FIFA Considering Extra Officials, Not Video Review

Abstract: FIFA on Monday continued to resist calls for goal-line technology, a day after match officials failed to see Frank Lampard’s shot go over the line in England’s 4-1 loss to Germany. “I have no authority to comment on refereeing decisions,” Nicolas Maingot, a FIFA spokesman, said in response to questions about whether soccer’s world governing body would adopt sensors or video review to determine if balls crossed the goal line. He noted that matters pertaining to the rules of the game were handled by the International Football Association Board. FIFA holds four votes on the eight-member board. The other members are the sport’s founding federations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Six votes are needed to alter an existing rule or install a new one, making FIFA’s agreement essential to any proposed changes in the rules. Maingot said FIFA would consider adding two extra officials who would act as goal judges, one at each end of the field, a system that the Europa League — a major European club competition — used last season. But he echoed the statement made Sunday by Jérôme Valcke, FIFA’s general secretary, that electronic review was not an option. Valcke made the statement despite a call for goal-line technology to prevent missed calls like the one on Lampard’s shot — ranging from the video reviews used to detect goals in the N.H.L. and home runs in baseball; to the electronic Hawk-eye system used in tennis; to a proposed sensor system to detect whether a soccer ball crosses the goal line. “We didn’t say you could have a zero-fault system in the World Cup,” Valcke said. “Additional assistants could happen in 2014 to make sure these kind of things are not happening in refereeing. “It doesn’t mean the use of video, that is definitely not on the table today, but one thing we are discussing is two additional assistants to support referees to make decision-making easier and to have more eyes helping him to make such decisions.” Sunil Gulati, the head of the United States Soccer Federation, said he was willing to have Major League Soccer experiment with changes that could help reduce errors by on-field officials. “We’d be happy to do some trial cases, not rules of the game or something like that, but with an additional referee or technology,” Gulati said Monday. The video review systems used in other sports cause a delay in the game that can disrupt the flow and spontaneity of the action — one reason cited by the FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, for his resistance to video review. But certain electronic systems, like the proposed sensor system, could enable referees to make near-instantaneous decisions on goal-line plays. David Cameron, the new British prime minister, came out in favor of goal-line technology. “I’m a keen follower of cricket and tennis, and I think the third umpire has been a great thing, and the machines that bleep at Wimbledon are quite handy, too,” Cameron said Sunday after the Germany-England match. “Maybe that’s something that football could now have a look at.” Maingot also said that FIFA would control the big-screen video replays shown at World Cup stadiums in reaction to another controversy Sunday, when Carlos Tévez’s first goal for Argentina against Mexico was shown to be clearly offside. Mexico’s players gathered around match officials pointing to the stadium screens in a vain effort to have the goal nullified. Maingot said that showing the replay on the stadium video screens was “a clear mistake” that “will be corrected.” ANOTHER LOSS FOR ENGLAND As if being undressed by Germany in a 4-1 defeat was not bad enough, some English players had clothing and other articles stolen from their hotel rooms. Members of the cleaning staff at the luxury hotel where England stayed in Rustenburg stole uniform shirts, a medal and even underwear, the police said. A police spokeswoman said only a small amount of cash was taken — about $750. The thieves instead seemed interested in souvenirs, like a United States team jersey an England player received in the customary postmatch trade. (AP)

FIFA
Video Review
England
Soccer
World Cup (Soccer)
World Cup 2010 (Soccer)
Officiating (Sports)
Robberies and Thefts


Samsung’s Uneven Handling of Galaxy Note 7 Fires Angers Chinese

Abstract: TIANJIN, China — Zhang Sitong was saving a friend’s phone number on his Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphone when it started to vibrate and smoke. He threw it on the ground and told his friend to start filming. Two employees from Samsung Electronics showed up at his house later that day, he said, offering a new Note 7 and about $900 in compensation on the condition that he keep the video private. Mr. Zhang angrily refused. Only weeks before, even as Samsung recalled more than two million Note 7s in the United States and elsewhere, the company had reassured him and other Chinese customers that the phone was safe. “They said there was no problem with the phones in China. That’s why I bought a Samsung,” said Mr. Zhang, a 23-year-old former firefighter. “This is an issue of deception. They are cheating Chinese consumers.” Samsung, already reeling from its embarrassing and expensive decision last week to kill the Note 7 , has a particularly vexing problem in China. On Tuesday, China’s powerful state-run broadcaster, China Central Television, or CCTV, criticized the way Samsung tested its phones and asked whether its claims that the phones were safe and reliable were “fabricated falsehoods.” “If Samsung continues to violate the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese consumers and continues to refuse to make public the samples used in its testing process as well as the process itself, who would be able to help Chinese consumers find the truth?” the CCTV report said. The South Korean company is paying a price for treating China differently. Samsung initially said the Chinese version of the Note 7 had a different battery and was safe. But last week, after reports in China of phones catching fire, it finally recalled the Note 7 there before it scrapped the phone globally. “The brand has been damaged already,” said Di Jin, research manager in China for IDC, a technology research firm. “It will be really hard for Samsung to regain its market share in the near future.” In a statement, Samsung said it “would like to apologize for any misunderstandings this may have caused the Chinese consumers due to an unclear communication in the process.” It said its quality control was the same in all countries. “To Samsung, China is one of the most important markets and a crucial destination for foreign investment,” it said. “Samsung never holds a double standard against them.” Samsung was once the top phone maker in China, which is now the world’s largest smartphone market. It enjoyed a reputation for quality in a country weary of cheap products, as well as the benefit of a Korean name in a country that adores Korean pop music and culture. Image Lei Jun, chief of Xiaomi, one of the local mobile companies that have taken market share from Samsung, once a leader in China. Credit China Network/Reuters But Samsung has become the latest global brand to get hit by rising Chinese rivals that compete on quality as well as price. Samsung has lost market share in China to Huawei Technologies , Xiaomi , Oppo Electronics and other local companies making competitive gadgets with advanced features. The South Korean company’s market share dropped to less than 7 percent in the second quarter of this year from nearly 19 percent in 2013, according to IDC. The treatment of Chinese consumers by foreign firms is an issue that resonates in a country where nationalistic sentiment runs deep. The state news media has vilified foreign brands such as McDonald’s, KFC, Apple and Starbucks for what they perceive as unequal treatment of Chinese customers. “Foreign companies who appear to employ any less favorable policy for the China market can quickly find themselves waist-deep in a P.R. quagmire,” said Mark Natkin, the managing director of Marbridge Consulting, an advisory firm based in Beijing. “Those who have navigated the Chinese market most successfully are the companies that have understood they can’t win every battle,” he said, “and that sometimes, to maintain a happy relationship, it’s better just to say: ‘I’m sorry. I love you.’ ” The official news media in China has become increasingly critical of both foreign and domestic companies as China’s consumer culture has grown. The push culminates each year in March, when CCTV takes on companies for their practices as part of Consumer Rights Day in a prime-time special complete with song-and-dance routines. Foreign brands have a mixed track record dealing with attacks from the official Chinese news media. Apple apologized after CCTV criticized its warranty policies but went on to enjoy strong sales in the following years. Starbucks continues to move lattes there at a brisk pace despite CCTV’s criticism of its pricing three years ago. But KFC’s parent, Yum Brands, took a hit after CCTV scrutinized its suppliers. Mr. Zhang, a salesman in the city of Fushun, in northeastern China, was a Samsung loyalist. He has owned four smartphones made by the company, in part because of the pen-type stylus that comes with its Note models. After he rejected the offer from Samsung, Mr. Zhang quit his job and hit the road. He joined up with Hui Renjie, another man who said his Note 7 had also blown up, to visit laboratories to figure out the problem with their phones. The trip and the testing were paid for by CCTV, which featured the two in Tuesday’s report. In the report, CCTV said an independent lab could not determine the cause of the fire that consumed Mr. Zhang’s phone. It said an external heat source was not responsible for the fire that destroyed Mr. Hui’s phone. Mr. Hui said Samsung had declined his repeated requests to conduct an investigation into the cause of his phone catching on fire in his presence and had ignored his calls. According to Mr. Hui, a representative from the e-commerce site JD.com, where he had bought his phone, told him that Samsung had offered to compensate him for his burned phone and laptop, which he had ruined after throwing his phone on it. Mr. Hui, in response, said, “I told JD to pass this message to Samsung: ‘Go to hell.’ ”

Samsung
China
Smartphone
Samsung Electronics
China Central Television
Recalls and Bans


Microsoft Lashes Out at European Regulators

Abstract: BRUSSELS, Feb. 15 - In a stinging rebuke to the European Commission, Microsoft insisted Wednesday that it had complied with the commission's antitrust requirements and sharply criticized the way the regulator had conducted its compliance review. Microsoft, facing possible fines of 2 million euros a day, submitted a 75-page response to the commission, Europe's top antitrust authority, just hours before a midnight deadline. The company said it had met the requirements of the commission's antitrust ruling of March 2004, and accused the commission of obfuscation. "The commission repeatedly refused to clearly define its requirements and concerns, despite repeated requests and accommodations by Microsoft," the company said in a statement Wednesday. "The company's response documents numerous ways in which the commission had ignored key information and denied Microsoft due process in defending itself," the company added. In the ruling two years ago, the commission branded Microsoft a monopoly abuser, ordered it to change its business practices in Europe and fined it 497 million euros for using the ubiquity of Windows to extend its dominance to other sectors of the software market, like server systems. The commission said in a statement Wednesday that it would consider Microsoft's response carefully. "It is the commission that decides if Microsoft is in compliance with the ruling, not Microsoft," said Jonathan Todd, the commission's spokesman on competition matters. On Dec. 22, the commission said Microsoft had not yet complied with its ruling. The agency said that "Microsoft had not yet provided complete and accurate specifications of the interoperability information which it is obliged to disclose." Microsoft, however, said it had filed the technical documents to the commission by the Dec. 15 deadline. Those documents answered the remaining questions the commission had on the company's compliance, Microsoft said. The commission, however, said it received nothing from Microsoft until after its public statement on the company. "This documentation was actually supplied on Dec. 26," the commission said. Microsoft insists it has complied with the 2004 ruling, which among other things ordered the company to reveal technical details about the Windows operating system that would allow rival server software programs to work as well with Windows as Microsoft's own server software does. "Microsoft has complied fully with the technical documentation requirements," the company said Wednesday. An independent monitor approved by Microsoft who oversees the company's compliance with the ruling found, however, that the documents provided by Microsoft last fall did not meet the commission's requirements. The monitor, Neil Barrett, a computer science professor at Cranfield University in England, told the commission last fall that he could not use Microsoft's instructions to make rival server software comparable to Microsoft's. On Wednesday, Microsoft also complained that the commission failed to inform it of shortfalls in its response in time. "The commission waited many months before informing Microsoft that it believed changes were necessary to the technical documents, and then gave Microsoft only a few weeks to make extensive revisions," the company said in its filing to the commission. Microsoft has requested an oral hearing with antitrust officials and rivals in the software industry. The hearing will probably be held some time in the next two to three weeks, the commission said. After the hearing, the commission will consult with national antitrust regulators from the 25 member states of the European Union. At that point, if it still believes Microsoft has not complied with the 2004 ruling, it will issue another ruling against the company, fining it 2 million euros a day retroactively to Dec. 15, the date Microsoft was supposed to have submitted all the necessary information.

EUROPE
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
EUROPEAN UNION
MICROSOFT CORP
FINES (PENALTIES)
COMPUTER SOFTWARE
ANTITRUST ACTIONS AND LAWS
SUITS AND LITIGATION
COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET


Using the ‘Public’ Network Option

Abstract: Q. I’ve recently moved to a hotel complex that offers free Wi-Fi to residents, guests and health club members who use its facilities. The network password is known to all who come in the door. How secure is my computer if I choose the “Public Network” setting in Windows 7? A. The “Public” network-location setting has the built-in Windows Firewall program block certain programs and services from running when you are connected. The setting also turns off file sharing and the network discovery feature that lets you see other computers and devices on the network — and for those other computers and devices to see you . While the “Public” option does offer the most security available within Windows 7, it is still good to be careful what you do when connected to the hotel’s network — especially if the password is known to everyone using the facilities. Keep in mind that you are not acquainted with all the other network users, nor do you really know the full security practices used by the hotel itself. Before connecting, make sure your Windows 7 system is fully up to date with the latest security patches. If you are running a third-party Internet security suite like Norton or AVG, check that it has all the latest updates too. Connecting to the Wi-Fi network through a virtual private network (V.P.N.) program that encrypts your Internet data traffic adds another layer of protection. If you do not have access to a V.P.N. through work or home, services like Hotspot Shield , OpenVPN or ProXPN are available. F-Secure’s Freedome or Avast SecureLine VPN apps are among those that bring a V.P.N. to mobile devices. If you do not add your own security measures, try to avoid doing anything on the hotel’s network that involves passwords to financial institutions or other accounts that are linked to credit cards. Microsoft has tips at bit.ly/1dthNqg and (specifically for online transactions) at bit.ly/1rEayo9 . Finding the Time With iPhone Photos Q. Is it possible to see date and time stamps on photos taken on iPhone? A. Several inexpensive programs in the App Store can add date and time stamps to the photos in your iPhone’s Camera Roll, and some can add location information as well. Date 1 or All , Context Camera and DateCam are among the many choices. If you have it, Apple’s iPhoto app for iPhone displays a selected picture’s date and time when you tap the “i” icon in the toolbar; other third-party photo apps have a similar feature. You can also view dates and times on picture file if you import them into the computer and view each image’s properties with a program like Picasa or the desktop version of iPhoto. TIP OF THE WEEK If you like to relax by watching YouTube videos in your computer’s web browser at home (or work), a few handy keyboard shortcuts help you control the player window without having to fumble for the mouse. For example, when you have the video window active on the screen, tapping the keyboard’s space bar pauses (or resumes playing) the clip. You can also use keys to jump around in a selected video. Tapping the left or right arrow keys skips a few seconds backward and forward through the clip. Pressing the numbers on the top row of the keyboard moves you to a corresponding percentage within the video’s total playtime: Press the 5 key to jump to the 50 percent playback mark of the clip, 3 to go to the 30 percent or 8 to go to 80 percent of the clip’s total time. Want to play the whole thing again? Just press the 0 (zero) key to go back to the beginning. J.D. BIERSDORFER

iPhone
YouTube
Computer security
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Photography
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming


Pennsylvania: Litter Box Odor Remains a Mystery

Abstract: New Castle residents are hoping tests on air samples can explain why their city smells like cat urine. Residents of the city, about 45 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, began noticing the smell on Nov. 1. The smell is still lingering near a sewage treatment plant in the Mahoningtown neighborhood. A spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said monitoring had not detected any hazardous substances in the air. But tests on air samples to determine the cause of the smell will take weeks to complete. The department is also testing wastewater.


Nadal Ends Federer’s Reign at Wimbledon

Abstract: WIMBLEDON, England — No man had beaten Roger Federer at Wimbledon since 2002. But in near darkness, one of the greatest tennis matches ever played concluded in the Wimbledon final Sunday with Roger Federer hitting a short forehand into the net and with a victorious Rafael Nadal flat on his back with camera flashes illuminating his drained and delighted face. Nadal had come the closest to ending Federer’s streak at Wimbledon in last year’s final, pushing his friendly rival to five sets before ending up in tears in the locker room as Federer equaled Bjorn Borg’s modern men’s record with his fifth straight title. Last year’s emotional tussle immediately took its place among the best Wimbledon finals, but this five-set classic — played on a rainy, gusty day — was better yet. At 4 hours 48 minutes, it was the longest singles final in Wimbledon’s 131-year history and did not finish until 9:16 p.m. local time. “The most important thing is to win the title,” said Nadal, who won, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7. “After that, you think about winning against the No. 1, probably the best player in history or close, and the fact it was so dramatic. But it’s one of the most powerful feelings I’ve had in my life.” By the end, as hard as it was to see, the top-seeded Federer and the second-seeded Nadal had produced so much brilliant tennis under pressure that it seemed the most normal thing in the world that Federer smacked yet another ace to get out of trouble or that Nadal hunted down yet another sharply angled ground stroke and ripped an off-balance passing shot for a winner. The capacity crowd at Centre Court, which had not diminished through two rain delays, continually roared with delight or surprise and took turns chanting each combatant’s first name, which is not the way these things usually work at proper Wimbledon. “Probably my hardest loss, by far; I mean it’s not much harder than this right now,” Federer said later, his voice muted and his eyes red. The loss kept Federer from matching the men’s record of six consecutive Wimbledon titles set by Britain ’s William Renshaw in the 19th century. Federer had won 65 straight matches on grass. “I’m disappointed, and I’m crushed,” Federer said. “He played a super match, and I’m sure it was a great match to watch and to play, but it’s all over now. I need some time.” Federer, 26, earned himself more time on Centre Court by saving two match points in the fourth-set tie breaker. He was later only two points from victory himself with Nadal serving at 4-5, 30-all in the fifth set. But Nadal, like his opponent, has a remarkable will as well as a remarkable topspin forehand. And although Federer kept chipping and ripping away at Nadal’s service games, he broke him just once in the match, and that was early in the second set. In all, Federer squandered 12 of 13 break-point opportunities. Nadal, a Spaniard whose serve was once considered his weakness, converted 4 of his 13 chances against Federer, none more important than the break that came when Federer, serving at 7-7 in the fifth, took a huge cut at a short forehand and knocked it just long. Nadal, seldom short of positive energy, leapt with delight and hustled to his chair to prepare to serve for the championship. It was 9:10 p.m. in London when he walked to the baseline, and the light was so dim at the end of this intermittently rainy day that both players were concerned. “I almost couldn’t see who I was playing,” Federer said, shaking his head. Nadal agreed. “In the last game, I didn’t see nothing,” he said. “Was unbelievable. I thought we have to stop.” Wimbledon’s organizers have pushed their sessions to the limit this year, with other matches finishing at 9:30 p.m. Not finishing on Sunday would have forced the tournament to extend to Monday, with all the logistical challenges that would have entailed. “It would have been brutal for fans, for media, for us, for everybody to come back tomorrow, but what are you going to do?” Federer said. “It’s rough on me now, obviously, to lose the biggest tournament in the world over maybe a bit of light.” But Nadal still had to hold serve one more time to get his hands (and teeth) on the gold-plated Challenge Cup. And although Federer did save a third match point at 40-30 with a bold backhand return that Nadal could not handle, Federer could not save the last, which came two points later. As soon as Federer’s forehand hit the net, Nadal dropped to the grass as if he had been hurled there, his racket flying out of his left hand. Among those standing and cheering in the front row of the Royal Box were Manuel Santana and Borg. Nadal, a 22-year-old from Majorca , joined them both on Sunday by becoming the first man to complete the grueling French Open-Wimbledon double in the same year since Borg in 1980 and also becoming the first Spanish man to win here since Santana in 1966. After four straight titles in Paris , Nadal finally had a Grand Slam title on a surface other than clay. Nadal wanted to share his victory with his family, and after shaking Federer’s hand, he climbed into the players’ box to hug his parents, Sebastian and Ana Maria, and his coach and uncle, Toni. Nadal then became the first Wimbledon champion to walk across the sloped roof of the commentary booths to the royal box —flashbulbs lighting his way — to shake the hand of Spanish Crown Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia. As is his custom, Nadal did not strike a triumphant tone in victory. He has long been deeply respectful of Federer, even as he has built a 12-6 career record against him and beaten him in the last three French Open finals. “He’s still the best,” Nadal said. “He’s still five-time champion here. Right now I have one, so for me, it’s a very, very important day.” Federer, who had not dropped a set until the final, will still be ranked No. 1 on Monday, but this has clearly been Nadal’s season, with victories in two of the first three Grand Slam tournaments. Federer came into 2008 hoping to match Pete Sampras ’s record of 14 Grand Slam singles titles. He is still holding at 12, with his only tournament victories this year coming in minor tour events. Federer certainly responded like a champion to Nadal’s pressure on Sunday, and he also dispelled concerns that — after winning just four games against Nadal in last month’s lopsided French Open final — he would be unable to stay with the physically imposing Nadal on grass. But Federer said losing big on clay was a pinprick compared with the sledgehammer blow of losing by so little here. “There’s not even a comparison,” he said. “This is a disaster. Paris was nothing in comparison.” Down by two sets to love, Federer worked his way back into contention, weathering an 81-minute rain delay late in the third set, and then controlling the ensuing tie breaker with four aces and a service winner. In the fourth-set tie breaker, Nadal took control and led, 5-2, with two serves to come, but instead of closing out the match, he played tentatively for the first time, double-faulting and then hitting a backhand weakly in the net. “I got nervous,” Nadal said. It happens, even to indefatigable Spaniards, but Federer showed no nerves on the two match points soon to come. He saved the first at 6-7 with another service winner. He saved the second at 7-8 with a magnificent, pressure-proof backhand passing-shot winner down the line, after Nadal jerked Federer wide with a forehand approach shot. But Nadal hardly looked like a broken man as they headed to a fifth set. “How can you not be 100 percent concentrated with sky-high motivation?” he said. The sky was still a problem, however. Rain drove the players off court once more early in the fifth set with the score 2-2, deuce on Federer’s serve. But while a Monday finish was looking increasingly likely, the skies cleared, the tarp came off and the protagonists resumed play 28 minutes after they had stopped. They were able to finish just in time for the changing of the guard to be completed. Not that Nadal is prepared to see it quite like that. “I don’t feel like the No. 1,” he said. “I’m not. I don’t like to feel that I’m something when I’m not.” But there could be no doubt as he cried on court for a very different reason from last year — that Nadal now knows how it feels to be Wimbledon champion.

Roger Federer
Tennis
Rafael Nadal
Wimbledon Tennis,Wimbledon


McCain Defeats Romney in Florida Vote

Abstract: MIAMI — Senator John McCain defeated Mitt Romney on Tuesday to win the delegate-rich Florida primary, solidifying his transformation to the Republican front-runner and dealing a devastating blow to the presidential hopes of Rudolph W. Giuliani . Republican officials said after Mr. Giuliani’s distant third-place finish that he was likely to endorse Mr. McCain, possibly as early as Wednesday in California. They said the two candidates’ staffs were discussing the logistics of an endorsement. The results were a decisive turning point in the Republican race, effectively winnowing the field to Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney, two candidates with very different backgrounds who have little affection for one another but share a similar challenge in winning over elements of the party suspicious of their ideological credentials. While most of the attention in Florida was on the Republicans, Democratic voters gave Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton a victory in a virtually uncontested race. The Democratic Party had stripped the state of its delegates as a punishment for moving its primary earlier in the year, and the leading candidates refrained from campaigning there. Mr. McCain’s victory showed he could win among Republican voters. Florida allows only registered Republicans to vote in its primary, unlike New Hampshire and South Carolina, where Mr. McCain’s victories earlier this month were fueled by independent voters. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Mr. McCain had 36 percent of the vote, Mr. Romney 31 percent, Mr. Giuliani 15 percent and Mike Huckabee 14 percent. “Our victory might not have reached landslide proportions,” Mr. McCain said, “but it is sweet nonetheless.” After a campaign in which he was often on the attack, Mr. McCain went on to praise his rivals, especially Mr. Giuliani, who he said had “invested his heart and soul in this primary, and who conducted himself with all the qualities of the exceptional American leader he truly is.” Mr. Romney made clear that he would go all-out in the coming week, as the presidential race builds toward its biggest day so far, a set of more than 20 contests across the country on Tuesday. He and Mr. McCain fought an increasingly bitter battle in Florida, and they now seem likely to take their messages to the national stage, with Mr. Romney trying to portray Mr. McCain as out of step with his party on critical issues and ill-equipped to deal with the economic downturn and with Mr. McCain suggesting that Mr. Romney’s principles yield too easily to the political winds and that he cannot be trusted on national security. The meaning of Mr. McCain’s victory starts with the trove of 57 delegates it brings him, the bounty of a winner-take-all contest and the biggest prize of the campaign to date. But it also gives him a chance to start persuading his party to put aside the deep internal divisions that have been exposed by the campaign and begin coalescing around him. Mr. Romney was having none of it. He continued to call for change in Washington and got in what sounded like another swipe at Mr. McCain when he said America needed a president who had “actually had a job in the real economy.” Surveys of voters leaving polling places painted a picture of how successful each campaign was. They found that Mr. McCain not only did significantly better than Mr. Romney among voters who listed the war as their top concern, but also did better than him with voters who said they were most concerned about the economy. Mr. Romney did significantly better than Mr. McCain among voters who said they were most concerned about immigration . Both candidates now face the challenge of rallying the fractured party establishment and grass-roots conservatives behind them — or at least not around their opponent. Mr. McCain, of Arizona, emerges from Florida with an opportunity to get back to where he was at the beginning of this roller-coaster of an election season: the anointed front-runner. Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor whose early goals of winning Iowa and New Hampshire were thwarted, wanted to show he could prevail in a competitive election somewhere outside his native Michigan so he could battle on in the week to come. But the outcome could be decisive for Mr. Giuliani, who suffered lopsided losses in all the early voting states this year and had staked his candidacy on a strong showing in Florida, where he campaigned more than anywhere else and outspent his rivals on television advertisements over the last month. Exit polls showed that Mr. Giuliani did not even have a clear edge among voters who were most concerned about his signature issue, terrorism; incomplete returns Tuesday night showed him narrowly finishing ahead of Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who barely campaigned in Florida. Mr. Giuliani, speaking in Orlando, thanked his supporters and talked about his campaign in the past tense but did not drop out of the race. “The responsibility of leadership doesn’t end with a single campaign,” he said in a serious, gracious speech that he leavened with a humorous asides. “If you believe in a cause, it goes on and you continue to fight for it, and we will. I’m proud that we chose to stay positive and to run a campaign of ideas.” Surveys of voters leaving the polls found that nearly half of Republican voters listed the economy as the most important issue in exit polls, while 21 percent said terrorism, 16 percent immigration and 14 percent the war in Iraq. Four in 10 Republican voters said illegal immigrants working in the United States should be deported, while about 3 in 10 said they should be allowed to stay as temporary workers, and the same number said they should be offered a chance to apply for citizenship. Mr. McCain was supported by a plurality of those who favored citizenship, and Mr. Romney by those who favored deportation. Hispanics, who made up more than one-tenth of the Republican voters, said they were more inclined to favor a guest-worker program over deportation. Forty-three percent of them said illegal immigrants should be allowed to remain in the United States as temporary workers, while one-third said they should be offered the opportunity to apply for citizenship. Only one-fifth of Hispanic Republicans said they favored deporting illegal immigrants. Mr. McCain, who last spring supported the immigration proposal that would have created a guest-worker program and a path toward citizenship for illegal immigrants, won roughly half the Hispanic vote. Mr. Giuliani, who strongly courted Cuban-Americans in the Miami area, won about one-quarter of the Hispanic vote, and Mr. Romney, who took the hardest line on illegal immigration, finished a distant third. Mr. McCain may have been helped with some Hispanic voters by the endorsement he gained last week from Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida. An even bigger surprise endorsement, by the popular Republican governor, Charlie Crist, also appeared to help him. More than 4 in 10 voters said Mr. Crist’s endorsement of Mr. McCain was important to them, and just over half of them voted for Mr. McCain. The exit poll was conducted throughout the state by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool with 1,505 Republican primary voters. To take into account the large number of early and absentee voters in Florida, Edison/Mitofsky conducted a pre-election telephone poll and included those results with the opinions of the voters exiting polls on Tuesday. Mr. McCain, who ran a more negative campaign than usual against Mr. Romney in the last few days, praised Mr. Romney and his supporters in his victory speech, saying, “The margin that separated us tonight surely isn’t big enough for me to brag about or for you to despair.”

Florida
Presidential Election of 2008
McCain John
Romney Mitt
Giuliani Rudolph W


La Masia, a Model for Cultivating Soccer Players

Abstract: BARCELONA, Spain — The stone farmhouse, built in the 18th century as a country estate, is now surrounded by modern stadiums, high-rise buildings and hotels in a leafy and upscale neighborhood here, but it continues to produce a bountiful harvest. The house, known as La Masia, is the symbolic home of Barcelona’s youth soccer academy, which helped develop eight of the team’s projected starters for Saturday’s match in London against Manchester United in the final of the European Champions League, the world’s most prestigious club tournament. Given Barcelona’s standing as one of soccer’s best and most attractive teams, La Masia has become an international model for the financial, athletic and social benefits of growing players on home soil. It differs from the standard American model of youth sports development, which is generally based in schools. And it differs, too, from the typical European soccer model, in which the best players often quit school around the age of 15 to devote their full attention to the sport. For instance, team officials said that a dozen players on Barcelona’s B team — as well as one of its stars, midfielder Andrés Iniesta — are taking college courses. “This surprises people,” Carles Folguera, the director of the residence at La Masia, said through an interpreter. “They think the players are here to play football and not to study. We prepare them for sport, but also to have another future if sport does not work out.” The success of Barcelona’s youth academy was never more evident than in 2010, when the graduates Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernández and Iniesta were the three finalists for FIFA’s Golden Ball award as the world’s top player. (Messi won for a second consecutive year.) Xavi, Iniesta and seven other players who won the World Cup for Spain developed in the academy. So did Pep Guardiola, Barcelona’s manager, and Guillermo Amor, a former star midfielder who is now the technical director of the youth academy. For one Barcelona player, Gerard Piqué, a central defender, affiliation with the club has been nearly lifelong. Piqué grew up five minutes from La Masia and Camp Nou, the Barcelona stadium. His grandfather was a member of Barcelona’s board of directors. After a stint with Manchester United, Piqué returned to his boyhood team in 2008. “Since I was a kid, I was a fan; I went to the stadium every week,” Piqué said. “It was a dream to play for Barcelona.” To have so many players spend much of their careers together enhances team unity, Piqué said. “It’s good for the atmosphere of the dressing room,” he said. “And there’s a lot of confidence. We can help each other as a friend, not only as a teammate. You can see this on the pitch — when we are in trouble that we work as a team and we fight to win.” Approximately 210 boys between the ages 7 and 18 are enrolled in Barcelona’s youth academy. A dozen players between 11 and 14 live in dormitory rooms at La Masia, which also includes a dining room, library, playroom and computer center. Forty-eight players between 15 and 18 live in rooms across the street at Camp Nou. Those who are from Barcelona live at home with their parents. So do some players who travel from other countries with their families. An 11-year-old, Ben Lederman from Southern California, has caught Barcelona’s attention. Some soccer Web sites have reported that Lederman is the first American accepted to the academy, but Amor said that not all details had been completed. Late next month, La Masia will close its dormitory, and all youth academy activities will be moved to Barcelona’s training center in the nearby village of Sant Joan Despi. The daily routine, though, will likely remain for the academy’s residents: During the week, they rise at 6:45 a.m., eat breakfast and leave for regular school in the city at 7:30. They attend classes from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., return to La Masia to eat, rest and attend mandatory study groups. Training is held from 7 to 8:45 p.m., followed by dinner and some free time. Lights out for the younger players is 10:30 p.m., 11 for older players. “Parents are giving us something they consider most valuable — their children — at a vulnerable age,” Folguera said. “It is important to show them the value of effort and humility. Talent alone does not work. You must be humble and a normal person, something that each parent of a certain level of dignity would be proud of.” Each player living at the academy is provided a laptop computer, Folguera said. On staff are cooks, nutritionists, a doctor, a psychologist, tutors and social directors who take the players on outings around the city. It can be an exhilarating but jarring experience for the boys to be separated from their families at a young age. Iniesta has talked about his homesickness upon arriving at La Masia at age 12 and of jostling with others to use a phone to call his parents. The pressure to succeed at such a young age can also be overwhelming. Piqué said he did not let himself think about playing for Barcelona’s first team until he turned 17. “It’s a really bad feeling when one day they say to you, ‘You have to leave,’ ” Piqué said. “So maybe it’s better not to think about it a lot. I saw a lot of friends of mine who were thinking to play in the first team, and then one day the club just says, ‘You don’t have the level to stay here.’ It’s a really difficult shock because you are really young.” From an economic standpoint, growing your own players is not so different from growing your own vegetables. It saves money at the market. In Barcelona’s case, this strategy has allowed it to be judicious in spending tens of millions of dollars in transfer fees, paid apart from salaries, to sign players from other teams. In 2009, Real Madrid spent $132 million just for the rights to forward Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United and another $94 million for the rights to the Brazilian playmaker Kaká from A.C. Milan. Since then, Madrid has failed to win the Spanish league, much less the Champions League. For Barcelona to have to pay transfer fees for such stars as Messi, Xavi and Iniesta at about the same time “would be impossible,” Folguera said. From an aesthetic standpoint, Barcelona grooms 8- and 9-year-old players to play its mesmerizing style of short, rhythmic passes. Especially for its younger players, learning to play with the ball is more important than winning. This is the opposite of the way many children in the United States learn soccer. In America, “the games are do or die,” said Claudio Reyna, a former captain of the United States national team who is now the youth technical director for U.S. Soccer, the national governing body. “At Barcelona, they are about educating players, and winning takes care of itself. I believe it makes an impact when players can develop in a calm and proper environment, not being judged on whether you win games all the time. They are just looking for players with soccer brains.” Patience has its rewards. In the end, though, Barcelona demands titles, not merely beautiful soccer. Young players must develop according to the club’s lofty standards, or they will be replaced. So while Xavi and Iniesta have spent their careers at Barcelona since boyhood, the average time spent living at the youth academy is three years, officials said. The majority of players must find another team or another pursuit. “Karl Malone and John Stockton played beautifully,” Folguera said, referring to the former stars of the Utah Jazz basketball team. “But they never won anything.”

La Masia
Soccer
Barcelona (Spain)
Barcelona (Soccer Team)


British Bank Northern Rock Plans to Increase Lending

Abstract: LONDON (Reuters) — Northern Rock, the state-owned bank, plans to increase its mortgage lending by up to £14 billion ($20 billion) over the next two years, a Treasury official in Britain said on Sunday. The plan to have Northern Rock lending again is part of a series of initiatives intended to get credit in Britain flowing after the economy shrank 1.5 percent in the final three months of 2008. “The government is implementing a new business strategy for Northern Rock that will see it make a significant return to the mortgage market,” the official said. Northern Rock was nationalized last year, becoming one of the first victims of the credit squeeze, when news that it had to seek emergency financing from the Bank of England led to Britain’s first bank run in more than a century. The Treasury official said that plan was now well ahead of schedule, with the government loan standing at around £9 billion at the end of December, down from £27 billion a year earlier. As a result, Northern Rock is expected to undertake around £5 billion in new mortgage lending this year and up to £9 billion from 2010 onward depending on market demand and funding, the official said.

Mortgages
Credit
Northern Rock Plc
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Economic Conditions and Trends
Banks and Banking


Mets’ Hopes May Be Dashed, but Not by the Loss of Zack Wheeler

Abstract: PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — When Zack Wheeler learned on Monday that his job had changed from pitcher to patient , he hung up the phone and returned to the Mets’ clubhouse in a daze. “Everybody was sort of just staring at me when I’m rounding this corner,” Wheeler said Friday, by his locker. “I was like, ‘Torn U.C.L.’ And then they all just came up to me, and I cried a little bit. They’re all really supportive and better than I thought they were going to be. Bunch of good guys in here.” This was the start of Wheeler’s lonely journey, in training rooms and doctors’ offices and rehab centers, a 14-month slog back to health. Wheeler, a dynamic Mets right-hander, confirmed that he needs Tommy John surgery on his elbow. He will have the operation Tuesday or Wednesday in New York, and said it was realistic to target June 2016 for his return. Wheeler, 24, said his elbow pain last season came from a torn tendon and a resulting calcium deposit, an injury doctors told him had occurred long before. He went through platelet-rich plasma therapy to fix that problem, and came here determined to pitch the same way, without changing his mechanics. But sometime this spring, Wheeler said, his ulnar collateral ligament tore . He could not pinpoint when, but he knew something was wrong when his routine elbow pain did not subside with rest. The time bomb exploded, and now Dr. David Altchek will put Wheeler’s pitching arm back together. “They’re going to fix the ligament, fix the tendon, clean up that calcium deposit, all the scarring and dead stuff inside,” Wheeler said. “I’ll basically have a new elbow once I come out.” Wheeler now follows the Mets’ well-worn recovery plan for Tommy John patients, a list that includes Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Jenrry Mejia, Steven Matz, Bobby Parnell and others. And while Wheeler could surely have helped the Mets’ effort to end a six-year string of losing seasons, it was no guarantee that he would. Wheeler made 32 starts last season, and in the last 16 he was 8-3 with a 2.71 E.R.A. He may have been primed for a big year, but his peripheral statistics were ordinary. Pick an advanced metric — wins above replacement or E.R.A.+ — and Wheeler’s overall 2014 performance, in this pitching-dominated era, was essentially league average. The Mets could fill his spot with the steady, if unspectacular, Dillon Gee. They could explore the potential of Rafael Montero, Steven Matz or, in time, Noah Syndergaard. The Mets lose some depth without Wheeler, but they can absorb this. “Where we’re strong, where we’re weak, where we have depth, where we don’t, if we’re going to have an injury and you sort of depersonalize who it is, yes, this is an area where we have broader, deeper resources,” General Manager Sandy Alderson said. “It doesn’t minimize at all the loss of Zack, both in terms of his performance as well as his relationship to the rest of the team. But strictly from an asset point of view, that’s probably true.” The Mets did not fortify their rotation assets this off-season, but they did not deplete them, either. Losing an everyday player would have hurt much more, because the Mets have few good ones to spare. Image Sandy Alderson and the Mets have weaknesses on defense and in the bullpen. Credit Jeff Roberson/Associated Press Their major move was to sign outfielder Michael Cuddyer — who homered on Friday for the second day in a row — for two years and $21 million. The Mets did little else besides hiring Kevin Long as hitting coach and moving in the fences again, but the state of their offense depends on one’s perspective. The Mets hit .239, and their .673 on-base plus slugging percentage ranked 26th in the majors. Yet they outscored the St. Louis Cardinals, who reached the National League Championship Series, and ranked eighth of 15 N.L. teams in runs. Spring training is the time to highlight the most optimistic possible outcomes. The Mets believe Curtis Granderson, 34, can get in better position to drive balls to the opposite field. They think Cuddyer, who turns 36 next week, can thrive after injuries held him to 49 games last season for Colorado. “We don’t play in parks he’s been playing in, but he still has real good power and brings a huge presence in our lineup because he can hit,” Manager Terry Collins said. “That, first and foremost, was what we were looking for: a guy who can get in there and drive in some runs.” Collins said the Mets had enough hitters with extra-base pop to handle Citi Field, which may still play big despite the new dimensions. With the right coaching and approach, Alderson said, the Mets’ hitters would maximize their potential, whatever that becomes. Other N.L. teams have similar hopes for an offensive revival. Just as the Mets expect more with a healthy David Wright, the Cincinnati Reds expect more with a healthy Joey Votto. The San Diego Padres and the Chicago Cubs have made improvements. The Mets’ offense could be competent, but preventing runs is still their ticket to relevance. The bullpen and the defense complicate that effort. The left-hander Josh Edgin has been lost to Tommy John surgery, and Vic Black is down with shoulder problems. Mejia, the closer, had the highest WHIP among the 15 N.L. closers with at least 20 saves last season. Defensive metrics are also unkind to most Mets, other than center fielder Juan Lagares. Alderson stressed that there were no perfect players. “You accept weaknesses in order to acquire strengths,” Alderson said. “So you make compromises. We’ll see how that works out. I don’t subscribe to the notion that we’re going to have a lousy defense. I don’t believe that’s the case. But at the same time, I don’t assume, nor do I think, all of our success is predicated on being outstanding defensively.” Their success depends on many factors, and they are lucky that their biggest hit came in their sturdiest area. The loss of Wheeler should not be fatal. The soft spots on the rest of the roster might be.

Mets
Zack Wheeler
Sandy Alderson
Baseball


A Chimney’s Poignant Surprise: Letters Santa Missed, Long Ago

Abstract: Last week, Peter Mattaliano, 66, an acting coach and screenwriter, put up Christmas decorations in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment and laid out presents for the children: Mary and Alfred. These are not Mr. Mattaliano’s children, and they are no longer living. But a century ago they lived in what is now Mr. Mattaliano’s home. He has honored Mary and Alfred every December for the past 15 years, ever since he learned of their existence when he renovated his fireplace. It had been sealed with brick for more than 60 years. “My brother does construction, and I had him open up the fireplace,” he said. “We were joking that we might find Al Capone’s money. Then my brother yelled to me and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ ” In the rubble and dust, Mr. Mattaliano’s brother found a delicate piece of paper with faint children’s scrawl bearing a request to Santa from a century earlier. “I want a drum and a hook and ladder,” read the letter, adding that the fire truck should be one with an “extentionisting” ladder. It was dated 1905 and signed “Alfred McGann,” who included the building’s address. Image Mr. Mattaliano’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, a neighborhood once home to poor Irish immigrants. In her letter, Mary hinted at her family’s poverty in wishing for a wagon for her brother. Credit Yana Paskova for The New York Times There was another item in the rubble: a small envelope addressed to Santa in “Raindeerland.” Inside was a second letter, this one dated 1907 and written by Alfred’s older sister, Mary, who had drawn a reindeer stamp as postage. “The letters were written in this room, and for 100 years, they were just sitting there, waiting,” said Mr. Mattaliano. He learned through online genealogical research that the siblings were the children of Patrick and Esther McGann, Irish immigrants who married in 1896. Mary was born in 1897 and Alfred in 1900. The family lived at 447 West 50th Street, where Mr. Mattaliano now lives in a fourth-floor apartment filled with books on acting and mementos from his days as a fast-pitch knuckleballer. Patrick McGann died in 1904, so by the time the children wrote the letters left in the chimney, they were being raised by Ms. McGann, a dressmaker. Mary’s letter is as poignant as Alfred’s is endearing. “Dear Santa Claus: I am very glad that you are coming around tonight,” it reads, the paper partly charred. “My little brother would like you to bring him a wagon which I know you cannot afford. I will ask you to bring him whatever you think best. Please bring me something nice what you think best.” She signed it Mary McGann and added, “P.S. Please do not forget the poor.” Mr. Mattaliano, who has read the letter countless times, still shakes his head at the implied poverty, the stoicism and the selflessness of the last line, all from a girl who requests a wagon for her brother first and nothing specific for herself. Video As part of his yearly holiday tradition, Peter Mattaliano honors the memory of a woman whose century-old letter to Santa Claus he discovered hidden in his fireplace. Credit Credit Yana Paskova for The New York Times “This is a family that couldn’t afford a wagon, and she’s writing, ‘Don’t forget the poor,’ ” he said. “That just shot an arrow through me. What did she think poor was?” Then there was the fact that the letters had survived at all, perhaps avoiding incineration by being tucked on a ledge or in a crevice in the chimney. “I have no idea how that paper made it,” he said. The letters have become “my most treasured possessions,” said Mr. Mattaliano, who had them framed and displays them year-round above the mantel of the fireplace where they had been discovered. On Friday, they were joined by ornaments and mementos, along with a dump truck, a miniature wagon and a doll. “I wanted them to have a Christmas present, even if it was 100 years too late,” he said. The story is well known among his friends, neighbors, acting students and the regulars at a longstanding Friday night poker game. “I’m the new guy in the group, and I’ve been there since the late ’80s,” said Mr. Mattaliano, whose roster of actors he has coached includes Jill Clayburgh and Matthew Morrison. For Mr. Mattaliano, the letters summoned a link to his years growing up in an apartment in Jersey City. He would leave letters to Santa under the tree on Christmas Eve. When Mr. Mattaliano was 12, his father, who was 47, died of cancer just before Christmas, leaving his mother, Margaret Costello, to raise him and his three younger brothers on her own. Image Letters from two Irish children were found tucked in the chimney of Mr. Mattaliano’s apartment. They now hang above the fireplace, near presents he bought for them. Credit John Quilty “So we had a few rough years,” he said. “For the next couple years, our Christmases were a little lean.” Mr. Mattaliano, who has lived in Hell’s Kitchen for 36 years, saw the children’s letters as a testament to the immigrant struggle in New York.. “I’m sharing their space,” he said. Their spirits remain in the apartment, he believes, forever young, in something of a Hell’s Kitchen snow globe. He has written a movie script based on the letters, titled “Present From the Past.” It is fictionalized, but includes the letters quoted word for word and the children depicted as spirits in the apartment. Mr. Mattaliano said he had attracted the interest of investors and hoped to start working on the film by the spring, using Broadway actors and shooting in Hell’s Kitchen and indoors on a set that replicates his apartment. But even after he had written the script, he knew almost nothing about Alfred or Mary. He wanted to know more, and he wanted to give the letters to their family. He began looking on genealogy websites and found census data that had basic information about the family. With the help of a reporter and a researcher from The New York Times, he found out more, including the father’s death. Image Records in a Manhattan court, where Mr. Mattaliano searched a 1905 census. Credit Yana Paskova for The New York Times By 1920, Mary, Alfred and their mother had moved up to West 76th Street. As young adults, Mary worked as a stenographer and Alfred as a printer. By 1930, Mary had married the similarly named George McGahan and moved to the Bronx, and later to Queens. Her brother also married. But, so far, Mr. Mattaliano has not found any living blood relative. Neither sibling appeared to have children and both apparently died in Queens; Mary in 1979, at 82, three years after her husband. She is buried in Flushing. Alfred’s burial location is unclear, perhaps because his birth name was John Alfonse McGann. He seems to have died childless in 1965 in Queens. His wife, Mae, died in 1991. Mr. Mattaliano met with Bruce Abrams, a volunteer at the Division of Old Records in the Surrogate’s Court in Lower Manhattan, and saw proof of the 1904 death of the children’s father. “So their mother became the breadwinner — that’s why they couldn’t afford a wagon,” he said. “She was a widow at 35 with two kids.” On a recent weekday, Mr. Mattaliano took the No. 7 train to Flushing, carrying a small, potted tree for Ms. McGahan’s grave site. He walked into the office at Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery and was told her grave location: Division 11, Row F, Grave 108. The modest headstone bore the name McGahan, but only her husband’s name, George, not Mary’s. Mr. Mattaliano said he would look into having Ms. McGahan’s name added to the gravestone. He put his hand on the grave and murmured little Mary’s Christmas reminder to Santa: “Please do not forget the poor.” “You know, I might have to come out here every Christmas,” he said as he turned to leave, and then added over his shoulder, “I’ll be back.”

Letters
Peter Mattaliano
Christmas
Mary McGahan
Hell's Kitchen Manhattan
NYC
Irish American


Developer Is Shot in the Head Outside His Long Island Castle

Abstract: Gary Melius, a well-known Long Island developer and prominent political patron, was shot in the head by a masked gunman on Monday in the parking lot of his opulent Gold Coast estate in Suffolk County, the police said. The gunman fled and Mr. Melius was able to stumble back to his house, where his daughter saw him and rushed him to Syosset Hospital. He was later transferred to North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, where he underwent surgery Monday evening. The police were still searching for the gunman, who they said they believed escaped in a car. Mr. Melius, 69, who lives on the property, known as Oheka Castle, with his wife, also uses it as a high-end hotel, catering facility and wedding venue. At the time of the shooting, many people were at the house, including lunch patrons and workers. One of the nation’s largest privately owned homes, Mr. Melius’s 109,000-square-foot French-style chateau has been the setting of some of the region’s most lavish nuptials, including former Representative Anthony D. Weiner’s wedding, which was officiated by former President Bill Clinton. Deputy Inspector Mathew C. Lewis, commander of the Suffolk County Police Department’s Major Crimes Bureau, said the shooting did not appear to be random. “This looks to be a targeted crime,” he said. Mr. Melius had just sat down in the driver’s seat of his Mercedes around 12:30 p.m. when a lone person wearing either a mask or a scarf pulled over his face approached the vehicle. The gunman shot Mr. Melius through the driver’s side window. Image Gary Melius at Oheka Castle in 2008. Credit Kirk Condyles for The New York Times The bullet wound was near the front of the victim’s head, according to Inspector Lewis. He would not identify the make of the weapon or say whether it had been recovered. The police were examining security camera footage, but it was unclear if the shooting itself was captured on video. “We don’t know any motive at this time,” Inspector Lewis said. But he said it did not seem to be a robbery as no property appeared to have been stolen. As to who would want to shoot Mr. Melius, Steve Schlesinger, chief counsel for the Democratic Party on Long Island and a close friend of Mr. Melius, said that after a lifetime in business, he had undoubtedly made enemies. But Mr. Schlesinger said he could not imagine who would want to kill Mr. Melius. “We have been racking our brains,” he said. Ronald J. Rosenberg, a lawyer for Mr. Melius and a close friend, saw him in the emergency room. “He looked at me, cracked a joke at my expense and said he was sorry he was putting so many people through a tough day,” Mr. Rosenberg said in a statement. “There is an extreme sense of relief at the hospital because you knew he was going to recover. His spirit is strong, his sense of humor is just as off-color as ever.” Mr. Melius, a close associate of former United States Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, is a powerful political power broker who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats and Republicans alike. He has also raised millions for charity. Born in Jackson Heights, Queens, Mr. Melius started his career as a plumber before becoming involved in construction. He ultimately made his fortune in real estate. He bought Oheka Castle in 1984. The house, completed in 1919, was built by the financier Otto Herman Kahn; its exteriors were featured prominently in the movie “Citizen Kane.” Image Mr. Melius bought Oheka Castle in 1984. Credit Kirk Condyles for The New York Times “At the time of its construction, the French-style chateau was, and still is today, the second-largest private residence ever built in America,” according to a website for the estate. Mr. Melius regularly hosted poker games there with a who’s who of the New York political establishment attending. “What Gary Melius created at Oheka Castle is a classic Gold Coast environment for virtually every boldface name who walks on Long Island,” said Gary Lewi, a former press secretary for Mr. D’Amato. “People from all sides of the political spectrum have gone through the doors to either share a meal, smoke a cigar, play a game of poker and leave their differences outside.” Mr. Lewi said Mr. Melius came to enjoy the way everyone, Democrats and Republicans, could find themselves at the estate. “It was kind of like how Washington used to be, a political generation ago,” Mr. Lewi said. “He greets you at the door with this impish smile, shakes hands and then recedes into the woodwork, as the boldfaced names sit down and enjoy a game of cards.” While friends described Mr. Melius as charming and a smart political operator who was not ruled by ideology, he found himself enmeshed in a scandal last year that led to the resignation of the Nassau County police commissioner, Thomas Dale. The county’s district attorney found that Mr. Dale had intervened to order an arrest in a politically charged case. It turned out that Mr. Melius had placed the call to Mr. Dale that led to that arrest. Mr. Lewi said the news of the shooting sent a shock through the political establishment. “It was inconceivable,” Mr. Lewi said. “It would be akin to a personality like Robert Moses being gunned down in the parking lot of Jones Beach. It was like, ‘What? That cannot be right.’ ”

Long Island
Gary Melius
Crime
Suffolk County NY
Murders
Huntington NY


A Review of the Hudson Room in Peekskill

Abstract: Does fried avocado sound like a good idea to you? It didn’t to me either. But at the Hudson Room, a happening new space in the heart of Peekskill, it somehow worked. Part of a “shrimp and avocado fry” that included expertly fried Gulf shrimp and chunks of avocado with a side of spicy mustard rémoulade, vegetables and brown rice, the bowl captured the feel of the restaurant: Funky meets sophisticated. The eclectic menu is reflected in the space itself. A former five-and-dime storefront, the Hudson Room is cavernous but manages to seem intimate by creating distinct areas. There is a full bar with backlit shelving to the left of the entrance and a sushi bar to the right. A large stage toward the rear brings music and other acts to the restaurant, and the seating ranges from a group of large rounded leather banquettes facing the stage to smaller tables along the big windows in the front. It looks like fun from the outside, and it is. Much of the food has a welcome spicy kick. Sriracha sauce is featured in the spicy tuna roll and on the seared shrimp with guacamole on crisp little flour tortillas. A special of grilled lamb rack came with a hot mustard/garlic/chipotle crust (and excellent Cheddar mashed potatoes). And the “pink” clam chowder had a peppery taste that brought out the flavors of the soup’s smoky bacon pieces, corn and fennel. That appetizer is made with mostly local ingredients, including cream, courtesy of Lanza Farms in Garrison, which is owned by Louis Lanza, one of the Hudson Room’s four owners. Image The menu includes popcorn shrimp. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times When there isn’t heat, the dishes can be less interesting. Rigatoni with meatballs in a red sauce was a bit bland. Orecchiette came with tender pieces of chicken and pork sausage but the sweet cherry peppers could have used more spice and, combined with lemon zest, became a mishmash of tastes. “Loaded fries” — French fries covered with asiago, Parmesan, scallions and truffle oil — sounded intriguing but were mushy, collapsed by overambition. Indeed, some of my favorite items were the simplest. The Hudson roll — Gulf lump crab, cucumber and avocado with a dusting of masago — had a wonderfully clean, sweet flavor. The seared Scottish salmon with a ginger-scallion butter had a great crust, moist meat and a rich taste. The Hudson Room’s mantra is “globally inspired, locally sourced.” There are lots of influences at work — Cajun, Italian, Japanese and more — but also a lovely local feel. Most of the desserts, for example, are made daily by Peekskill’s beloved old-school bakery, Homestyle . (If the mascarpone layer cake is on the menu, it is definitely worth a try, as is the kitchen’s own creamy cheesecake and delicious ice cream.) The bar offers beer from a Japanese craft brewery, a Barolo made with grapes grown in California and an Australian wine made with grapes from Germany and France. It is all a reflection of the ways the culinary world has expanded and gotten more intimate at the same time, so that people are familiar with tastes from around the globe but use them to create something of their own. The owners behind the Hudson Room (in addition to Mr. Lanza, who is also the chef, they are Daniel Steinberger, Cheng Ling and Jose Quinoy) have years of experience with Manhattan restaurants and wanted to bring some of that sophistication to Peekskill’s growing restaurant scene. They have bought four other buildings in the Hudson River town and plan to open a taco and tequila bar, a barbecue place and more. “This is such a great, artsy, open town,” Mr. Steinberger said in a phone conversation after my visits. “We want to bring some new options to the table.” Image Seared shrimp with guacamole on crispy flour tortillas with Sriracha sauce. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times The Hudson Room, which opened in August, is certainly offering new culinary possibilities, and that is a welcome development.

Hudson Room
Restaurant
Louis Lanza
Daniel Steinberger
Cheng Ling
Jose Quinoy
Peekskill NY


Catholic Leader William Donohue Turned Away at Exhibit He Deemed Offensive

Abstract: On Thursday night, William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, held a news conference outside an art gallery in Midtown Manhattan to denounce one of the works of art on display there: a 1987 photograph of a crucifix immersed in a jar of urine. But, when Mr. Donohue tried to enter the exhibition, the gallery would not allow him in, he said i n a blog post on Friday. “No one else was barred from entering the gallery,” he wrote. “Just me.” The amber-hued photograph, “Immersion (Piss Christ),” has inflamed passions since the New York artist Andres Serrano first displayed it in 1989. Last year, four Christian protesters attacked the photograph with a hammer when it was on display in Avignon, France. It was also vandalized in 1997 while on display in Victoria, Australia. All of which is ironic, Mr. Serrano said in an interview on Friday. For him, he said, the work is about his personal love of Jesus, and Jesus’s bodily torment on the cross, during which, Mr. Serrano believes, not only blood, but all Jesus’s bodily fluids, including urine, spilled out. “The thing that offends me is that they characterize me as being an anti-Christian bigot,” he said, “and that’s far from the truth. They are barking up the wrong tree when they are saying I am not a Christian.” The gallery, the Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery, is displaying 25 of Mr. Serrano’s works in a retrospective that opened on Thursday. All are for sale except the Christ photograph. A private owner lent the piece to the gallery for the monthlong show because of its importance, said Dini von Mueffling, a representative for the gallery. It is being displayed behind bulletproof glass. “Piss Christ” is not Mr. Serrano’s only photograph depicting an object immersed in his urine — there are also replicas of Michelangelo’s “Moses,” Myron’s “Discobolus” and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, as well as a statue of Satan, similarly situated. But none have generated as much controversy. Gallery owners were expecting a protest on Thursday night and were relieved when only about 30 people turned up, Ms. von Mueffling said. Things became heated, she said, when the group tried to push pass the four guards at the entry. She said that the gallery called the police, who dispersed the protesters. Mr. Donohue called that version of events an “out-and-out lie.” “We didn’t push past anybody,” he said. “There were no police there, none at all.” Only he was blocked from entering, Mr. Donohue said. He left and went with some friends to Rosie O’Grady’s, a nearby bar. Detective Marc Nell, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department, said that officers were aware that a protest was going on and went by twice to check, but not in response to a call. During the first visit in the evening, at 6:22 p.m., “there was no interaction with the protesters,” Detective Nell said. He added: “Police talked to security and security said everything was fine.” Mr. Donohue said that he had left the gallery by 6:20 p.m. Asked to clarify, Ms. von Mueffling acknowledged that the police were already there and had not been called, but she maintained the group had tried to force its way in. Controversy over the photograph, which became a symbol of the American culture war over federal financing for the arts, has faded somewhat over the years. But Mr. Donohue said he decided to protest it now to point out that while the White House condemned the anti-Muslim film “Innocence of Muslims,” which recently led to global protests, it had not condemned Mr. Serrano’s work as offensive to Catholics. Mr. Donohue also recorded a video on Thursday in which he held up a clear jar containing a bobblehead doll of President Obama and a brown substance that Mr. Donohue said was feces. “Well, not really feces,” he quickly acknowledges in the video. “It’s brown Play-Doh.” The point, he said, “is that the cultural and political elite are basically secularist; they don’t believe in God. This is their god,” he said, pointing at the jar. Mr. Serrano said he felt the protests made a different point. “It just shows me that 23 years later, ‘Piss Christ’ is still used as a political football for certain religious and political conservatives,” he said. “I just feel I have to stay proud.”

Art
Crosses and Crucifixes
Serrano Andres
Donohue William A


GoDaddy Prevails in Suit Over Oscar Domains

Abstract: GoDaddy, an Internet domain registrar, prevailed in a website-squatting lawsuit brought by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which accused the company of illegally profiting off its trademarks, including for the Oscar telecasts. On Thursday, United States District Judge Andre Birotte in Los Angeles said the academy had failed to show that GoDaddy acted in bad faith by letting customers buy 293 domain names such as academyawards.net and oscarsredcarpet.com. The academy had accused the company of letting customers share in revenue collected from advertising on those pages. But Judge Birotte said GoDaddy “reasonably relied” on its users’ representations that their domain registrations did not infringe any trademarks. The academy said it would review its options for an appeal.


Bernard Schwartz, on the Philosophy of ‘Just Say Yes’

Abstract: This interview with Bernard L. Schwartz, an investor who is the former chairman and C.E.O. of the Loral Corporation, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. What were some early leadership lessons for you? A. My father was an entrepreneur — a sign maker, and he had about 20 employees — and often he’d take me to business meetings, and I would listen to him talk with his workers and customers. We would also talk a lot about business over dinner. The thing my brothers and I learned is that businesses are organizations of people, and it’s about treating them as individuals and trusting them. I really believe in people. Everybody brings certain talents and skills. It’s my job and the job of the senior people in my companies to bring those skills out. We made the job fit the individual rather than the other way around. That’s the way I run my companies. That came from my parents. I’ll tell you one story about my brother Harold. He was in the distribution business, and on one weekend his main competitor’s warehouse on Long Island burned down. This guy was basically out of business, because his customers couldn’t wait for him to come back. Harold called him — they knew each other from trade organizations — and said to him: “Fred, I really am sorry that you lost your plant. I want to make a proposal to you. Why don’t you let me serve your customers, and when you get your plant finished, you can have them back? That’s going to be good for me, because I’m going to have the extra business for that time. But I guarantee you I will not keep your customers when you’re ready to come back on board.” He explained to me later why he did that. He said: “If it happened to me, I’d be out of business. It could happen to anybody.” We had a certain sense of pride in working with other people, and making them better because they were making us better. It was a much more relationship-oriented environment when I started in business. Some of my biggest deals were done on a handshake. Today, it’s all transactional. Any favorite expressions you developed over the years? “Just say yes.” I started using it because often we would have discussions in the company and we’d come to a decision, but then someone who was advocating for a different direction would keep pursuing it. After a while, I’d lean forward and say: “Just say yes. Let’s get on with it.” Instead of it being an admonition, it got to be a joke, and others around the table would say it if we needed to move on. But it also reflects something else. One thing I would look for in the people I hired is optimism — the sense that we’re going to win, and that we’re going to have a successful answer to whatever the problem is. What else about your leadership style? I used to give out Mickey Mouse awards to people. I like Mickey Mouse because he represented certain values. He invested in people, was good to his friends and hard on his enemies. Once a year, I would have our management team from each division come to an offsite, and I would talk about Mickey Mouse. I’d say that Mickey Mouse was a good guy and he was successful, and that you could be successful and be a good guy also. You don’t have to be a tough guy. Win-win is more important than win-lose. Anything else unusual about your leadership approach? When we acquired companies for Loral, we didn’t fire people or sell assets. I would go to the management and say: “We’re going to keep your staff. I’m interested in you because of your people.” There may have been redundancies, but we were looking for the growth synergies. I could have cut expenses, but we didn’t do that. Of the 26 companies we acquired, we never closed a plant. There were often different benefit programs within each of the companies, and I tolerated that. I did decide that the trademark of Loral was very important, and I wanted to add Loral to every company’s name, like Loral Aerospace. I made that announcement at one of our management meetings. We owned a company called Randtron, and the chairman of that company came to see me. “I have a severe problem,” he said. “I named my company after my son Randy, who died six months before I started the company.” He said the name of his company was very important from a personal point of view. So I said: “O.K., we won’t change the name of your company. But someday you’re going to come to me and say you’re ready to make the change, and then we’ll make the change. But I promise you, we will not make the change otherwise.” And after a year, he came to me and said, “I’m ready to make the change.” So we named it Loral Randtron. Any other observations on how business leadership has changed over the years? In very big companies, you find less entrepreneurialism than you really want to see. Success is defined as “don’t make a mistake.” And you get to be the C.E.O. by outlasting everybody else, then you’re there for five or six years, and you want to get your bonus on the way out. You have to have a passion. You have to have some idea of what you want to do. Entrepreneurialism, to me, means being able to fail. And I believe that kind of leadership is not necessary only in business, but it’s necessary for running countries, too. You’ve got to be able to believe in something strongly enough that you want to do it even if there’s a risk of failure. When you talk to college grads, what advice do you give? Learn how to communicate well. Your bosses don’t want a long dissertation from you. They want their answer. Make sure you can deliver the message in a page or two, rather than giving a long presentation. Otherwise, you’ll lose them. I think that’s important.

Loral Corporation
Management
Job Recruiting and Hiring
Bernard L Schwartz


Winter Superpower Gets Its Turn as Olympic Host

Abstract: SOCHI, Russia — That the organizers here spent a record $50 billion — capital improvements and alleged baksheesh included — and did not quite get a finished product is difficult to fathom. That the International Olympic Committee decided to put their winter crown jewel in this rough neighborhood in the Caucasus is highly debatable. But that the Winter Olympics are finally being staged in Russia is nothing but logical. Norwegians, Canadians and other frozen folk might argue the point, but what other nation has a deeper historical and literary association with winter? It has been a burden and ultimately a bulwark for Russia through the centuries, and in the 90 years since the Winter Olympics began in Chamonix, France, the Russians have brought home plenty of medals to underscore the point that they know how to handle snow and ice. Now they get their turn to hand out the medals on their own turf, and though that turf has palm trees and though the international drumbeat has been loud and negative coming into the Sochi Games, it is also worth remembering that there were strong arguments in Russia’s favor. The four nations who lead the all-time Winter Olympic medal count are Norway, the United States, Austria and the former Soviet Union, in which Russia was the major player. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has won 91 medals in its five Winter Games as an independent Olympic entity: 36 gold, 29 silver and 26 bronze. That ranks behind only Germany, the United States, Norway and Canada during that span. Of those five nations, the only one to have never staged a Winter Olympics was Russia. “Russia is, and nobody would question it, a very legitimate winter sporting superpower, one that has never hosted the Winter Games,” said Michael Payne, a former I.O.C. executive who is now an analyst and consultant. “They’ve got some incredible mountains but didn’t have the infrastructure and facilities, and they lost a lot of their winter training facilities when the Soviet Union broke up into other countries. And one of the original pitches from back in the bid seven years ago was, ‘We need the Games also as a catalyst to sort of build all the training facilities we used to have, and it’s not as if we’re a bit player on the winter sports scene.’ And nobody could fault that position.” Finding fault has been a sport of its own ever since with domestic and external concerns about corruption, ecological damage, human rights, security and the enormous cost of transforming this city and its nearby and spectacular mountains into an Olympic site. The scale of the project is suitable for a pharaoh or, in this case, President Vladimir V. Putin, and to make the one-hour journey on the new road by bus from the shores of the Black Sea to the Alpine ski resort in Rosa Khutor is to see nature transformed by the exigencies of man. Bridges, tunnels, power lines, hotels, concrete in all shapes and sizes, stripped hillsides, freshly planted evergreens, gondolas, ski jumps, a sliding track, ski stadiums. The pace of the transformation has even Olympians who visited recently rubbing their eyes. “We came here two years ago, and there were about four hotels at the base of that gondola, the one gondola,” said the American skier Marco Sullivan. “Now there are a dozen gondolas and so many hotels. It’s amazing what they’ve done.” There are clearly concerns about the future use of facilities in the mountains and on the coast — though the Olympic Park is at least certain to stage Russia’s first Formula One race in October. But there is also excitement within the sports community about what Sochi’s new world-class facilities and the exposure the Games will generate could do for winter sport in Russia. “Now we have everything,” said Ksenia Alopina, 21, one of three young Russian women expected to compete in Alpine skiing at these Games. “After Sochi it will be better, I think. In Russia, not a lot of people like Alpine skiing. It’s more Nordic skiing and hockey or other sports. This could make a difference.” No skier from Russia or the former Soviet Union has won an Olympic gold medal in Alpine skiing, though there is no shortage of snow or mountains at home. But the nation has until now lacked a resort capable of staging World Cup events, particularly speed events like the downhill. The Russian World Cup team makes its winter base in Austria. “Russia is for sure a huge country, and it’s not so easy to organize junior skiing because they have so many time zones,” said Klemen Bergant, a Slovene who is head coach of Russia’s women’s World Cup Alpine ski team. “Flying from one point to the other point for sure is not easy, and it’s not cheap for these kids to fly to race together, and what is important is that the best are racing together.” But, he said, the Sochi Games could increase interest in skiing beyond the sport’s usual powerhouses. “I’ve heard Alpine skiers say, ‘Why is the Olympics in Russia? Why is the next Olympics after that in Korea? But the way I see it, Alpine skiing is much too local already. So if we stay in central Europe and just race in Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Slovenia, nobody will be interested. We have to go abroad, and this is also good for everybody, because Russia is a huge market with a huge potential. For me it’s just normal that they have the Olympics.” In ski jumping, another sport in which Russia has had little recent success, the Sochi Games give the country the international-standard large-hill jump it lacked. The Games also provide a second sliding track to accompany the track built in 2007 in Paramonovo, near Moscow. “They don’t have the history of Germany in luge, so they aren’t quite there, but just looking at the results, they’ve come leaps and bounds,” said Erin Hamlin, an American who has raced on both Russian tracks. “Having this facility has definitely helped them a ton already.” Like many an Olympic host, the Russians have ramped up their programs and invested heavily in success, particularly after a disappointing performance at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, where they won just 15 medals, only three of them gold. They have hired foreign coaches like Pierre Lueders, a Canadian gold medalist in bobsled, and Wolfgang Schädler from Liechtenstein, who once coached the United States luge team. The Russians have also brought back top Russian coaches, like Aleksandr Zhulin, the former ice dance world champion. Image President Vladimir V. Putin waiting to be introduced at the opening ceremony on Friday. Russia is hosting the Winter Games for the first time. Credit Pool photo by David Goldman Until now, the focus in Sochi has hardly been on the sport, but that will change. A Winter-Olympic record of 87 nations will compete in Sochi. not counting India, whose national Olympic committee has been suspended but whose athletes will compete under the Olympic flag. There are also 12 new events, including slopestyle and women’s ski jumping, bringing the total to 98, quite a leap from 68 sports at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan. “I think the opening ceremony can’t come fast enough for the I.O.C.,” Payne said. “It’s my fifth Olympics, and it seems like leading up to the Games everyone always has worries and concerns and the speculation and all the focus is on everything but the sport and the athletes and sort of the ideal of the Olympics,” said Bode Miller, the American skier who will be one of the favorites in the men’s downhill race set for Sunday. “I think this is no different. Certainly these issues were no more political than the ones in China or Olympics as far back as you can remember.” The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing were a polarizing event. The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City — the first major international sporting event after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — and the 2004 Summer Games in Athens also generated big concerns about security. Sochi, however, has been a flash point on multiple levels, creating concern among prospective bidders for future Winter Games. Sochi’s $50 billion price tag, more than the cost of all previous Winter Olympics combined, is misleading in part because it includes tens of billions in public infrastructure costs. Dmitry Cherneshenko, head of Sochi’s organizing committee, has said the operating budget is closer to $2 billion and in line with previous Games. But the I.O.C. clearly has a communications challenge on its hands: Voters in Germany and Switzerland have rejected potential bids for the 2022 Olympics, and Stockholm withdrew its bid, citing financial concerns. “You have to be clear about the nature of any Olympic budget,” said Sebastian Coe, head of the 2012 London Games who is in Sochi as chairman of the British Olympic Association. “There are two very clear budgets. You have the operating budget, which I understand is about $2 million and is in line with previous Winter Games. That is the budget raised through marketing, merchandising and broadcasting. “The structural budget is of course going to vary according to the strategic view that a country or city takes. When the Soviet Union broke up, most of the winter sports facilities were not within Russia. Russia does not have a concentration of winter sports facilities but it now has. I think you have to be very clear about an operating budget and an investment in a region which has been taken very seriously.” The verdict on whether Sochi’s transformation was justified will depend on what happens in the years to come: whether its venues get used or fall into disrepair; whether a state-of-the-art but expensive Alpine resort complex can become a destination for skiers who have many other options in the Alps, which already draw wealthy Russians. But the focus of the world is here for the next 17 days, and as the sport begins in earnest by the Black Sea, three major areas that could shift the focus from Russia’s would-be winter celebration. First could be attendance. Sochi organizers claim that 80 percent of event tickets have been sold, but international sales have not been brisk, in part because of cost and security concerns. While the atmosphere in the Iceberg Skating Palace for the start of the team figure skating competition was lively on Thursday night, there were many empty seats in the bottom tier despite the fact that the Russian star Evgeni Plushenko was performing. Second could be protests, from athletes or others, about Russia’s stance on gay issues. Third, and by far the most problematic, would be a terrorist attack. “I think the Games are always remembered by their sport,” Payne said. “Unless, heaven forbid, there is some unexpected incident.”

Sochi
Russia
International Olympic Committee
2014 Winter Olympics


Egyptian Channel Blocks Episode by TV Satirist

Abstract: CAIRO — A private television station on Friday abruptly canceled an episode of a show whose host is Bassem Youssef, a popular Egyptian satirist who lampoons political figures and the news media, with the channel saying it had been “taken by surprise” by the show’s content. There was no apparent sign that the Egyptian authorities had ordered the cancellation by the private channel, CBC. In a statement read on the air, CBC accused Mr. Youssef and the show’s producer of disregarding the channel’s editorial policy and said the show would be suspended until the disputes with the host were resolved. The sudden, mysterious cancellation of one of Egypt’s most widely talked-about shows fed a sense of alarm about media freedoms that has intensified since July, when the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, after widespread protests against his rule. Islamist channels were shut down after the takeover. Dissenting voices disappeared from state and private channels, which began to practice self-censorship or simply parroted the government’s messages. The airwaves were filled with adulation for the military and its leader, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, who is regarded as Egypt’s de facto leader. In that atmosphere, the return of Mr. Youssef and the show, “The Program,” to the air last week after a long hiatus was closely watched by viewers waiting to see how frankly the satirist would speak about Egypt’s civil conflict and how much criticism the military would allow. Mr. Youssef avoided taking on General Sisi himself, but ridiculed the adoration the general had inspired. The episode drew complaints from various offended citizens and even CBC, which quickly distanced itself from the show. Last week, prosecutors opened an investigation into Mr. Youssef based on the citizen complaints, including that he had insulted the military, though no charges have been filed. It was unclear what exactly led to the cancellation of Friday’s show. A producer for “The Program” did not immediately return a call seeking comment. An Egyptian blogger who posts as The Big Pharaoh and attended the taping of the program on Wednesday said Mr. Youssef had spent the entire show making fun of the news media rather than political figures. Most pointedly, he mocked CBC, accusing it of a double standard for criticizing his show. Mr. Youssef, he said, “really bashed them.”

Egypt
TV
Bassem Youssef
Arab Spring
Freedom of speech


Goalie Helps Others With Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract: EDINA, Minn. — The 95-degree heat on a late August day made Josh Harding hasten from his Cadillac Escalade pickup truck into an air-conditioned coffee shop. A few minutes after buying a lemonade, Harding — in a white T-shirt, dark blue shorts, flip-flops and a backward Minnesota Twins ball cap — felt so cold he grasped his shoulders for warmth. But Harding did not seem to mind. Oppressive heat can be problematic for people with multiple sclerosis. Keeping cool and hydrated is an everyday concern for Harding, the Minnesota Wild goalie who was found to have the inflammatory disease last year during the N.H.L. lockout. Harding took the diagnosis so seriously he even gave up golf. “It’s good,” Harding, 28, said. “I need to be chilly. This is perfect.” Harding missed most of last season as he adjusted to his medication and its side effects. He returned in the playoffs to fill in for the injured Niklas Backstrom, posting a .911 save percentage and a 2.94 goals against average in a five-game, first-round loss to the Chicago Blackhawks, the eventual Stanley Cup champions. Awarded the N.H.L.’s Bill Masterton Trophy for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey, Harding spent the off-season establishing Harding’s Hope , a charity benefiting multiple sclerosis patients struggling to afford medication and treatment. Harding said he was aghast to learn that a year’s supply of M.S. drugs cost $60,000 to $70,000. His N.H.L. health insurance picks up most of the costs, but Harding knows not everyone is so lucky. “I was kind of seeing what needed the most help,” Harding said. “I sat down and talked to doctors, everybody involved in the charity. The best thing is to help people living with it right now, with their day-to-day lives. I feel very fortunate being in the N.H.L., being covered with insurance, all the resources are covered, too. I just wanted to help out people living with it right now.” Last week, Harding was back on the ice for the opening of the Wild’s training camp. In a white mask with his nickname, Hards, on the chin, Harding appeared no different from the other four goalies at the University of Minnesota’s Ridder Arena. His only visible concession to M.S. was a second water bottle atop his goal. Harding said he must be careful to avoid overheating, excessive fatigue and stress. Unfortunately, all are part of a goalie’s job description. Although Harding’s playoff return alleviated some of the team’s concerns, Wild Coach Mike Yeo said he still had to determine how often Harding could play as Backstrom’s backup. Backstrom, who turns 36 in February, appeared to wear down as the lockout-shortened season went along. “We can’t sit here and draw up a blueprint for it right now,” Yeo said. “There have been other years where we put a pretty set plan in place. This is a unique situation with both guys where we have to evaluate it on a day-in-and-day-out basis and be prepared to adjust.” Multiple sclerosis is an unpredictable disease that attacks the central nervous system. Symptoms and severity vary from person to person, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Web site, and most people do not become severely disabled. There is no cure, but symptoms often can be controlled with medication. Harding said he received his diagnosis after collapsing last October during an informal workout with locked-out N.H.L. players in St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb. Several weeks before, Harding had complained of extreme fatigue and neck pain. On the ice that day, he said he saw dots that grew bigger and bigger until they blocked out the puck. Then his right leg went numb and gave out. “Obviously, I knew something was wrong,” he said. “It stayed like that just for a little bit, but I had enough to get up. It felt like I was walking on nails. Thankfully, we had three goalies there. I had to come off the ice, and I just left.” Magnetic resonance imaging tests of his neck and brain showed lesions, telltale signs of M.S. The Wild’s team physician, Dan Peterson, who is also Harding’s family doctor, referred Harding to Dr. Jonathan Calkwood, one of Minnesota’s leading M.S. specialists. The diagnosis shook Harding. It came four months after he signed a three-year, $5.7 million contract extension and shortly after he learned his fiancée was pregnant. “Right when the doctor said multiple sclerosis, I was worried for sure,” he said. “I think anybody would be. I didn’t know if it was going to be career-ending. I had so many questions.” Calkwood told Harding that with a proper diet, rest and medication, he could continue his career. Harding later heard from Jordan Sigalet, a former minor league goalie who played four professional seasons with M.S. and appeared briefly for the Boston Bruins in 2006. “When you think about M.S., the main thing is not to be overheated and not to be stressed,” Sigalet said in a telephone interview earlier this year. “When you think about a goalie, it’s probably the worst for all those things. People always think, you’re in an ice rink, it’s cold out there. But you have 50 pounds of equipment on.” Sigalet said he often received intravenous fluids between periods as a precaution. Harding would not address that but said he was willing to do whatever was necessary. “I’m lucky to be a Minnesota Wild,” Harding said. “Now it’s my job to do everything in my power to not make them regret taking me back.” It helps that Harding is expected to be a backup, not the No. 1 goalie. Harding insisted he could play as well as he used to. “No one knows except Josh how he’s feeling or what his day-to-day life is like,” his teammate Zach Parise said. “For us, you can only hope we can rely on him when we need to, and he can step in and play big games when we need him to.”

Multiple sclerosis
Josh Harding
Minnesota Wild
Ice hockey
Philanthropy


Maryland: Bodies of Miners Are Found

Abstract: Workers found the bodies of two miners trapped when a wall section collapsed in an open-pit coal mine in western Maryland, a federal mine official said. The official, Bob Cornett, acting regional director for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the men, one of whom was found in a backhoe, and the other, found in a bulldozer, appeared to have died instantly. The cause of the collapse was under investigation. Mr. Cornett said heavy rain and the ground’s freezing and thawing could be a factor. The mine, about 150 miles west of Baltimore, has had no fatal injuries since at least 1995 and was not cited for violations in its most recent inspection, which began March 5, according the federal mine agency.

Coal
Mine Safety and Health Administration