Gary Bettman Denies Brain Disease Link

Abstract: N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman on Wednesday stood by his recent comment that there was no definitive evidence linking hockey and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that scientists have found in many athletes who played contact sports. Bettman said his views echoed those of the federal court judge who approved a settlement between the N.F.L. and thousands of retired players. The N.H.L. is being sued by former players who say the league did not warn them of the dangers of concussions. Speaking before the start of the Stanley Cup finals in Tampa, Fla., Bettman also said that the Arizona Coyotes were in no danger of moving and that the Florida Panthers were in no danger of going bankrupt, despite reports to the contrary. Bettman said he would update the league’s Board of Governors about investor interest in potential clubs in Las Vegas, Quebec City and Seattle. That could lead the league to start a formal expansion process.

Ice hockey
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
Gary Bettman
NHL


French Win Latest Battle of Waterloo

Abstract: LONDON — It was to have been a commemoration that would have placed France ’s humiliation at the Battle of Waterloo in every European’s purse or pocket. Instead, it turned into a tussle of a different kind, redolent of history’s long shadow, in which France finally emerged triumphant. The events began as Belgium was casting around for a design for a 2 euro coin that would feature an image of the monument that commemorates the battlefield at Waterloo where, on June 18, 1815, Napoleon’s forces were defeated by the armies of Britain, its allies in what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, and Prussia. In London, a railroad station was named for the battlefield, and the phrase “to meet one’s Waterloo” has entered the English-language lexicon as denoting a particularly cruel defeat. But when Belgium produced its design for the coin, officials in Paris sent a letter to the European authorities to complain of its “negative” connotations, arguing that Waterloo’s place in European memory went far beyond the battlefield. Indeed, the officials said, French reactions to the coin might well undermine efforts to deepen cohesion among the eurozone countries — as if the 19 nations in the currency union were not already divided by fiscal woes in Greece and grumbling at German-led demands for belt-tightening. The coin’s proposed design “appears prejudicial, in a context where the governments of the eurozone are trying to strengthen unity and cooperation throughout the monetary union,” the letter from Paris said. And so, on Wednesday, Belgium withdrew its plan, news reports from Brussels said, offering France a victory at Waterloo, albeit two centuries later, and averting the prospect of a potentially divisive vote among European ministers. The coin, which is worth about $2.13, was to have been part of ambitious commemorations in which France, from other perspectives, seems happy to join. Even as the question of the coin bubbled up, France was preparing to transport the distinctive hat worn by Napoleon at Waterloo from a museum near Paris to be displayed in Belgium, the newspaper Le Monde reported. It is axiomatic of history’s rose-tinted vision that nations offer differing accounts of victory and defeat , of who really did what and when. Particularly, since the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, or perhaps since the Norman invasion in 1066, France and Britain have sparred, sometimes as rivals, sometimes as allies, and sometimes as both at once. And so, French discomfort at the proposed coin provoked harrumphs here in London. The French “really should recognize that this is a momentous event in Europe’s history and an important one for freedom and democracy — which I’d have thought the French Republic would have celebrated, rather than sought to prevent,” Sir Peter Luff, a Conservative lawmaker, told the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, referring to Waterloo. Britain itself has no such qualms about commemorations in coinage. The Royal Mint is offering a special 5 pound coin showing Waterloo’s victors — the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher of Prussia — shaking hands in “the spirit of camaraderie,” as the mint’s website put it, a spirit that did not always endure.

Euro
Belgium
France
Currency
Great Britain
Brussels
Waterloo (Belgium)


NBCUniversal to Team With Data Trackers to Study Olympics Viewing

Abstract: NBCUniversal ’s research chief has called the Olympics his “billion-dollar research lab.” The Games offer a perfect opportunity every two years to analyze how media habits are changing , said Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development at the company, because they deliver a large audience that tunes in to hundreds of hours of coverage across a proliferation of screens over a 17-day period. For the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro next year, NBCUniversal plans to team up with the television tech company TiVo and RealityMine, a research start-up, to track how people watch the Games on television, mobile and digital platforms. The partnership, to be announced on Monday, is intended to provide insights into the daily habits of Olympics viewers and the interplay between watching coverage on television and using tablets and smartphones. It is also expected to deliver clues to how people watch outside the home, as well as the effect of social media on viewership and the effectiveness of advertising during Olympics coverage. The deal is part of a growing push across the media industry to better understand how vast digital changes are transforming the way people consume entertainment. Industry executives have said that they are seeking alternatives to Nielsen, the dominant measurement company for user engagement, which they complain has been slow to adapt. As Nielsen has introduced new offerings to track digital media, rivals also have pushed ahead. In September, two smaller measurement companies, comScore and Rentrak, announced plans to merge , seeking to create a stronger challenge to Nielsen. “More competition is always healthy,” Mr. Wurtzel said. “Frankly, it is a good opportunity to see whether or not there are some other players out there that can contribute to the TV measurement industry.” TiVo, which introduced the first digital video recorder in 1999, has built a research business based on proprietary TiVo set-top-box data and partnerships with cable and satellite companies. Its panel now includes 2.3 million households. RealityMine was founded in 2012 and tracks digital media activity, offering the ability to measure how people watch programming across platforms. (RealityMine also plans to announce on Monday that it has landed a $16 million investment.) Noting that TiVo places software in homes that captures every second of television viewing, Tom Rogers, the company’s chief executive, said, “We know what actual homes are doing, what they watch, what they buy.” Mr. Wurtzel said getting the research right was crucial to NBCUniversal, which in 2014 agreed to pay $7.75 billion for exclusive broadcast rights to the six Olympic Games from 2022 to 2032. The research helps dictate programming decisions. During past Olympics, for example, one major concern was that live-streaming a sporting event during the day would cannibalize viewership of the same event when it was shown later on tape delay. Mr. Wurtzel said the research showed that the live stream actually served as a promotional tool to drive viewership for the prime-time event. “The notion of ubiquity is not cannibalization,” he said. Mr. Wurtzel said that research around the Olympics is also valuable because it can accelerate the adoption of new media habits. His prediction for the 2016 Games is a surge of mobile viewing among broader audiences. “During those three weeks,” he said, “you get a glimpse into the future.”

2016 Summer Olympics
NBCUniversal
TiVo
TV
TV Sets
Olympics


Devils, Driving for Playoffs, Lose to Last-Place Senators

Abstract: NEWARK — The Ottawa Senators came to town Tuesday with the worst record in the N.H.L. and with a lot less motivation to beat the Devils than the Devils had to beat them. But stunning a crowd of 15,978 who wanted to see the Devils stay hot, the Senators picked up a 2-1 victory on a freakish goal by the rookie Erik Condra with just 2 minutes 13 seconds left in regulation. It was the second goal of the game for Condra, who has four in 10 N.H.L. games. The loss was only the third in regulation in the last 25 games for the Devils (30-32-4), who did get a small break when Buffalo, the eighth-place team in the Eastern Conference, lost to Pittsburgh, 3-1 . The Devils remain 8 points behind Buffalo with 16 games to play. “I don’t believe we’re out of it yet,” the veteran forward Brian Rolston said. But the Devils thought this was a game they probably could have won, and not just because Ottawa has a bad record. The Devils had a pair of two-man advantages in the second period, the latter for 72 seconds, and did not score. The Devils scored what appeared to be a tying goal at the end of what amounted to a nearly five-minute power play, but it was called off because the officials said the Devils rookie Jacob Josefson swatted the puck with a high stick. “I think the ref knows the rules better than I do,” Josefson said. Patrik Elias tied the score at 4:01 of the third by taking a pass from Rolston and slapping in his 15th goal, but the Senators (23-34-9) scored the winner when Jason Spezza’s pass was deflected on a bounce to Condra, who beat goaltender Martin Brodeur. The Devils had won four straight games by one goal, and Jacques Lemaire, their interim coach, figured the Devils were due to lose a close one. He said the Senators played tight defense — à la the Devils — and the two fruitless, fumbling five-on-threes were an issue. “When you get two? Come on, come on,” Lemaire said. “That’s the most frustrating thing from this game.” The Devils did not score in the first period, but the Senators did not either, so the Devils extended their N.H.L.-record streak of games without allowing a first-period goal to 14. But Condra scored his first goal at 4:45 of the second period by swatting in the rebound of his shot. It looked as if Elias’s goal would extend the game into overtime, in which the Devils would have gotten at least 1 point in the standings and perhaps 2, given how they have played for two months. Condra’s second goal left them empty-handed. “It’s tough because of the situation we’re in,” Devils center Travis Zajac said, “but because of that, we just can’t dwell on this.” PENGUINS 3, SABRES 1 James Neal and Zbynek Michalek scored goals 3:17 apart for host Pittsburgh. It was the first win in regulation for the Penguins since Feb. 4. (AP) ISLANDERS 4, MAPLE LEAFS 3 Blake Comeau’s tip-in with 57.3 seconds left in overtime lifted the host Islanders over Toronto. The Islanders have won 11 of 19 since the All-Star break. (AP ) FLYERS 4, OILERS 1 Jeff Carter scored two goals to help host Philadelphia end a four-game losing streak. (AP) CANADIENS 4, BRUINS 1 Lars Eller scored twice in the first period and Carey Price made 30 saves as host Montreal won its fifth straight. The Canadiens’ Max Pacioretty was taken to a hospital for observation after a hit by Boston’s Zdeno Chara. (AP) WILD 5, AVALANCHE 2 John Madden of host Minnesota scored with 9:05 left to break a 2-2 tie. The Wild began the day in a three-way tie for ninth place, 2 points out of eighth. Guillaume Latendresse returned from a 58-game absence after two operations to repair injuries to his midsection. (AP) PANTHERS 3, BLACKHAWKS 2 David Booth had a goal and an assist for host Florida. Chicago had won eight in a row. (AP) CANUCKS 4, COYOTES 3 Dan Hamhuis scored twice, including the winner with 2:47 left in overtime, as visiting Vancouver won its third straight. (AP)

Hockey Ice
New Jersey Devils
Ottawa Senators
Condra Erik


Tyson and Stallone Inducted Into Hall

Abstract: Mike Tyson broke down in tears and cut short his speech, and Sylvester Stallone proclaimed, “Yo, Adrian, I did it!” as they were inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y. The Mexican champion Julio César Chávez, the Russian-born junior welterweight Kostya Tszyu, the Mexican trainer Ignacio Beristain and the referee Joe Cortez were also inducted.

Boxing
International Boxing Hall of Fame
Tyson Mike
Stallone Sylvester


Odessa Celebrates April Fools’ Day

Abstract: ODESSA, Ukraine — Starting early in the morning, men of widely varying physical types began collecting around the Magic Bar, which had been set up in central Odessa at a height of about eight feet. It looked easy: Pay your $2.50, hang on for two minutes and walk away with $40. But something funny happened to people on the Magic Bar. Their fingernails turned white, their forearms began to tremble, their legs pumped as if they were riding a bicycle and, one after another, they grimaced and dropped to the ground. Sergei Reznichenko, burly and mustachioed, was watching from the edge of the crowd, and when asked whether he wanted to try, he gave an explosive laugh. He was so delighted that he turned to enfold his questioner in an embrace. “You’re in Odessa,” he said happily. “This is how they make their money.” April Fools’ Day has become the day that Odessa — a city weighed down by history — celebrates its tradition of wry humor and charming scoundrels. The practice began 40 years ago under the wary eye of the Soviet authorities. It has been marked by such episodes as a taxi driver who drove his rickety sedan all the way down the 400-foot staircase that is the city’s most recognizable symbol, where he was greeted by a complement of militiamen. Tourists poured into Odessa on Monday for the festival, called Humorina. Men in bowler hats played Dixieland jazz, and boys circulated through the crowd carrying enormous hawks available for posed photographs. There were characters out of the stories of Isaac Babel, whose Jewish gangster courted his wife in an orange suit and diamond bracelet. There were games of chance everywhere: the “drunken bicycle,” “railway roulette” and the “bottle trick,” in which the customer tries (and inevitably fails) to set a bottle upright using a loop on a string. Sergei Chudin, who sells jokes for a dollar apiece, regarded the out-of-towners with compassion. He was working the crowd dressed as Ostap Bender , a stylish con artist of mysterious origins who was one of the Soviet Union’s most beloved characters. “Everybody who tries to do it is trying to prove something to somebody — it is a demonstration of a person’s insufficiency,” Mr. Chudin said, sounding a little like a field anthropologist. As for the Odessites, he said, they live in a resort town and have only a few sunny months in which to support themselves. He shrugged. “What can we do if our mamas bore us this way?” he said cheerfully. “It’s not our fault.” It is impossible to extricate Odessa’s famous wit from the horrors that took place here. Babel was shot by a firing squad in Moscow in 1940, accused of spying. Nazis took control of Odessa the following year, sending Soviet fighters and ordinary citizens to seek refuge in the labyrinth of catacombs underneath the city. Thousands of Jews were moved to a nearby village and killed; thousands more were dispatched to concentration camps. Those who were left emigrated when they could. Odessa’s Jewish population, once 40 percent of the city, was down to 6 percent by the mid-1980s, according to the city’s Jewish Museum. The historian Charles King, who published a book about Odessa in 2011, calls it “a place where fortunes were literally made or lost overnight — a ship sinks, the locusts eat the wheat, a pogrom upends things — so there was something useful and even heroic in laughing at the world.” There were some recollections of this on Monday. An elderly man named Igor, who had just been performing comic dances on the sidewalk, climbed on stage at a joke competition and said this: “They knocked on the door and said, ‘Is this the home of the widow of Rabinovich?’ She said, ‘What do you mean, widow? He just left the house on his way to work!’ They said, ‘OK, this is the right house, bring in the body.’ ” The crowd stirred a little; no one laughed. A team of young women in spangles came out to dance. Valentin S. Krainov, 72, his eyes the color of seawater, watched crowds throng the promenade as if he were seeing a ghost. Once, when Odessites were packed in communal apartments, Primorsky Boulevard had been filled with people every evening. But not for years. “Come out here tomorrow,” he said. “The city will be empty again.” Humorina was born of an act of censorship; in 1972, Soviet authorities decided to take a televised improvisational comedy competition off the air. A team of comics from Odessa had been winning, and local Communist officials, chagrined by the cancellation, supported their proposal to hold a festival, said Valery I. Khait, one of the festival’s founders. “It was the end of a thaw, and there was some inertia of openness,” said Mr. Khait, who was drinking vodka out of a plastic cup in the elegant, dingy headquarters of his organization, the World-Wide Club of Odessites. Pranks were performed every year on the “Potemkin” steps, made famous in a 1925 film by Sergei Eisenstein that showed a baby carriage hurtling to the bottom. A motorcyclist skidded down, then a skier, then the legendary taxi. Instead of cutting a ribbon one year, Humorina’s organizers sawed through a log, and revelers collected sawdust as a souvenir. “The roots of Odessa, its traditions, were passed on through us,” Mr. Khait said. Odessa, he said, “was conceived as a free city, and these roots showed themselves.” These days, the event is huge and joyful, and it is impossible to identify any political message. Children marched beside their grandmothers, wearing matching adhesive mustaches; men indulged in that time-honored sight gag, the fake bust. Konstantin I. Eftodi, who was selling clown noses, ebulliently advertised his homemade moonshine — “it makes your whiskey look like fruit cocktail!” — and the beauty of Odessa’s women. “They are so beautiful that drivers are always turning around to stare at them and crashing,” he crowed triumphantly. “It causes accident after accident after accident. Especially in the spring!” The parade started then, under the banner “Everything Was Invented in Odessa (and Made in China).” Majorettes and clowns marched by, carrying comic slogans like,“A fire extinguisher is not a toy — it’s even better!” and “Hail to the Customs Union — Moscow-Odessa-Tel Aviv!” Mr. Chudin, evidently frustrated with his dollar-a-joke rate, foisted two books on his foreign visitor and pocketed the money with satisfaction. America, he said genially, owes a lot to Odessa. “This is where the humor comes from,” he said. “Wise people listen, write it down and then repeat it later.”

Odessa Ukraine
April Fools
Festival
Ukraine


Vatican Tells Bishops to Set Procedures Against Sexual Abuse

Abstract: VATICAN CITY — The Vatican told bishops worldwide on Monday to make fighting sexual abuse of minors by clerics a priority, telling them to create “clear and coordinated” procedures by next year and cooperate with law enforcement authorities when required. The directives, detailed in a letter , are among the clearest to emerge from the Vatican since a sexual abuse scandal erupted in Europe last year. But the recommendations are not binding in church law and do not spell out any enforcement procedures or punishments for bishops who have been found to have violated church law. The guidelines note that the sexual abuse of minors by clerics is not only an offense punishable by church law, but also “a crime prosecuted by civil law.” Still, they play down the role of the civilian review boards that have investigated abuse in Ireland, the United States and elsewhere — and that have often faulted bishops for not stopping abuse — noting that those boards “cannot substitute” for bishops’ ultimate authority in adjudicating abuse cases. The letter’s emphasis on the power of bishops did not go over well with some victims’ advocates, who have said that the bishops themselves have contributed to the problem by being more concerned with protecting priests than with protecting children. “There’s no enforcement here,” the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a leading victims’ rights group in the United States, said in a statement . “There are no penalties for bishops who don’t come up with guidelines or who violate their own guidelines.” “Until that happens — until top church officials who hide and enable abuse are severely disciplined — top church officials will continue to hide and enable abuse,” the group said. The Vatican said the letter, signed by its chief doctrinal officer, Cardinal William J. Levada, was essentially aimed at making bishops around the world more responsive — especially in countries where they had not routinely tackled the problem of sexual abuse of minors or had even dismissed it. “The aim of the document is to provide a common denominator for principles that everyone can bear in mind in making appropriate directives,” the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Monday. Father Lombardi said the Vatican could not issue universal requirements for mandatory reporting to civil authorities because it also operated in countries with repressive governments. “Each reality is different, culturally and from the point of view of different countries’ laws,” he said. The letter states that bishops are required to investigate all claims and send all cases deemed “credible” to the Vatican for review. It says that bishops should also listen to victims, create “safe environment” programs for minors and properly screen seminarians. In March 2010, a sexual abuse scandal swept the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, with scores of new victims coming forward. And new revelations have revealed weakness in even the toughest “zero tolerance” norms put in place by the United States bishops in 2002, which recommend removing a priest from ministry while claims against him are investigated. In February, a grand jury in Philadelphia indicted a church official on charges of child endangerment in connection with the transfer of priests accused of sexually abusing children, and it also indicted four men, including two priests and a former priest, on charges of raping or assaulting children. The grand jury also said it had found “substantial” evidence of abuse by 37 other priests who remained in active ministry at the time of the investigation, and the archbishop of Philadelphia subsequently suspended 21 of them from ministry. A review board made up of lay people accused the archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali, of failing to be “open and transparent” because the archdiocese screened the cases that the panel was allowed to examine. In Ireland, a new report by civil authorities is expected this month, after two scathing government reports there in recent years showing extensive abuse and cover-ups by church officials. The Vatican’s letter on Monday incorporated revisions made last year to the church’s procedures on prosecuting sexual abuse, including extending the use of fast-track procedures against priests and doubling the statute of limitations for disciplinary action against priests to 10 years from the victim’s 18th birthday. It said that local bishops did not have to make their guidelines church law, as bishops in the United States have done, but could ask the Vatican for permission to do so. Asked why it took the Vatican more than a year to issue guidelines that did not alter church law, Father Lombardi said the letter had to be vetted by multiple Vatican offices. “Obviously, someone can say that at important and urgent moments it’s better to treat the issue quickly and swiftly, but if there are delicate and complex issues to consider, it’s good for there to be consensus,” he said.

Sex Crimes
Roman Catholic Church
Benedict XVI


Time Is the Theme in ‘Continuous Present’ at Yale Gallery

Abstract: By my count, it has been more than six years since the curators at the Yale University Art Gallery organized a show of contemporary art in all media. That is difficult to understand, given that the museum collects in this area and primarily serves students, including those studying at the nearby Yale School of Art. The wait, however, has been worth it. “Continuous Present,” which examines how artists are working with ideas of time, presents some terrific contemporary artwork in an engaging yet scholarly way. Organized by Jennifer Gross, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, the exhibition includes the work of 11 well-known contemporary artists installed in the temporary exhibition galleries adjacent to the museum entrance. Some of the works are from the collection, but the bulk of them are on loan from other museums, galleries and collectors. There is a great deal of painting, but also works of film, video, photography, drawing and sculpture. In addition to issues of time, the show inadvertently picks up on other trends in contemporary art. Much of the art lacks finish, or is process oriented, suggesting the influence of conceptualism. And even the less conceptual, more visually appealing pieces here are grounded in ideas that invite viewers to ponder the nature and passage of time. On Kawara evokes the “continuous present” in his paintings of the day, month and year of execution, done in white letters on a flat background. The artist has been doing these date pictures since 1966, making this one of the world’s longest running conceptual art projects. The ebb and flow of time is the subject of Francis Alys’s animated video loop of a woman pouring water back and forth between two glasses — a simple, meditative work that after a while becomes hypnotic, like listening to the tick-tock of an old clock, and the endlessness of time. Other artists try to slow time down. For “Cabinet of” (2001), Roni Horn photographed a clown’s face, with long exposure times so as to capture facial gestures and subtle shifts in observation. Rather than a snapshot of a moment, this series of 36 photographs traces her subject’s movement through time. Rodney Graham’s short film “City Self/Country Self” (2000) is, like a lot of contemporary art films, oblique. Things don’t ever really add up. Mr. Graham is a talented filmmaker with an eye for a sensual image, but this particular work — a looped sequence that follows two characters and a silk hat — comes off as visually captivating yet unresolved. “The Way Things Go” (1987), by the Swiss duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss, is more focused. In this entertaining video, the artists have recorded a series of staged and carefully timed chain reactions using ephemeral materials. One event leads to another, and another, and so on, forming an endless narrative of interrelated incidents — a meditation on the inescapable importance of timing. Instead of dealing directly with ideas of present time, many of the artists in this show work with the past, presenting art traditions in new ways. Franz West subverts the conventions of sculpture in “The Monster of the Black Lagoon” (2004), three painted papier-mâché blobs on metal stands resting on artists’ pedestals that have been tipped provocatively onto their sides. Thomas Nozkowski’s abstract paintings also evince enormous freedom and imagination. They are raw, with a childlike simplicity; several are intriguing combinations of shapes resembling jigsaw-puzzle pieces. Showing here are half a dozen made between 1973 and 2009, each of which is a little gem, redolent with the playfulness and serendipitous quality we have come to expect of him. It has been years since Mr. Nozkowski had a survey show, and this selection proves he deserves one. An exquisite and strange painting of a prostitute by Laura Owens might not at first glance appear to have much to do with the theme, though according to the exhibition catalog it is based on a painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Yale’s collection. Here, time is folded back on itself, with the artist subtly transforming a piece of art history into something vibrant and new.

Art
Museums
Yale University Art Gallery
Connecticut


Britain’s Mervyn King Says Europe Debt Is Major Threat

Abstract: LONDON — The Bank of England governor, Mervyn A. King, said on Friday that the worsening debt crisis in Greece and other European countries was the biggest threat to Britain’s financial system. Mr. King urged British banks to be especially diligent and clear in disclosing their exposure to European sovereign debt, to avoid a collapse of confidence among investors. He also called on banks to set aside more capital when earnings were strong instead of distributing it to shareholders or employees. “The most serious and immediate risk to the U.K. financial system stems from the worsening sovereign debt crisis in several euro area countries,” Mr. King said during a briefing on financial stability by the interim Financial Policy Committee, of which he is chairman. The new committee, which includes executives from the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority, is a result of Prime Minister David Cameron’s revamp of the country’s financial regulation after the banking crisis. Mr. King’s comments came as European Union leaders met in Brussels to discuss a second bailout for Greece and ways to stabilize the euro zone area. Greece has until the end of the month to meet conditions for its next aid payment of 12 billion euros, or $17 billion, ahead of a finance ministers’ meeting on July 3. Some investors remain concerned that the Greek prime minister, George A. Papandreou, could struggle to gather enough support to push through the necessary budget cuts, which has pushed down the euro and weighed on European stock markets. Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, warned earlier this week that the sovereign debt crisis posed a serious threat to the financial stability of Europe. The Financial Policy Committee warned that “any escalation of stresses could also be transmitted via interconnected global markets, including via the United States, leading to a tightening of bank funding conditions.” It said “such contagion could be amplified if bank creditors were unsure about the resilience of their counterparties.” Mr. King said he was less worried about British banks’ direct exposure to Greek debt, which he said was “very small,” than the chances that a lack of transparency and increased risk awareness could paralyze financial markets. “If there’s uncertainty about exposures and a lack of transparency, there’s always the risk that people may feel it’s just not worth continuing the rollover funding to institutions,” Mr. King said. “Greater clarity about the extent of these exposures would help to limit the transmission of problems to U.K. banks.” The European Banking Authority said Friday that it had adjusted its stress tests of European banks to better account for potential trading losses on sovereign debt from troubled economies, including Greece. The results are due next month. “It’s necessary that stress tests are credible,” Mr. King said. The hope is that detailed data on the banks’ capital and government debt exposure would calm those investors who fear a Greek default. The committee also warned that British banks should improve their provisioning for real estate loans that are in arrears or had breached some covenants. The committee implied that some banks were not diligent enough in setting aside money to cover such loans, which were mainly for commercial real estate. The committee also said it was increasingly mindful of risks linked to exchange-traded funds , which were now worth $300 billion in Europe, and asked the Financial Services Authority to monitor the industry more closely.

Banking and Financial Institutions
Great Britain
Europe
Greece


Spain Arraigns Somalis Suspected of Piracy

Abstract: MADRID — Two Somali men were arraigned on kidnapping charges in a Spanish court on Tuesday in a case that underscores the legal ambiguity of trying people suspected of piracy in international waters. The case involves the still-unresolved capture of a tuna fishing ship in the Indian Ocean. The ship, the Alakrana, was taken 12 days ago off Somalia with a crew of 36, including 16 Spaniards. Spanish naval forces captured the defendants two days later as they tried to sail away from the trawler in a skiff. The ship remains anchored off Somalia, where the crew is reported to be well, although a leader of the pirates told Reuters that they would not negotiate until the two defendants were released. Judge Baltazar Garzón of National Court ordered the transfer last week of the two men, whom prosecutors identified as Cabdiweli Cabdullahi and Raageggesey Hassan Haji. Mr. Haji was shot once during the Spanish Navy’s assault on their small vessel. In transferring the men to Spain, officials have argued that it has jurisdiction because its citizens are involved and because the detention occurred outside the maritime perimeter agreed upon by the European Union as part of an operation to capture pirates and turn them over to Kenya. On Tuesday, most of the day went to confirming whether the two men were more than 18 years old. Afterward, they were each arraigned on 36 counts of kidnapping, each carrying a penalty up to five years in prison, as well as armed assault. The two claimed innocence and said that they, too, had been taken by the pirates, Jesús Alonso, the prosecutor in the case, said after interviewing the defendants. When asked about the issue of jurisdiction, Mr. Alonso said each country had to act to protect its interests. “If you have to act against a crime, you can’t think of the consequences,” he said. The Alakrana case follows similar trials in France, the Netherlands and the United States, but this is the first time Somalis suspected of piracy will face trial while the attacked ship is still being held. This is the second time a Spanish ship has been held for ransom, although the first time the ship was released after less than a week and reportedly after a ransom of more than $1 million was paid. Before an agreement signed in March with Kenya, most piracy cases were tried in the country where a ship is registered. The agreement between Kenya and other parties — including the European Union, the United States and Denmark — provides a temporary fix to the lack of an international legal framework to capture, prosecute and jail pirates for crimes on international waters or in countries like Somalia that lack their own working judicial system, analysts said. “There is a lot of gray area in terms of a legal system and jurisdiction, and obviously with each navy and national laws,” said Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau, a London-based division of the International Chamber of Commerce. “Pirates caught carrying out an attack have to be tried. That is the only agreement. Where exactly the pirates are tried is a matter of individual countries.” Kenya gets financial help to centralize the pirate prosecution program. “It is a lot cheaper to hand the pirates over to Kenya,” Mr. Mody said.

Spain
Piracy at Sea
Somalia
Fishing Commercial
Courts


Bard College Applicants Trade 10,000 Words for Two: You’re In

Abstract: Helen Chen, a senior at a small public high school in San Francisco, is the kind of student who tries teachers’ patience. “Honestly, in class when I’m not interested in something, because I understand it already, I kind of just stop paying attention,” she said. She is more than smart enough to handle the material — she did great on her SATs — but instead of listening to the day’s lessons, she sometimes follows her own curiosity, reading about philosophy, art history and other subjects her school does not offer. Behavior like that earned her a D in English class. It also made her a perfect candidate for the experiment that Bard College conducted this year. In addition to the standard application, which emphasizes measures like grade point average, test scores, extracurricular activities and teacher recommendations, Bard for the first time invited prospective freshmen to dispense with all the preamble, and just write four long essays chosen from a menu of 21 scholarly topics . Very scholarly topics, like Immanuel Kant’s response to Benjamin Constant, absurdist Russian literature and prion disorders. The questions, along with the relevant source materials, were all available on the Bard website . As for the four essays, totaling 10,000 words, they were read and graded by Bard professors. An overall score of B+ or better, and the student got in. Leon Botstein, Bard’s outspoken president, characterized it as “declaring war on the whole rigmarole of college admissions,” a way to turn a tiresome chore into an actual learning experience. But it was also a way to seek out students like Ms. Chen, whom the usual admissions process would not favor but who might thrive in an unconventional atmosphere like the one at Bard, a liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. It was also a clever marketing tool, a way for Bard to separate itself from the herd of colleges vying for attention. The only catch was those essays. They were daunting. About 400 people logged on to the website to read the questions, according to Mary Backlund, Bard’s dean of admissions. Only 50 ended up filing the application. Nine of those were not complete, so the actual sample size for this bold experiment turned out to be 41, which, compared with the 6,980 students who applied to Bard overall, is either a rounding error or a harbinger of widespread change, depending on one’s perspective. Bard professors deemed 17 of those who completed these applications worthy of admission, for an acceptance rate that turned out to be just a few percentage points lower than the college’s overall rate, Ms. Backlund said. The essay applicants, from seven countries and 17 states, ranged in age from 14 to 23. (The youngest to be admitted was 15; the oldest, 19.) Ms. Backlund said she had expected many of them to have had unusual educational experiences, but most came from public schools. All three home-schooled essayists got in. One applicant, found to have plagiarized, did not. “The verdict is that it provided a really wonderful opportunity for kids,” Ms. Backlund said. “Universally, they enjoyed it, they learned a lot, and that was the purpose. It exists as an example of the risks we’re willing to take but also the intention that the application should be about students’ capacity to think.” Steve Syverson, a trustee of the National Association for College Admission Counseling , said he predicted more students would participate in the program as it became better known. “It sounds like it would have a really interesting effect on the class, because those are pretty high-initiative kids,” he said. “It might also have some interesting impact on your yield, because they’re making a pretty powerful statement about their commitment.” Ms. Chen chose to write about game theory, a painting by Kazimir Malevich , and the evolving history of the Constitution. She also composed the music for a new national anthem using the opening text of the Declaration of Independence. It worked. She will be one of about 500 members of the class of 2018 arriving on campus next fall. “I thought about other colleges,” she said, “but when I started working on the essays, I became sort of obsessed.”


Not Betting a Dime, a ‘Voucher Vulture’ Cleans Up at the Slots

Abstract: LIKE a bird of prey, Gary Bemsel swept past thousands of video slot machines, swiftly scanning them, looking for little jackpots — winnings left by bettors at the vast Resorts World Casino at the Aqueduct racetrack in South Ozone Park, Queens. Every minute or two, he spied a terminal with unclaimed credits, its redeem button lighted and its seat empty. He swooped in, punched the button and snatched the cash voucher. He hit for 11 cents, then 22, and later a 50-cent jackpot. “They add up,” said Mr. Bemsel, who is tall, slim, single and youthful for his 55 years. “It’s like a big bank — you’re finding money all the time.” He can scan hundreds of video slots a minute, with an eagle eye honed by the past 15 years making his living as a racetrack stooper — someone who bends down to gather betting slips off the track floor in the hope of finding a mistakenly discarded winner. Mr. Bemsel has been a fixture at the Aqueduct and Belmont racetracks, making the daily two-train, two-hour trip from Metuchen, N.J., where he grew up and still lives in his sister’s house. But pickings at the tracks got slimmer after the closing of New York City’s Off-Track Betting parlors just over a year ago prompted many OTB parlor stoopers to flood Aqueduct. Shortly after the so-called racino opened next to the track’s betting area in late October, Mr. Bemsel heard from a stooper colleague that one could pick up small winnings on the casino floor without betting a dime on the slots. Soon, Mr. Bemsel was using unclaimed racino winnings to make ends meet and to fuel his horse-playing habit. “It’s a legitimate living — the money’s been left behind,” he said on Wednesday. “It’s surer money than stooping; it’s steadier, and it’s cleaner — you don’t have to fish through garbage cans.” Mr. Bemsel has not given up stooping. After a loop through the racino, he has enough cash to hit the betting window in the track and then scour the floor and trash for winning tickets. Slipping deftly through crowds of cheering and swearing horseplayers, he can read slips on the ground and tell immediately if they are winners. For face-down slips, he has developed a nimble, soccer-style flip move using both feet — so he barely has to stoop at all. In the racino, Mr. Bemsel is just one of perhaps 20 regular voucher vultures. Each has his own blend-in technique. The savvy ones pose as gamblers by pinning a betting debit card to their shirt, or clutching a handful of dollar bills. One regular wears a second-hand “Security” jacket and marches around authoritatively. Another constantly keeps a cellphone to his ear. Mr. Bemsel goes with the high-roller look, dressing nicely in loafers, slacks and dress shirt, and moves quickly through the crowd, as if headed for the High Limits section. “The first few weeks you could hit the A.T.M. machines for stray $20 bills lodged up in the dispenser,” Mr. Bemsel said. “But certain guys caught onto it, and now they stake out a machine all day, snatching them up.” A spokesman for the casino said that there was no specific rule against voucher-gathering, but that it was discouraged. When a bettor leaves a ticket behind, the spokesman added, “we work with him or her to recover those lost tickets.” Mr. Bemsel has been a devoted horseplayer since getting hooked at Monmouth Park on the Jersey Shore at age 16. After high school, he worked in a warehouse until he was 40, when he saw a man at Freehold Raceway in New Jersey pulling betting slips out of the trash. He became a top stooper, and he still never misses the huge stooping jackpots: the Kentucky Derby, and August in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where he and three other stoopers rent a house to work the racing session. On Wednesday, he strode quickly through the two huge casino levels, checking several thousand video terminals — with optimistic names like Instant Winner, Stinkin’ Rich and Wall Street Winner — and accumulating a fistful of vouchers, to be redeemed at a nearby window. He works 12-hour days and finds $600 to $1,200 a week, Mr. Bemsel said, but winds up blowing most of it on bad horse picks. “The whole reason I do this is to feed my gambling addiction,” he said. “It’s an illness.” The racino has been a godsend, he said, because “the golden years of stooping are over.” In those days, he said, he could make $1,000 a day, and he stayed regularly in Las Vegas and Atlantic City suites. He paused during his racino rounds on Wednesday and said, “I’ll hit a big one, one of these days, and be back on top.”

Casinos
Gambling
Horse Racing
Aqueduct Racetrack
Ozone Park (NYC)
Bemsel Gary


Running the Health Care Gantlet

Abstract: Over the next couple of months, a sausage factory will seem tidier than the U.S. Congress. The disposition of the huge health care overhaul will be a messy dance of legislation. There will be more ups, downs, false starts and near deaths than a Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon political drama. And that may make it harder to do. “The process of putting something together could make it seem more threatening to a lot of people,” says Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University. Nevertheless, he suspects this will be a short-term phenomenon if any bill is finally enacted, as the focus after that will be on its content. With the caveats that the shape of compromises to come is unclear and the process unwieldy, the leading indicators are: Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, remains the single most important member of Congress on this issue. Democrats might be able to pass a bill without her; it will be hard. Rahm Emanuel will be a central figure in crafting any Senate-approved measure and the final bill. The White House chief of staff may have to delegate much of the Afghanistan account and any plans for “stealth” economic stimulus, spending most of his time on health care deliberations. There won’t be a full-fledged government-run program, or public option, though the measure will have a fallback safety net that will put pressure on the private health insurance industry when it comes to premiums and coverage. For all the focus on the public option, ultimately the issue of affordability and how to pay for the overhaul will be more important. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, is trying to thread the needle between sharply divergent bills and views. The shape of the product he takes to the Senate floor will be crucial; it will take 60 votes, or a supermajority, to make any major changes. Final passage of any bill will also take 60 votes. Enter, again, Ms. Snowe. Her support could bring along a couple of other Republicans. More important, she provides politically necessary “bipartisan” cover for more conservative Democrats like Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Moreover, Ms. Snowe, whose popularity in her home state of Maine is such that she has few political constraints, genuinely wants a bill. She cares about the substance of the policy. By contrast, Mr. Reid isn’t deep in the specifics. Amid the dazzling array of estimates and numbers that are tossed about, only two matter to him: 60, the number of votes required for passage, and 51, the percentage he needs in a tough re-election struggle next year. Thus, Mr. Emanuel, a master dealmaker who’s steeped in the substance of health care from his days as a lawmaker from Illinois on the House Ways and Means Committee, will have a leading role in patching together the legislation that goes to the Senate floor and any final compromise with the House. President Barack Obama, who has adopted an above-the-fray approach, will have to get down and dirty on the details now. Mr. Emanuel has some heavyweight help from the director of the White House Office of Health Reform, Nancy-Ann DeParle; the budget director Peter Orszag; and the chief congressional lobbyist, Phil Schiliro, all of whom are versed in both the politics and the policy. Their chief task may be to placate liberals — some of whom are complaining about Ms. Snowe’s disproportionate influence — who will have to make painful concessions to get a bill. One such compromise will be abandoning a full public option. The backup will probably be a combination of a “trigger” that launches a government program if the private insurance industry doesn’t meet certain criteria, along with giving states the flexibility to come up with their own forms of public plans. The bigger issues will be affordability, making the overhaul more attractive and then deciding how to pay for it. Mr. Reid and Mr. Emanuel will have to appease labor by softening the tax on so-called Cadillac insurance plans. A number of union leaders say that too many of their contracts will be affected and that they plan to oppose the bill unless it’s changed. Raising the threshold, currently at about $21,000 for a family, by only several thousand dollars would subtract as much as $50 billion in revenue over 10 years. Making that up would be tough. There’s also pressure from Democratic lawmakers on other potentially costly measures. These range from proposals to ease the almost $40 billion in fees on medical device makers to making the government’s insurance subsidy for low-income people more generous by lowering the maximum they would have to spend on premiums from 12 percent to 10 percent of their income. In the early, private talks, there are two major revenue-raisers being mentioned as having the potential to bring in as much as $100 billion. One is to reduce the $81 billion surplus that the Congressional Budget Office projects the Senate Finance Committee bill passed last week would raise over the next decade. The other is to adopt a long-term individual health care plan promulgated by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the so-called Class, or Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, Act. This would enable individuals to voluntarily put small portions of their paychecks into a government fund that eventually would pick up long-term health care for them. Over the next decade, it would raise money, both because of the fee and because less would be spent on Medicaid and Medicare. There may be other avenues for slapping taxes or fees on the insurance industry, which is more unpopular than ever on Capitol Hill after it issued several broadsides to the Senate Democratic bills last week. None of these considerations will be without political peril. Veteran observers have no doubt that there will be several doomsday moments, and they dismiss the notion that everything will be approved and reconciled by Thanksgiving, the target deadline. The odds are that a measure will pass — assuming Ms. Snowe stays on board — with Christmas lights and music in the background when Mr. Obama signs it.

Medicine and Health
Law and Legislation
Snowe Olympia J
Emanuel Rahm
Reid Harry


West Wins W.N.B.A. All-Star Game

Abstract: Maya Moore scored a record 30 points to lead the West to a 117-112 victory over the East in the W.N.B.A. All-Star Game in Uncasville, Conn.

Basketball
All-star game
WNBA
Maya Moore


Google Races to Catch Up in Cloud Computing

Abstract: When it comes to cloud computing, Google is in a very unfamiliar position: seriously behind. Google is chasing Amazon and Microsoft for control of the next generation of business technology, in enormous cloud-computing data centers. Cloud systems are cheap and flexible, and companies are quickly shifting their technologies for that environment. According to analysts at Gartner , the global cloud-computing business will be worth $67 billion by 2020, compared with $23 billion at the end of this year. “The world’s biggest maker of computer servers is making machines just for these guys,” said John Lovelock, a cloud analyst at Gartner. “It’s the nexus of things like big data, social networks and mobility, and the next big thing, which is artificial intelligence.” For Google, a loss in cloud computing would be a rare misstep for a company that revolutionized media with its advertising business, and then made the world’s leading smartphone operating system. A victory for Google, however, could change how we work, turning advanced computing into an everyday utility that we use to run factories, interact in virtual reality or read one another’s emotions. Given Google’s track record, it’s worth considering the prospect. But it will be an uphill climb. Amazon Web Services , which began its cloud product a decade ago, remains the leader. The company took in $2.6 billion, 9 percent of Amazon’s sales, in the first quarter of 2016. Profits from the service made up 56 percent of Amazon’s operating income. Those numbers may well be higher when Amazon reports its second-quarter earnings on Thursday. Microsoft styled itself a cloud company, too, and the company said last week that revenue from Azure , its cloud business, which was founded in 2010, rose 100 percent over the last year. Cloud technology also figures in crucial businesses like Office 365 . In contrast, Google Cloud Platform does not even figure in the earnings reports of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. That has to sting, since the company owns perhaps the largest network of computers on the planet, spending close to $10 billion a year to handle services like search, Gmail and YouTube. Google is moving rapidly to change things. Three announcements it made last week show how it hopes to gain ground on Amazon Web Services and Azure. First, the company said it has used artificial intelligence to cut the power use in its data centers 15 percent, a huge decrease considering how efficient these data factories were already. Power is probably the largest single cost for all three of the cloud companies. Google is almost certain to use its savings to reduce prices, much the way it won in search advertising by figuring out its competitors’ costs, then undercutting them. That ability to find energy efficiency may be a powerful tool to sell to others over Google Compute. Mustafa Suleyman, the head of applied artificial intelligence at the company’s DeepMind subsidiary, said the techniques could be used at power plants, refineries and other big industrial systems. “This certainly gives Google an edge,” he said. “Other people focused on narrow problems. We’ve focused on the widest possible problem.” Google also released for public use ways to transcribe and analyze recorded speech for things like meaning, emotional content and whether a speaker was happy or sad. An outside company that worked on the project — Google would not say which one — used it to analyze over two billion minutes of customer service calls. It works in 80 languages, Google said. At the same time, the company moved its customers on the United States West Coast from a data center in Iowa to facilities in Oregon. Google’s network, which it claims is larger than the internet, can send the equivalent of 375 hours of video a second. A move like that only makes sense when a company wants to offer the kind of split-second performance needed for virtual reality or instantaneous customer interactions over networks of cellphones and sensors. At a recent conference at Amazon Web Services for software developers, an executive from iRobot , which makes the Roomba vacuuming robot, talked about using the cloud to map homes and human behavior in houses with potentially “hundreds” of connected devices. Doing something like that would require instantaneous connections. Can faster networks, lower prices and lots of artificial intelligence put Google ahead? Amazon’s lead seems to give it an edge for at least the next couple of years, as its cloud branch has perfected a method of developing hundreds of new cloud features annually. Yet while the company appears to have some basic artificial intelligence features, called machine learning, it seems to have little in the way of speech recognition or translation. Mr. Lovelock, the Gartner analyst, predicted that Google would offer businesses the insights it has gained from years of watching people online. “Amazon views the customer as the person paying the bill, while Google believes the customer is the end user of a service,” he said. And Microsoft is promoting itself as the company that has products customers already know and use. “Everyone has to play to the strengths the market already sees they have,” Mr. Lovelock said.

Cloud computing
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Artificial intelligence
Data center
Google
Amazon
Microsoft


Despite Poor Image, Pedicabs Are Clean Transportation

Abstract: The bride stood out against the backdrop of Central Park: The temperature was in the 50s, yet she had nothing more on her torso than a lace bustier. Below, her dress was as voluminous as an inflated parachute, dragging as she hobbled along the path. I was gliding along comfortably in the back of a pedicab, with plenty of room next to me on the seat. So I offered her a lift. The look she gave me was not gratitude. After a few more friendly entreaties, the groom caught up to us. “She doesn’t want to,” he said. With that, they turned off the path and she hobbled onward, juggling various hems. I was stunned. Did she just reject my chivalrous offer? Could I possibly look that weird? Then I thought: Oh wait, she’s seen the video. If you have not caught it on YouTube or the evening news, the video shows a pedicab driver getting into a brawl with a taxi driver on Broadway, and it has given pedicabs — already viewed as suspect — an unwelcome moment in the spotlight. In June, one got into an accident after crossing the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn, where pedicabs are not allowed in the first place. By the time a Fox 5 cameraman caught the pedicab driver hurling a garbage can at the taxi driver, the whole fleet was in for a whupping. Now the City Council has passed a law requiring all pedicabs — there’s no reliable figure for how many are on the road — to be inspected and registered by Nov. 20. “Pedicabs have been for too long acting like they rule the streets ahead of any other mode of transportation,” City Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr. told The New York Post. Having never thought to ride one — any more than one of those ridiculous party bikes (which probably are fun if you’re drunk enough to get on) — I had to wonder, could pedicabs really be that bad? Worse even than buses, the oblivious, lumbering bullies of the city streets? So I spent a few days being driven around on three wheels, and even on occasion taking the handlebars myself. Let’s just say I do better in the back than in the front. The drivers who congregate at 58th Street and Seventh Avenue said they were delighted someone was finally going to regulate their business. They take their jobs seriously, and say people who don’t should be kept off the road. Bernard Treanor, a driver for six years, has an impeccable pedigree: He trained with George Bliss, an industrial designer, who started one of the city’s first pedicab companies in 1995. “We were all actors and musicians,” said Mr. Treanor, who recently appeared in an independent film and is writing a novel about Central Park. “We needed to do this so we could hit our auditions.” Today, many drivers are recent immigrants who rent pedicabs by the week (around $200 in summer, as low as $80 in January). Before, “the only thing in these guys’ way was maybe, like, a random goat,” he said. “And now they’re guiding a family through Times Square?” It’s turning police officers, who used to cheer him on, into enemies, he said. I felt a little silly the first time I climbed into the back seat, but despite the autumn chill I warmed to it quickly. As with riding a bicycle, you see things at that pace that you can’t see from a car, and you get to put your feet up in a way you obviously can’t while walking. If your driver is full of interesting historical information, great, sit back and learn. If not, tell him to shut up (but apologize with a tip). After a few rides, I persuaded a driver to let me try. It’s hard to keep the wheel straight, and during turns I kept thinking it was going to tip over, as a bicycle might. (A girly shriek ensued.) Of course there’s almost no way to tip over: the vehicles are solidly balanced on three wheels, with a lot of ballast keeping them that way. Especially if your driver hops in the back, as mine eventually did, then invites his friend in, too. By that point I was laughing too hard to go very far. I got no tip. More seriously, it’s about as green a conveyance as anyone is ever going to find. But what do the tourists who typically ride them care about keeping our streets and our air clear? Perhaps, I started to think, pedicabs are being wasted on their passengers — and perhaps that is part of the reason they’re largely reviled. What if New Yorkers exercised eminent domain and reclaimed these overgrown tricycles for our own daily use? To lead the way, I tried hiring a pedicab to run a few errands: dry cleaning, deli, the basics. Fine. But when I thought about visiting Aunt Frances at Mount Sinai Hospital, I found that at about $1 per minute or per block, what would be $15 in a taxi would be a trip to the A.T.M. in a pedicab. Fail. I turned to Mr. Bliss for guidance. “The goal when I started this was that the pedicabs would actually be less money than a yellow cab,” he said. He began that experiment downtown, where he thought people would be open to the idea, but he found they were too self-conscious to ride in a pedicab. It worked for a while in Midtown, but today, he said, sounding melancholy to the point of despair, the dream is dead. “The pedicab industry itself became self-marginalizing,” he said. “It became more and more tourist oriented, less transportation oriented. We need drivers who are educated, fluent in languages. They need to be ambassadors to the city.” We also need stricter regulation of the fleet, he said, and electric-assisted pedicabs — which he developed with a state grant, but the city does not allow. In short, we need the city to decide that a fleet of law-abiding, low-cost vehicles that consume no gas, is in everyone’s interest. Take that to its logical conclusion and you get people commuting by rickshaw, exchanging newspaper sections with the guy in the next lane at a red light. Kids picked up after school by a parent on three wheels who has already stopped for groceries. A bride in Central Park accepting a lift from a pushy but well-meaning stranger. Wouldn’t you like to live in that city? It seems a lot of people would say no. In 2007, a city councilman was quoted in the Village Voice saying that pedicabs caused pollution by increasing congestion. Perhaps he’s right; perhaps pedicabs and cars cannot coexist in Manhattan. Maybe it’s not safe to have three wheels darting in and out of four-wheel traffic. Maybe the time has come to make a change. How about we get rid of the cars?

Pedicabs (Bicycle Taxis)
Manhattan (NYC)


Axe Music Brand Introduced With Mystery Concerts

Abstract: WITH the possible exception of zookeepers trying to breed pandas in captivity, surely no one mentions “mating” more than marketers at Axe, the men’s grooming brand whose racy advertisements promise young men that women will find them irresistible if they use their products. “Axe is all about being a guy’s wingman and helping him as he navigates the mating game,” said Mike Dwyer, a marketing director at Unilever . Now, to promote a new fragrance, Axe Music, which will be available in a body spray, shower gel and shampoo, the brand is staging four mystery concerts in major cities, with the artists and sites announced only shortly beforehand. The first show, featuring the rapper T. I. and unannounced guests who included Mary J. Blige, took place on Monday at Capitale in Manhattan. The brand trickled out the information in the days leading up to the show on its Web site, TheAxeEffect.com , as well as on its Facebook page and through Twitter messages, where followers entered drawings to attend and were encouraged to bring a date. T.I., who has about 4.2 million fans on Facebook, also announced details of the concert shortly before the show on Facebook and on his Web site, Trapmuzik.com . “Something like 85 of the top 100 songs downloaded from iTunes are about relationships or the opposite sex, and the heart of Axe is about bringing guys and girls together, so the play here is how can we get into lifestyle or popular culture in a way that it connects and is highly relevant with our target?” Mr. Dwyer said. The target demographic for the brand is men ages 18 to 24. “We hope they bring a girl, because this will be a place for the mating game to happen,” said Heather Mitchell, a Unilever spokeswoman. “The idea is that we want to inherently be part of a place where the mating game happens because we want to be a lifestyle brand.”  A television commercial, by the New York office of Razorfish, part of the Publicis Groupe, will have its premiere on Monday and will promote Axe Music products and the mystery concerts. It shows a man in his 20s attending a T.I. concert — with three attractive women. The scent, described in promotional materials as having “youthful, fruity and aromatic notes with sexy leather undertones and edgy wood accords,” will carry a suggested retail price of $4.99 for both the deodorant body spray (4 ounces) and shampoo (12 ounces), and $3.99 for the shower gel (12 ounces). It is not the brand’s first appeal to after-hours revelers. This is the second consecutive summer that it has christened a club in Southampton previously known as Dune as the Axe Lounge, a sponsorship akin to naming-rights deals for sports stadiums. The Axe logo is festooned on the venue’s menu, valet tickets and D.J. booth, and clubgoers sample its products in the bathrooms. What the brand calls pop-up versions of the Axe Lounge have been staged elsewhere for shorter durations, including one in Miami in February while the city hosted the Super Bowl . The market for men’s grooming products grew to $4.83 billion in 2009, from $2.38 billion in 1997, according to Euromonitor International, a market research firm. Axe is widely credited for driving much of that growth, all but creating the male body spray category and continuing to enter categories that mainstream men’s brands have historically avoided, most recently hair care, with Axe introducing shampoo in 2008. Since it was introduced in the United States in 2002, Axe has grown to dominate the deodorant body spray market, with a 36.7 percent share in 2009, from just 9.9 percent. The current share is far ahead of Tag, a Procter & Gamble brand, with a 9.9 percent share.  In the shower gel category, however, Axe has been overtaken by Old Spice, also a Procter & Gamble brand. This is partly because of the success of two commercials — the first released in February and the second in June — that feature the chiseled actor Isaiah Mustafa as the Old Spice Man and that have garnered more than 31 million views on YouTube combined. In the four weeks ended July 12, 2009, Axe had a 7.7 percent share of the overall liquid body wash market, and Old Spice, 6.2 percent, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a market data firm whose totals do not include Wal-Mart. In the four weeks ended this July 11, Axe’s share had slipped to 5.9 percent, and Old Spice’s had climbed to 10.1 percent. Axe spent a total of $125 million on advertising in 2009, and Old Spice spent $36 million, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP. Coming Axe Music shows will be in Los Angeles in September, Chicago in October and Las Vegas in November, with the brand revealing the performers, sites and dates in stages beginning a few days before each. The brand’s Web site and Facebook page, meanwhile, will feature video from previous shows. “This is something unique and quite talk-worthy in social media and digital space,” Mr. Dwyer of Axe said. “But we think that the real sizzle will come from whether you’re at the show or not.”

Advertising and Marketing
Axe
Unilever N.V
Music
Axe Music


Rushworth M. Kidder, Ethicist, Dies at 67

Abstract: Rushworth M. Kidder, an academic-turned-journalist who founded a research institute dedicated to mapping approaches to ethical dilemmas and propounded his ideas in books, speeches and seminars, died on March 5 at a nursing home in Davie, Fla. He was 67. His daughter Heather said the cause had not been determined. Mr. Kidder, a Christian Scientist, was not treated by a doctor, she said. Mr. Kidder taught that thorny moral decisions rarely involved choosing right over wrong; rather, he said, they often demanded selecting among various “right” solutions. Making ethical judgments, he said, included balancing considerations like truth versus loyalty and short-term versus long-term effects. He urged that people think through such matters regularly to achieve “ethical fitness.” In 1990 he founded the Institute for Global Ethics in Rockport, Me., to spread his message through seminars and workshops at corporations and schools. A nonprofit organization, the institute also opened offices in London and New York. Mr. Kidder was its president. He wrote a dozen books, most about ethical concerns. In one, “ How Good People Make Tough Choices ,” published in 1995, he confronted readers with hypothetical workplace situations, asking them to make decisions as a boss (addressing the reader as “you”). One example: Your office manager confesses that she stole money from the office account to buy medicine for her ailing father. Her father has died, and she offers you a check from the insurance proceeds to pay you back. After you cash the check, do you fire her or forgive her? Mr. Kidder did not give definite answers to his questions, advising that the good of an individual must be weighed against the good of an organization. But he did say that mercy was usually a higher value than justice. Former President Jimmy Carter called the book, which was revised and reissued in 2009, “a thought-provoking guide to enlightened and progressive personal behavior.” Rushworth Moulton Kidder was born in Providence, R.I., on May 8, 1944. His father, George, was a biochemistry professor at Amherst College; his mother, the former Ruth Rushworth, was her husband’s lab assistant. Mr. Kidder graduated with honors from Amherst and earned a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia. He taught English for 12 years at Wichita State University in Kansas. His first two books were about Dylan Thomas and E. E. Cummings. In an interview with the reference book Contemporary Authors, he said he had been interested in their capacity for writing poems of praise without cynicism or sentimentality. After leaving Wichita, he joined The Christian Science Monitor, for which he had already contributed articles. He became the newspaper’s London correspondent and was later a columnist. His interest in ethics was partly inspired by a series of interviews he did for The Monitor with leading thinkers, like the historian Barbara W. Tuchman. Mr. Kidder lived in Naples, Fla., where he and his wife moved last year from Lincolnville, Me. In addition to his daughter Heather, he is survived by his wife of 46 years, the former Anne Elizabeth Davidson, and another daughter, Abby. For all the nuance Mr. Kidder advocated in thinking about ethics, he could be stern in his moral judgments. When former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was awaiting trial on corruption charges in 2010, Mr. Kidder told The New York Times that the governor demonstrated society’s failure to teach morals . “As such, he’s the perfect outcome of our ethical indifference and a role model for the next generation,” he said.

Kidder Rushworth M
Institute for Global Ethics
Ethics (Institutional)
Deaths (Obituaries)
Ethics (Personal)


India's Economy Expands 8.9 Percent

Abstract: NEW DELHI — India’s economy grew 8.9 percent in its fiscal second quarter compared to the same period a year earlier, the Central Statistical Organization said Tuesday, as farm output and manufacturing expanded. The annual gross domestic product figure for the July-September period was far above Reuters analysts’ forecast of 8.3 percent growth and was greater than the 8.8 percent expansion in the fiscal first quarter. The manufacturing sector, in the domestic demand-driven Indian economy, rose 9.8 percent in the second quarter, supported by strong output and rural demand, while the farm sector grew 4.4 percent from a year earlier. Private spending in the quarter was up 9.3 percent from the year-earlier period, from 7.8 percent in the previous quarter, although investment grew at 11.1 percent, slowing from 19 percent in the first fiscal quarter. The strong G.D.P. growth comes despite a series of interest rate increases by the central bank this year to fight inflation, and the latest reading puts more pressure on the Reserve Bank of India to tighten monetary policy again. “Governor Subbarao has strongly hinted that the R.B.I. will take a break from raising policy rates for the next one or two months, but the strong growth numbers today may change his mind,” said Brian Jackson, strategist at the Royal Bank of Canada in Hong Kong. “Inflation is still the number one policy focus, and we continue to expect more rate hikes in the months ahead, perhaps as soon as the next meeting in December,” he said. But signs of easing inflation, a fragile global economy and weaker industrial output in September were likely to forestall any rise in rates for the rest of 2010, some analysts said. Industrial output, which is a key indicator of growth momentum, rose 4.4 percent in September from the year-earlier period, slowing from 6.9 percent annual growth in August. “Unless the full-year growth looks likely to cross 9 percent, the central bank is unlikely to get aggressive again in raising rates,“ said Anjali Varma, an economist at MF Global in Mumbai. “I do not expect any more rate hikes in this fiscal year. We also have to look at how industrial production fares going ahead, as that has started slowing down only now.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government is under pressure to rein in inflation while keeping the economy on a high growth trajectory. The government, which is hopeful of achieving growth of at least 8.5 percent this fiscal year, which ends March 31, has said it expected headline inflation to ease to around 6 percent by the end of March thanks to easing food prices and higher interest rates. India’s annual headline inflation fell to 8.58 percent in October to its lowest level in 10 months, while food inflation slowed for a sixth consecutive week in mid-November.

India
Gross Domestic Product
Economic Conditions and Trends
Inflation (Economics)


Just Don’t Expect Them at the Early-Bird Sale

Abstract: At 3 a.m. in New York City, there is a lot you can legally do, but it is not exactly a wonderland. You can ride the subway. You can watch your clothes twirl around in a dryer at an all-night Laundromat. You can buy a pack of cigarettes and a bag of chips at a 24-hour deli. So there was something unusual, maybe even thrilling, about walking through the largest department store in the world at that bleary-eyed hour and shopping for designer handbags, children’s clothes, jewelry and perfume. If you wanted to buy those leather Michael Kors wedge-heel boots for $279 at 3:47 a.m., you could. It was at a slightly more reasonable hour (shortly after 2 a.m.) that a Brooklyn man in a Jets T-shirt, Luis Negron, 40, strolled through the first-floor men’s department at Macy’s Herald Square on Saturday. The store was in the middle of an 83-hour holiday shopping marathon, opening its doors Friday at 7 a.m. and keeping them open until Monday at 6 p.m., the first time that Macy’s 105-year-old flagship store on West 34th Street has been open around the clock. Mr. Negron’s shift as a surgical technician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan had ended about 11 p.m. Friday, and now here he was a few hours later with his wife, Betsy, shopping for last-minute gifts with thousands of other New Yorkers and tourists. “I got Granny a juicer, because she’s trying to live to 100,” he said. “I got my father some belts. Nieces, perfumes. My brother-in-law, you know, he just went to D.C. He got a job at the Treasury Department, so we got him some corporate shirts.” Mr. Negron and other shoppers, many of whom said they worked night shifts, seemed appreciative, even downright grateful, that one of the city’s busiest stores was reaching out to their often-overlooked demographic: night-owl procrastinators. They disputed the old saw about the city that never sleeps. “You can’t go shopping,” Mr. Negron said of New York’s usual nighttime options. “Sometimes when you get out of work there is nothing open. Do you know how many times I’ve bought my wife birthday presents at Walgreens or Eckerd? It’s embarrassing. It’s either that or go to the Village, and what am I going to get, a bong?” Throughout the predawn hours Saturday, from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m., Macy’s was packed with shoppers. Some happened to be walking by and noticed that the store was open. Some heard about the extended hours on the news and drove in from New Jersey. There were two American Red Cross workers in their red jackets, on their lunch break. There was a group of young men and women who had come from Australia and a couple from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who had come from a Laundromat. As holiday music played on the sound system and sales clerks worked the cash registers, Macy’s seemed a brightly lighted, timeless world unto itself. “That’s a really classic watch,” a clerk told a woman trying on a watch at 2:43 a.m. A few minutes later, another woman, clutching two shopping bags, talked on her cellphone while stepping onto one of the store’s old wooden escalators. “It’s the city,” said another shopper with a shrug, as she stood at a bank of cash registers on the seventh floor. “Everybody’s up this late.” Everybody, that is, except for the boy who slept soundly in the stroller she was pushing. Indeed, as the hours passed, the real miracle on 34th Street seemed simply staying awake. Dr. Puneet Nath, a pediatrician from Cambridge, England, leaned his head against the wall outside some fitting rooms on the third floor, where his sister was trying on clothes. He had been visiting for several days and was already accustomed to New York time, which at that moment was 4:37 a.m. “We’re here since midnight, so don’t ask,” Dr. Nath explained. Macy’s Herald Square was one of eight of the retail chain’s stores in New York City and New Jersey taking part in the marathon. One of those stores, at the Queens Center mall in Elmhurst, stayed open even longer, beginning its promotion one day earlier, on Thursday. At the Queens Macy’s, Saturday’s predawn crowd included a 20-year-old student who said he was just “wasting time” with his friends after they became bored with their poker game, and a uniformed emergency medical technician who offered a suggestion for store management. “They should give out free coffee when you walk in the door,” said the E.M.T., Sonia Agard, 34, who was at the store about 3 a.m. Amit Mahabir, 28, a doorman at a Manhattan building, was considering taking a sick day from work so he could do his holiday shopping. But he and an elevator operator he works with went to Queens after their shift ended at 1 a.m., and he bought his wife a Coach watch for $431. “She deserves it,” he said. In Manhattan, the commercial activity — and the coherence of some of the customers — seemed to reach a temporary lull around 4 a.m. Some sections of the store, including the floors selling furniture and holiday decorations, had just a handful of shoppers, and though the store was busy, there were none of the long lines and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds typical in the daytime holiday rush. At this hour, there were instances of what might be called B.W.I., or buying while intoxicated. One man with an unlighted cigarette in his mouth had trouble standing while trying to purchase some items at a designer handbag counter. He leaned on his two female friends for support. After the cashier rang up the items, he was told the amount: $884. “Why?” he muttered. His mood seemed to sour, and he and his friends mumbled to one another and left without buying the handbags. Meanwhile, Michele Harshall stood at a counter near the store’s Broadway entrance. Her husband had told her to wait there while he went shopping for her surprise gift. But there was another reason why she was in Macy’s at 4:15 a.m. “We kind of had one too many drinks,” she said.

Macy's Incorporated
Holidays and Special Occasions
Retail Stores and Trade
Herald Square (NYC)


U.S.-Led Raid Frees 8 Qaeda Hostages From a Yemeni Cave

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In a predawn raid on Tuesday, United States Special Operations commandos and Yemeni troops rescued eight hostages being held in a cave in a remote part of eastern Yemen by Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, officials from both countries said. The freed captives were six Yemeni citizens, a Saudi and an Ethiopian, who were unharmed, Yemeni officials said in a statement. Earlier reports that an American hostage was freed were incorrect, according to Yemeni and American officials. About two dozen United States commandos, joined by a small number of American-trained Yemeni counterterrorism troops flew secretly by helicopter to a location in Hadhramaut Province near the Saudi border, according to American and Yemeni officials. The commandos then hiked some distance in the dark to a mountainside cave, where they surprised the militants holding the captives. An ensuing shootout left seven of the Qaeda militants dead, the officials said. The hostages were then evacuated in helicopters. The rare and risky dash into Qaeda-infested territory was organized fairly quickly, within two weeks of a request from President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen to help rescue the captives, one American official said. The operation appeared to be at least partly an attempt to bolster the stature of Mr. Hadi, a committed but wobbling United States ally whose authority was badly undermined when a rebel group suddenly seized control of Yemen’s capital in September. In an apparent effort to play down the leading American role in the clandestine operation, the Pentagon referred questions about what had happened to the Yemeni government. “I would just tell you we continue to support Yemeni counterterrorism efforts and would refer you to them to talk to any operations,” Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday. A statement from the Yemeni government made no mention of any American role in the hostage rescue, which is one of the principal missions of Joint Special Operations Command troops like the Army’s Delta Force or the Navy’s SEAL Team Six. With militias gaining ground and Yemen’s political order upended, Mr. Hadi has increasingly seemed like a bystander to arguments and violence beyond his control. He came to power two years ago after Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down as part of an internationally brokered deal. Mr. Saleh, who was president for 33 years and remains a powerful political broker, was widely suspected of aiding the ascent of the rebel group, known as the Houthis. The Houthis, whose leaders come from the minority Zaydi sect, a branch of Shiite Islam, had fought six wars against Yemen’s central government before they swept into the capital, Sana, in September. Seizing on popular anger with Mr. Hadi’s government, Houthi fighters took over government buildings, state media facilities and military bases. The military broke apart, some units appeared to side with the rebels, and the prime minister abruptly resigned. Since storming Sana, the Houthis have sought to consolidate their power, including by vanquishing their Islamist political enemies. They have also eclipsed the military at the vanguard of the battle against Sunni extremists of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, with the Houthi fighters engaging the extremists on a growing number of fronts across Yemen. The fighting has led to fears of an escalating sectarian war. The Houthis’ ascendance has angered Al Qaeda, which views Shiites as heretics and the Houthis as pawns of Iran. Houthi fighters have been making advances outside Sana, taking over cities, apparently with the agreement of the local authorities. All the while, in southern Yemen, a movement calling for independence for the south has threatened a more forceful effort to press its demands. Earlier this month, in another attempt to bolster Mr. Hadi, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on two Houthi leaders, as well as Mr. Saleh. The United States’ action, though, seemed only to prompt new controversy and further isolate Mr. Hadi. The captives were held in Hadhramaut, Yemen’s largest province and a sparsely populated region where vast spaces outside its cities are beyond the government’s control. Long known for its fierce independence, the oil-rich province has also struggled in recent years with a security vacuum. It has become the stage for a growing number of shadowy militant attacks on the security forces, for which the government blames Al Qaeda. And the province, which stretches from the Gulf of Aden in the south to the desolate Empty Quarter near the border with Saudi Arabia, has also been the site of repeated strikes by missile-firing United States drones. The Supreme Security Committee in Yemen said in a statement carried on the official Saba agency that one of those freed was Khalil al-Mekhlafi, who was kidnapped from the southern province of Bayda in June 2013. Mr. Mekhlafi holds a doctorate in computer science from China and lectures at Al Bayda University. According to Mr. Mekhlafi’s friends, he was abducted along with two of his colleagues after finishing classes last year. Prof. Sailan Al Arami, president of Al Bayda, said Mr. Mekhlafi was installed as a teacher at the university last year after serving for months at a police academy in the capital. But a local journalist who has followed Mr. Mekhlafi’s abduction said that Qaeda militants had kidnapped him because they thought he had expertise in making explosives, and because he had worked as a police officer. “They think that he would help them making bombs,” said the journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety. The official statement did not say whether the freed Saudi citizen was Abdullah al-Khalidi, a Saudi diplomat who was kidnapped from the port city of Aden in 2012 and has appeared on Qaeda videos, appealing to his government to secure his release. A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington said he had no information about the Saudi who was reportedly released.

Yemen
Kidnapping and Hostages
Rescue
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Terrorism
US Military
US Special Operations Command
Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi
Houthis
Khalil al-Mekhlafi


For Each Side, Outcome Is Difficult to Process

Abstract: Phoenix Early Monday morning, I received a telephone message from Marlin Briscoe. The Magician simply said, “We did it.” Briscoe was a receiver on the undefeated Miami Dolphins team in 1972. He and his Dolphins teammates have fiercely guarded their undefeated legacy. They have actively pulled for a Patriots loss. The old Fish got their wish Sunday, although fate made them wait out the final minutes, final seconds and final play to ensure that their legacy was kept intact. What an extraordinary game: a hard-hitting defensive struggle in the first half, a relative offensive burst in the second. Tom Brady and Eli Manning led fourth-quarter scoring drives, and all over the field, players — heralded and unheralded — made clutch plays. My heart was with the Giants, but I must confess that in the back of my mind I wanted to see New England make history. I wanted to witness a perfect season. Sports is one of the few areas of endeavor in which perfection can be measured. But achieving perfection is rare because it requires good fortune as well as skill and execution. On a crucial third-down play Sunday, the Patriots nearly sacked Manning; he miraculously got away and threw a pass to David Tyree, who made a circus catch. A month ago, Manning probably would have gone down, or Tyree probably would not have made the catch. “That play was representative of us not really getting the breaks that we were used to getting,” Patriots safety Rodney Harrison said.  In the closing seconds of Sunday’s game, I felt as if I’d watched a pitcher carry a perfect game into the bottom of the ninth, then give up a game-winning home run. Perfect game lost; game lost. Worse, the pitcher forfeits any claim to posterity because people rarely remember who finishes second. Ellis Hobbs, the Patriots cornerback who failed to stop the winning touchdown pass, said: “The season means nothing now. It means nothing to me. When you put a win together, when you continually put wins together with so many people not wanting you to win, to lose at the end just hurts. You know, it is all for nothing.” Who saw this victory coming? The morning after, the Giants and the Patriots walked around here in a daze. People — fans, reporters, friends and family of players — were still trying to get their minds around it: a hot, perfectly balanced Giants team lit into the unbeaten Patriots with fury and total irreverence. I felt that the game had the potential to be a classic because of the intersecting realities: a surging Giants team, an undefeated Patriots team simultaneously going for posterity and a fourth Super Bowl championship. Beyond that, this Super Bowl was personal, very personal. The teams had played a few weeks earlier in East Rutherford, N.J., where New England won. The rematch reminded me of one of those A.F.L.-N.F.L. Super Bowl games between 1967 and 1970, when the N.F.L. didn’t think the A.F.L. belonged on the same field. Willie Lanier, a Hall of Fame middle linebacker, was the anchor of a Chiefs defense that mauled heavily favored Minnesota in Super Bowl IV. “We were underdogs by 13 or 14 points — like the Giants,” Lanier said Monday in a telephone interview. “The general feeling — about our league and our team — was that we didn’t have the ability to perform. The essence of competition is: Give us a chance to be on the same field and we will show you.” What does this championship mean for the Giants? Are they a team that got hot and simply surprised the field? Or is this the beginning of an era of dominance? At the very least, we know that the Giants — especially the defensive line that terrorized Brady — will be the object of every offensive coordinator in the N.F.L. The Giants themselves will receive the Patriots treatment. Every Patriots game this season became the opponent’s Super Bowl. As the Patriots’ victories began to pile up, teams that had nothing to play for played New England as if their season depended on it. New England took everybody’s best shot. They took the Giants’ best shot in the regular-season finale. On Sunday, the Patriots took even harder shots from the Giants, and Brady felt every one of them. The Giants were sky high against the Patriots and shifted into continually higher ranges of intensity. New England, which had been shifting gears all season, simply ran out of emotional gears. When team after team attempts to run down the Giants next season, how many gears will they have?  In New England, the Patriots’ legacy, moving forward, is a mixed bag. They were 18-0 but stumbled at the finish line. Now there is simmering controversy about allegations of improper taping. Despite that, anyone with heart has to feel a tinge of compassion. New England was undefeated through 18 games this season, but today the team is left with no trophy and a haunting question. How did an otherwise perfect season end so imperfectly?

New England Patriots
Super Bowl
Football
National Football League
Brady Tom
Manning Eli


Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Reactor Talks Falter

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Constellation Energy said on Saturday that it had reached an impasse in negotiations for a federal loan guarantee to build a proposed third nuclear reactor at its Calvert Cliffs site near Washington. The decision would appear to kill the project unless Congress or the White House steps in. Constellation said in a letter to the Energy Department that the Office of Management and Budget was seeking a fee of $880 million on a guarantee of about $7.6 billion, which it said would doom the project, “or the economics of any nuclear project, for that matter.” The fee is to compensate taxpayers for the risk of default. The company argues that because the plant’s model is being proven in Finland, France and China, and because it has a strong partner, Électricité de France, the fee should be 1 to 2 percent. The project had once been hailed as a cornerstone of a nuclear power renaissance. In 2005, President George W. Bush spoke at Calvert Cliffs, the first presidential visit to a nuclear plant in 30 years. “It is time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again,” he said. The last successful groundbreaking for a nuclear reactor in the United States was in 1973. The federal government authorized a loan guarantee program in 2005 intended to spur nuclear power development, and Congress agreed to finance it in 2007. So far, however, only one guarantee has been issued, for two new units at the Southern Company’s Vogtle plant, near Waynesboro, Ga. Ground has been broken there, and also for two more reactors across the Savannah River in South Carolina, a project that is proceeding without loan guarantees. But a variety of utilities around the country have stepped back from plans to build reactors. Constellation, which serves a large area of Maryland and owns generating plants nationwide, announced its decision Saturday after the impasse was reported by The Washington Post. On Saturday, James L. Connaughton, executive vice president of Constellation and an environmental official in the Bush White House, stopped short of saying the project was dead. “We were in the middle of discussions,” he said. The government had proposed a lower fee if Constellation agreed to buy three-quarters of the power and Constellation and EDF guaranteed completion of the plant, said Mr. Connaughton, but he said those conditions were too onerous. The site in question is 40 miles south of the District of Columbia where Baltimore Gas & Electric, a predecessor to Constellation, finished two reactors in the 1970s. They remain in operation. In a statement, EDF said it was “extremely disappointed and shocked to learn that Constellation has unilaterally decided to withdraw from the Calvert Cliffs 3 project.” It added, “We were at the finish line with the Department of Energy and were making significant progress.” Constellation said EDF would have to decide whether to proceed alone, although by law it needs an American partner. The companies had hoped to build a series of identical reactors around the United States, with local partners. A spokeswoman for the Energy Department said they were surprised by Constellation’s announcement. Constellation had been hinting for weeks that it had reservations. In September, Mayo Shattuck, the company’s chief executive, speaking at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Washington, referred to the differences in economics between Calvert Cliffs and the Vogtle plant. The Georgia plant, he said, falls under traditional regulations that pass the costs of construction on to power customers; Calvert Cliffs, he said, was in a “merchant” environment, where companies build at their own risk, and sell power at market rates. Experts have pointed out that the current economic climate is not favorable to nuclear construction, in part because the price of natural gas is so low. Congress has authorized loan guarantees of up to $18.5 billion for new reactors, with $8.3 billion now earmarked for Vogtle. President Obama has proposed an additional $36 billion. The sums are simply guarantees by the government to repay lenders if the builder cannot do so. Their cost to the Treasury is unclear; if the reactors are built as planned and run profitably, the cost would be zero. In fact, the Treasury could make a profit on fees paid by the borrowers. While the negotiations are secret, Constellation has been complaining for months that the fee Treasury sought was too high.

Constellation Energy Group
Nuclear Energy
Energy Department
Office of Management and Budget (US)
Maryland