Mayor Aims to Add Spark to Flagging Sex Lives

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — Flashing a boyish grin, the silver-haired septuagenarian fidgeted nervously. His voice dropped to a whisper. A reddish hue enveloped his face. All this because he was asked how the latest social program to be offered by Mexico City’s government was affecting his home life. “Things have changed,” Angel Posadas Sandoval, 74, finally confessed, not going into specifics but nonetheless making himself abundantly clear. He was talking, however obliquely, about the free Viagra the government is giving away to poor men age 60 and above. With midterm elections looming in July, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has been rather creative in his attempts to make life more livable for the people of this sprawling metropolis, which finds itself clogged with traffic, overwhelmed by smog, prowled by criminals and reeling from the global financial crisis. The mayor dumps sand at public pools to create artificial beaches. He bans cars from major roadways on Sundays and turns them into sprawling bike paths. The largest skating rink in the world, one that makes Rockefeller Center’s patch of ice look puny, went up in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s central square, for the second straight year over the Christmas holidays. This weekend, for Valentine’s Day, the government is sponsoring a mass kiss-in, in an attempt to break the world record and raise awareness about domestic violence. “Bésame Mucho,” or “Kiss me a lot,” was recently adopted as the city’s motto by tourism officials, and Mr. Ebrard is expected to preside over the event, though his staff was not sure whether he would be publicly smooching his wife, a former soap opera actress. But the free Viagra is what had Mr. Posadas, a retiree, hemming and hawing on a recent afternoon. After reading an announcement about Mr. Ebrard’s latest gesture, he summoned the courage to broach the topic of his erectile dysfunction at a local government health center. After undergoing an in-depth health exam and receiving a lecture on the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, Mr. Posadas recently became among the first men in the city to be issued a handful of government-subsidized pills. Apparently, they worked. “Now, I’m able to fulfill my wife,” he said. Mr. Posadas, the father of two and grandfather of six, acknowledged that his sex life had slowed somewhat in recent years. The initiative may be more about politics than anything else, and with nationwide elections looming in July, candidates across Mexico are beginning to lay the groundwork for their campaigns. To bolster the fortunes of his leftist Party of Democratic Revolution and to further his own dream of becoming the country’s president in 2012, Mr. Ebrard has pushed to legalize abortion and gay civil unions in the capital and crack down on illegal street vendors and unlicensed taxi operators, who have long been associated with crowds and crime. His plan to expand subway and bus service is ambitious and popular. In announcing the erectile dysfunction program in November, Mr. Ebrard, 49, portrayed it as a way of bringing smiles to the faces of those who have reached the tercera edad, or third age, as Mexicans call the golden years. “Everyone has the right to be happy,” the mayor said, noting that many of the poorest elderly people do not qualify for employer-based health plans and have been abandoned by their families. “They don’t have medical services, and a society that doesn’t care for its senior citizens has no dignity.” An estimated half of Mexican men over the age of 40 experience difficulties achieving erections, said Dr. Irán Roldán, a specialist in geriatrics who helps run the new program at Mexico City’s Department of Public Health. But the subject has not been one that many men have felt comfortable talking about before. Getting men into public clinics with the promise of free erectile medicine, Dr. Roldán said, could help them get treatment for other related health problems, like diabetes, hypertension, obesity and depression. “This is a public health problem,” she said. So far, huge crowds have not turned out for the free Viagra, Levitra or Cialis , which are the three tablets being offered. Fewer than 100 inquiries have been made at health clinics and only about a dozen or so men whose erectile dysfunction has been diagnosed have begun the process to get the pills, health officials say. They range in age from their early 60s to 82. Still, the new program has managed to provoke a spirited debate on a topic that was considered taboo before: sex among senior citizens. One of Mr. Ebrard’s long-shot rivals for the presidency, Fidel Herrera, 59, the governor of Veracruz State from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, dismissed the Viagra handouts as ridiculous. “What’s the point of encouraging old people to have sex?” he asked in a recent interview. “There’s such a thing as nature. You can’t play God.” But others disagreed with that take. “Nobody pays attention to us,” said Bernarda Valenzuela, 77, whose husband died in an accident years ago. “Those children who care for their parents only worry about giving them food and changing their clothes, as if we were children. They forget that we feel many things, even sexual things. We’re not made of wood.” But Pepe Castro, 65, a barber who dyes his hair jet black, thought the money spent on the pills could be better used on more pressing matters. “There’s other things more important,” he said. “Everyone wants sex, no matter the age, but the government ought to be paying for medicines to keep people alive, not this.” As for Mr. Posadas, he has used three pills already and has three left from his initial batch. Soon, he will return to the clinic for more tests and, he hopes, another supply. His artificial knee still hurts him and his cholesterol is elevated. But other than that, he said he felt quite robust. “I’ll enjoy whatever time I have left,” he said, flexing his biceps a bit.

Sex
Marcelo Ebrard
Elderly
Viagra (Drug)
Mexico City (Mexico)


Slapdash Play Slaps Mets’ Psyche and Dashes Perceptions of Progress

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Not much seemed to separate the Mets and the Nationals on Sunday. Neither starting pitcher was at his best, which created opportunities for both teams as the afternoon crawled along. Ultimately, the Nationals won, 6-3. The difference, it appeared, was in the details. The Mets failed to produce with runners on. Shortstop Ruben Tejada made a costly error. Twice, base-running gaffes led to outs that ended innings. The Mets seemed to lack discipline, and it dropped their record to 20-23, including an unsightly 5-12 mark in May. “We can’t make some of the mistakes we’re making,” Manager Terry Collins said. Perhaps they could have overcome the sloppiness had Zack Wheeler pitched better. Wheeler said he felt “great, probably the best I’ve felt all year,” but he still allowed five runs in six innings. He said his one regret was not throwing his fastball higher against Ian Desmond, who crushed it for a solo home run in the second inning. It did not help Wheeler that with two outs in the third, Tejada went to backhand a ground ball and failed to field it cleanly. Tejada was charged with an error, and the next batter, Wilson Ramos, doubled, scoring two runs. Ramos came up again in the fifth inning, with the bases loaded and one out, after Wheeler had allowed the first three batters to reach base. Jordan Zimmermann, the pitcher, had singled. Denard Span had doubled, and Anthony Rendon had drawn a five-pitch walk. Ramos then ripped a single to left field, scoring two more runs. “He got me today,” Wheeler said of Ramos. At his locker afterward, Wheeler, 23, seemed to be at a loss in his young career. After nine starts this season, his first full year in the majors, his earned run average is 4.53. He has not made an obvious, significant improvement on his 17 starts in 2013, when he arrived and was hailed as the Mets’ best hope, after Matt Harvey. He has now allowed at least five runs in three of his last four starts. Those include the two shortest outings of his career, as the Rockies and the Yankees both chased him in fewer than five innings. His start against the Yankees was perhaps one of the biggest he had made, and he spent the night struggling with his release point. Image Umpire Ed Hickox offered an explanation to Daniel Murphy after the Mets second baseman was called out at third base in the first inning. Credit Alex Brandon/Associated Press Every missed spot or unlucky hit seemed to bother him, too, and at one point, Collins had talked with him about composing his body language on the mound. He felt better Sunday against the Nationals and was still rocked. Collins said now that Wheeler had been in the majors for about 11 months, teams knew what he would throw, and that was especially true of a division rival like the Nationals. After he left the game, Wheeler said he thought, “I might be a little bit predictable right now,” throwing fastballs in fastball counts, relying too much on sheer talent. “It’s been a bunch of bad starts in a row here,” Wheeler said, “so I need to hurry up, turn it around and get back on the right track.” His offense, though, had done him no favors, even though Zimmermann seemed hittable. The previous day, Juan Lagares had carried the Mets, driving in three runs and making a spectacular catch to rob the Nationals of a home run. His performance was all the more intriguing and vindicating because he had been benched for four of the previous five games. On Sunday morning, though, Collins voiced his displeasure over the premise that he had benched Lagares. He had previously said that he sat Lagares so he could play Eric Young Jr. to bolster the offense. After the way Lagares played Saturday, Collins was asked, what more would Lagares have to do to be an everyday player? “He has been an everyday player,” Collins said before the game. “He got into a little bit of a funk. It’s not like I sat him for seven days. I sat him for two days, for cripes’ sakes. We’re getting a little carried away here. Somebody gets a day off, and it’s like the sky is falling. It’s not. He’s the center fielder. He had a big day yesterday. I hope he has a big day today. It’s not going to be easy. Jordan Zimmermann is real good.” Lagares, in his encore, went 1 for 4 with a run-scoring single. The Mets, as a whole, worked Zimmermann for eight hits and two walks but only three runs. An absence of clutch hitting and a few poor base-running decisions killed their momentum. In the first, Daniel Murphy was caught off third base to complete an inning-ending double play. In the third, Lucas Duda grounded out, stranding two runners. And in the sixth, after the Mets had rallied, after Lagares and Juan Centeno had each hit run-scoring singles, Centeno was tagged out trying to advance to second. Then the Mets were retired in order through the final three innings. “There’s got to be some sort of gray area where we’re able to squeak out a win when we’re not playing well,” David Wright said. “Doesn’t seem like we’re doing that.”

Mets
Zack Wheeler
Jordan Zimmermann
Juan Lagares
Baseball
Washington Nationals


Ha Na Jang Leads in Phoenix

Abstract: Ha Na Jang topped the crowded leaderboard when darkness ended play at the L.P.G.A. Tour’s JTBC Founders Cup in Phoenix. Jang birdied her final four holes to reach 11 under par with seven holes left in the second round. Hyo Joo Kim was a stroke back.


Facebook Offers a Glimpse of Oculus Rift Goggles

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook showed the world its first commercial version of virtual reality on Thursday — and offered tantalizing hints of how it hopes to turn three-dimensional goggles into a new kind of computing and communications device. At an event in San Francisco, Facebook executives discussed the goggles, called Oculus Rift. While the device is initially designed to be tethered to a high-end gaming computer, Facebook said the product would in time employ microphones for communication, voice recognition software to recognize computing commands and laser-based high-speed wireless data transfers. “This is a teleportation device,” said Michael Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technical officer. “What people are missing is that we have a clear path of research and development.” Teleportation and its ilk have been in the wings of technology for decades, with few results and many failed virtual reality products. Oculus Rift, which Facebook got last year in a $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR , will not be available until the first quarter of 2016. At the event, Facebook did not give a demonstration of the actual product , settling instead for standard projections of several games that are expected to appear on Oculus Rift. Facebook did not say what Oculus Rift might cost, but the goggles will work only on expensive computers running costly processors. The wire between the computer and Rift is necessary because of data inputs about half as big as the already demanding level of existing VR goggles. Facebook held the event in advance of next week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, the gaming industry’s largest annual event. If the company had had nothing to show for Oculus after a year, it would have been a black eye. To showcase Oculus Rift’s gaming possibilities, Facebook said the device would work with the gaming controller made by Microsoft for its Xbox One console. This could make the goggles easier for established gamers to get used to, and raises the prospect that lots of Xbox games — like Halo and Minecraft — could be played on Oculus and upgraded to a more immersive kind of 3-D. Facebook also showed off its own controller, called Oculus Touch, which looks like a pair of half-moons that fit over the hands and can be used to manipulate objects with a button and a trigger. Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, described Touch as “an input device that allows people to interact.” Touch, he said, would be available in the first half of 2016; its cost was not disclosed. Oculus Rift has several subtle but important design changes compared with the heavyweight model that Oculus VR initially produced. Besides weighing less, images are produced by two round screens that are adjusted to be the right distance from a user’s eyes. Facebook reduced the size of the headphones and employed fuller 3-D audio, so objects sound as if they are moving in the right relationship to distance. The head strap is somewhat heavier in the back, so the goggles feel less as if they are hanging on a user’s face. The changes, along with better software, are designed to help people wear the goggles for hours at a time. Nate Mitchell, the head of product at Oculus, said the Rift’s fabric covering is to help a user’s skin breathe better under the goggles and make the device feel like a piece of clothing. A microphone for Oculus will allow gamers to talk to each other and eventually might be used for commands, he said, adding that this may be announced as early as September. Facebook appears to be spending significant resources trying to make the Rift a success. “They fly engineers to our offices and give us tips on new ways to do things,” said Eric Nofsinger, the chief creative officer at High Voltage Software of Hoffman Estates, Ill., which is developing a game for Rift.

Facebook
Oculus
Virtual reality
Palmer Luckey
Computer and Video Games
Mike Schroepfer


Chicago House Race Draws a Crowd

Abstract: The Fifth Congressional District on Chicago ’s North Side, a Democratic stronghold, has a history of electing larger-than-life representatives — Dan Rostenkowski , one of the most powerful members of Congress before he pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1996 and served 15 months in federal prison; Rod R. Blagojevich , the erstwhile governor who was driven from office after skipping his own impeachment trial and faces federal corruption charges; and Rahm Emanuel , the head-knocking former Clinton White House aide who soared to power in the House before stepping down to become chief of staff to President Obama . Now, voters in the district are preparing to choose their next representative, and the race is a free-for-all that has drawn a disparate field of 23 candidates, some with no political experience. “How do you follow Rostenkowski and Blagojevich and Emanuel?” asked David N. Wasserman, who studies House races for The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter. “What will this person be notorious for?” In a special primary on Tuesday, voters will choose among 12 candidates on the Democratic ballot, six on the Republican ballot and five for the Green Party. Whoever wins the Democratic primary is all but certain to win the special general election on April 7. There is no anointed successor to Mr. Emanuel, and no clear front-runner has emerged. The Democratic establishment, perhaps reluctant to appear too heavy-handed in the post-Blagojevich era, could not agree on a single candidate and made no endorsement. Neither has Mayor Richard M. Daley nor Mr. Emanuel. That has left ward leaders to go their separate ways, and labor unions have split over their backing. “In this election, not being endorsed is better than being endorsed, because of the toxic political situation,” said Russ Stewart, who writes a local political column for the Nadig newspapers in Chicago. The eclectic collection of candidates includes an eye surgeon, a marketing consultant, an airline pilot, a doctor who was born in Poland , a labor lawyer, a psychiatrist who immigrated from Cuba , a college lecturer and economist, and four local elected officials. The elected officials are garnering the most attention, each having a power base, however small, from which to raise money, send direct mail and call on volunteers. The only woman among the officials is State Representative Sara Feigenholtz , who is pushing health care. The others are State Representative John Fritchey , who is focusing on the economy and government reform; Patrick O’Connor , an alderman and ally of Mr. Daley; and Mike Quigley, a Cook County commissioner who advocates government reform and has been endorsed by The Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times . Two Democrats running as outsiders, Tom Geoghegan , a labor lawyer who is a favorite in the liberal blogosphere, and Charles Wheelan , an economist, have also won notice. But not one of the candidates is a household name. Whoever wins the election will rank last in seniority among the 435 House members in Washington . But simply by holding this Chicago seat, that person will surely have the ear of Mr. Emanuel and, as a result, President Obama. Mr. Wasserman, of the Cook report, said the storied seat was the House equivalent of the Senate seat recently vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York and given by the governor to Kirsten Gillibrand , a relatively unknown member of Congress. “This is why Gillibrand is dealing with a stature gap,” Mr. Wasserman said. “She has to prove she can be the big persona that New Yorkers have come to expect, and whoever wins this House seat will be expected to produce for the district in big ways and be a loud voice.” So far, the contenders for the seat have been mostly loud, especially as the primary enters its final days. The recent scandal involving Mr. Blagojevich — and the ongoing challenges to the legitimacy of his appointment of Roland W. Burris to the Senate seat formerly held by President Obama — inspired most of the candidates to try to position themselves as reformers. Now they are battling over who is the true reformer, fueling an increasingly acrimonious debate that Rich Miller, author of Capitol Fax Blog , which covers Illinois politics, calls a “circular firing-squad bloodbath.” When the Service Employees International Union said it would spend $250,000 for television commercials for Ms. Feigenholtz, for example, Mr. Fritchey dismissed the move as “the same strategy that they used to elect Rod Blagojevich.” No one dares to predict how many voters will turn out. “It’s such a strange race, and there aren’t many models,” said Zachary Cook, a political scientist at DePaul University . But if voter interest is low, the interest among candidates is high. “It’s one of the few opportunities for elected officials to move up, and a lot of the others see this as an opportunity to jump into national politics,” said Dick Simpson, a former alderman who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Rostenkowski in the 1990s, and now heads the political science department at the University of Illinois in Chicago. “Besides,” Mr. Simpson said, “it wasn’t clear who all the candidates were going to be, and everybody figured they had a chance.”

Chicago
Election
Rahm Emanuel
US Politics
House of Representatives


Lakers Set to Obtain Dwight Howard in Four-Team Trade

Abstract: Dwight Howard is on the verge of landing with the Los Angeles Lakers in a blockbuster trade that should end the festering drama that has consumed Howard and the Orlando Magic for the past year. Under the proposed four-team deal, the Lakers would acquire Howard, the N.B.A.’s top center, from Orlando while sending their own All-Star center, Andrew Bynum, to Philadelphia. The 76ers , in turn, would send Andre Iguodala to the Denver Nuggets , who would ship Arron Afflalo to the Magic. The parameters of the trade were confirmed Thursday night by two agents with clients who are involved in the deal. Both agents expected the deal would be completed Friday, after the required conference call with league officials. ESPN first reported Thursday night that the trade was complete, hours after Yahoo Sports reported that a deal was imminent. In addition to Afflalo, a promising young guard, Orlando would receive the veteran forward Al Harrington from the Nuggets, center Nikola Vucevic and forward Moe Harkless from the 76ers and three protected first-round picks — one from each team. With the 26-year-old Howard joining with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and the recently acquired Steve Nash, the Lakers will again have one of the flashiest and most talented lineups in the league. After two straight playoff flameouts, they should challenge the Oklahoma City Thunder for pre-eminence in the Western Conference. Acquiring Howard without surrendering Gasol is something of a Lakers victory all by itself. It had been assumed that the Lakers would have to surrender both of their star big men to have any chance at Howard, and it took the involvement of Denver and Philadelphia to make the deal possible. There are risks for three of the four teams. Howard underwent back surgery this past spring, and the 24-year-old Bynum has a history of knee injuries. Both Howard and Bynum are set to become free agents next summer. Howard has already signaled that he does not intend to sign an extension before then. However, the Lakers can offer Howard more money and a longer deal, as well as the inherent advantages of playing in Hollywood and for one of the most decorated franchises in professional sports. Howard led the Magic to the finals in 2009, where they lost to the Lakers in five games. His relationship with the franchise has deteriorated since then and reached a point of no return in the last year. He initially pushed to be traded by the February deadline — under the threat of leaving as a free agent this summer — but he relented at the last minute and agreed to opt into his contract for 2012-13. But the damage was done. The Magic cleaned house after the season, firing Coach Stan Van Gundy and General Manager Otis Smith. Orlando hired Rob Hennigan from the Thunder to become the new general manager. Jacque Vaughn, a rookie head coach who had been on the San Antonio Spurs’ staff, was hired to replace Van Gundy. By dealing Howard now, the Magic will guarantee themselves a peaceful start to the season and a long rebuilding process.

Los Angeles Lakers
Orlando Magic
Denver Nuggets
Howard Dwight
Basketball
Bynum Andrew
Philadelphia 76ers


Terror Threat From Pakistan Said to Expand

Abstract: This article was reported by Elaine Sciolino , Victoria Burnett and Eric Schmitt and written by Ms. Sciolino. BARCELONA, Spain — As the terrorism suspects congregated in the largely Pakistani neighborhood here over the past few months, they were joined by a young man who called himself Asim. He had come from the Pakistani borderlands where the leadership of Al Qaeda is said to have regrouped. The suspects, he later told Spanish investigators, envisioned a wave of spectacular attacks: Coordinated suicide bombings would start in this city’s vast subway system and then sweep through Portugal, Germany, France and Britain if certain demands were not met. Asim had been sent to Spain to be a suicide bomber, but he also was an informant for French intelligence working in the no man’s land of Waziristan in Pakistan. After he got word to his handlers of an impending attack, Spain’s military police swooped into the neighborhood of Raval in the early hours of Jan. 19 and arrested 14 men. Now the officials unraveling the case say it demonstrates the growing threat of terrorist activities migrating to Continental Europe from Pakistan. The largely Pakistani cell formed quickly in Barcelona with support, and perhaps direction, from the tribal areas of Pakistan, the authorities said. According to the arrest warrant in the case, three suicide bombing suspects arrived in Spain within the last four months and the bomb making suspect had recently spent five months in Pakistan. With Spain preparing for elections next month, the suspected plot was an eerie echo of the March 11, 2004, Madrid transit bombings, which killed 191 people just days before the last election. In the weeks since the arrests, Spanish officials have backed off their claim that an attack was imminent. They seized evidence like broken timing devices and small quantities of explosives. But they acknowledged that without more evidence of bomb making, they were relying heavily on the testimony of the informant to make their case, which had blown the cover of a rare intelligence source with access to Pakistan’s tribal areas. Even so, in interviews, Spanish, American and other European officials — most speaking on condition of anonymity because the inquiry is not over — said the plot was indicative of the terror threat from Pakistan. “That these people were ready to go into action as terrorists in Spain — that came as a surprise,” said Judge Baltasar Garzón, Spain’s highest antiterrorism magistrate. “In my opinion, the jihadi threat from Pakistan is the biggest emerging threat we are facing in Europe. Pakistan is an ideological and training hotbed for jihadists, and they are being exported here.” That threat has been felt elsewhere. Two of four suicide bombers who attacked London’s transit system in July 2005 had trained at a camp in Pakistan. Four of the five British men convicted last April in a plot to blow up targets in London using fertilizer bombs were of Pakistani origin and some had trained at a makeshift terrorist camp there. Last September, when the German authorities broke up what they suspected was a plot to bomb an American Air Force base and the Frankfurt airport, they said three of the suspects, two of them German citizens, had trained at terrorist camps in Pakistan. Officials say the Barcelona case points to a more serious dynamic: Pakistanis with no apparent previous links to Europe who appear to have been sent there on a terrorist mission. “We had 20 terrorists show up in Spain that had been trained in Pakistan that were going to be suicide bombers, fanning out over Europe,” Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Although some of the suspects had in fact been living in Spain, Mr. McConnell’s remarks underscored statements by the Spanish authorities that in addition to the 14 suspects who had been arrested, others had eluded arrest. American officials acknowledged that they had monitored phone calls to Pakistan by some of the suspects, and Mr. McConnell cited the case as a reason that United States intelligence agencies needed to retain electronic surveillance authorities. Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba of Spain compared the plot to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying: “It looks as if there is an international connection. There appears to be a boss outside.” “Somebody sent this individual to Spain,” he added, referring to the informant. Spain Draws Pakistanis Spain’s Pakistani community has grown from a few thousand residents a decade ago to about 70,000 today, as immigrants have been drawn to Spain by easy entry and to Barcelona’s Raval district by cheap rents. They have injected new life into the decrepit neighborhood, opening small businesses, but law enforcement officials say some have engaged in petty crimes like money laundering and credit card fraud. Pakistanis have also sent home millions of dollars through the informal system of money transfers, some of it financing extremist groups there, the officials add. In late 2004, the police arrested 11 Pakistani men on suspicion of plotting to attack two landmark buildings in Barcelona, financing terrorism and drug trafficking, although only six were convicted, two for document forgery. The Spanish authorities had long had some of the current Barcelona suspects under surveillance. The police were also monitoring the activities in the Tariq bin Ziad mosque and a small underground prayer room in the Raval neighborhood, both identified with the Tablighi Jamaat, a conservative missionary group that is suspected of being used as a recruiting ground for radicals. The informant working for the French arrived in Barcelona by train from France on Jan. 16 to join the suspects in the plot, he told the police. Tipped off by French intelligence, Spanish intelligence operatives set Operation Cantata in motion. The next day, French and Spanish agents, working together, spotted two suspects tossing a plastic bag into the garbage. Inside, the agents found wires, broken timing devices, latex gloves, wire cutters, computer connectors, lead ball bearings, tubes for firework rocket propellers and small traces of a black powder containing potassium perchlorate, an explosives component commonly found in fireworks. On Jan. 18, as agents continued to watch, one of the men bought a wireless-equipped laptop computer and a camcorder, perhaps, the Spanish authorities assumed, to record suicide tapes or messages containing demands. The suspects prayed together for jihad and sacrifice; they phoned family members, perhaps to say goodbye, Western intelligence officials said. In the evening, agents watched as the men left the mosque in groups of two. Carrying backpacks, they snaked through the streets of the Raval district as if to elude detection, then reunited at the prayer room. The informant relayed a series of increasingly panicked messages to his handlers that the attack was getting closer, several Spanish officials said. “We found ourselves in a critical situation and decided to neutralize the threat,” said a senior official in the Guardia Civil, Spain’s military police. “The risk was so high — not only for Spain but for other countries.” In the early hours of Jan. 19, the police raided the mosque, the prayer room and three apartments, arresting 14 people. In the prayer room, the police seized four timers, empty pyrotechnic cartridges, multicolored wires, latex and kitchen gloves, batteries of varying voltages, cables that could be used for detonators and a small amount of nitrocellulose, according to an inventory of the searches. But already, four of the men have been released. “They asked me, ‘What is your name? Where do you live? Are you into jihad? Did you see the bomb?’ ” said Mohamed Imran, a 30-year-old itinerant construction worker who was released after five days. “I said, ‘No jihad. No bombs. This is all a lie.’ ” Denials by the Accused Of those still in custody, all are either Pakistani or of Pakistani origin, except for one Indian citizen. In questioning by prosecutors, all have denied being part of a terrorist conspiracy, the Spanish authorities said. Two other suspects are being tracked in Barcelona, and another is believed to be hiding in the Netherlands, Spanish officials said. After the arrests, Judge Ismael Moreno, in his 72-page arrest order, and Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido described the attack as imminent. But Spanish law enforcement officials were clearly disappointed. There was no hard evidence of a bomb factory, no viable explosive devices or even enough explosive material to assemble bombs. Investigators are struggling to understand the gap between the informant’s version of events and the physical evidence they found. The informant apparently had seen much more bomb-making material than was seized by the Spanish authorities, according to a Western official with direct knowledge of the case. The extra material had disappeared, apparently with one of the suspects who fled, the official added. Guardia Civil investigators are operating under the assumption that the group may have been rehearsing an attack. “We believe they were getting ready for an attack, but it wasn’t as imminent as we initially were informed,” said Mr. Rubalcaba. Without sufficient physical evidence, Spanish law enforcement officials apparently decided they had to turn France’s informant into a protected witness for the prosecution. They gave him the code name “F1.” He told Spanish interrogators that the first bombing in Barcelona would be followed by demands from Al Qaeda through Baitullah Mehsud, a powerful militant commander in the South Waziristan tribal area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. If the demands were not met, there would be a second strike and then a third in Barcelona, followed by attacks elsewhere in Europe. One senior European official said the demand was to involve the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, although senior Spanish and American officials said they could not confirm that claim. “If they didn’t comply, there would be one in Germany,” the informant said, according to a secret transcript of his statements, whose contents were verified by several people with access to the document. “If they didn’t comply, France. If they didn’t comply, Portugal. If they didn’t comply, Britain. There are many people ready there.” While senior Western intelligence officials do not rule out the possibility that Mr. Mehsud or his organization supported the suspects, they are skeptical that he ordered the attack. And they are less certain that the suspects posed a real threat outside of Spain. The arrest order identified two suspects as the ideological leaders: Maroof Ahmed Mirza, 38, a Pakistani national and legal resident of Spain, and Mohammad Ayub, 63, who is accused of taking part in at least one meeting with explosives experts. According to American intelligence officials, each man was trained in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Mr. Mirza, who teaches at the Tariq bin Ziad mosque and sometimes acted as the prayer leader, was known for his hate-filled sermons and calls for the faithful to join the fight in Iraq, according to the police, who monitored sermons there. An Unusual Suspect Mr. Ayub seemed like a strange fit for a suicide bomb plot. A grandfather with a score of grandchildren, he holds Spanish citizenship and had worked in Spain for 24 years as a dishwasher and as a cook before retiring 13 years ago. “We don’t understand this big movie plot that they have created,” said Mr. Ayub’s son Naveed Ayub. “There are 20,000 Pakistanis in this neighborhood who’ll tell you my father is innocent.” According to the arrest warrant, three suspects identified by the informant as would-be suicide bombers arrived through other European cities: one from Pakistan via Sweden in October, a second via Germany in November, a third via Portugal in December or January. Hafeez Ahmed, who was to be the bomb maker, spent five months in Pakistan last year, the warrant said. For all the international intrigue surrounding the suspects, the case has caused diplomatic friction among investigators. Spain’s handling of the French informant has enraged officials at France’s intelligence agencies and eroded trust between the countries, French and other European officials said. The informant’s value as a source was destroyed when he was made a prosecution witness and the contents of his statements were leaked to the news media. Vicente González Mota, the prosecutor in the case, meanwhile acknowledged that the case may be difficult to prosecute with the current evidence. “All the information will come out in court,” Mr. Mota said, adding, “The problem is — is what we have enough?”

Terrorism
Spain
Europe
Espionage
Bombs and Explosives
Extradition
Intelligence Services
Barcelona (Spain)


Last Wish of Dying Girl, 14, to Be Frozen, Is Granted by Judge

Abstract: LONDON — During the last months of her life, a terminally ill 14-year-old British girl made a final wish. Instead of being buried, she asked to be frozen so that she could be “woken up” in the future when a cure was found — even if that was hundreds of years later. “I want to have this chance,” the teenager wrote in a letter to a judge asking that she be cryogenically preserved. She died on Oct. 17 from a rare form of cancer. “I don’t want to be buried underground,” she wrote. The girl’s parents, who are divorced, disagreed about the procedure. The teenager had asked the court to designate that her mother, who supported her daughter’s wishes, should decide how to handle her remains. The judge, Peter Jackson, ruled in her favor. Local news reports said he was impressed by the “valiant way in which she was facing her predicament.” He said she had chosen the most basic preservation option, which costs about £37,000, or nearly $46,000, an amount reportedly raised by her grandparents. “I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they might find a cure for my cancer and wake me up,” the teenager wrote in her letter to the judge. Local reports said she had told a relative: “I’m dying, but I’m going to come back again in 200 years.” For legal reasons, the teenager cannot be identified. The case was revealed for the first time on Friday. Cryogenic preservation involves storing people’s bodies, or sometimes just their heads, at very low temperatures in the hope that scientists will one day be able to resuscitate them. According to Cryonics UK, a nonprofit organization that embalmed and transferred the girl’s body to a storage facility in Michigan, once a patient is declared dead, a response team swiftly injects a cocktail of chemicals to try to reduce blood clotting and brain damage. The body is then cooled to around 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 Celsius), and the blood is removed and replaced with a kind of antifreeze to prevent ice crystals from forming inside the body during the freezing process. The body is then placed in a waterproof bag and gradually cooled to minus 94 degrees using dry ice. Once packed in ice, the body is flown to a storage facility where it is cooled further, to minus 321, and stored in a container filled with liquid nitrogen. The 14-year-old London girl is one of 11 Britons to have been frozen under this procedure, Cryonics UK said. Judge Jackson acknowledged ethical issues surrounding the procedure and called the case “an example of the new questions that science poses to the law.” “The scientific theory underlying cryonics is speculative and controversial, and there is considerable debate about its ethical implications,” the judge said in a statement. “On the other hand, cryopreservation, the preservation of cells and tissues by freezing, is now a well-known process in certain branches of medicine, for example the preservation of sperm and embryos as part of fertility treatment,” the statement said. “Cryonics is cryopreservation taken to its extreme.” Zoe Fleetwood, the girl’s lawyer, said her client had called Judge Jackson a “hero” after being told of the court’s decision shortly before her death. “By Oct. 6, the girl knew that her wishes were going to be followed,” Ms. Fleetwood told BBC Radio 4. “That gave her great comfort.” There are only three cryonics storage facilities in the world: two in the United States and one in Russia. Since the procedure was invented in the 1960s, more than 300 people have reportedly been frozen , many of them at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz. So far, no one has been revived. Asked about the chances that the British girl would ever be resuscitated, Tim Gibson, a committee member of Cryonics UK, said they were “somewhere between zero to 100.” “Cryonics is just a big experiment,” he said. “You can be part of the experiment or part of the control group.” On its website, Cryonics UK addresses the question of whether customers could know for sure that the procedure works. “You can’t,” the company says. “You have a choice, though: You can try it, and maybe live and maybe die. Or you cannot try it, and definitely die.”

London
Cryonics
Alcor Life Extension Foundation
Decisions and Verdicts


Donaghy Set to Plead Guilty in Betting Case

Abstract: Tim Donaghy, the former N.B.A. referee accused of betting on games he officiated, is expected to plead guilty in federal court in Brooklyn today, according to a person with direct knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plea had not yet been entered. Donaghy will appear before United States District Court Judge Carol B. Amon. Donaghy’s lawyer, John Lauro, and Mike Bass, a spokesman for the N.B.A., declined to comment. Federal law enforcement officials wanted to determine whether Donaghy bet on N.B.A. games during the past two seasons, and if he had made calls since December that affected any game’s margin of victory while being coerced by members of organized crime. A federal grand jury in Brooklyn had been reviewing the case, which has been going on for several months. The F.B.I. first contacted the N.B.A. on June 20. Donaghy, 40, resigned July 9 after 13 seasons as an N.B.A. referee.

Donaghy Tim
Officiating (Sports)
Basketball
National Basketball Assn


The San Diego Padres Don’t Feel Like Themselves. That’s the Point.

Abstract: PEORIA, Ariz. — The San Diego Padres scored the fewest runs in the major leagues last season, and their fewest in a full schedule since 1972. So you could understand Bud Black’s enthusiasm for filling out his lineup card Wednesday, when the Padres opened their exhibition season. He put Matt Kemp in the third spot, and Justin Upton cleanup. “The first game is always great in spring training, but when I wrote down the names this morning, it’s a little different,” said Black, the Padres’ manager. “I think all of us sort of feel that. Players, coaches, we’ve talked about this.” The process of turning talk into actual names spinning from the clubhouse printer unfolded in a series of bold strikes. A. J. Preller, hired last summer as the Padres’ general manager, acquired Kemp, Upton, center fielder Wil Myers and catcher Derek Norris within 24 hours in December. Just before spring training, Preller signed James Shields for the top of the rotation. Preller had been a top scouting executive with the Texas Rangers, cultivating an air of mystery. He was like a ghost, colleagues said — somewhere out in the world, in the skies or on the ground, hunting for talent. He flew so often, and slept so awkwardly on planes, that he needed cervical fusion surgery on his neck. “I think Mike Dee said he doesn’t sleep,” starter Ian Kennedy said, referring to a comment by the Padres’ president. “I forgot how many days he was on the road in a year, but it was a crazy amount, just going around scouting with the Rangers. “We knew that something was going to happen, but, to be honest, I had no idea what to expect. I think it impressed all of us by what he was able to do in one off-season.” After four losing seasons in a row, the Padres need to think big to compete in the National League West. The Los Angeles Dodgers have won the last two division titles, and the San Francisco Giants have won three of the last five World Series. The Padres have not won a playoff series since 1998. Preller preserved three top prospects, but unloaded many of the rest. In their place, he said, is a core that can contend for a while. Upton and Kennedy can be free agents after the season, but nearly every other impact player is under team control for years. “You have a million different ideas you throw around, and a million different things you put on the whiteboard, hoping just one will come to fruition,” Preller said. “To see it line up and kind of look at it and say, ‘We have a chance to pull off a few of these things, in sequence, that we think fit and work,’ that was a lot of fun.” Black, who pitched 15 seasons in the majors, said he sometimes woke this winter to find a text message sent by Preller at 4:30 a.m. The work ethic impressed him, but he was struck even more by Preller’s feel for the game — for players and for competition. Preller graduated from Cornell in 1999 and did not play professionally, but showed a hunger to win now, rather than wait on prospects for a distant payoff. “He was looking to rebuild the offense’s identity and the organization’s identity,” said Upton, who launched a homer off the center-field backdrop on Wednesday. “He wanted to build a contender and he thought that I was a piece of that. When he called and told me it was going to be a good year and we weren’t done making moves, and we wanted to still make the team better, I was on board.” Upton will play left field and Kemp will play right. Myers, the 2013 American League Rookie of the Year for Tampa Bay, will play center. He has started just six games there in the majors, but he played 100 games in center in the minors and called it his best position. The motivations of the new outfielders are clear. Upton will be just 28 when he becomes a free agent for the first time, after a solid career for Arizona and Atlanta. Kemp, once a cornerstone of the Dodgers, was shipped to a rival to make room for a rookie, Joc Pederson. Then there is Myers, who learned of his trade from a Rays pitcher, Jake Odorizzi, who saw a rumor in a news report. Myers had hit just .222 with six homers in 87 games, but never felt strong after jamming his left wrist in the first week of the season. Then he broke his right one, sidelining him for months. He went from a building block to the trading block, and said he could hardly believe it. “It was the first bad year of my career — with injuries,” Myers said. “I’m not worried about the fact people say, ‘Well, he’s washed up.’ I’m 24. I didn’t lose talent. I didn’t lose my baseball skills. I still know how to play; I still know how to hit. I’m finally healthy again, and I’m excited to rebound and prove everybody wrong.” Myers has never played at Petco Park, a notorious place for power hitters at night, but Kemp and Upton have succeeded there. Kemp has a .495 career slugging percentage in San Diego, and no visitor has hit more home runs at Petco than Upton, who has 10. “These guys have got all-field power,” Black said. “But we’ve moved the fences in twice. There’s an opposite-field homer for the right-handed hitter. We’re moving the fences in again in left, about two feet, and left field’s really doable. Any pull hitter with power can get the ball airborne; it’s short to left. I think the days of Petco being known as cavernous are over.” The Padres are ready for a change, and the fans are responding. By mid-February, the team said, season ticket sales were up 600 percent from the same time the previous year. The Padres ranked 12th in the N.L. in attendance last season, but now they should put on a better show. “It’s pretty cool to have a fan base, and I knew it was bigger than it looked like when we were playing there the last couple of years,” Kennedy said. “Hopefully this is a good reason for them to show up, and we can start playing better.”

Padres
Bud Black
Matt Kemp
Justin Upton
Wil Myers
Derek Norris
James Shields
Baseball


One Big Inning Puts Hughes on Winning Track

Abstract: DETROIT — The last time Phil Hughes won a major league game, Roger Clemens was the Yankees ’ starter, Joe Torre was the manager and Joe Girardi was a broadcaster. It was October 2007, in a playoff game against Cleveland, and Hughes’s stellar relief earned him the final victory of the Torre era. Convinced that Hughes was ready for a full-time job in the rotation, the Yankees installed him there in Girardi’s first season as Torre’s successor. The season was a high-profile failure for Hughes, who won no games, and for Girardi, whose team missed the playoffs. Back in the majors Tuesday night, Hughes faced pressure to stop a four-game losing streak and quell any gathering panic that could cloud Girardi’s future. He did it in vintage fashion, if there is such a thing for a pitcher still just 22 years old. Hughes fired six shutout innings to beat the Detroit Tigers , 11-0, at Comerica Park. He allowed two singles and two walks, striking out six and reclaiming, for the moment, his reputation. “That was the old Phil Hughes that we need him to be,” said catcher Jose Molina, whose grand slam capped a 10-run seventh inning. “If he keeps throwing that way, he’s going to be here for a long time.” The Tigers’ Edwin Jackson also tossed six shutout innings, and his career offers a lesson in patience. In 2004, when Jackson turned 21, Baseball America rated him the best pitching prospect in the Pacific Coast League. But he struggled for the Dodgers, who hastily traded him to Tampa Bay. Jackson wobbled for two years, then helped the Rays reach the World Series with 14 victories last season. Now he is thriving for Detroit, the way the Yankees believe Hughes can for them. “I hope he builds off it,” Girardi said of Hughes. “He has the ability to pitch here. That’s probably why he’s been touted for a while. But having the ability and being able to do it sometimes takes a little longer.” Hughes looked ready in 2007, especially when he took a no-hitter into the seventh inning in Texas on May 1, in his second start. He left that game with a hamstring injury, sprained his ankle while recovering and missed most of the summer. Despite late-season success, Hughes has basically been striving to recapture the magic of that night in Texas. How long ago does it feel? “Ages,” Hughes said. “Ages and not a lot of wins later.” Hughes pitched with a fractured rib last April, and when he came off the disabled list, he was shipped to Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Even in a late-season cameo for the Yankees, he was still trying to build arm strength and confidence. “There were points last year — I’m not going to lie — I was pretty lost,” he said. “I felt like I had forgotten how to pitch. Things weren’t falling into place for me. I just tried to keep working as hard as I could.” The work continued in the Arizona Fall League, in which Hughes pitched well, and in spring training, when his earned run average was 2.19. It was even better in three starts at Scranton, and along the way Hughes refined his cutter to go with a fastball, curve and occasional changeup. Called up in place of the struggling Chien-Ming Wang, Hughes had his fastball humming from the first inning. He struck out the leadoff hitter, Curtis Granderson, with a 94-mile-an-hour heater. Then he froze Placido Polanco on a third-strike curveball and got a diving play from third baseman Ramiro Pena to end the inning. Hughes said he was lucky on the curve to Polanco, which was meant to bounce, not drop into the strike zone. Pena’s play came after Magglio Ordonez smashed a curve. Miguel Cabrera then led off the second by singling on another hanger. Hughes’s best pitch was his fastball, which Molina said had a better downward angle than it did last season, when it was flat. But he kept trying with the curveball, which improved as the game went on. “He put the ball where he wanted to, and he was aggressive in the zone all night long,” Molina said. “All his pitches were working, and when one wasn’t, he came back with the same pitch and did good.” Hughes allowed just one runner past second base, when the Tigers loaded the bases with two out in the fourth. Hughes faced Josh Anderson and used his cutter for a groundout to second baseman Robinson Cano, ending the threat. Cano had worked a 12-pitch at-bat in the top of the fourth, bloating Jackson’s pitch count, which reached 117 through six innings. Hughes needed only 99 in his six, and Girardi said he would have kept pitching had the Yankees not hit for so long in the seventh. Hughes joked that he wished they had scored only once, so he could have gone back to the mound. Or maybe he was being serious. For Hughes, pitching was fun again at last. “Right now,” he said, “it’s the best I’ve felt as a complete pitcher in quite a while.” INSIDE PITCH Alex Rodriguez practiced sliding on Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., and he is almost ready to start a rehabilitation assignment. ... Ian Kennedy left his start for Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in the fifth inning Monday because of numbness in a finger on his pitching hand. He returned to New York for tests. ... According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Jose Molina became the first player to have a sacrifice bunt and a grand slam in the same inning since Oakland’s Sal Bando on May 7, 1975, against the Angels.

Detroit Tigers
Baseball
New York Yankees
Hughes Phil


Trainers Are Drawn to Britain for Racing’s Prestige

Abstract: ASCOT, England — The queen won the Royal Ascot Gold Cup here Thursday, stopping for a moment the continuous parade to the winners’ circle by Irish horsemen. No, the fix was not in. It was the first time a reigning monarch’s horse had won the meeting’s signature race in its 207-year history. But the victory was perhaps overdue — Queen Elizabeth II has come to Royal Ascot every year since 1945, and that perfect attendance record, along with 22 victories, is evidence enough that she takes thoroughbred racing seriously. So do the French, Australian, South African and yes, American horsemen who converge here each June for what is truly an international festival. Animal Kingdom failed to finish his career with a victory in the Queen Anne Stakes, but two other Yankees made an impact over the five days of racing here. Joseph Allen, a longtime breeder and owner, won two races, including the Queen Anne with Declaration of War, and the trainer Wesley Ward’s colt No Nay Never set a track record for five furlongs in the Norfolk Stakes. The world, indeed, has become smaller, and as the thoroughbred industry continues to contract, some American horsemen are globe-trotting for better opportunities. They come to Royal Ascot for the prestige more than the money — there are richer purses most weekends at home. They come here to go back in time to when a day at the races meant Champagne, elegant clothes and a certain romance. The Bronx-born, Florida-based Allen was visibly moved after War Command ran off with the Coventry Stakes to make him a winner for a second time. “This is surreal,” Allen said. “I’ve been involved with horses for 35 years, and this is the highlight. To win two major races on the first day of Royal Ascot is a dream.” While horse racing in the United States has increasingly become a niche sport that commands the nation’s attention only during the Triple Crown races, it has visibility and clout here, contributing more than $5.4 billion to the English economy, according to a recent study by the British Horseracing Authority and the auditor Deloitte. It is the second most popular sport here behind soccer, with 5.6 million people attending the races in 2012. Not including the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, 4 of the top 10 most attended sporting events last year were at racetracks, according to the study. Image Queen Elizabeth II, seated, became the first reigning monarch to win the Royal Ascot Gold Cup. Credit Darren Staples/Reuters Having the royal family in its corner does not hurt. Windsor Castle is nearby, and this is their meet. Two pastimes are guessing what color outfit the queen chooses for each of the five days, as well as whom she will invite as her guest to ride in her carriage during the royal procession. (She was sporting purple when her filly Estimate won the Royal Ascot Gold Cup.) You have to go all the way back to the early 1800s, when President Andrew Jackson ran a stable from the White House, to find such a powerful advocate for American horse racing. The reverence and enthusiasm the public here has for horse racing is something to behold. It is a constant on television, with England’s Channel 4 broadcasting 88 afternoons of racing along with 64 mornings of an hourlong magazine show. Its coverage each day of Royal Ascot was a mix of human interest stories, fashion features and expert analysis. It means horses like last year’s undefeated Frankel become superstars alongside footballers and rugby players. It meant Animal Kingdom was welcomed like a hero. It also helps build a following among young people, who made up a significant part of the more than 40,000 fans who showed up each day of the festival. Jake Acaster, 21, and Hayden Kirby, 18, put on suits and drove five hours from Cheltenham for the Royal Ascot meeting. They were conversant on Animal Kingdom and South Africa’s Shea Shea as well as the English and Irish horses that are regulars on the English circuit. “We follow on television and chat with racing experts around the world on Twitter,” said Kirby, a student. “Going to these festivals are very much an event, something you want to do.” The bookies who sprawl out on the apron of the track with their boxes, computers and odds boards add to the Old World feel here. Surprisingly, however, they were not overrun by bettors. In fact, there were rarely lines at all. “Horse racing is in our blood,” said Nick Luck, Channel 4’s racing presenter. “It’s not just about backing horses with the bookies, either. It’s about watching them run and knowing that they are athletes.” Yes, they are.

Horse racing
British Horseracing Authority
Great Britain


From Richard Deon, a Dose of the Unexpected

Abstract: Yonkers MORE than 30 years ago, Richard Deon pulled a book called “Visualized Civics” out of a trash bin. Today, variations on the graphic images in that discarded school textbook — a man standing tall and dapper in a suit with his hands at his sides, an archetypal American Indian, a professorial figure with a pointer — can be found throughout the artist’s work. Walking through his solo exhibition at the Hudson River Museum here, Mr. Deon referred to these recurring images as his “givens.” It was easy to understand why. They echo consistently in the nearly 50 works on display, which include paintings, prints and two huge banners specially designed for the museum’s atrium. The exhibition, “Paradox and Conformity,” displays the artist’s exploration of these icons, many from the 1950s, which he places in odd contexts, often using false perspective or other visual tricks to create what he calls “a sense of irritation” in the work. In one enormous banner, “Low Tide,” the suited figure appears lying down. He would look almost funereal if not for the small smile on his lips, his wide-awake stare, and the incongruous ocean horizon at his head. The figure reappears in many paintings throughout the show — his ramrod posture looks military on the bow of a ship in “Weehawken,” a false depiction of a Civil War naval battle. But in “Measure of Success,” he stands as a businessman, with the background text — “Knowing’s Not Enough” — suggesting some disruption of a climb up the corporate ladder. This ubiquitous figure, along with other characters, has become part of what Mr. Deon calls his “graphic toolbox.” That source material is transformed into something almost surreal in each work. One of the paintings on display, “Burning the Department of Interior,” shows a group of figures sitting cross-legged around what at first appears to be a campfire. But the flames are coming from an office building, where tiny suited figures are at work in cramped spaces. Sitting around the campfire are mostly shirtless men with long hair. It would have been easy for this painting to be “weaponized,” meaning heavily politicized, Mr. Deon said, so he began to play with the work after he originally thought it was finished. The artist pointed to two men wearing shirts and hats on the outside of the circle, figures he added later. He also noted that smudged text in the painting had initially been very clear. “When there’s a lot of context with a story being described, I don’t want to take it to a conclusion that real life has,” he said. “I want a dreamlike conclusion where you are not really sure where the story has ended.” In addition to his iconic figures, Mr. Deon uses a group of symbols repetitively, including a chevron; a flag that doesn’t belong to a country (an image he found on a matchbook in Canada); and an abstract shape the artist simply calls “the object.” Noting that his paintings have become “a repository for accidents,” Mr. Deon, who also works as an art director and publication designer, said the creation of “the object” began with a stock illustration of a microscope for a graphics job. The day after he had roughly cut out the image, he found its “negative shape” — the paper that he had cut away — in the trash. It is this shape, vague in its outline, that became “the object.” Mr. Deon’s work occupies two floors of the museum. Among the first works the visitor sees is “Death in the Long Grass,” in which a kneeling man in a loincloth is posed in front of a large cow, which originally appeared in the show “Got Cow? Cattle in American Art” at the museum in 2006. “Since then Richard’s images, always sophisticated, have matured and deepened, and we are happy to welcome him back this summer for a solo show,” said Bartholomew F. Bland, the curator of exhibitions. “The scale and strength of his graphics are powerful enough to stand up to the architecture of the museum’s large and open galleries, which he has filled with a cast of characters that appear and reappear in his paintings, much like a repertory theater troupe.” Mr. Deon lives in Dover Plains in Dutchess County, and works in a restored carriage house. His fascination with and manipulation of historical figures began as early as the seventh grade, when he defaced a school textbook. Already playful in his work, the youngster added touches like airplanes to the background of the Boston Tea Party. (He paid for the book, and at the suggestion of an English teacher, started taking art classes, ultimately studying at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan .) Circus posters were also a source of inspiration. Mr. Deon noted that a lithography shop that designed many posters seemed to use the same models repeatedly. The short stocky lion trainer figure was also the acrobat and the horseback rider. The idea of using the same figures over and over again in his paintings took hold. Despite the recurring images, Mr. Deon’s work is not all that predictable. Abraham Lincoln appears in Roman armor in “Lincoln Ignores the Carbon Compact,” while in “Lincoln Handles the Fragments of a Red Dish,” he is dressed in a toga, pointing to “the object” while an attentive group looks on. Time and perspective are confused. “The conformity part is the familiar images,” he said. “The paradox is, ‘Why the hell are these things together?’ ”

Art
Hudson River Museum
Westchester County (NY)
Deon Richard


Supplier Expands Beef Recall Over Concerns of E. Coli Contamination

Abstract: LOS ANGELES, June 9 (AP) — A meat supplier has expanded a ground beef recall to include about 5.7 million pounds of fresh and frozen meat because they may be contaminated with E. coli. David Goldman, acting administrator of the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service, announced on Saturday that the recall would be expanded to include products with sell-by dates from April 6 to April 20. The beef was distributed by United Food Group LLC, based in California. Mr. Goldman said that none of the latest batch of suspect beef was in stores now because the product would be well past its expiration date, but that consumers might still have some of the meat at home. “It is important for consumers to look in their freezers,” he said. The meat has been blamed for an E. coli outbreak in the Western states that resulted in 14 illnesses, spanning April 25 through May 18. All the patients have recovered. On Wednesday, United Food Group expanded an initial recall of 75,000 pounds of ground beef, adding an additional 370,000 pounds based on “unspecified concerns” raised by the California State Department of Health Services. This meat had sell-by dates from April 29-May 6. The recalled products were shipped to stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. They were sold under the brand names Moran’s All Natural, Miller Meat Company, Stater Bros., Trader Joes Butcher Shop, Inter-American Products Inc. and Basha’s. Customers with questions about the recall can call United Food Group’s hot line at 1-800-325-4164. Those with recalled products should either throw the product away or return it to the point of purchase for a refund.

Meat
Food Safety and Inspection Service
E Coli (Bacteria)
Bacteria
Recalls and Bans of Products
Food Contamination and Poisoning


A Dream With Cooperstown Ties Wasn’t to Be for the Crafty Mets

Abstract: It was never happening. Not the way it unfolded, anyway. But that did not stop the Mets from pushing aggressively to bring baseball’s most electrifying player to a team on the rise. Imagine Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza, who might make up this year’s Cooperstown class, sharing the middle of the lineup in Flushing. The Mets sure did. They had just fallen two games short of the World Series with elite production from Piazza at catcher, Edgardo Alfonzo at second base and Robin Ventura at third base. Their outfield was much weaker, and the Seattle Mariners were looking for a place to trade Griffey, one of the best center fielders in history. The Mets scrambled to make it work. “We thought there was a chance, especially coming off the year that we had, and with the expectation that we would be good again,” said Jim Duquette, then the Mets’ assistant general manager. “We would have had Alfonzo, Griffey and then Piazza. We were salivating over that.” Griffey had just turned 30 years old and was already, by then, a certain Hall of Famer. He had been an All-Star and a Gold Glove winner every season of the 1990s and had just led the American League in homers for the third year in a row. His home run total for the previous four seasons was 209, with no hint of the steroid rumors that would soon engulf other sluggers. The Mariners, meanwhile, were in a curious state. They had just moved from the drab Kingdome to glittering Safeco Field, a ballpark made possible by the momentum generated in 1995, when Griffey led the team on an exhilarating, unexpected charge to the playoffs. Yet the team had traded Randy Johnson, spent modestly on free agents and tumbled below .500. Beyond that, the Mariners seemed to be facing a crisis. They had recalled Alex Rodriguez at age 18, in 1994, which helped Rodriguez accrue enough service time to be a free agent after the 2000 season. Griffey’s contract also expired then. Griffey, an intensely devoted family man, made his off-season home in Florida. His children’s school obligations would soon keep him away from them for longer stretches. The golfer Payne Stewart, a neighbor in Orlando, had just died in a plane crash, reinforcing Griffey’s commitment to putting family first. He did not want to devote the bulk of his remaining career to a team based so far away. As a player with 10 years of service, the last five with the same team, Griffey had veto power over trades. East Coast teams that trained in Florida, like the Mets, initially held some appeal as potential destinations. But the most alluring spot was Cincinnati, where Griffey’s father, Ken Griffey Sr., had been a star outfielder for the Reds. “I always knew where Junior wanted to go,” said Jim Bowden, then the Reds’ general manager. “The whole point was for him to come home to Cincinnati. The whole point was to wear the Reds uniform like his dad. He wanted to be closer to home, to family. I always believed he would come to Cincinnati; we just had to navigate through it.” The Reds were coming off a 96-win season that had ended with a loss to the Mets in a one-game wild-card playoff. But affording a contract extension for a superstar, even at a hometown discount, caused the Reds to hesitate. Publicly, they had dropped out of trade talks by the winter meetings in Anaheim, Calif., in early December. The Mets saw an opportunity. “Nelson Doubleday was always big on trying to inquire on Griffey,” said Steve Phillips, then the Mets general manager, referring to the team’s co-owner at the time, who died last June. “He was dying to get Griffey. But it was really a nonstarter that he did not want to come to New York.” Pat Gillick, the future Hall of Fame executive who had just started as Mariners’ general manager, hoped Griffey would change his mind. (“He changes it quite a bit,” Gillick said then. “It’s sort of like sand dunes.”) Gillick engaged the Mets, and the teams agreed to the framework of a deal, reported then to be pitchers Armando Benitez and Octavio Dotel and outfielder Roger Cedeno for Griffey. “We agreed in principle on the players,” said Duquette, who remembered outfielder Jay Payton being discussed as well. “It was in Griffey’s hands.” If so, it was more like a Hail Mary pass to a receiver just putting on his shoulder pads and thrust suddenly onto the field. Chuck Armstrong, then the Mariners’ president, called Brian Goldberg, Griffey’s agent, to ask if he would consider a deal with the Mets — but said the Mets needed to know immediately. Griffey — not wanting to rush into a major life decision — declined. “It was so confusing and fast that I never thought it was anything that was going to happen at that moment,” Goldberg said. “It was quick, and it was done with.” At a stalemate for his future, Goldberg said Griffey was open to a one-year contract extension through 2001, which would have ensured that the Mariners would retain at least one of their megastars for the next two seasons. But a trade was inevitable, and it finally happened on Feb. 10, 2000. Bowden shipped outfielder Mike Cameron, pitcher Brett Tomko and two prospects to Seattle, and the Reds’ owners signed Griffey to a nine-year, $116.5 million contract. “There’s no doubt my favorite moment as G.M. was trading for Ken Griffey Jr.,” Bowden said, “walking up to the podium and saying, ‘Baseball is back in Cincinnati.’ ” Griffey would battle injuries for much of his tenure with the Reds, who did not reach the playoffs with him. But he hit 210 homers, made three All-Star teams, spent more time with his family — and enjoyed a warm return to the Mariners in 2009, erasing any leftover hard feelings. Griffey now works for the team as a special consultant. “Junior’s such a wonderful guy, and I feel very close to Ken and his family,” said Armstrong, who retired in 2014. “I think it came down to family and geography, and I’m glad he came back to the Mariners when he did. He’s the foremost player we’ve ever had, he’s maybe the greatest player I’ve ever seen, and we were lucky to have him.” The Mets never did get Griffey — or Rodriguez, whom they also coveted at the time — but they moved on quickly from their flirtation. Less than two weeks later, Phillips got a surprise call from Gerry Hunsicker, the general manager of the Houston Astros, who told him his ace left-hander, Mike Hampton, was available. The Mets used two of the pieces in the proposed Griffey deal — Dotel and Cedeno — to acquire outfielder Derek Bell along with Hampton, who would win 15 games and be named most valuable player of the National League Championship Series against St. Louis. The Yankees beat the Mets in the 2000 World Series, and Hampton then signed with the Colorado Rockies. But as compensation for his departure, the Mets received the 38th pick in the 2001 draft — and used it on a high school third baseman from Virginia named David Wright. “How crazy is that?” Duquette asked. “We didn’t get Ken Griffey Jr. We got Hampton instead, which led to David Wright — and we got to the World Series with Hampton, and I don’t know if our pitching was good enough to get there without him.” Hampton is on this Hall of Fame ballot, too, but he has no chance of election. Griffey is a lock. Piazza might join him. In time, Wright could make his own case. They were all loosely connected, whether they knew it or not, for a New York baseball minute.

Mets
Baseball
Mike Piazza
Mariners
Reds
David Wright
Ken Griffey Jr
Baseball Hall of Fame


In Thai Cultural Battle, Name-Calling Is Encouraged

Abstract: BANGKOK, Aug. 23 — America has Tom, Dick and Harry. Thailand has Pig, Money and Fat. For as long as people here can remember, children have been given playful nicknames — classics include Shrimp, Chubby and Crab — that are carried into adulthood. But now, to the consternation of some nickname purists, children are being given such offbeat English-language nicknames as Mafia or Seven — as in 7-Eleven, the convenience store. The spread of foreign names mirrors a rapidly urbanizing society that has absorbed any number of influences, including Hollywood, fast-food chains and English Premier League soccer. The trend worries Vira Rojpojchanarat, the permanent secretary of the Thai Ministry of Culture. Mr. Vira, whose nickname is the relatively unimaginative Ra, is embarking on a campaign to revive the simple and often more pastoral nicknames of yore. “It’s important because it’s about the usage of the Thai language,” Mr. Vira, an architect by training, said in his office decorated with Thai theatrical masks and a small Buddhist altar. “We worry that Thai culture will vanish.” With help from language experts at the Royal Institute, the official arbiter of the Thai language, Mr. Vira plans to produce by the end of the year a collection of thousands of old-fashioned nicknames, listed by such wholesome categories as colors, animals and fruit and including simple favorites like Yaay (big), Ouan (fat) and Dam (black). Published in a small booklet, the names will be distributed to the news media and libraries, and posted on the Internet. “We can’t force people,” Mr. Vira said. “It’s their right to have their own ideas. But what we can do is give them options by producing this handbook.” The Culture Ministry’s plans have not yet been made public, but some Thais, when told about the nickname campaign, were skeptical. “I don’t agree with this; it’s unnecessary,” said Manthanee Akaracharanrya, a 29-year-old real estate contractor. Ms. Manthanee, whose nickname is Money, says having an English name is practical because it is easier for foreigners to pronounce, unlike Thai names, which are tonal and can include sounds alien to non-Thai speakers. Her name has meaning, Ms. Manthanee said. Her father chose Money because she was born on Nov. 29, around the time his paycheck landed. Her elder brother is named Bonus because he was born on Chinese New Year, when some companies hand out extra cash. And her younger brother is called Bank, because it fit the theme. Korakoad Wongsinchai, an English teacher at a private primary school in Bangkok, is also not sure whether the Culture Ministry’s campaign will stem the tide of English names. “Parents think they are modern names,” Ms. Korakoad said of the foreign nicknames. “Thai names are from 20 years ago.” More than half of her students have English names, she said, offering this sampling: Tomcruise, Elizabeth, Army, Kiwi, Charlie and God. One apparently gourmand family named their child Gateaux, the French word for cakes. “I think a lot of parents get the names from television or magazines,” she said. Ms. Korakoad, 30, carries the nickname Moo (Pig), a traditional name that Mr. Vira approves of and says will be in the booklet. After years of hearing about the spread of foreign nicknames, Mr. Vira says he was spurred into action in July when he saw the results of a survey of almost 3,000 students in and around the city of Khon Khaen, in northeastern Thailand. In one classroom there were three children nicknamed Bank. To tell them apart, fellow pupils had renamed the children Big Bank, Medium Bank and Small Bank. Forty percent of secondary students and 56 percent of primary students had English nicknames, the survey showed, compared with just 6 percent of university students, indicating a clear trend among the youngest Thais, Mr. Vira said. Ball was the most popular English nickname — possibly because it is the nickname of a well-known Thai tennis star, Paradorn Srichaphan — followed by Oil and Bank. The most common Thai nicknames were Lek (small), Ng (one) and Mai (new). Mr. Vira, who is the most senior civil servant in the Culture Ministry, says his mission is to preserve what he calls Thai-ness: “not only the Thai language but Thai dress, Thai food — everything that shows Thai identity.” The year 2007 (2550 according to Thailand’s Buddhist calendar) has been proclaimed the Year of Promoting Correct Thai Usage, he said, and the nickname campaign is part of that effort. From a purely practical point of view, Mr. Vira added, having a foreign name like Apple or Bank may be cute for a child, “but once you’re an old man with no teeth, it doesn’t match with the name.”


Outside Money at Issue in Boston Mayor’s Race as Labor Unions Weigh In

Abstract: BOSTON — With Boston’s first competitive mayor’s race in three decades going down to the wire, John R. Connolly has seized on the issue of outside labor support for his opponent, Martin J. Walsh. Outside cash has been pouring into the mayoral race in the last few days, about three times as much of it for Mr. Walsh, 46, a state representative and union leader backed by organized labor, as for Mr. Connolly, 40, a city councilman who is receiving money from education groups. Mr. Connolly has been careful not to disrespect labor, an influential political force here. But over the weekend, he escalated his assertions that the new money obligated Mr. Walsh to the unions. “My opponent is a good man, but you can’t have $2.5 million pour in from across the United States on behalf of labor unions and say you’re going to be able to be independent,” Mr. Connolly said, his voice rising, as he addressed about 80 black supporters at a restaurant in the Hyde Park neighborhood. “And,” he said, by now screaming, “you can’t have a ‘super PAC’ form four days before the election and have $500,000 dumped into it on your behalf and say you’re not going to owe anybody a thing after the election.” Mr. Walsh said Sunday that it was “wrongheaded” to suggest he could not be independent. “As John Connolly well knows, nobody has questioned my independence in the past, and voters can be assured of my continued independence in the future,” he said. “I’m disappointed that my opponent has chosen to personally question my integrity.” Image Martin J. Walsh spoke to voters at a cafe in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston on Saturday. Credit Katherine Taylor for The New York Times The campaign to succeed Mayor Thomas M. Menino has been a largely civil affair, with the candidates mostly shying away from direct personal attacks. But with the race neck and neck, both are looking for ways to galvanize voters, a task made harder in recent weeks as the city has been preoccupied by the Boston Red Sox march to winning the World Series. Mr. Connolly and Mr. Walsh, both progressive Democrats, won the right to face each other in Tuesday’s nonpartisan general election by claiming the top two spots in the September preliminary election for mayor. A major part of Mr. Walsh’s campaign has been his endorsements by the city’s most prominent black and Latino politicians — including Charlotte Golar-Richie, Felix Arroyo and John Barros, who were runners-up in the preliminary election for mayor. In September, the candidates of color won nine of the city’s 22 wards, said David Paleologos, a pollster for Suffolk University. “The whole race boils down to whether Walsh’s endorsers can deliver in their neighborhoods,” Mr. Paleologos said. The real value of labor money, he said, was in the Walsh campaign’s ability to air television ads that highlight those endorsements. Analysts say that voters know one main fact about each candidate — that Mr. Connolly is the “education” candidate and that Mr. Walsh is the “labor” one. Mr. Connolly was a teacher before becoming a lawyer, and he has made improving public schools the centerpiece of his campaign. While education is a major issue for voters, Mr. Connolly has been criticized as a one-note candidate. Now, he is weaving his school plans in with broader issues. “You want safer neighborhoods?” he told parents and children at a youth athletic program on Saturday. “Yes? Well, you need better schools. You want a stronger economy and better jobs? You need better schools. It’s all connected together.” With his criticism of union money, Mr. Connolly is hoping to score points with voters who resent labor’s muscle. “Most people are very dissatisfied with the role of unions in city politics,” said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial and labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, with voters particularly concerned that generous labor contracts lead to tax increases. Image Outside a school in Dorchester, John R. Connolly participated in a rally on Sunday. Credit Katherine Taylor for The New York Times Mr. Walsh’s ties to labor — he rose through the ranks of Laborers Local 223 to become head of the Building and Construction Trades Council of the Metropolitan District — have long been an issue in the race. As a lawmaker, he has sponsored union-friendly legislation, sometimes with unions helping him write the bills, and he favored a measure to strip the City Council of the authority to approve or reject arbitration awards for the police and firefighters. He has sought to counteract these concerns by casting himself as someone who can talk to unions because he has their trust. “I can sit down with the firefighters and get a good contract,” Mr. Walsh told voters at a Hyde Park ice cream shop on Saturday. “We can sit down and have a mutual respect for one another and have some tough conversations but get to yes.” Mr. Walsh said that as mayor, he would not worry that he would be their captive. “I’m running for mayor not to negotiate contracts,” he said. His bigger concern is how to close the achievement gap in the face of dwindling state and federal dollars. If his ties to labor have turned off some voters, they have helped with others. Mr. Connolly had been forecast to win the preliminary election in September against 11 other candidates, but Mr. Walsh, backed by a strong field operation of union workers, took first place. “There’s a lot of anger in Connolly’s words,” Jeffrey Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University, said of the candidate’s attack on outside money. “He didn’t anticipate that labor would see the Boston mayor’s race as an opportunity to flex its muscle.” He said that Mr. Connolly initially sought to frame the race as a contest between the Old Boston and the New Boston, with the Old representing racial strife and outmoded ways of doing things and the New being a majority-minority city and an innovative approach to government and the economy. Early on, Mr. Connolly often said he wanted to make City Hall as consumer friendly as an Apple store. “He was happy to let Walsh have the union support because he thought it would backfire — that it would tarnish Walsh as part of the Old Boston,” Mr. Berry said. “But it has backfired on Connolly because of the manpower that labor has provided.”

Boston
Labor Unions
Mayoral races
Martin J Walsh
John R Connolly
Thomas M Menino
Campaign finance


In Hospital Scrubs and Officer’s Blues, a Kinship

Abstract: Herman Yan remembers one of the first things anyone told him about Kings County Hospital Center after he became a police officer in Brooklyn. “My sergeant said to me: ‘If I get shot, don’t bring me anywhere else. Bring me to Kings County,’ ” Officer Yan said. Dozens of times over the next two years, Officer Yan’s work brought him through the sliding glass doors into the overlit clamor of Kings County’s emergency room, one of the busiest in the city. Sitting in East Flatbush at the heart of some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods, the Kings County emergency room is in many ways an extension of the local station house, and vice versa. Both are chaotic places where people complain, stagger, bleed, soil themselves and wait, often impatiently, for attention from someone in uniform. Frequent guests at one place often turn up at the other. Occasionally, the Kings County hospital, a forbidding-looking castle of health care that sees about 100,000 emergency room patients a year, is itself a crime scene. And all too often over the years, it has been the place where familiar figures in blue are carried in on stretchers. Between the local police and emergency workers at the hospital, said Dr. Robert S. Kurtz, a director of trauma surgery at Kings County, “there is a kinship. You do develop relationships.” Last Monday, Officer Yan was brought into the Kings County emergency room with a bullet wound in his left arm. He and his partner, Officer Russel Timoshenko, had pulled over a stolen sport utility vehicle, and its occupants opened fire on them. Officer Yan was recovering at home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, but Officer Timoshenko, who was shot in the throat and mouth, died yesterday at the hospital. The three men who the police said were in the car have been arrested. Officers Yan and Timoshenko were stationed in the hospital’s home precinct, the 71st, whose members are particularly dear to the staff. “With these people from the 71st and the 67th, we see a lot of them,” Dr. Kurtz said. “Of the ones I know personally, I would be as horrified if they were injured as if they were in my family.” Officer Yan, speaking by phone on Friday, said that he was sent to Kings County on the job at least once a week. “For anything,” he said. “Even a mother that reports their child missing, after we search their building, we’ll call in and say, ‘Sarge, is it O.K. if we swing by the hospital and see if she’s there?’ ” While Officer Yan said he had not become particularly close to anyone in the emergency room — “I’m not great with the nurses, but I recognize their faces” — he said he felt welcome every time he walked in. “They’re always very friendly with us,” Officer Yan said. The camaraderie between big-city police officers and nurses, forged in the heat of trauma, is of course a staple of television dramas and movies like “Hill Street Blues” and “Fort Apache, the Bronx.” Tom Rowe, a longtime police officer in Queens who became an emergency room nurse and now trains hospital workers on Long Island, said the cliché was well grounded in reality. Police officers are often able to provide emergency room staff with crucial information about the people they bring in. “When I have police come in from the scene,” he said, “if there’s a motor vehicle accident, I can find out where the damage to the vehicle was, the speed the car was traveling; then, as a clinician, I can get a better idea of the kinds of injuries I’ll find.” But it is more than that, he said. “Basically, you’re allies,” Mr. Rowe said. “You depend on each other.” As a result, an injured officer might be “up-triaged a little bit” at the hospital, he said. He added: “That’s a respect, a professional courtesy. They don’t disregard the patients that are there, but you get a quicker look.” Certainly, the Kings County emergency room is no stranger to the swirl of adrenaline and action that accompanies the injury of an officer in the line of duty. In 2004, two veteran detectives from the 67th Precinct who were shot in East Flatbush spent their dying moments in the emergency room. “The officers looked bad, but the paramedics were working them real good, pumping their chests hard,” The Daily News quoted a hospital security guard as saying. “There was blood all over the stretchers, and other cops were yelling, ‘Hurry, hurry, rush him, rush him!’ ” In 2005, Officer Dillon Stewart of the 70th Precinct was taken to the hospital after he was shot nearby. In the emergency room, a dozen doctors and nurses went to work on him. One doctor took the officer’s heart in his hands and gently clapped it until it began to beat again, though Officer Stewart, too, eventually died. And in a terrifying episode in 1994, a prisoner being treated at the hospital jumped off an examining table, wrestled away a correction officer’s revolver, shot another officer and briefly took a 7-year-old hostage before the first officer shot him dead. Last Wednesday, in the gap between Monday’s police shooting and Officer Timoshenko’s death, it was just another night in the Kings County emergency room. The bleary-eyed injured held towels or gauze to their wounds while they waited. A police officer walked into the waiting room, thumbs jammed in his belt, looking beat. His face brightened a little when he saw a nurse in orange scrubs. “Hey, baby, how you doing?” she shouted almost maternally across the room. “Oh, not bad, not bad,” the officer said, half yawning. “Come here,” the nurse said. “Let me give you some love.” Yesterday afternoon, at a news conference shortly after Officer Timoshenko died, Dr. Kurtz emerged from the hospital. He stood beside Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly to address the latest loss. “This is a really tragic case,” Dr. Kurtz said, “one that affected us emotionally as well as professionally.” He switched modes briefly to describe in clinical detail how the bullets transected Officer Timoshenko’s spinal cord just beneath his brain. Then he spoke of Officer Timoshenko’s family. “For his mother to have lost her son like that,” he said, choking up, “it brings tears to my eyes.” The trauma surgeon stood beside the police commissioner for a few more questions. Then they wheeled away from the cameras and walked back into the hospital.

Hospitals
Kings County Hospital
Police
Attacks on Police
Timoshenko Russel
Yan Herman


Jason Pierre-Paul to Return to the Giants

Abstract: The Giants’ pass rush has been one of the worst in the N.F.L. this season, ranked 31st in a 32-team league. But the defensive front line will soon — or relatively soon — be getting a boost from Jason Pierre-Paul, who has kept his distance from the team since an unexplained Fourth of July fireworks accident mangled his right hand. The Giants and Pierre-Paul, whose right index finger was amputated, came to terms on a new contract Tuesday night that will put the player back on the practice field. When Pierre-Paul, a onetime rising star at defensive end who has not worn football gear in about 10 months, will be ready to play in a game is unknown, but Nov. 29, after the Giants’ bye week, is a reasonable guess. The Giants have been granted a two-game roster exemption for Pierre-Paul, which means the earliest he could be expected to play is Nov. 15 against the New England Patriots. Pierre-Paul, 26, will need a considerable amount of time to get back into football shape and to determine how he is going to play a fierce position where hand fighting is crucial to success while missing a finger and recovering from unspecified injuries to his thumb and middle finger. Pierre-Paul also has to learn the new defense installed in the off-season by the coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. “I’m very excited to be back,” Pierre-Paul said in a statement released by the team. “I’m getting ready to do what I have to do. I’ve been training down in South Florida with my trainer. Every day, I got up at 7:30 and lifted weights, I’ve been doing what I have to do to stay in football shape.” Asked how he felt, Pierre-Paul answered: “I feel younger.” On his Twitter account at about the same time, Pierre-Paul referred to his ordeal after the accident as “a humbling experience.” Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said: “It is just good to have Jason back in our building. You can feel his energy and his desire to overcome what he has had to endure since July. His spirit is undeniable, and he is anxious to get to work.” The terms of Pierre-Paul’s new one-year contract were not immediately known, but it will be worth substantially less than the nearly $15 million he was set to earn had he signed the contract due him when the Giants designated him as the team’s franchise player in the spring. Pierre-Paul did not sign that contract and has been in limbo ever since the accident. With Pierre-Paul likely to play six or seven games this year, his new salary will be reduced accordingly, with the contract laden with incentives based on his production. How much of an assist Pierre-Paul, a two-time Pro Bowl selection, can give the Giants’ defense is unclear. His performance as a pass rusher had been declining in the last two seasons. Pierre-Paul was strong against the run, but he was notably less productive getting to the quarterback against top-notch teams with quality offensive lines. But on a team that has only nine sacks in seven games this season, Pierre-Paul could lend credibility to a defensive unit even if he is just a fraction of the player who had 42 sacks in his first five seasons with the Giants, including 16 ½ in 2011. Before this week, the Giants had not seen Pierre-Paul since Labor Day, when they deemed his rehabilitating right hand unfit to withstand the rigors of pro football. Monday, the Giants doctors and executives examined his hand again and came to a different conclusion. Throughout the summer, Pierre-Paul’s whereabouts and the condition of his hand have been uncertain. Another unpredictable episode will unfold as Pierre-Paul tries to revive a once glittering career. “I’m just here to help the team out,” Pierre-Paul said. “I’m blessed to play the game, and I’m excited about the opportunity to play again.”

Jason Pierre-Paul
Giants
Fireworks
Football
Sports injury
Accidents and Safety