CNN Fires Jonathan Klein

Abstract: There has been a corporate bull’s-eye on the back of Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., for years, because of the stubbornly low ratings of his channel’s prime time lineup. But it still came as a shock to many CNN employees when Mr. Klein was fired Friday, ending a six-year run at the head of the beleaguered cable news channel. After all, Mr. Klein had just set up a wholesale reinvention of CNN’s prime-time schedule. Effective Friday, Mr. Klein was replaced by Ken Jautz, the head of the tabloid-oriented sister channel HLN, who is known internally as a competent and creative manager. He was long seen as a suitable successor to Mr. Klein. Executives at CNN, a unit of Time Warner, said the shift did not portend a change in CNN’s nonpartisan approach, but Mr. Jautz did say he would seek to make the channel’s prime-time programs “more compelling, more lively and sometimes fun.” Mr. Jautz, whose title will be executive vice president of CNN/U.S., and Jim Walton, the president of CNN Worldwide, said Friday that the prime-time adjustments planned by Mr. Klein would happen as scheduled. Next month, the commentators Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker will replace a news program in the 8 p.m. time slot, and in January the talent show judge and journalist Piers Morgan will replace Larry King in the 9 p.m. slot. The anchor Anderson Cooper will remain in the 10 p.m. slot. Since joining in 2004, Mr. Klein marketed CNN as the lone nonpartisan source of cable news, positioning Fox News to the right and MSNBC to the left. Viewers have gravitated toward those other channels, however, leaving CNN to languish, and leading some media critics to publicly wonder how Mr. Klein had managed to keep his job for so long. In 2005, his first full year at CNN, the channel had an average of 479,000 viewers at any given time; so far this year, it has had an average of 447,000 viewers, according to Nielsen. In a telephone interview, Mr. Klein said Mr. Walton “told me they wanted to restructure things this way, and thank you very much, and good luck.” As part of the overhaul, CNN is planning to hire a managing editor who will “lead collaboration across all platforms” for the company, Mr. Walton said. In an internal memorandum, Mr. Walton said, “Jon has made important contributions to the CNN story, and he leaves with our respect and friendship, and with my sincere thanks.” Like many observers, Mr. Klein said he thought that the CNN higher-ups would wait to judge him — the “reckoning,” he called it — until the new 8 and 9 p.m. programs were on the air. “I’m disappointed that I’m not going to get to see these new shows through to completion and to see them soar,” Mr. Klein said. But he added: “The good thing about TV is that you can still watch the product, even if you’re not in charge of it anymore. So I’m looking forward to watching.” On a conference call with reporters, Mr. Walton explained that he purposefully made the executive change before the new programs started. “We didn’t want to have any disruption once the programs were on the air,” he said. Reiterating a regular talking point, Mr. Walton said the profits for the global CNN enterprise were expected to grow this year for the seventh consecutive year, despite the slipping ratings for the flagship channel. As the head of HLN, Mr. Jautz orchestrated a sharp shift away from the channel’s Headline News roots and added opinionated hosts like Nancy Grace, Joy Behar and, for a time, Glenn Beck. Previously, Mr. Jautz oversaw the business channel CNN/fn and ran a CNN bureau in Germany, among other jobs. He was also an international correspondent for The Associated Press. Scot Safon, who is the chief marketing officer for CNN’s channels, will take over HLN.

Klein Jonathan
Cable News Network
News and News Media
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Appointments and Executive Changes
Jautz Ken


Kasparov Discloses Election Contracts

Abstract: Garry Kasparov, a former chess world champion who is running for president of the World Chess Federation, released previously confidential agreements Friday involving himself and one of the officials who is part of his slate of candidates to lead the organization. An earlier draft contract, reported in an article in The New York Times this week, indicated that the official, Ignatius Leong — who is the general secretary of the federation under its longtime president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who is running for re-election — was paid to join Kasparov’s campaign. The draft also stated that Leong, who lives in Singapore and is a powerful figure in chess in Asia, was being paid to supply votes for Kasparov’s election. The election will be in August in Tromso, Norway, as part of the biennial Chess Olympiad. The final agreements were released on Kasparov’s election website. A statement accompanying the disclosure said that “the Kasparov Team welcomes such transparency and are looking forward to seeing our opponents act in the same manner.” One of the contracts is an update of the previous draft. The draft said that Kasparov would pay Leong $500,000. That is not part of the revised agreement. But the final agreement, as in the earlier draft, promises to pay Asean Chess Academy, an organization for teaching children that was founded and is owned by Leong, $250,000 annually for four years, beginning in 2013. The payments will come through a newly created foundation bearing Kasparov’s name. As in the draft, the agreement can be voided and the final $500,000 not paid if Kasparov is not elected. According to the final agreement, Leong is “responsible for delivering a minimum of 10 + 1 vote from his region, with the effort to deliver 15 votes (not counting China).” In language that appears stronger in the final version than in the draft, the agreement goes on to say, “Support from each of these above mentioned federations must materialize in the form of a written and signed statement and/or an irrevocable proxy, before the last tranche of payment takes place.” In the past, Kasparov has denounced the use of proxies, saying they have contributed to the corruption of the election process. The final agreement adds that if Leong is successful in lining up more than 15 votes, “the parties will negotiate the financial terms separately and in good faith.” As in the draft, Kasparov has agreed, after his election, to open a new federation office in Singapore, to be run by Leong, for which he would be paid an undisclosed amount. Kasparov Chess Foundation Asia Pacific was started in November 2013, and a second agreement concerns the terms and conditions of the transfer of the first $500,000 in payments from the Kasparov Chess Foundation, a nonprofit charity based in New York, to its newly created namesake. According to Morten Sand, a Norwegian lawyer working for the Kasparov campaign, the second agreement was written in the United States. Part of the second contract, which governs how the money distributed by Kasparov’s foundation can be spent, said, “No part of the grant has been or will be used to attempt to influence legislation, to attempt to influence the outcome of any specific public election, or to carry on, directly or indirectly, any voter registration drive, or to make grants to other organizations or individuals, or to undertake any activities for any purpose that would not be deemed to be a charitable or educational purpose.” The agreement was signed Oct. 31, 2013, by Michael Khodarkovsky, the executive director of the Kasparov Chess Foundation and Leong.

Garry Kasparov
Chess
World Chess Federation
Ignatius Leong


News Corp. Sells a Group of Small Local Publications

Abstract: In one of its first moves since a corporate spinoff in June, News Corporation said on Tuesday that it had sold 33 local publications to a private equity and hedge fund firm. The collection of small newspapers and niche publications, known as the Dow Jones Local Media Group, will be owned by an affiliate of the Fortress Investment Group, News Corporation said in a news release. The publications will be managed by GateHouse Media, the newspaper publisher based outside Rochester. The details of the transaction were not released, but the money involved was evidently relatively small, because if it had been bigger (or, in financial terms, material to the company) News Corporation would have had to disclose more financial information. Christine Frank, managing director of Waller Capital Partners, which advised Dow Jones, said “there was significant interest among strategic and financial buyers” for the local publications. Image Robert Thomson, chief executive, said the publications were not “strategically consistent” with News Corp. Credit Shannon Stapleton/Reuters “This is a testament to the growing number of buyers for newspaper assets and these properties in particular,” she said. The company’s interest in selling the local publications was reported in April by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal and the collection of local publications were both included in the 2007 deal in which News Corporation acquired Dow Jones. Shortly afterward, News Corporation tried for the first time to sell the local media assets, but it pulled back in 2008 because of unfavorable market conditions. The same logic guided the decision to sell now: the community papers — like The Cape Cod Times, The Herald in Portsmouth, N.H., and The Daily Tidings in Ashland, Ore. — and the small magazines don’t fit into the company’s larger framework. “We are confident that the papers will prosper under the new owners, but they were not strategically consistent with the emerging portfolio of the new News,” Robert Thomson, the News Corporation chief executive, said in a statement. In June most of News Corporation’s television and film units were split off into a separate company called 21st Century Fox, leaving News Corporation as the publishing arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Newspaper
Fortress Investment Group
21st Century Fox
News Corp


Analysts Detail Claims That Reports on ISIS Were Distorted

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A group of intelligence analysts have provided investigators with documents they say show that senior military officers manipulated the conclusions of reports on the war against the Islamic State, according to several government officials, as lawmakers from both parties voiced growing anger that they may have received a distorted picture about the military campaign’s progress. The Pentagon’s inspector general, who is examining the claims, is focusing on senior intelligence officials who supervise dozens of military and civilian analysts at United States Central Command, or Centcom, which oversees American military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Bridget Serchak, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s inspector general, confirmed that the investigation is focused on Centcom’s intelligence command. “The investigation will address whether there was any falsification, distortion, delay, suppression or improper modification of intelligence information,” she said in an email on Tuesday. She added that the inquiry would examine any “personal accountability for any misconduct or failure to follow established processes.” The New York Times reported last month that the investigation had begun, but the scope of the inquiry and the focus of the allegations were unclear. The officials now say that the analysts at the center of the investigation allege that their superiors within Centcom’s intelligence operation changed conclusions about a number of topics, including the readiness of Iraqi security forces and the success of the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. The revisions presented a more positive picture to the White House, Congress and other intelligence agencies, the officials said. “The senior intelligence officers are flipping everything on its head,” said one government intelligence analyst, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The analyst said that the complaints involve the highest-ranking officials in Centcom’s intelligence unit, run by Army Maj. Gen. Steven R. Grove. The Pentagon’s inspector general would not examine disputes over routine differences among analysts, and so it is highly unusual that an investigation would be opened about the intelligence conclusions in an ongoing war. The allegations raise the prospect that military officials were presenting skewed assessments to the White House and lawmakers that were in sharp contrast with the conclusions of other intelligence agencies. The issue is expected to come up Wednesday when Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of Central Command, is expected to testify before a Senate panel about the military campaign against the Islamic State. “We do take seriously any allegations of the mishandling or manipulation of intelligence information for purposes other than getting to ground truth,” Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday. “In the wake of the flawed intelligence prior to the Iraq war, we must make sure that all voices are appropriately considered and that assessments are never again politicized.” Where ISIS Has Directed and Inspired Attacks Around the World More than a dozen countries have had attacks since the Islamic State, or ISIS, began to pursue a global strategy in the summer of 2014. Last week, Mr. Schiff said that the intelligence presentations that lawmakers get from spy agencies are in general far better than they were in the period leading up to the start of the Iraq war in 2003, when dissenting views about Iraq’s weapons programs were often buried in intelligence reports or ignored. Today, he said, dissenting views are given more prominence in reports. Disagreements over analytical conclusions are both commonplace and encouraged. Just as in the peer review process in academia, the government wants analysts to consider opposing viewpoints and revise reports as necessary. Analysts who disagree are encouraged to publish rival papers, but changing someone else’s conclusion is forbidden. The matter is complicated because the analysts who made the complaint work for the Defense Intelligence Agency — it was created to be immune from the pressures and biases of the officers leading the war — but are supervised by officers at Centcom. At least one analyst complained to the inspector general in July. Last week, The Daily Beast reported that those complaints were supported by a cadre of more than 50 intelligence agents. Col. Patrick S. Ryder, a Centcom spokesman, on Tuesday reiterated several points he had made when news of the investigation broke last month. The inspector general has a responsibility to investigate all allegations, he said, and he cannot comment on an ongoing investigation. But Colonel Ryder said that because many different intelligence agencies provide assessments to policy makers — all derived from a wide range of sources — the system is structured to guard against “any single report or opinion unduly influencing leaders and decision makers.” On Friday, Pentagon investigators held a conference call with members of Congress as a growing, bipartisan chorus of lawmakers expressed concerns about the dispute. One official who listened to the call said it was intended to assure lawmakers that investigators were taking the claims seriously. That same afternoon, both the Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, and a colleague sent letters to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and John T. Rymer, the Pentagon inspector general, asking that Pentagon officials brief his committee about the scope of the inquiry and its findings. “We are deeply concerned about these allegations and want to ensure that intelligence provided to key decision makers properly reflect the expert analysis produced by our Intelligence Community (IC) professionals,” the letter said. Last summer President Obama authorized a bombing campaign against the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group that spun off from Al Qaeda and now controls large areas in Iraq and Syria. Roughly 3,400 American troops are in Iraq advising and training Iraqi forces. The White House has been reluctant, though, to recommit large numbers of ground troops to Iraq after announcing an end to the Iraq war in 2009. The bombing campaign over the past year has had some success in allowing Iraqi forces to reclaim parts of the country formerly under the Islamic State’s control, but important cities like Mosul and Ramadi remain under the sway of the group. There has been little progress in loosening the group’s hold over large parts of Syria, where the United States has conducted limited airstrikes. Critics have argued that the bombing alone cannot defeat the Islamic State and have called on the administration to send in more troops. It is not clear if Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have concluded that more American troops would make an appreciable difference. In testimony on Capitol Hill this year, Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, the agency’s director, said sending ground troops back into Iraq risked transforming the conflict into one between the West and the Islamic State, which would be “the best propaganda victory that we could give.”

Pentagon
Iraq
Syria
US Military
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


Vinyl Siding Holds Its Appeal to Some in Brooklyn

Abstract: Like many creative professionals who live in Williamsburg, Lewis Canfield possesses a Renaissance man’s variety of passions and hobbies. He worked in the movie industry, profited from the Internet boom, dabbled in art, developed an interest in women’s perfume scents and now buys, sells and renovates Brooklyn real estate. No topic has captured his attention lately more than vinyl siding. One might assume that Mr. Canfield’s background puts him squarely in Brooklyn’s antivinyl camp, but beneath that artsy exterior is a guy who actually likes vinyl siding, when well applied. A lot. Last week, as Mr. Canfield drove down Williamsburg streets lined with brilliantly colored trees and paler vinyl-sided buildings, he pointed out his favorite examples. He likes neatly lined siding, siding blazed by the sun until a patina forms, siding intended to look like wooden shingles and traditional designs that try to approximate George Washington’s Mount Vernon. To Mr. Canfield, replacing vinyl siding that is in good shape, as some homebuyers do as soon as they have the deed, is like carelessly restoring antiques that came over on the Mayflower. He views vinyl siding facades as the key to preserving Williamsburg’s working-class traditions, which arguably has become its own facade. “It’s not the most beautiful thing, but it’s real,” he said. “It’s authentic. It’s tied to the history of the neighborhood.” In a neighborhood like Williamsburg where vinyl siding is as dominant as brownstone is in Park Slope and concrete is in Midtown, many residents are ready to fight with Mr. Canfield with equal passion. Real estate bloggers devote hours mercilessly photographing homes and posting online what they think are the most lowbrow examples. To the preservation-minded, vinyl siding and its close cousin, aluminum siding, are a hideous blot on the landscape. “I can’t imagine anyone liking vinyl siding,” said Robert Lanham, who rents a floor in a Pepto-Bismol-colored vinyl-sided house in Williamsburg and praises neighbors who go back to wood. “If you have the means and time to get rid of it, I’m all for it,” said Mr. Lanham , author of “The Hipster Handbook.” Although Mr. Canfield may be one of the few vocal supporters of vinyl siding’s appearance, untold millions of homeowners have wrapped their homes in the stuff for more practical reasons, after tiring of frequently repainting or repointing and fighting the effects of rain, sun and rot. Since the artificial siding requires very little upkeep, many of these exteriors have remained untouched for decades, becoming, as Mr. Canfield puts it, their own kind of historical “time warp.” Thomas Hohmann, the owner of Top Line, a vinyl siding installer based in Brooklyn, said he still got plenty of business from people adding, or upgrading, their siding. Now, he said, his customers are not so much the aging Italian families who long gave him business there, but tend to be young professional couples, and they are choosing more traditional Dutch colonial siding, the kind that looks almost like clapboard. That is only welcome news to Mr. Canfield, who has handled about a dozen sales of vinyl-sided Williamsburg homes over the past three years. He pulled up before 45 Powers Street, a house with vinyl siding in the back that he sold in 2008. (The front exterior is made of cement board siding.) Matthew Friedman, who bought the house for $1.3 million, shares Mr. Canfield’s sentiments He feels a connection to the neighborhood because his grandmother was born nearby. He prefers vinyl-sided homes to his friends’ brick-front town houses in Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights. “To me, it’s more of a, like, bourgeois town over there,” Mr. Friedman said. “Williamsburg feels more like a neighborhood, a little less stately, more flavor.” Mr. Canfield drove up to 171 North Eighth Street, which has a vinyl-sided front and sun-baked asphalt shingles on its side. One client recently lost a bid on that property, which was listed for $835,000. In June, Mr. Canfield bought his own vinyl-sided home in Williamsburg for $640,000. He plans to keep it as it is. “It’s in good condition and it’s doing its job,” he said. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” From Vinyl to Stainless Daniel Edrei, who lives nearby in Greenpoint, does not share Mr. Canfield’s love of vinyl siding. When Mr. Edrei, a commercial real estate lender, bought his vinyl-sided house on Green Street in 2005, he thought it was so hideous that, he said, he “couldn’t stand the look of it.” But Mr. Edrei was not one to fall in with the real-wood movement. So he covered the front and back in stainless steel in an oblong design that he said was inspired by Frank Gehry and Dr. Seuss. “It’s sleek, it’s clean, it’s sexy,” he said. He kept the sides in vinyl siding, kind of like a chicken drumstick sticking out of its tinfoil wrapping. The exterior led to puzzled looks from his Polish neighbors, praise from newer residents he calls “condo kids” and plenty of material for bloggers. The blog Curbed called it the “Subzero” and cracked, “if only it had an icemaker on the front.” One blogger, a Miss Heather, wrote that it should “be used as gallows for the owner of this property.” The challenge came when Mr. Edrei put the house up for sale in March for $1.4 million. After a price cut, Mr. Edrei has received a serious offer close to the new $1.15 million asking price, said his agent, Lior Politi of the Corcoran Group. Let us hope the buyer has an appreciation for jokes about Popsicles and crisper drawers.

Housing and Real Estate
Williamsburg (NYC)


Fate of M.T.A. Rescue Plan May Hinge on Highway Spending

Abstract: Almost from the beginning, Republicans have criticized the push to have the State Legislature pass a financial rescue plan for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority because it ignored another gaping hole in transportation spending: financing for a statewide highway and bridge-building program. Those complaints have taken on a new urgency as the rescue plan has floundered in a narrowly divided State Senate, which is controlled by Democrats who acknowledge that passing the plan may require Republican support. “To just ignore the highway, road and bridge plan and go to trying to negotiate a schedule for a new M.T.A. capital plan was just not the right thing to do,” said Senator Thomas W. Libous, a Republican from Binghamton who is the ranking minority member on the Senate Transportation Committee. But he acknowledged that finding money for the road program during a deep recession could be every bit as problematic as solving the transportation authority’s fiscal woes. “The need is going to be huge,” Mr. Libous said, referring to the money for the highway program. The Senate is the main stumbling block to helping the ailing authority; Gov. David A. Paterson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have already endorsed a rescue plan. The dispute centers on separate five-year capital spending programs for the New York City metropolitan area’s mass transportation system and the state roadway network, both of which expire within the next 12 months. In the past, the Legislature has generally allotted equal amounts to roads and transit. That has ensured support from both parties and all areas of the state: The city is seen as benefiting most from the transit money, while upstate areas rely heavily on roadway spending. But that pattern was broken last year when Mr. Paterson chose to seek a financial rescue for the authority first. The rescue plan was primarily intended to be a stable source of financing for the authority’s next capital program, which is to run from 2010 to 2014. The program is expected to cost about $28 billion, much of that borrowed through the sale of bonds. It would pay for big-ticket items like new trains and buses; the renovation of subway stations and signal systems; and major projects, like the Second Avenue subway line. The rescue plan would also help the authority deal with the crisis affecting its operating budget, which pays for the day-to-day expenses of running trains and buses. To help close a deficit of at least $1.2 billion, the authority is planning to raise fares and tolls by 20 to 30 percent and enact deep cuts in service. The rescue plan would eliminate most of those service cuts and trim the fare increase to about 8 percent. It would also raise money through a tax on payrolls in the 12-county region served by the authority and tolls on East and Harlem River bridges. Mr. Paterson and Mr. Silver both support the plan, but in the Senate, where Democrats have a narrow 32-to-30 majority, a group of city Democrats has blocked the toll proposal while a group of suburban Democrats has opposed the payroll tax. That has led to appeals for support from Republicans, who have largely sat on the sidelines as Democrats bickered. Republicans have pointed to the lack of a corresponding highway and bridge program and have also said that they have been left out of negotiations about a rescue plan. “If you brought in the bridge and highway program, that would help it become a bipartisan issue, as it’s been in the past,” said Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association , a civic policy and planning group. He said allowing the capital programs to lapse would cost the state tens of thousands of jobs. “This is a pretty fundamental economic issue for the whole state,” he said. An estimate last year said a new highway program would cost $26 billion, though its final price would probably mirror that of the authority’s program. It would pay for general roadway upkeep, like repaving and the installation of new signs and traffic signals, and also for larger projects, like the construction of bridges and roads. The road and transit programs receive some funds from the federal government, with the rest coming through the sale of bonds. Borrowing costs for the current highway program are paid out of a trust fund financed largely by gasoline-related taxes and motor vehicle registration and licensing fees. But that fund is running out of money, and to pay for the next five-year program more financing will have to be identified — possibly by substantially increasing the same taxes and fees that supply the trust fund. That will not be an easy task during a recession and will almost certainly ignite a public debate that could be just as rancorous as the one raging over the transportation authority rescue. An early proposal for a new five-year highway program written last year estimated that the state would have to inject an additional $5 billion into the highway trust fund over the course of the program — with more needed to pay debt service in following years. Meanwhile, the Transport Workers Union, which represents transit workers, began running television and radio ads last week taking aim at the three Republican senators from New York City, claiming that Republican inaction was endangering the transit system. The three senators, Frank Padavan from Queens, Martin J. Golden from Brooklyn and Andrew J. Lanza from Staten Island, all disagreed strongly with the ads, saying they had never been invited into discussions with Democrats on the rescue. “Sure, I would want to get involved, but we’ve been premeditatively kept out of it,” Mr. Padavan said, adding that he would support a payroll tax but saw bridge tolls as problematic.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority
New York City
Transit Systems
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Roads and Traffic


Oprah, Daytime Network Franchise, Bets on Future With Cable

Abstract: Oprah Winfrey is giving network television one of her trademark aha moments. Ms. Winfrey, the billionaire queen of daytime television, is planning to announce on Friday that she will step down from her daily pulpit, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” in two years in order to concentrate on the forthcoming cable channel that will bear her name. “The sun will set on the Oprah show as its 25th season draws to a close on Sept. 9, 2011,” Tim Bennett, the president of Ms. Winfrey’s production company, Harpo, said in a letter to her 214 local TV stations on Thursday evening. She will appear on her cable channel, called OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network, in some form. But “The Oprah Winfrey Show” will no longer be. The list of repercussions of her decision is long. For CBS , the owner of syndication rights to her show, it means the loss of its signature program and millions of dollars every year in revenue. For ABC stations, where her show was largely seen, it means the loss of daytime’s most popular program, a generator of giant audiences leading into evening news programs. Larry Gerbrandt, an analyst for the firm Media Valuation Partners, said “any show that ABC comes up with to replace her will not draw anything near the ratings guarantee they could count on with Oprah. At least for the first year, ABC is going to take a serious hit.” More widely, her departure will surely be interpreted as an endorsement of the cable TV business, and a blow to the fortunes of broadcast television. Discovery Communications, which will co-own the new channel, announced the creation of OWN 20 months ago. Now Discovery will parlay Ms. Winfrey’s anticipated exit from broadcast into higher per-subscriber fees and will also seek more lucrative commitments from advertisers. For Ms. Winfrey herself, the move represents an enormous bet — that her popularity and golden touch with programming can sustain an entire cable channel and that she’ll remain a central cultural figure even without the mass exposure of broadcast television every day. Far and away the most popular daytime talk show host, Ms. Winfrey has spent two decades spinning her TV fame into a vast media empire, including her own show, a popular magazine, a book club and several movies. She is also one of the most successful daytime producers in television, with longtime talk shows like “Dr. Phil,” “Rachael Ray” and “The Dr. Oz Show,” this season’s syndicated success story. Her talk show regularly draws seven million viewers, nearly twice as many as the next biggest talk show, “Dr. Phil.” Her endorsement of Barack Obama is widely credited with helping elect him president in 2008. She even claims to own the trademark on the phrase “Aha moment.” Ms. Winfrey, 55, told the staff of her Chicago -based show about her decision late on Thursday afternoon, according to people who were told but who insisted on anonymity because they agreed to wait until Ms. Winfrey makes the official announcement. Then she informed her business partners at the networks and instructed Harpo employees to start calling her affiliate stations. The stations were told they could report her decision on local newscasts, apparently to increase audiences for her formal announcement on Friday. It remains unclear what on-camera role Ms. Winfrey will have at OWN, which is a 50-50 joint venture with Discovery. The management team at OWN has been busy creating a programming plan but has remained mostly silent about the lineup in deference to Ms. Winfrey and her decision-making process. Discovery executives declined to comment on Thursday evening. The OWN channel will have its premiere in January 2011, according to a person with knowledge of Ms. Winfrey’s decision who insisted on anonymity. Ms. Winfrey made clear to her staff members that she will not transfer the show to cable. She is expected to produce new programs for OWN, and will appear occasionally on some of them. Ms. Winfrey was believed to be in renewal talks this fall with CBS Television Distribution and another syndicator, Sony , which distributes her most recent spinoff, “Dr. Oz.” At the same time, she considered ending her talk show altogether. In recent days television executives said they sensed that Ms. Winfrey was leaning toward an exit. CBS seemed eager to keep its door propped open for Ms. Winfrey, saying in a statement that, “We look forward to working with her for the next several years, and hopefully afterwards as well.” Acknowledging OWN, they added, “We know that anything she turns her hand to will be a great success.” OWN is expected to replace the Discovery Health Channel, which is currently available in more than 70 million homes. Her cable plans, however, have been fraught with delays. OWN was announced in January 2008 and was originally expected to make its debut this winter, but those plans were scuttled because of management turnover and a turbulent advertising climate. Still, Discovery’s chief executive, David Zaslav, predicted this day might come, saying a year ago, “Her show will go off of ABC in syndication and she will come to OWN.” “This is her chapter two,” Mr. Zaslav said then. During her decades of daytime TV, she had a number of highlights, including a show in 1988 when she appeared after losing 67 pounds, a show in 2005 when the actor Tom Cruise declared his love for the actress Katie Holmes by leaping all over Ms. Winfrey’s couch, and another show that year when she sent her audience members into a screaming frenzy by giving them all free cars. Ms. Winfrey’s show was at the height of its popularity when she conducted what was at the time called the most-watched interview of all time with the singer Michael Jackson. That prime-time special in 1993 was seen by 62 million people in the United States and almost 100 million people worldwide. Robert Thompson, a professor of television at Syracuse , said Ms. Winfrey’s impact on the medium and the culture has “always been characterized by hyperbole: the biggest this, the most-viewed that.” He added, “We have come to use the term ‘Oprahfication’ in almost same way we use a term like the ‘Hellenization.’ And it’s not completely inappropriate. She was able to colonize cultural territory the way Alexander was able to colonize physical territory.” As recently as Monday, Ms. Winfrey showed that she can command the country’s attention. Having scored the first TV interview in months with the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin , Ms. Winfrey asked her guest if she should be worried about competition, “because I heard you’re going to get your own talk show.” Ms. Palin smiled and answered: “Oprah, you’re the queen of talk shows.”


Senussi, Qaddafi Spy Chief, Is Extradited to Libya

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi ’s intelligence chief was extradited to Libya by Mauritania on Wednesday, handing a victory to the new Tripoli government in an international tug of war over the chance to put him on trial for murder and war crimes. Mauritania arrested the intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi, who ran Libya’s extensive spy network and was Colonel Qaddafi’s brother-in-law, in March as he sought to evade attempts by the Libyans, the French and the International Criminal Court to bring him to trial for suspected human rights abuses and acts of international terrorism during his decades as the Libyan leader’s enforcer and confidant. He had been a fugitive for seven months, since rebels captured Tripoli. Mr. Senussi and Colonel Qaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi are perhaps the two most reviled survivors of the Qaddafi government; both are now in the hands of the new Libyan authorities. Their trials will be pivotal tests of the new government’s avowed commitment to the rule of law. Libya still lacks an effective police force, public security or fully functional courts; resisting mob justice may be a challenge. “The Libyan government has received Qaddafi’s right-hand man,” Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib told reporters. “I want to take the opportunity to say that Libya will guarantee a fair trial for Senussi that will respect international legal standards,” he added, urging other countries to turn over any fugitive Qaddafi officials. Mr. Senussi’s extradition followed months of diplomatic pleading and pressure from the new Libyan authorities, and it was unclear what assurances or inducements they may have given Mauritania, a nation with far fewer resources. The International Criminal Court is seeking to try the two men at The Hague on charges that as top lieutenants to Colonel Qaddafi they directed the killing of political opponents challenging his rule. The French, whose intelligence service reportedly assisted in Mr. Senussi’s capture, tried him in absentia for his involvement in the 1989 bombing of a passenger jet that killed 170 people, including 54 French citizens. British and American officials believe that he played a role in the 1988 bombing of a United States passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed more than 250 people. The Libyans have not specified the charges they will bring. Many believe Mr. Senussi was responsible for the torture or assassination of suspected spies or political opponents during Colonel Qaddafi’s decades in power, and they imagine he can unlock financial and security secrets known only to the colonel’s inner circle. “Senussi threatened to kill and slaughter us,” said Sami al-Saadi, a former political prisoner who was tortured and sentenced to death in Mr. Senussi’s custody. Part of an Islamist guerrilla movement against Colonel Qaddafi in the 1990s, Mr. Saadi said two of his brothers were killed in a notorious 1996 prison massacre that many Libyans say Mr. Senussi ordered. Mr. Saadi said that he hoped to see Mr. Senussi on Thursday so he could tell him: “How ironic that tables have turned. The same people who are guarding you now in prison are the same people you sentenced to death in your prison.” Libyan state television showed Mr. Senussi, with a new beard, exiting a helicopter in Tripoli. In a telephone interview broadcast on Libyan television, Abdul-Majid Saad, a representative of the Justice Ministry who traveled with Mr. Senussi, said that he had been in good health and comfortable circumstances in Mauritania, where he had been able to live with family. He also said the extradition caught Mr. Senussi by surprise. “He was under the impression that he was going to meet with one of the Mauritanian security officials,” Mr. Saad said. “But when he saw the Libyan Arab airlines plane, he tried to resist.” Mr. Saad added that when Mr. Senussi saw a crowd at the Tripoli airport, he fought to stay on the plane. During the flight, Mr. Saad said, Mr. Senussi had tried to diminish the legitimacy of the new Libyan authorities, saying, “If it wasn’t for NATO, the battle wouldn’t have been over.”

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


In Japan, the Aftershocks Are Also Felt Within

Abstract: TOKYO — Aguri Suzuki, a 44-year-old real estate agent, says she sometimes thinks the ground is shaking even when it is not. When she sees a tree branch swaying in the wind, she worries there has been an earthquake. Doctors here say they are seeing more people who are experiencing such phantom quakes, as well as other symptoms of “earthquake sickness” like dizziness and anxiety. And it is no wonder. As if the threat of radiation from a crippled nuclear power plant were not enough, Tokyo and the region to its northeast have been under a constant barrage of aftershocks since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that set off a devastating tsunami on March 11. Two earthquakes were felt in Tokyo on Wednesday morning, three on Tuesday, a large one on Monday and a very large one of magnitude 7.1 last Thursday . Over all, there have been 400 aftershocks of magnitude 5.0 or greater in northeastern Japan since March 11. That is as many sizable quakes in one month as Japan typically experiences in two and a half years, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The quakes are complicating efforts to control the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. For instance, the quake on Monday knocked out cooling at the Fukushima plant for nearly an hour. Every time a sizable quake occurs, the first question on many people’s minds is whether the nuclear plant has been further damaged and whether a new cloud of radiation is on the way. A spokesman for the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant’s owner, is then hustled onto television to reassure viewers. Government officials are becoming concerned that in the rush to cool the reactors and prevent hydrogen explosions, the plant’s vulnerability to another tsunami has been overlooked. “A week ago we thought the major risk was a hydrogen explosion,” a senior official in the office of the prime minister said Tuesday. “I think the major risk at the moment is an aftershock and tsunami.” Hidehiko Nishiyama, the deputy director general of Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said at a news conference on Wednesday evening that three measures are being considered that would allow electricity and cooling at the plant to remain intact even after a tsunami measuring 15 meters, or 49 feet. Right now the site can withstand a tsunami of only about 18 feet , he said. One measure is to interconnect the external power lines that have been built to the power plant, so that if one power line is broken, the others can still carry electricity to the various reactors. A second measure is to put a generator on a small hill inside the plant site, and the third is to place a fire pumper engine on the hill that could send water into the reactors and spent fuel pools even if electricity was interrupted. Japan, which sits atop four colliding tectonic plates, has a long history of earthquakes and some sophisticated technology to deal with them. A detection system transmits warnings of some pending quakes a few seconds in advance to television broadcasters and to many cellphones. In recent weeks it has not been unusual to see nearly all the people in a restaurant or a train suddenly look at their cellphones at the same time. Yurekuru , a free app for the iPhone that delivers such warnings (its name might be translated as “the shaking is coming”), now has 1.5 million users, compared with only 100,000 before the March 11 quake, according to RC Solution, the app’s developer. Geologists say the frequency of the aftershocks has declined since March 11 and will continue to decline, but will still remain higher than normal for a long time. “There is an increased frequency and it will last for at least five or ten years,” said Ross S. Stein, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., who has studied the situation in Japan. The March 11 quake was so strong that a Japan Coast Guard monitoring instrument on the floor of the Pacific Ocean near the epicenter moved 24 meters, or about 79 feet, eastward. The city of Sendai, whose airport was inundated by the tsunami, moved about 13 feet, according to Shinji Toda, a professor at Kyoto University. Such large movements have shifted stresses in the earth, increasing the likelihood of quakes on some fault lines while reducing the likelihood on others, including the one involved in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake. But over all, Dr. Stein said, the risks have increased. “There’s this very broad turn-on of seismicity that extends 300 miles from the rupture zone,” he said. Satoko Oki, an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo’s earthquake research institute, said that an aftershock of the March 11 quake could reach magnitude 8.0. There is some precedent. The 2004 quake of magnitude 9.1 near Sumatra, Indonesia, which spawned a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people, was followed three months later by one measuring 8.6 and later by four more huge ones. But the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile in early 2010 has not yet produced an aftershock larger than 7.1, Dr. Stein said. To be sure, the spate of earthquakes has not caused the same panic and mass exodus as the fears of radiation in the first week after the nuclear crisis began. Still, with levels of radiation in the Tokyo air having sharply fallen since then, some people interviewed on the street said they worried about the aftershocks more than radiation. Dr. Hideaki Sakata, director of the Mejiro University Clinic, who is treating Ms. Suzuki, said that feeling the ground shaking when it is not is similar to the continued feeling of swaying when one first gets off a boat onto solid ground. Dr. Kazuhiro Soeda, an ear, nose and throat specialist in Utsunomiya, outside Tokyo, who also treats patients having trouble dealing with the aftershocks, said: “People are getting too sensitive. This is something we’ve never experienced before.”

Japan
Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (2011)
Anxiety and Stress
Mental Health and Disorders


I.M.F. Gains Sway, but Its Authority Is Uncertain

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Can the International Monetary Fund achieve what seems like a mission impossible: bridge the increasingly tense currency and trade disputes that threaten to set back the uneven global recovery? That is what leaders of the world’s largest countries are hoping, even though a number of international economists are skeptical. A weekend gathering in South Korea of officials from the Group of 20 economic powers ended Saturday with a collective vow to avoid a foreign-exchange war. But they failed to agree on an American proposal to set a numerical limit on the trade imbalances that have been identified as a source of global economic instability. So G-20 officials, including the United States Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, instead decided to strengthen the I.M.F.’s nascent, but largely untested, role as the arbiter of international economic frictions. Keeping its 187 members in line has not always come naturally to the I.M.F. It is best known for bailing out fiscally stricken nations, giving political cover to — and taking political heat for — debt-burdened governments as they cut spending, raise taxes and restructure their balance sheets. But its longstanding role as a monitor of fiscal and monetary policies is taking on new emphasis. To support that expanded monitoring, the G-20 officials agreed on a huge increase in the fund’s resources; a historic shift in voting power toward fast-growing emerging markets and away from the richest nations; and a stronger mandate for the fund to monitor — and criticize, when necessary — the policies of its members. Whether the I.M.F. is up to the task of policing its members and exerting influence on the most powerful ones remains far from clear. “At present, there is no effective international umpire who can call a foul on countries for their policies,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a former I.M.F. economist who now teaches trade policy at Cornell. “The I.M.F. can say its piece, but is ineffectual when it comes to influencing the large economies.” Even the I.M.F. is aware of its own limitations. While Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the fund’s managing director, lauded what he called “the most important reform in the governance of the institution since its creation,” he acknowledged the magnitude of the challenge. “The I.M.F. is a multilateral institution, but we don’t have real teeth,” Mr. Strauss-Kahn said on Saturday at the close of a two-day meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bankers in Gyeongju, South Korea. “We cannot oblige a country to do something, but what we can do is to notice that a country has a commitment and fulfills, or not, a commitment.” He added, “To be able to say to a country publicly, ‘What you’re doing is wrong,’ we probably need to extend the mandate of the I.M.F.” For the United States, which helped create the I.M.F. in 1944 as part of the Bretton Woods system of managing global economic relations, the new reliance on the I.M.F. stems from a recognition that it cannot unilaterally compel China, now the world’s second-largest economy, to do what it wants. The United States for months has been pressing China to let its currency rise in value and realign its economy, away from a dependence on exports and toward domestic consumption. “The I.M.F. has to play cop; that’s what it exists to do,” Mr. Geithner told Bloomberg Television on Saturday. “No country can be the independent, unilateral arbiter of exchange-rate misalignments. And no country can, on its own, figure out how best to reduce a persistently large imbalance. It requires cooperation.” The I.M.F. said it realized that addressing the currency issues was a priority. “The main threat to this recovery would be to enter an endless fight on current account surpluses and exchange rates,” Mr. Strauss-Kahn said Saturday. “I don’t like to use the term ‘war,’ because it has been too much used, but let’s say a confrontation.” Germany, an export powerhouse, resisted Mr. Geithner’s proposal that G-20 countries aim to limit the surplus or deficit on their current account — the broadest measure of a nation’s trade and investment — to no more than 4 percent of gross domestic product. (Germany has a projected current account surplus of 6.1 percent this year, compared with a 4.7 percent surplus for China and a 3.2 percent deficit for the United States.) But the Germans and Americans were on the same page regarding the I.M.F. “If you can make the fund more legitimate, it can play a greater role in multilateral surveillance of economic policies,” Jörg Asmussen, state secretary of the German Finance Ministry, said in a phone interview. “It is extremely necessary.” So the G-20 powers agreed to pump up the fund’s resources by doubling the quotas that determine how much each country contributes to, and may borrow from, the institution. The I.M.F. will also shift 6 percent of voting power away from the richest countries toward “dynamic emerging-market developing countries.” China, Russia, India and Brazil will be among the fund’s 10 largest shareholders. But the United States, with nearly 17 percent of voting power, will retain its ability to unilaterally veto major decisions, which require an 85 percent vote. Europe agreed to give up two of its seats on the 24-member executive board that governs the I.M.F., a significant concession. “We put an end to a discussion which has been in the headlines for decades about the legitimacy of the institution,” said Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister of France. For the United States, tasking the I.M.F. with mediating the currency dispute “may help rebuild Congressional support for the I.M.F. while reducing the growing threat of protectionist legislation against China,” said J. Lawrence Broz, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. There is, of course, a risk: in sharing power at the I.M.F. more broadly, the Western powers (and Japan) may be opening themselves up to advice that is not easy to hear. “Greater legitimacy will depend on the I.M.F. offering policy prescriptions and analysis that genuinely reflect the interests and experiences of emerging markets and poor countries, even when such actions may run counter to the interests of wealthier countries,” said Jeffrey M. Chwieroth, a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics and author of “Capital Ideas: The I.M.F. and the Rise of Financial Liberalization.” Mr. Strauss-Kahn said the I.M.F., which traditionally has produced reports limited to individual countries, would increasingly emphasize the spillover effects that one country has on others. Such “spillover reports,” he said, will include the world’s five major currencies: the dollar , the euro , the yen , the pound and the renminbi . “These five currencies have accepted the spillover report despite the fact that they understand that sometimes it will be a bit problematic for them, because we will say things they don’t like,” he said. At the same time, Mr. Strauss-Kahn made clear his independence from American influence, saying of Mr. Geithner’s abortive proposal, “Whereas this idea of 4 percent has been launched by Tim, the discussion focused more on finding something more appropriate and more sophisticated.”

International Monetary Fund
Currency
International Trade and World Market
Protectionism (Trade)
Group of Twenty
Economic Conditions and Trends
United States Economy


Italy Drops Some Charges in Migrant Shipwreck Case

Abstract: ROME — Italian prosecutors on Tuesday dropped charges of illegal detention against two men accused of being smugglers in the shipwreck of a boat loaded with an estimated 800 migrants that capsized in the Mediterranean last month. What’s Behind the Surge in Refugees Crossing the Mediterranean Sea There were about 17 times as many refugee deaths from January to April this year as there were during the same period last year. However, prosecutors said, the men, a Tunisian thought to be the navigator of the ship and a Syrian alleged to have been an accomplice, are likely to still face multiple charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abetting illegal immigration. Early accounts of the wreck reported that smugglers had locked hundreds of migrants in the boat’s hold, but further investigations have determined that the hold doors were closed only to allow more migrants on the boat, and at least one door was open. Two people were in fact able to move from the lower deck to the bridge, said Giovanni Salvi, the leading prosecutor in the case. The authorities believe that overcrowding and faulty seamanship on the part of the navigator caused the wreck, the deadliest in the Mediterranean in recent years. Only 28 migrants survived, and just 24 bodies were retrieved. The Italian navy has located the shipwreck in about 1,200 feet of water and been able to inspect it. Recovery is considered unlikely, given the depth and strong currents. The report of the wreck drew international condemnation and vows of action from European Union officials, as the numbers of migrants seeking asylum swells, and deaths at sea along with it. On Monday, European leaders agreed to use naval forces to intercept and eliminate ships used by smugglers to transport migrants from North Africa to Italy. According to the International Organization for Migration, 1,820 migrants have died this year in the area, compared with 200 in the same period last year.

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Texas A&M President Resigns

Abstract: COLLEGE STATION, Tex. (AP) — The president of Texas A&M announced her resignation on Sunday, a day before regents were scheduled to discuss the university’s leadership in what had every appearance of a decision on her future. The president, Elsa A. Murano, issued a statement through her lawyer saying that she was doing what she believed was best for the university and that she hoped to return to the faculty. This month, the university system released a scathing review of Dr. Murano’s performance in her first full year on the job, giving her low marks for leadership and management, including the lowest scores possible for decisiveness and for being a team player. Dr. Michael D. McKinney, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, conducted Dr. Murano’s review, dated Feb. 9. She disputed Dr. McKinney’s review in a 10-page response sent March 10 to the chancellor and the regents. Dr. McKinney previously told The Bryan-College Station Eagle that the regents were considering merging the positions of chancellor and president to save money. Such a move could have pushed Dr. Murano from her post. But a university system spokesman said at the time that no merger plans were in place. Dr. Murano — the first female and first Hispanic president in the university’s 132-year history — was a celebrated internal choice in January 2008 when she succeeded Robert M. Gates, who had left to become defense secretary in the Bush administration. She was a historic selection at a university that was founded as an all-male military institution and did not admit women on an equal basis until 1971.

Texas A&M University
Colleges and Universities


The Offshore Game of Online Sports Betting

Abstract: Hard by the High Line, in a vintage industrial building with a Romanesque arch, lights flash on powerful computers in row after row of metal cabinets and cages. Power lines connect the equipment to diesel generators on the roof. Cables route data through the building to conduits beneath New York City streets. This is one small corner of the Internet, unremarkable except for the confluence of two facts: Sports betting is largely illegal in the United States. And this Manhattan building, on 10th Avenue in Chelsea, is one node in a vast network used by a major offshore sports book — ever faster, ever more sophisticated and harder to track or regulate. The network is traversed by United States customers of pinnaclesports.com, a hugely successful Internet sports-gambling company with headquarters until recently in a shopworn hotel in the tiny Caribbean island nation of Curaçao. The unlikely chief of Pinnacle Sports is a granddaughter of a former North Dakota governor who famously engaged in a bit of Cold War diplomacy with Nikita S. Khrushchev. For years, offshore sports books like Pinnacle have used technology and other means to keep prosecutors at bay. In the United States, field agents are arrested, money is forfeited and the illegal gambling rings are seemingly dismantled. Yet they rise again, with different street soldiers and a new arsenal of deception. The one constant is the Internet, which allows for the electronic brain of these sports books to evolve, beyond the reach of American prosecutors. This pattern raises a persistent question: Are the successes of law enforcement tantamount to cutting off a lizard’s tail only to see it grow again, and if so, is the battle even worth fighting? Is the better way — with gambling increasingly woven into the fabric of American sports — to simply legalize it so it can be regulated? That question is playing out in the rising controversy over betting on daily fantasy sports — the now-ubiquitous business that was given life by a 2006 federal law that tried, and largely failed, to stamp out old-school sports betting. Fantasy sports received an exemption on the ground that it is a game of skill, not chance — a contention being examined by a growing number of investigators. The story of Pinnacle — pieced together from documents and interviews as part of The New York Times’s investigation of unregulated online gambling, in collaboration with the PBS series “Frontline” — is a case study of how more traditional, and far less public, offshore sports books operate and, at least for now, survive on American soil. Indeed, experts say illegal sports betting remains a considerably larger business than its legal cousin, fantasy sports . In a statement, Pinnacle said it “pulled out of the United States in 2007,” after the passage of the federal online gambling law, and since then had “never knowingly taken bets from the United States.” The company says it is fully licensed in Curaçao, where online gambling is legal. However, American and European investigators have determined that since 2007, Pinnacle has had thousands of betting customers in the United States, documents show. What’s more, using advanced Internet technology , The Times found that Pinnacle, along with other gambling sites, had quietly developed a direct digital presence in the United States, allowing it to communicate quickly with its potential customers. Speed is the currency of today’s Internet, where users expect a website rich with graphics and interactive features, but may abandon the site if it takes more than an instant to load. How many of Pinnacle’s users are actually betting or simply visiting the site cannot be known. What is clear, though, is that by 2014, vast amounts of gambling data, once housed legally offshore, were being delivered to the United States from equipment in New York, Miami, Chicago, Dallas and elsewhere. This represented a new and pervasive domestic presence, one that investigators have largely overlooked. Image Pinnacle's main office at the Holiday Beach Hotel and Casino in Willemstad, Curaçao. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times “For them to knowingly collect data in New York for the purpose of furthering a bookmaking enterprise, if that’s what they’re doing — that would be a significant exercise of brazenness on their part,” said Gerard Brave, the chief of the rackets bureau for the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, who has prosecuted Pinnacle operatives in recent years; the company itself has not been prosecuted in the United States. Mr. Brave added, “That would be very interesting to us, and we would certainly be looking into that.” In its statement, Pinnacle said: “All content is delivered legally from Curaçao. We use U.S. traffic acceleration companies, which is fully in compliance with all U.S. laws.” But last week, as this article was nearing publication, United States traffic to the Pinnacle website abruptly shifted from equipment on American soil to servers in Europe and elsewhere, according to an analysis by Dyn , an Internet performance company. Each online sports book has its own DNA. Some are run by Mafia associates or are part of larger criminal enterprises. Pinnacle is different. There has been no shortage of old-time bookmaking techniques, including operatives making street drops with bulging bags of cash. But some of its senior operatives have had an unusual social conscience, attuned to gay and environmental groups, and campaigns to protect whales, dolphins and children in need. And it has often been ahead of the pack, and of investigators, in its use of the Internet. To understand how betting rings employ the Internet to navigate around legal traps requires a journey to places that, for most people in the online age, are far more foreign and remote than a Caribbean island — places where the virtual and physical worlds intersect. Image Willemstad, Curaçao, home of Pinnacle, a successful Internet sports-gambling company. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times Pinnacle Is Born Every successful sports book needs a Stanley Tomchin. He is not shy about his analytic mind, his digital foresight or his role in the building of Pinnacle. Raised on Long Island but now living in Nevada, Mr. Tomchin, 70, acknowledges that he not only helped establish Pinnacle in Curaçao, he also handled one of its most important jobs. “My role was the oddsmaker,” he said in written responses to questions from The Times. “My knowledge and experience allowed me to make better odds than N.Y., Las Vegas, anyone in the world.” Image Stanley Tomchin, who helped establish Pinnacle in Curaçao. "My role was the oddsmaker," he said. Mr. Tomchin claims to have been one of the original members of the so-called Computer Group, credited in gamblers’ lore with bringing the first computer-based betting schemes to sports books. His reputation is such that he was featured in the book “ Gambling Wizards: Conversations With the World’s Greatest Gamblers .” “At 8 or 9 years old, I was walking around with $500 in my pocket,” the book quoted him as saying. In the 1990s, Pinnacle Sports began operating in what was then the Dutch territory of Curaçao, one of the Caribbean islands where American bookmakers sought to escape the scrutiny of United States prosecutors even as they lured American gamblers. The government showed little interest in regulating bookmaking. Mr. Tomchin, who says he has been with Pinnacle from the start, said the company established its headquarters on the second floor of the Holiday Beach Hotel and Casino after he spotted the building while on vacation. Pinnacle initially ran a telephone-betting service aimed at the United States market, but quickly realized it could attract more customers if it reduced its “juice” — the bookmaker’s cut — by turning largely to computers. Image Jessica Davis, a granddaughter of a former North Dakota governor, rose to chief executive of Pinnacle under the alias Paris Smith. At the same time, on Antigua, Jessica Davis, a granddaughter of former Gov. John E. Davis of North Dakota, was working at another sports book, Worldwide Telesports. Ms. Davis appeared in a Times article in 1998 under the headline: “ With Technology, Island Bookies Skirt U.S. Law .” Customers in the United States could place their bets with Antiguan operators or on a relatively primitive website. American law enforcement caught up with Ms. Davis; an indictment, unsealed in 2006, charged her with gambling-related offenses, for which she eventually received probation. Those charges, though, did not dissuade Pinnacle from hiring her and eventually elevating her to chief executive, though by then she had a new name — Paris Smith. (“Aliases are common in the industry,” Pinnacle said in its statement. “Ms. Davis has never hidden her use of an alias.”) The company’s senior operatives included a flamboyant Californian, George Molsbarger, who lists himself as a Pinnacle co-founder. Neither Mr. Molsbarger nor Mr. Tomchin has the profile of an old-time gambling boss. Mr. Tomchin is an active donor to a variety of liberal political causes. Mr. Molsbarger has also played the role of philanthropist, running a foundation for children in need, the Squid & Squash. One of its fund-raisers, at the Playboy mansion, featured “the sexiest go-go dancers strutting their skills on poles,” according to a company that provided entertainment. Image Pinnacle’s high rollers included a flamboyant Californian, George Molsbarger, who lists himself as a Pinnacle co-founder. Pinnacle donated more than $2 million to the foundation. The gambling site could certainly spare the money. When times were good, it processed bets worth billions annually, records show. And it wired more than $4 million to a Canadian bank as payment, Mr. Tomchin said, to buy his Pinnacle stock. But a crisis was brewing. Just months after prosecutors took down Ms. Davis’s $2.5 billion gambling ring in Antigua, signaling a more aggressive posture toward offshore sports books, Congress passed the 2006 Internet gambling law , barring the use of credit cards to place online bets. Pinnacle responded by trying to look beyond the United States market, and by 2008 its annual intake had dropped to $5.7 billion from $12 billion, according to documents filed with regulators on the English Channel island of Alderney, where Pinnacle had sought a gambling license. But with so many Americans eager to bet on sports, Pinnacle must have realized it could not abandon such a lucrative market — a fact that did not escape the Queens prosecutor. “Confidential information came to us that a certain individual was engaged as an agent in organized sports betting,” Mr. Brave said. That individual led investigators to New Jersey, then Las Vegas, then Los Angeles and back to Queens. Soon, investigators would begin wiretapping conversations of gamblers and their agents. When they passed sacks of cash, investigators were on hand to photograph them. Hiding Profits Because wiring money leaves a trail that can be easily detected, gambling money from offshore sports books often remains in the United States, creating the need for a shadow banking system where bettors settle up in person with the ring’s agents or money collectors. Gamblers and agents in the field had to find ways to hide large sums of money, which must be reported under anti-money-laundering regulations. Some gamblers passed bulging envelopes in country club parking lots and from bar stool to bar stool. Others stuffed money into casino safe deposit boxes and used casino chips as currency to transfer funds. To penetrate this system, the investigators relied on wiretaps to pinpoint the place and time of these cash transfers so they could take surveillance pictures. In May 2012, undercover agents watched Mr. Molsbarger enter a California restaurant with a brown suitcase. It was heavy enough that he was pulling it on rollers, and no wonder: The suitcase held $1.5 million in cash. Mr. Molsbarger handed it to a man named Scott, who put it in the trunk of his car. Local deputies stopped the car in Pico Rivera and confiscated the cash. Image A suitcase stuffed with cash that Mr. Molsbarger carried into a California restaurant in May 2012 as undercover agents watched. He handed the bag to a man who put it in the trunk of a car. Local deputies stopped the car and confiscated the money. “Pinnacle stands by it, right?” bookies were heard asking on the wiretaps, according to court records. “What if this money goes missing?” They need not have worried. Pinnacle replaced the money in less than a week, records show. Suspecting that the police might be listening in, bookies and agents tried to disguise their business conversations. When agents, for example, needed to transfer $350,000 in June 2012, Mr. Tomchin arranged for his sister, Joy Tomchin, a New York real estate developer, to accept the money in a bag on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Later he was recorded asking her if she received “three fifty worth of grapes,” and she answered affirmatively, court records show. Also under scrutiny was Michael Colbert, a risk manager for sports books at eight casinos in Las Vegas, where betting is legal. According to a later indictment, Mr. Colbert, who worked for the gaming unit of Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street trading firm, allowed so-called runners to place bets for out-of-state customers at Las Vegas casinos, which is illegal. The Queens district attorney made his move in the fall of 2012, charging 25 people in connection with offshore sports books, particularly Pinnacle. The company was not charged, and asserts that none of those charged were employees. “There were thousands of accounts,” said Mr. Brave, the rackets bureau chief. “There were scores of agents. We had 25 people, but we could have charged 125 people.” Mr. Colbert pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy related to illegal gambling. He no longer works for Cantor, which was fined $5.5 million by the Nevada Gaming Commission, the largest fine in its history. Mr. Tomchin forfeited $1.7 million and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge. Despite the coded language with his sister on the sacks of cash, Mr. Tomchin said he believed the money had come from legal betting. “I would never have knowingly involved my sister in this if I had the slightest indication it might be illegal,” Mr. Tomchin said. His sister, who was not charged but eventually surrendered $450,000, did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Molsbarger’s case is sealed; one of his lawyers said Mr. Molsbarger had pleaded guilty to the equivalent of a disorderly conduct charge and did not contest the seizure of the $1.5 million. Soon after charges were filed, Pinnacle surrendered the gaming license it had recently won in Alderney, “as a consequence of legal advice,” the company said. (Pinnacle says it is licensed in Curaçao but also in Malta.) An investigator for the Alderney gambling commission also visited Mr. Brave, carrying documents that showed numerous American accounts. The investigator said he had stopped counting at 1,700, but there may have been thousands more, according to Gerard McNally, a New York City detective, now retired, who worked on the case. Pinnacle had come up with a handy, not terribly high-tech way of hiding action in the United States, the Alderney investigators found: Simply list the accounts as originating in a foreign country. One account listed as Canadian originated in Pompano Beach, Fla., a spreadsheet from the investigation showed. Another account, logged as Vietnamese, came from Garden Grove, Calif. One from Singapore actually belonged to a bettor in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Image This Manhattan building on 10th Avenue in Chelsea, seen from the High Line, contains a data center used by Pinnacle — an indication that the company has a presence on American soil. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times The Evolving Internet Three years after the law enforcement assault on Pinnacle, hints of the company’s continuing presence on American soil could be found in the flashing array of computer technology in the old factory building in Chelsea. Some of that equipment is operated by a company called CDNetworks, a so-called content delivery network. Such networks can be traced back to 1995, when Tim Berners-Lee of M.I.T., one of the inventors of the World Wide Web, foresaw that it would be crippled with congestion once it became popular. He issued a challenge: Find a better way to deliver content over the Internet. No signal can move faster than the speed of light. In practice, signals move much slower than that, because nothing travels in a straight line on the Internet. Signals traverse stretches of copper or fiber, and are shunted to other segments via routers and switches as they zigzag to their destinations. “The milliseconds really add up,” said Jim Davis, a senior analyst at 451 Research, a technology market research company. “Every chance you get to reduce those kinds of issues getting in the way of buying or selling something — it adds up to revenue.” That has led to the rise of countless local hosting services and the content delivery networks. The delivery networks often have servers distributed around the world. A website pays to have its content available on all those servers so that when a customer types in a query, it is directed to the nearest server, which may be only a few miles away. Delays vanish. But hosting gambling websites in the United States carried an obvious risk. “If I were advising an entity that is accepting American players,” said Joseph M. Kelly, a professor of business law at the State University College at Buffalo, “I would advise them to keep everything overseas.” Doing that was much easier before splashy graphics and data-rich presentations took the place of simple, written text. To compete, gambling sites needed faster communications to bring the data secretly home, a fact apparently realized by Pinnacle. Hiding in plain sight, it remains elusive. To help identify how and where Pinnacle and other gambling companies hosted their websites, The Times turned to Dyn, the Internet performance company, which archives 150 billion data points a day on patterns in web traffic. “We know where to look, and we know how to look,” said Jeremy Hitchcock, Dyn’s chief executive. But, Mr. Hitchcock added, his company could not necessarily answer why a website might route traffic a certain way. With Dyn’s assistance, The Times found that in 2012 and 2013, Pinnacle began experimenting with delivering its website from equipment in the United States. And by 2014, Pinnacle began delivering content widely through CDNetworks in New York and elsewhere in the country. Recently, The Times used publicly available Internet tools to confirm that content for pinnaclesports.com was being delivered in the New York area by CDNetworks. Internet addressing and routing tables showed that CDNetworks was providing service for the website, and a technique called “tracerouting” provided data demonstrating the New York location. The traceroutes did not determine exactly which data centers in New York had the equipment delivering Pinnacle’s content. But CDNetworks promoted its “point of presence” in the Chelsea data center in a 2012 news release. In a public online document called a “peering database,” CDNetworks indicates that its equipment is at the same data center. Rodney Settles, a senior global account manager for Telehouse, the company that runs the data center, said in a telephone conversation in September that CDNetworks had about eight cabinets of equipment there. “That’s pretty substantial,” Mr. Settles said, adding that there were five to six CDNetworks cabinets at its data center in Los Angeles. Telehouse confirmed in a statement that CDNetworks is a customer. In fact, both are subsidiaries of a Japanese company, KDDI. The statement said Telehouse could not discuss customers but did not condone illegal activity. CDNetworks also delivered Pinnacle content from data centers operated by other companies in Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Seattle and other cities, records and data show. Citing client confidentiality, a spokeswoman for CDNetworks, Sharon Bell, declined to comment about Pinnacle. She said that her company exercised no control over customer content and that customers must comply with the law. Although Pinnacle contends that it is simply using “traffic acceleration,” published user manuals, case studies and other documents show that the services CDNetworks brands as acceleration products are, in fact, content delivery networks. Such networks operate with a complex variety of technologies, often sending data to a server in a city only when a user pulls up the website there. As its name implies, CDNetworks is one of those networks. According to laws governing gambling, Professor Kelly said, “you can’t use any means of electronic communication to promote sports gambling.” Aside from the website itself, which appears to be breaking the law by offering gambling, he said, the network could be liable if it knew or should have known it was aiding the enterprise. While Pinnacle asserts that it has no legal concerns about its digital presence in the United States, traffic to its website from American soil shifted, literally overnight, last week. Doug Madory, the director of Internet analysis at Dyn, said that at about 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, queries from the United States to Pinnacle’s website began to be redirected. Before that time, the queries went to the nearest American city with CDNetworks equipment; afterward, the queries started going to CDNetworks equipment in Europe and elsewhere. “Somebody instituted a pretty big shift out of the U.S., which is the epicenter of the Internet,” Mr. Madory said. He called the move “completely counter” to typical practice. As to why the shift may have happened, Professor Kelly said, “Nobody wants to take a chance of being arrested.” He added, “If you’re conducting sports betting, you don’t want to have anything in the U.S. except the bettors.” To show that it is not difficult to place bets on Pinnacle from the United States, a Times reporter in New York recently set up an account and made two wagers. Video Reporters for The New York Times are turned away from Pinnacle Sports headquarters in Curaçao after trying to get an interview for an article and a coming “Frontline” documentary. Credit Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times An employee with Bet-IBC, which advertises itself as an agent of Pinnacle Sports, directed the reporter to send money to Krakow, Poland, via Western Union. The IBC website instructed gamblers making bets on the Pinnacle site to log on with a proxy service, to make it appear the connection was coming from abroad. The reporter’s money, $300, was credited to his Pinnacle account, allowing him to bet on baseball games. After The Times informed Pinnacle that it was able to make bets on the website from the United States — despite Pinnacle’s insistence that this was not possible — the agent sent an irate message. “We have closed your account and confiscated the funds,” the message said. “We are also obliged to report your fraudulent activities to the relevant authorities,” it said. Reporters attempted to interview Pinnacle at its headquarters in the Holiday Beach Hotel and Casino. But on the morning after reporters arrived, Pinnacle began moving its computers and furniture to another location in the Curaçao capital of Willemstad. Those who remained did not wish to talk. One man with a long view of Internet gambling is Michael Fagan, a former assistant United States attorney in Missouri who prosecuted one of the earliest online betting cases, in the late 1990s. From the beginning, he said, it was clear that sports, technology and the allure of gambling were combining to form a globe-spanning criminal enterprise. He said he had written an urgent memo to the Justice Department recommending that it form a task force on Internet gambling. Image The morning after reporters tried to conduct interviews at Pinnacle in August, the company began moving its computers and furniture to another location in Curaçao. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times He heard nothing for months. “I got a call eventually: ‘Well, gee, it was a great idea, thanks for the memo,’ ” Mr. Fagan said. Washington could have acted, he said. But “they passed on it.”

Sports
Manhattan
Gambling
Pinnacle Sports
Fantasy sport
Data center
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Curacao
NYC


Sex Scandal Threatens a Georgia Pastor’s Empire

Abstract: LITHONIA, Ga. — Over the last two decades, Bishop Eddie L. Long has built a religious and financial empire from scratch, transforming a small, faltering church into a modern cathedral with one of the largest and most influential congregations in the country. Today, Bishop Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church includes a multimillion-dollar network of charities and businesses, a private school and the Samson’s Health and Fitness Center, where he holds court and pumps iron with young people. His message that God wants people to prosper has attracted celebrities, professional athletes and socialites, swelling the membership to 25,000. The church hosted four United States presidents for the funeral of Coretta Scott King in 2006. The rapid expansion of the church — often called “Club New Birth” because it attracts so many young black singles — has also made Bishop Long a powerful political player, especially in DeKalb County, home to one of the wealthiest black communities in the country. The church has become a mandatory stop for many politicians — local, state and national — and Bishop Long supports candidates of both parties. But Bishop Long’s reputation and sprawling enterprises now stand threatened by a sex scandal. Four former members of a youth group he runs have accused him of repeatedly coercing them into homosexual sex acts, and of abusing his considerable moral authority over them while plying them with cash, new cars, lodging and lavish trips. Bishop Long has denied the accusations in a letter sent to a local radio station and has promised to address them from the pulpit on Sunday. He declined, through his lawyer, to comment for this article. The accusations are all the more explosive because Bishop Long styles himself a social conservative, rails against homosexuality and calls for a ban on same-sex marriage . His church even holds seminars promising to “cure” homosexuals. “When this comes out, it gives at least the perception of hypocrisy — it’s like red meat to a lion, everyone’s pouncing on this story,” said the Rev. Timothy McDonald III, a friend of Bishop Long who heads the First Iconium Baptist Church. “This is the issue: how can you be against homosexuality and you are allegedly participating in it? That is the epitome of hypocrisy.” The accusations center on the LongFellows Youth Academy, an exclusive group of teenage boys handpicked by Bishop Long for spiritual mentoring. The boys went through a bonding ritual, known as a “covenant ceremony,” in which Bishop Long gave them jewelry and exchanged vows with them while quoting from Scripture as ceremonial candles burned, according to court complaints filed against the pastor. Reciting Bible verses, the pastor promised to protect them from harm and called them “spiritual sons.” But four former members of the group now say the real purpose of the academy was to provide Bishop Long with young men whom he could lure into sex. The men say they were past the legal age of consent when Bishop Long initiated the relationships. Still, the charges have shaken Atlanta’s church-going society, spurring painful conversations from kitchen tables to talk radio. Bishop Long cuts a flashy figure in Lithonia, the Atlanta suburb where he lives and has built his church. He is often seen in a Bentley attended by bodyguards. He tends to wear clothes that show off his muscular physique. He favors Gucci sunglasses, gold necklaces, diamond bracelets and Rolex watches. He lives in a 5,000-square-foot house with five bedrooms, which he bought for $1.1 million in 2005. His lavish display of wealth is in keeping with his theology. In his sermons, he often tells his congregation that God wants them to be wealthy and asserts that Jesus was not a poor man. By all accounts, he has been well compensated for his leadership in building New Birth from a church with a few hundred members into the largest congregation in Georgia. His televised sermons reach 170 countries. In 2005, for instance, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published tax records showing that from 1997 to 2000 Bishop Long had accepted $3 million in salary, housing, a car and other perks from a charity he controlled. “We’re not just a church, we’re an international corporation,” he told the newspaper in justifying his compensation. “We’re not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can’t talk and all we’re doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.” After the article about his compensation, Bishop Long hired a public relations firm and went on a campaign to improve his image, Mr. McDonald said. He began charitable programs to feed the poor, help struggling people with mortgages and even offer haircuts to the homeless. “The bishop used to be perceived as aloof, untouchable, with his entourage all around him,” Mr. McDonald said. “He started putting himself in a different light, a more positive light.” Bishop Long’s critics and his defenders are waiting for an explanation of the accusations against him. Some members of the church believe he is the victim of a smear campaign by people in favor of gay rights, though they offer no proof. “It’s propaganda, man,” said Anthony M. Harris, 30, a businessman who says Bishop Long has served as his role model. “It’s retaliation for the 2004 march, the anti-gay-marriage march.” But the accusations have turned others away from Bishop Long. William Abernathy, 25, a music producer, said that he had attended the church several times this year and was considering joining, but that the accusations, coupled with Bishop Long’s opulent lifestyle, persuaded him to go elsewhere. “I’m going to pass on that,” Mr. Abernathy said. “It’s like hot milk now, sitting on the curb, getting sour.” Many in the congregation, meanwhile, have been wrestling with feelings of betrayal. “My heart just kind of sank,” said Cheryl Jenkins, 43, who owns an accounting firm. “If he says he didn’t do it, we believe in him. If it turns out that he did and he apologizes, we have to accept it. No one is above reproach.” Bishop Long was born in Charlotte, N.C., where his father, Floyd Long, was a Baptist minister and owned a service station. In interviews and his books, he has described his father as a drinker and emotionally distant. “To be candid, I’ve been working to remove the tentacles of nearly 40 years’ worth of pain and complications that came my way against my will during the first 12 years of my life, and my father was a preacher,” he wrote in his 2002 self-help book, “What a Man Wants, What a Woman Needs.” He studied business at North Carolina Central University, then went to work as a sales representative for the Ford Motor Company, but was fired over inaccuracies in his expense accounts. He moved to Atlanta to study theology and became the pastor of a small church in Jonesboro, Ga. In 1987, when he took over New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, it had only 300 members and a small building. He adopted a modern image, using slang and dressing like a hip-hop mogul. He borrowed ideas from evangelical and charismatic churches and expanded his reach through cable TV. He also adopted what has become known as “muscular Christianity,” a male-dominated view that emphasizes a warriorlike man who serves as the spiritual authority and protector in a family. His books on relationships suggest that men get in touch with their inner “wild man” and channel their fighting instincts into taking responsibility for their lives. Women are to submit to their husbands, he says. Bishop Long has been married twice and has four children. B. J. Bernstein, a lawyer for the four young men who claim to have been coerced into sexual affairs with Bishop Long, said the pastor exerted a paternalistic and, at times, autocratic influence over young men. The four complaints filed in court describe how Bishop Long arranged for the church to provide cars to the young men and put them on the church payroll. Two of them also said they received free lodging in church-owned houses, where, they said, Bishop Long visited them for sessions of kissing, oral sex or masturbation. He also took them on trips to other cities and abroad, sharing rooms with them, with the knowledge of several church officials, the complaints say. “There are biblical and spiritual passages that were given to them to make them comfortable and make them believe that they were not gay,” Ms. Bernstein said. In the letter to the radio station, Bishop Long called the accusations false. “We continue to categorically deny each and every one of these ugly charges,” he said.

Georgia
Churches
New Birth Missionary Baptist Church
Homosexuality
Long Eddie L
Sex Crimes


Networks See Telenovelas as Maybe the Next Salsa

Abstract: SALSA crossed over from the Latino market to the mainstream. So, too, did the music of Ricky Martin. Can telenovelas do the same? Telenovelas are melodramatic, episodic TV programs, broadcast in Spanish, with sex-drenched stories centered on impossible love affairs, implacable enemies and insoluble family problems. They are hugely popular in Latin America as well as among viewers of United States networks that cater to Hispanic viewers like Telemundo and Univision, which run telenovelas previously seen in countries like Colombia and Mexico. Telenovelas combine elements of soap operas, mini-series and serialized shows like "Dynasty" and "Desperate Housewives." They appear in prime time, as often as five days a week for four to six months, concluding with an episode tying up loose plot lines. When one telenovela ends, another usually begins, offering viewers a different set of cast members to adore or despise. "You find yourself cheering for one character over another," said Graham Hall, chief insights officer at the Bravo Group in New York, an agency specializing in Hispanic advertising that is part of the Young & Rubicam Brands division of the WPP Group. "These shows have a social function," Mr. Hall said. "They're like the village square where people meet virtually, gossiping over the fence." In recent weeks, two broadcast networks, ABC and CBS, said they were exploring the creation of English-language versions of telenovelas that could appear as replacement programs this summer. And Twentieth Television, part of the News Corporation, plans to remake telenovelas in English to run on stations owned by a sibling, Fox Broadcasting. They would also be offered for syndication to local stations owned by other companies. The interest in adapting telenovelas for mainstream viewers is indicative of the growing influence of multicultural consumers. Telenovelas broadcast in English could appeal to millions of younger second- and third-generation Latinos who speak English more frequently than Spanish. The move is also emblematic of changes in programming as networks try to find the next genre to capture the attention of jaded, restless viewers. "The broadcast market is the realm of 'anything is worth a shot,' " said Steven J. Farella, president and chief at TargetCast TCM in New York, a media services agency. Offering telenovelas in English "is a risk," Mr. Farella said, "but continuing story lines are always appealing to American audiences, from daytime soap operas to 'Dallas.' " Viewers with long memories will recall that ABC presented episodes of a nighttime soap opera, "Peyton Place," two or three nights a week from September 1964 through January 1969. Mainstream versions of telenovelas, Mr. Farella said, would be a way for broadcasters to attract an important audience, which he referred to as "four-out-of-four viewers" -- that is, "people who will come back to watch a series four out of four weeks" rather than dip in and out, missing most episodes. Advertisers like such faithful viewing because it demonstrates loyalty and increases the frequency of their commercials being seen. "It seems to make sense to try out a new format that has connected with Hispanic viewers," said Shari Ann Brill, vice president and programming director at the media agency Carat USA in New York, part of the Carat division of the Aegis Group. Several telenovelas recently broadcast by Univision, part of Univision Communications, have been drawing larger audiences than programs on English-language networks like UPN and WB. "Clearly there's something in the programming that's drawing those viewers," Ms. Brill said. "The key thing will be to have characters who matter, who viewers care about," she added, "and the shows will need to establish that very quickly." Marc Berman, senior television editor at the trade publication Mediaweek, said he believed that English-language telenovelas would be "a good idea, but you can't guarantee they will have crossover appeal." "The risk of course is that viewers tune in and don't like what they see," Mr. Berman said, leaving a network with weeks of programs to run that will generate low ratings and possibly require giving advertisers compensatory commercial time to make up for viewership shortfalls. "On the flip side, there is another risk," Mr. Berman said. "What if a telenovela is very popular and suddenly it goes away? Do you end it after the 13 weeks or keep it going?" Gail Ettinger, executive vice president and director for national broadcast at KSL Media in New York, agreed. "If a general-market audience embraces the characters in a telenovela, are they going to want to see it end?" Ms. Ettinger asked. Ms. Ettinger also questioned the value of running more than one episode a week of a prime-time series. "In Anglo-speak, it's an incredibly long mini-series," she said of the telenovela format, adding, "I'm reserving judgment." As for a TV show with a defined beginning, middle and end, Ms. Ettinger said, "Thank you very much, I can read a book." Ms. Ettinger's skepticism was echoed by an entry last month on a popular blog, TV Squad (tvsquad.com), which carried the headline "Things I Hate About TV: Telenovelas." The blogger, Jonathan Toomey, described them as cheesy and corny and quoted an observation by Seth Cohen, a character on the Fox series "The O.C.," that telenovelas "always seem to be about some guy named Victor and his handlebar mustache." Opponents of English-language telenovelas ought to embrace that playful spirit, said Dolores Kunda, president and chief executive at Lápiz in Chicago, the Hispanic division of the Leo Burnett unit of the Publicis Groupe. "This is entertainment, fun, a diversion, in much the same way that 'Desperate Housewives' is," Ms. Kunda said. "There's a lot of drama, a lot of excitement, a lot of sexual tension, a lot of va-va-voom," she added, laughing. "And that va-va-voom element is quite attractive."


With Crosby on Shelf, Fleury Fuels Penguins

Abstract: In the absence of Sidney Crosby , the reinvented Penguins continue to rely upon goalie Marc-Andre Fleury to win games. Alex Kovalev and James Neal scored in the shootout, Fleury had 37 saves and Pittsburgh set an N.H.L. record by winning via shootout for the fourth consecutive game, defeating the visiting Florida Panthers , 2-1, on Sunday. “We’re in a good streak right now getting some wins that way,” Fleury said. Ben Lovejoy scored in regulation for the Penguins, who moved within two points of Philadelphia in the race for the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference leads. Pittsburgh clinched a playoff berth Saturday when Carolina lost to Tampa Bay. Crosby missed his 35th consecutive game because of a concussion, although he skated and stick-handled for about 45 minutes Sunday morning. An offensive juggernaut with their captain, the Penguins have turned to defense to stay near the top of the standings. Pittsburgh improved to 13-1-5 in one-goal games without Crosby. They were fifth in the league in goals at 3.2 per game when Crosby was injured but entered Sunday averaging about a goal a game fewer since — 26th in the league in that stretch. Pittsburgh has won its past three games despite scoring only two non-shootout goals in total. “Some games you need to do it 1-0,” Penguins Coach Dan Bylsma said. “I’m not sure if it’s a huge concern, but I don’t think it’s the strength of our team right now. BRUINS 2, FLYERS 1 Brad Marchand, the rookie forward, scored his 20th goal of the season on a third-period power play to break a tie and lift visiting Boston past Philadelphia. The win clinched a playoff appearance for Boston, which is third in the Eastern Conference and first in the Northeast Division. Kris Versteeg started the scoring for the Flyers in the first period, and Nathan Horton tied the score in the second period, beating Brian Boucher, who made 34 saves. Marchand scored the winning goal with 3 minutes 43 seconds left in regulation. CANUCKS 4, BLUE JACKETS 1 Chris Higgins had two goals and an assist and Vancouver beat host Columbus to reach 50 victories for the first time in its 40-year history. Cory Schneider made 39 saves for the Canucks. R. J. Umberger scored for Columbus with just under 10 minutes remaining to spoil Schneider’s shutout bid. THRASHERS 5, SENATORS 4 Blake Wheeler and Ben Maxwell each had a goal and an assist, Andrew Ladd scored the deciding shootout goal and Atlanta stayed on the fringe of the playoff race with a victory over host Ottawa. “We have put ourselves in a terrible position,” Thrashers goalie Chris Mason said. “If we have any hope at all, we basically need to win every game and get some help along the way.”

Florida Panthers
Hockey Ice
Pittsburgh Penguins
National Hockey League
Fleury Marc-Andre
Crosby Sidney