its online video statements, said it had targeted the aircraft “in an area clear of residents to preserve the lives of Muslims.” Witnesses said they had seen on Saturday “a strange body” flying toward the helicopter, which then burned in the air for a time before falling. The flames were visible from nearby towns. The helicopter landed near El Shollaq, a small town just south of Sheikh Zuweid, and continued to burn for hours. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis released a video on Sunday night that appeared to show one of its fighters firing the missile, and the burning aircraft falling from the sky. All five soldiers in the helicopter were killed, security officials said. “This is what everyone has long assumed could happen, and it is a confirmation of those fears — that substantial and advanced weaponry came into the country in the aftermath of the Libyan war,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt scholar at the Century Foundation in New York. Israeli officials said they had believed for some time that militants had manpads in Sinai as well as in the adjacent Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said commercial airports in the southern resort city of Eilat, Israel, and across the border in Aqaba, Jordan, had changed landing patterns over the past few months because of the possibility of an attack like the one against the Egyptian military helicopter. Timeline of Turmoil in Egypt From Mubarak and Morsi to Sisi Egypt’s three-year experiment with democracy has ousted Hosni Mubarak and deposed Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first elected leader. Explore key moments of their rule and the aftermath. “All the pilots there operate under the assumption that they can be targeted,” Mr. Yaari said. “We have known for a long time that those guys in the Sinai have a lot of manpads from Libya.” In Egypt, news of the attack was almost overshadowed by other political violence. The military-backed government held a celebration in Tahrir Square on Saturday to commemorate the third anniversary of the revolt that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, and at least 49 people were killed and 250 injured in clashes with security forces at protests against the military takeover, health officials said on Sunday. An earlier report had put the death toll at 29. Then, on Sunday night, a spokesman for the medical examiner said in a television interview that at least 62 people had been killed in greater Cairo alone. Security officials reported more than 1,000 arrests. On Sunday morning, masked men in an SUV attacked a bus carrying soldiers in Sinai, killing at least three and injuring at least 11, a military spokesman said. On Friday, at least six people were killed in four bomb blasts around Cairo, an art museum was badly damaged, and eight more people died in clashes with security forces. The violence did not appear to slow the government’s brisk transition plan. Adly Mansour, a senior judge and Egypt’s interim president, condemned the “heinous terrorist attacks” in a seven-minute televised address, but he also accelerated the political calendar. Instead of holding parliamentary elections first as promised, Mr. Mansour decreed, the government will hold presidential elections first, sometime between Feb. 17 and April 18. He offered little explanation, but the shift was widely expected. It will make it easier for Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, who appointed Mr. Mansour as interim president, to run for president and consolidate his power before any rival parties or players can find footholds in Parliament. In an effort to create an atmosphere of celebration for the third anniversary of the revolt — an event that doubled as a rally for General Sisi — the government declared the downing of the helicopter an accident until further investigation. On Sunday, General Sisi attended a funeral for the five soldiers killed, and a statement from a military spokesman did not mention the cause of the episode, saying only that “one of the Air Force’s helicopters crashed while carrying out the raids in order to assist the military operations led by the Armed Forces against the Islamist extremist elements in North Sinai.” Late on Saturday, however, Sameh Seif el-Yazal, an outside expert who has often acted as a mouthpiece for the Egyptian military, said in a television interview that the helicopter had been shot down by a missile, which he described as a Russian-made Strela 2 — a form of manpad that was very common in Libya after Colonel Qaddafi fell. On Sunday, two people briefed on the Egyptian investigation confirmed that account. A senior American official said preliminary evidence indicated that the helicopter had been shot down by a shoulder-fired missile, probably of the type that Russians call a Strela 2 and NATO calls an SA-7. “It’s difficult for us to know with certainty right now, but it’s looking more and more likely that the helicopter was shot down,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic protocols.

Egypt
Military
Sinai Peninsula
Libya
Arab Spring
Terrorism
Missiles and Missile Defense


A 40-Year-Old Records a Shutout for Hungary

Abstract: Gabor Kiraly set an age record at the European Championships and helped Hungary beat Austria, 2-0, on Tuesday in Bordeaux, France. Kiraly, Hungary’s goalkeeper, became the first 40-year-old player to participate in the championship. Adam Szalai gave Hungary the lead with his first goal in 12 appearances. “I don’t want to talk about myself,” Szalai said. “The whole team won. Everyone worked together. I think we managed to do everything our manager told us in terms of advice and strategy.” The substitute Zoltan Stieber scored Hungary’s second goal after Austria was reduced to 10 players when Aleksandar Dragovic was shown a second yellow card. Austria thought it had tied the score moments after Hungary’s first goal, when Martin Hinteregger put the ball in the back of the net, but it was waved off for a foul and Dragovic was sent off. Kiraly made some good plays, including a diving stop of Zlatko Junuzovic in the 35th minute.

Hungary
Austria
Soccer
Euro 2016 UEFA European Championship


Pennsylvania: Fire Damages Buildings at Flight 93 Memorial

Abstract: A fire at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville badly burned three administrative buildings Friday, leaving officials concerned about some of the memorabilia and archival material stored there. The National Park Service said it could not yet assess the damage. The fire did not affect the visitors center or the memorial to United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Fires
9/11,Sept 11
Monuments and Memorials
Shanksville PA


Helping Families Right Where They Live

Abstract: NEWARK AT 67, Mattie Gordon is still raising children, and she is weary. When Ms. Gordon was 16, her mother died and she was sent from Georgia to Newark to live with an aunt. Instead of going to 11th grade, she went to work in a laundry. She married young, had seven children in seven years, and by the time she was 29, she and her husband had split, for many reasons, she said, including his drug use. He died long ago. She is blind in one eye, crippled in one leg, and has lived for the last 20 years in Bradley Court, a public housing project known as a haven for drug dealing and a hot spot for murder. Three of her sons are dead — two in infancy and one from AIDS. Her only daughter died from breast cancer at 36, leaving two children whom Ms. Gordon has cared for these last 10 years. “I had to,” she said, “the father’s in jail.” It was harder being a parent the second time around, she said. “Oh, my God, so hard. I’m older. I was strict with my own children, but by my grandchildren, I was too tired.” She has relied on public assistance for years, and any crisis meant a trip downtown to the welfare office. “You take a number and wait for them to call, sit there, no lunch, waste a whole day, then walking back up the hill at the end of the day. Oh God, what a mess.” But that has changed for her in the last year, with the arrival of one of the state’s 46 new Family Success Centers here at the Bradley Court projects. The little center has three trained case workers just down the hall from Ms. Gordon’s apartment, and they use high-speed computer hookups to deliver the government and community services poor families are entitled to, but often don’t know how to track down. The idea, which has the support of both Gov. Jon S. Corzine and Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker, is to deliver poor families better support faster, so they stay intact and children are kept out of the state’s costly and often troubled foster care system. Last week, Theresa Ellis, a case worker in the office, arranged a job interview for Ms. Gordon’s granddaughter Anniyah, 18. The month before, she helped Ms. Gordon arrange physical therapy three times a week for her bad right leg. Eight months ago, Ms. Ellis persuaded one of Ms. Gordon’s middle-aged sons to go into drug rehab. She spoke to him on a Tuesday, Ms. Gordon said, “and next day he had a book bag over his shoulder and was going to a program — he’s still in rehab, working and clean eight months now.” Newark, which has 11 of the 46 new centers, is a prime target for the program. One quarter of the 10,000 New Jersey children who have been removed from their homes by the state and placed in foster care live in Newark. Last year, the state appropriated $7 million to create new centers, plus convert about a dozen existing programs that were part of earlier, failed welfare reform efforts. The Robert Wood Johnson and Nicholson foundations provided an additional $2 million. “Our hope is the stronger we make these families in the community, the fewer child abuse and neglect cases we see,” said Darrell Armstrong, a director in the state’s Department of Children and Families. “We’re not dwelling on what got you here, but how we can get you out of here. And we’re not making you come to a welfare office. We’re coming to you, in your neighborhood.” New Jersey modeled the program on a network of 33 centers that has operated for the last decade in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County, Pa. Most workers at the centers are parents from the neighborhood, trained by Family Intervention Services, a nonprofit started 27 years ago to help keep children out of foster care. Jeanne Warnock, the director, said Ms. Ellis is the prototype of the case worker they’re looking for. She’s 41, lives at the Bradley projects, and has her own hard history. She describes herself as a recovered drug addict and mother of 10 who at one point lost custody of her own children to foster care, but fought her problems and won the children back. Few at Bradley Court own computers, and Ms. Ellis’s ability to use the NJHelps Web site to assist them right there in the projects in applying for work programs, Medicaid , food stamps or home energy grants seems like a minor miracle. “They may not understand the process, may have reading troubles, and I help with the application,” she said. “They can come in here and for no charge use the fax, phone or copy machine.” Social services representatives visit the Family Success office regularly: a state employment worker comes every Wednesday from 1 to 3; Fridays, from 12 to 2, there’s a food pantry; a food stamp van visits monthly. Studies show that when drug addicts finally seek help, they need immediate services or may be lost. Ms. Ellis said she is able to get someone enrolled within 24 hours. “We have people going off to rehab every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at 6,” she said. The state director, Mr. Armstrong, acknowledges that to have a significant effect on the foster care caseload, many more centers would be needed. He would like 30 in Newark and surrounding Essex County. He believes the financing level, $200,000 per center, is about a third of what it should be. “Two hundred thousand doesn’t meet the kind of need, but it’s a respectable start,” he said. Given the economy, he said he was just grateful that the legislature recently renewed the program through July 2009. “This is the third child welfare reform I’ve been through,” said Ms. Warnock of Family Intervention. “A program gets started, there’s a change of administration, and you can never tell what happens when a new governor comes in.” Still, she said, “This has the best chance I’ve seen in 27 years to get it right.” Ms. Gordon hopes so. She is getting help from Ms. Ellis on one final project. “You know what my dream is,” Ms. Gordon said. “To live alone. I’ve never lived alone in my life. I’ve always had people to take care of. I just want to live by myself once, even if it’s just for a week. I’d love to see what it feels like.” Now that her grandchildren are 18 and 23, Ms. Gordon thinks it may be time. Ms. Ellis has found her a residential senior center, in the suburbs, about a half-hour away, but Ms. Gordon is nervous. “I may not be ready,” Ms. Gordon said. “I’m a decent person, I want a decent place, I don’t want just any senior center. I might be lonely. I won’t know nobody there.”


‘Shadow Banking’ Up to $67 Trillion, Financial Group Says

Abstract: BRUSSELS (Reuters) — The so-called shadow banking system, blamed by some for aggravating the global financial crisis, grew to a new high of $67 trillion worldwide last year, a regulatory group said on Sunday, calling for tighter oversight of nonbank institutions like hedge funds, private equity firms and other investment companies. The report by the Financial Stability Board appeared to confirm concerns among policy makers that shadow banking is set to thrive beyond the reach of a regulatory net that has been tightening around conventional banking. The board, a task force from the world’s top 20 economies, also called for greater regulatory control of shadow banking. “The F.S.B. is of the view that the authorities’ approach to shadow banking has to be a targeted one,” the group said, pointing to current lax regulation of the sector. “The objective is to ensure that shadow banking is subject to appropriate oversight and regulation to address banklike risks to financial stability,” it said. The United States had the largest shadow banking system, with $23 trillion in 2011, followed by the euro zone, with $22 trillion, and Britain, with $9 trillion. The American share of shadow banking has declined in recent years, while the shares of Britain and the euro zone have increased. The board warned that tighter rules forcing banks to keep more capital reserves to cover losses could bolster shadow banking.

Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Banking and Financial Institutions


Thomas Jets From the Frying Pan Into the Fire

Abstract: CHARLESTON, S.C., Oct. 2 — The journey from the courthouse steps to the basketball court, from the trial in Lower Manhattan to the training camp in South Carolina’s low country, was smooth, effortless and seemingly transformative. Isiah Thomas took a helicopter from Wall Street to Long Island, where he boarded a Cablevision jet that whisked him to Charleston. He was greeted at the gate by Mark Aguirre, his longtime friend and a Knicks assistant coach. Hours later, Thomas walked into a College of Charleston gym, having ditched his suit and tie in favor of a black shirt and shorts adorned with Knicks logos. By 6 p.m. Tuesday, Thomas was once again exuding the quiet confidence of an N.B.A. coach and a Hall of Fame player — albeit one who had been found to have sexually harassed a former colleague. On the courthouse steps, Thomas flashed indignation and anger, and insisted on his innocence. Standing in a gymnasium hallway, he calmly tried to push the conversation back to basketball. “I’m excited to be back,” Thomas, the embattled Knicks’ coach and president, told a small gathering of reporters in a brief interview before the team’s evening practice. “I’m about winning now, about getting back on the floor and coaching the guys and getting my team ready to go out and compete and win a lot of games.” The defeat Thomas absorbed, however, will not soon be forgotten. His employer, Madison Square Garden, has been ordered to pay $11.6 million in punitive damages to Anucha Browne Sanders, the former Knicks executive who accused Thomas of creating a hostile work environment. The case cast Thomas as a profane, verbally abusive bully, and the Garden as an anything-goes boys club that permitted lecherous behavior and shrugged when an intern had sex with the team’s star player, Stephon Marbury. Both Thomas and the Garden announced plans to file an appeal, which will sustain the story for months to come. Thomas, who missed the team’s first practice here, said he did not believe the legal battle would take him away from his duties again. It also appears that Thomas, despite the verdict, will retain all those duties for the foreseeable future. Although Garden officials declined to comment Tuesday, they quickly and quietly spread the word that James L. Dolan, the Garden chairman, has no intention of firing Thomas. Thomas has also told friends that his jobs, as coach and president, are secure. Dolan has been loyal to Thomas since the day he hired him in December 2003, despite the Knicks’ poor record on the court and considerable controversy off of it. The Knicks have had four straight losing seasons during Thomas’s tenure, while cycling through five head coaches and dozens of players. Regarding the Browne Sanders case, the message from Garden officials is simple: Dolan and Thomas are in it together, literally (as co-defendants) and figuratively. Dolan has not held the lawsuit against Thomas since it was filed in January 2006, and although the trial was embarrassing, it did not appear to undermine Thomas’s standing. That could conceivably change if the Knicks again stumble out of the gate in November, or if corporate sponsors start severing ties in the wake of the trial and its verdict. There are conflicting opinions about whether firing Thomas would hurt the Garden during an appeal. The appearance of acknowledging Thomas’s guilt makes it “very unlikely that they would fire Isiah at this point,” said Gene Grabowski, a senior vice president who runs the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications. “Given the fact that they have loudly declared their intention to appeal, the executives at Madison Square Garden now have to be very careful to do nothing that inflames this situation,” Grabowski said. “He has declared his innocence, and they have declared they’re going to appeal. That indicates that they believe he’s innocent.” Under the law, however, the appellate court is bound to make a ruling based solely on the facts presented at trial. Firing Thomas “shouldn’t have any ramifications” on the appeal, said Frederick Nance, a regional managing partner for Squire, Sanders & Dempsey L.L.P., a law firm based in Cleveland. Still, Nance said he thought it unlikely that Thomas would be dismissed because “it would tend to undercut the position that they’ve taken, and continue to take, that nothing happened.” The closest Dolan has come to dismissing Thomas was in June 2006, when he fired Coach Larry Brown and ordered Thomas to coach the team, with a one-year ultimatum to show progress. That ultimatum lasted only nine months. In March, with the Knicks five games below .500, Dolan signed Thomas to a multiyear contract extension. On Tuesday, he provided Thomas with the corporate jet to get to training camp. Thomas said he had watched a tape of the team’s morning practice and that he was firmly focused on basketball. He expressed the belief that once the season starts, fans will again be focused on the game as well. Thomas dismissed any concern that he, and the franchise, could be permanently stained by the case. “I’ve been around a long time, and I know what’s accurate and what’s inaccurate,” Thomas said. Thomas was greeted with hugs by several of his players at the team’s downtown hotel. Earlier, the veteran Malik Rose said the team could “be like a collective shield for him and help him get through this time.” “We were hoping that he would be found innocent,” Rose said. “I guess in some of our eyes, he still is innocent.”

Basketball
Sexual Harassment
Madison Square Garden
Thomas Isiah
New York Knicks
Browne Sanders Anucha


Bloomberg to End Its Daily Politics Show

Abstract: With the election now in the rearview mirror, Bloomberg has decided to terminate its daily politics show “With All Due Respect” hosted by the political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin and refocus its Bloomberg Politics team, according to a staff memo on Thursday. “In the coming weeks, as Washington transitions from the Obama administration to the incoming Trump administration, our Bloomberg Politics team will transition as well — shifting our focus to the impact of politics and policy on the business and financial world,” John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of Bloomberg, and Justin B. Smith, chief executive of Bloomberg Media, said in the memo. “Will All Due Respect,” which began in October 2014 and was broadcast on Bloomberg TV at 5 p.m. and MSNBC at 6 p.m., will run daily until Dec. 2, after which there will be four hourlong specials setting up the presidency of Donald J. Trump. The show will end with coverage of Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Errol Cockfield, a spokesman for MSNBC, declined to comment on the network’s plans for the 6 p.m. hour. Mr. Heilemann and Mr. Halperin, the authors of the popular book “Game Change” about the 2008 election, joined Bloomberg in May 2014 . But their hiring caused discord between Bloomberg’s offices in New York and Washington, where journalists felt they were being overshadowed by the new politics team. The show initially struggled to find an audience and was criticized in some quarters for being too frivolous. With all of that in mind, the inauguration could be viewed as both a natural and convenient endpoint. The duo are in discussions about staying on as contributors and columnists for Bloomberg, according to the memo, though they will no longer have day-to-day roles. Bloomberg Politics will shift to a “more global outlook,” and there are plans to start a new television show “focused on global politics and the impact of the new administration’s policies on business and finance worldwide,” according to the memo, which was reported earlier by The Huffington Post . The moves are part of a broader reshuffling at Bloomberg, which said in a separate memo on Thursday that it was revamping its magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, to focus more on business and finance. Megan Murphy, who was Bloomberg’s Washington bureau chief, was named editor of the magazine, which is expected to begin publishing in its new form in the second quarter of next year. “What will emerge from this will be very different from the stand-alone magazine you all write for at the moment,” the memo said. The memo also said the editorial team at the magazine “may well be smaller.”

John Heilemann
Mark Halperin
TV
US Politics


At Chappaqua Station, Local Food in an Old Depot

Abstract: I’m high on Chappaqua Station cafe, and not only because I’m a fan of repurposed rail stations. Much of the original skin remains on the bones of this sturdy stone station, built in 1903. Inside, a century’s worth of grime has been removed from the curvilinear benches, beadboard walls and, not least, the lovely honey-toned details of the ticket window, now a bar and a pickup spot for takeout. A big plus: The refurbished timber that lines the waiting room serves as a brilliant acoustic backdrop for the jazz trios that play here on Saturday nights. Image Edamame hummus with feta, carrots, olives and bagel crisps. Credit Suzy Allman for The New York Times As for the food, freshness counts, and produce from local farms and markets drives the menu of small plates, sandwiches, salads and proteins — all thoughtfully composed and ready for diners to mix and match. Several small plates could be shared over a drink. Bagel chips made perfect scoops for an edamame hummus, with feta and marinated olives adding a briny tang. The tasting plate of three well-chosen cheeses — goat, sheep and raw cow — and their pretty garnish of grapes, nuts and jam was so engaging that diners might not want to split it. Flatbread combinations were as savory. Fig marmalade, arugula and Jasper Hill blue cheese; and sausage, fresh mozzarella and tomato paved two of the delicate flatbreads on offer. We left one with prosciutto and another with wild mushroom, ricotta and pesto for a future occasion. Image A wild-mushroom flatbread with tomato and ricotta. Credit Suzy Allman for The New York Times As a main dish or as a companion to one of the proteins, salads here were lush and inventive. Properly chopped, loaded with fresh produce from nearby farmers’ markets and chock-full of bright flavors and textures, each bowl had a delicious personality of its own. The couscous and quinoa salad included mixed greens and a variety of grilled vegetables. Soba noodle salad put a dainty chop of napa cabbage scallions, carrots and peanuts under a sesame ponzu vinaigrette. Don’t miss a terrific kale and shaved brussels sprouts number with cranberries and walnuts; or the vibrant Chappy salad, with tiny chickpeas, red and green roasted peppers, feta, red and yellow beets, and sunflower seeds — a circus on a plate. Curry-roasted cauliflower tossed with loads of lentils, pine nuts, raisins and capers proved equally appealing. For a heartier meal, add a protein to your salad. The selection was small but more than adequate. Grilled Scottish salmon was moist and full of flavor; big, crisp Gulf shrimp came laced with a chili-lime dressing; and the petite filet mignon could have easily stood alone without the distracting steak sauce. Thin slices of lightly seared, luxurious ahi tuna tataki with a sesame-ginger dressing were dewy and fresh. Though we wished for more toasting on the bun, the hot dog with sauerkraut and other condiments was everything a dog should be: juicy, steamy, comforting. Breads, muffins and croissants are made in house, as are desserts. Warmed apple tart à la mode was a trifle short on apple and ice cream and overloaded with whipped cream. The cheesecake, too, had too much whipped cream and not enough cheesecake. The dark, sweet bread pudding made a much better choice, served with good vanilla ice cream. And the coffees were excellent.


Khaled Meshal, Hamas Leader, Makes First Visit to Gaza

Abstract: RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The long-exiled leader of the militant group Hamas , Khaled Meshal , entered Gaza for the first time on Friday, a symbolically powerful visit that sought to reinforce Hamas’s contention that it was victorious in its eight-day clash with Israel . For Mr. Meshal, 56, whom the Israelis tried to assassinate in Jordan in 1997, it was a triumphant day as Hamas fighters, armed with rifles and wearing balaclavas, lined the streets where he was to travel. He entered from Egypt, through the Rafah crossing, an indication of a new alliance with Cairo after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, an avowed adversary of Hamas . “Gaza, with its martyrs, cannot be described in words,” he said as he arrived here, with tears in his eyes. “There are no words to describe Gaza, to describe the heroes, the martyrs, the blood, the mothers who lost their sons.” Mr. Meshal, who has spent years in exile and now spends most of his time in Qatar, had never before been to Gaza, but he said he felt as if he was returning because “Gaza has always been in my heart.” His visit resonated on multiple levels, reflecting the many changes that have swept the region since the Tunisian revolution, which began in December 2010 and ignited the Arab Spring uprisings. Mr. Meshal was permitted to cross the Egyptian border now that allies of the Muslim Brotherhood — a cousin of Hamas — have come to power in Egypt. At the same time, Hamas tried to use his visit to reinforce the impression that it is ascendant and no longer a pariah. Mr. Meshal arrived in Gaza to celebrate the 25th anniversary on Saturday of the founding of Hamas. His visit, 15 years after Israel nearly assassinated him, is a kind of victory for Hamas, which has just negotiated with Israel, however indirectly, for a cease-fire after a bloody conflict last month . His visit also provided a visible unity in Palestinian territory of Hamas in exile, represented by Mr. Meshal, and Hamas on the ground, in the person of the Gazan prime minister, Ismail Haniya, who met him at Rafah and traveled with him during a noisy and celebratory day. Mr. Meshal fled the West Bank with his family at age 11 after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. He said Friday that he had returned once to the West Bank in 1975, but had not entered Palestinian territory since. In 1997, when he was in Amman, Jordan, agents from the Israeli intelligence service, posing as Canadian tourists, tried to kill him by injecting him with poison. The agents were captured by the Jordanian authorities, and Mr. Meshal lay in a coma until Benjamin Netanyahu, then and now the Israeli prime minister, was pressured to hand over an antidote. “This is my third birth,” Mr. Meshal said. “The first was my natural birth. The second was when I recovered from the poisoning. I ask God that my fourth birth will be the day we liberate all of Palestine.” As a practical matter, Israel deals indirectly with Hamas but regards it as a terrorist group that uses violence against civilians in its effort to drive Israelis from the region. Later, in an emotional speech to supporters, Mr. Meshal said: “Today is Gaza. Tomorrow will be Ramallah and after that Jerusalem, then Haifa and Jaffa.” Mr. Meshal also referred to the Palestinian boundaries of 1949, not of 1967, and said that Palestinian unity would come on “national principles, of Jerusalem, the right of return, and the West Bank.” He told the many young fighters of Hamas “to please keep your fingers on the trigger,” and said, “There is no politics without resistance.” He was speaking to an impassioned crowd at the home of Ahmed al-Jabari, the operational commander of Hamas forces, killed by Israel at the outset of November’s fighting , a man Mr. Meshal praised as the key figure “in the victory of the eight-day battle” with Israel. The eight days of fighting included Israeli airstrikes and shelling and Hamas rocket launchings against Israel. The Israeli government asserts that it sharply reduced Hamas’s military capacity by killing Mr. Jabari and destroying storehouses of rockets and weapons. Still, Hamas negotiated a cease-fire with Israel through the Egyptians, and for the movement it may represent an important step toward becoming a more recognized international player and representative of at least a portion of the Palestinian people. Mr. Meshal also visited the homes of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a Hamas spiritual leader assassinated in 2004, and of the Dalu family, who lost 10 members in an Israeli airstrike on Nov. 18 . On Friday, Human Rights Watch said the airstrike on the Dalu home was “a clear violation of the laws of war.” In a statement, it said its field investigation into the attack concluded that even if there had been a legitimate military target inside the house, the likelihood that the attack would have killed large numbers of civilians inside made it “unlawfully disproportionate.” In the days after the attack, the Israeli military offered different explanations about the actual target. It has not yet said whether it knew that the house was filled with people at the time of the strike. In a preliminary response to the Human Rights Watch report, the military said the Dalu residence had been identified as “the hide-out of a senior Hamas militant” involved in launching rockets. Without naming the person, the military said those who used the people of Gaza as human shields were ultimately responsible for the civilians’ deaths. The Fatah movement, a rival of Hamas, controls the West Bank, which Israel still occupies. Despite all the talk on Friday of Palestinian unity, the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas remains the defining principle of Palestinian politics. Decorating the stage where the anniversary celebration will be held Saturday is a mock-up of a large rocket, called the M-75, that Hamas claims it has built on its own and can reach almost 50 miles, close to Tel Aviv. The M stands for a dead founder of Hamas, Ibrahim Maqadma, killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2003. In fact, the Hamas anniversary is Dec. 14, but the organization moved the celebration forward a week to honor the first uprising against Israel.

Hamas
Gaza Strip
Israel
Palestinians
Meshal Khaled


Promoting Mobile Cuts Into Profit of Baidu

Abstract: BEIJING — Baidu, which operates China’s leading Internet search engine, said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit had edged down 0.4 percent as it spent heavily to promote mobile services amid an industrywide scramble to keep up with users who increasingly surf the Web on smartphones. Baidu earned 2.8 billion renminbi, or $460 million, in the three months that ended Dec. 31, the Beijing-based company announced. Revenue rose 50.3 percent, compared with figures for the same quarter a year earlier, to 9.5 billion renminbi. Marketing and administrative costs rose 135 percent, which the company said reflected higher spending to promote mobile services. Research and development spending jumped 80 percent. Baidu and its rivals are spending heavily to attract users who are rapidly picking up the habit of surfing the Web on smartphones, tablet computers and other wireless devices. China has the world’s biggest Internet market, with 618 million people online at the end of 2013, according to an industry group, the China Internet Network Information Center. The figure includes 500 million people — or more than 80 percent of the total — who go online wirelessly. Mobile accounted for more than 20 percent of Baidu’s quarterly revenue, according to the company’s chairman, Robin Li. “Our efforts to drive mobile adoption among customers gained significant traction throughout the year,” Mr. Li said in a statement. “Building out our platform to capture the huge opportunities ahead remains our focus for 2014.” Baidu’s market share in traditional search from personal computers is more than 80 percent. But in mobile it faces intense competition from companies like Qihoo 360, which introduced a rival search engine in 2012. Baidu has expanded into music downloads, online video and other services. In July, it announced the acquisition of a smartphone app distributor, 91 Wireless, for $1.9 billion. Baidu’s latest revenue growth “suggests some of the heavy investment is starting to yield some returns,” Alicia Yap, an analyst at Barclays, said in a report. For all of 2013, Baidu’s profit edged up 0.6 percent over 2012 to 10.5 billion renminbi. Revenue rose 43.2 percent to 31.9 billion renminbi.

Baidu
China
Search Engines
Smartphone
Robin Li
Earnings Reports
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry