N.B.A. Reaches Out to African Talent in Dakar

Abstract: The basketball court, DeSagana Diop explains, is in Parcelles Assainies, the neighborhood in which he grew up in Dakar and the unlikely starting point for a nine-year N.B.A. career. Diop’s parents, he says, still live in the neighborhood. The space was just dirt and trash before Diop dedicated the court last week. “Before we did it, it was nothing,” Diop said by telephone from Dakar, the capital of Senegal, in western Africa. Its opening symbolizes another small step on a continent where the N.B.A. is attempting to take a great leap. The N.B.A. has extended its influence to Asia, and India is next on its ambitious docket. But the league has recently increased its efforts in Africa. Besides some successes, like Hakeem Olajuwon of Nigeria, who was drafted by the Houston Rockets in 1984, the continent has been an area of mostly untapped or underdeveloped talent in a soccer-first region. The N.B.A. made pilgrimages to the continent and conducted camps and clinics, but the visits did not have a lasting effect. This year, the N.B.A. named Dikembe Mutombo its global ambassador. In March, it opened its first office in Africa, in Johannesburg, under the guidance of Amadou Gallo Fall, a native of Senegal who discovered Diop and served as a Dallas Mavericks executive for a dozen years. And Basketball Without Borders, the international development and community outreach program, visited Senegal last week, the first time the camp was staged in Africa outside of Johannesburg. “There’s a lot of talent here,” Diop said. “We’ve just got to do more camps and teach the game more and more. They’ve got a lot of athletes. They’ve just got to learn the basics. Shooting, jumping, passing, and it’s going to help the game of basketball.” Diop led a contingent of N.B.A. personnel to Dakar that included his fellow African-born players Hasheem Thabeet and Luc Mbah a Moute and the Knicks’ Danilo Gallinari of Italy and Ronny Turiaf of France. The players and a number of N.B.A. officials hosted 60 of the continent’s top teenage players, who represented countries from Angola to Zambia. Diop views himself from the same prism as many of his campers. He is luckier than most and did not scour for his next meal. His father was a high school principal and his mother a teacher. But like some of the campers, Diop ventured into basketball only after he grew too tall for soccer. Fall discovered Diop and funneled him to the United States and the high school basketball powerhouse Oak Hill Academy in Virginia, which has produced numerous N.B.A. stars. Diop progressed on the basketball court and, even more important, in the classroom. He was Oak Hill’s valedictorian. “He just needed to be given the tools, but you could tell that he had a lot of upside,” Fall said. “It was just a question of if he could get to the right place to learn the game.” Diop entered the N.B.A. as an athlete with raw skills but plenty of promise. The Cleveland Cavaliers drafted him with the eighth overall pick in 2001, only four years after he first started to play the game. In four seasons with Cleveland, Diop was deemed a bust. The learning curve had proved high. He resuscitated his career by contributing to a finals-bound Dallas Mavericks squad and is now a reserve center with the Charlotte Bobcats. Diop says he sometimes wonders if he would have become a star with better tutelage as a youth. Fall, a former microbiologist who played at the University of the District of Columbia, wonders the same thing. While he once sought to export players to learn the game, Fall now wants Africa to serve as the learning ground. “You see so many people here who don’t have the fortunes of learning or developing their skills, and their talents go to waste,” Fall said. “That’s why we’re so happy to impact basketball at the ground-roots level and to teach young people that they don’t have to necessarily go somewhere else to learn their skills.” Diop has made the trek back almost annually. In 2003, he and Fall started the Seeds Academy in Senegal, an acronym for Sports for Education and Economic Development. Diop is quick to point out that basketball is only one aspect of life that he teaches. “It’s not just about basketball,” he said. “It’s about life in general. Not everybody is going to make it to the N.B.A. I want to help teach them that they can be anything. They can be teachers. They can be doctors.” Some, though, do advance in the game. Diop can still recall a lanky and athletic Mbah a Moute at the camp in 2003. “Now I’m playing against him in the N.B.A.,” he said with a chuckle. “How crazy is that?” Perhaps, it was once far-fetched. Now such progress is rooted in reality. Two other products from the Basketball Without Borders program in Africa — Christian Eyenga, the Cavaliers’ 2009 first-round draft selection, and Solomon Alabi of the Toronto Raptors — signed N.B.A. contracts this summer. The signings were more inroads in the search not for symbolic gestures but for meaningful influence and development. “Everybody wants to be associated with something special,” Fall said. “We all hold dear to our heart where we are from, and basketball is a huge tool that can impact the community.”

National Basketball Assn
Basketball
Diop DeSagana
Draft and Recruitment (Sports)
Dakar (Senegal)


Scientists Sample the Ocean and Find Tiny Additions to the Tree of Life

Abstract: Climate change scientists have known for years that rising temperatures affect sea creatures, from the biggest fish to the microscopic plankton at the base of the ocean food chain. Now, a four-year expedition that sampled microbes from across the world’s oceans is bringing the mechanisms of that change into focus. These tiny creatures, which may be among the oldest on Earth, together absorb carbon dioxide, make oxygen, break down waste and nourish other creatures. And they are profoundly affected by water temperature, according to a series of five studies published Thursday in Science about the voyage of the schooner Tara. “Temperature is the most important environmental factor determining the composition of these communities,” said Chris Bowler, an author on all five studies and a genomics expert with the Department of Biology of the École Normale Supérieure and the National Center for Scientific Research in France. “This would imply that climate change, warming of the oceans, is going to have a strong impact on these organisms and the functions these organisms perform for the well-being of our planet,” Dr. Bowler said. The Tara expedition’s findings, researchers said, have added an order of magnitude to what we know of the Tree of Life, vastly expanding its base. The microbes studied range from viruses and bacteria too small to see under a microscope to the single-celled amoebas or paramecia that children study in biology classes. Research on the diversity of these creatures was virtually impossible until a few years ago, with the advent of relatively quick and affordable genetic analysis, said Stephen Palumbi, a Stanford University marine biologist who was not involved in the Tara studies but wrote a commentary that accompanied them . Until about 50 years ago, scientists did not even realize that the specks they saw when they examined seawater under a microscope were alive, he said. The new research showed that these microbes are in a constant dance with one another, collaborating and battling just below the water’s surface. Their interactions keep the ecosystem in balance, preventing any one species from dominating the seas. “A lot of what we didn’t really ever see before in the ocean are predators and parasites, zombies and vampires that are floating through this incredible set of diversity, battling it out,” Dr. Palumbi said. “All these tiny little critters add up to something that is really a part of the way our planet operates.” The vast genetic diversity of the oceans impressed many of the scientists involved in the Tara Oceans project, a consortium that involved 18 institutions. The researchers identified roughly 40 million genes in the upper layers of the world’s oceans. The human gut microbiome, in comparison, is known to have only about 10 million genes, said Shinichi Sunagawa of the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg, Germany, who was a first author on one of the papers. The raw data produced by the Tara expedition should allow scientists eventually to predict how microbial life will change as a function of changes in water temperature, said Eric Karsenti, a cell biologist and scientific director of the consortium. One of the new papers tracks the effects warming waters have on bacterial diversity, suggesting that other microbes, like viruses and single-celled organisms, are probably affected as well. Future analysis should allow researchers to build predictive models for what will happen to microbial communities as water temperature changes, Dr. Karsenti said, and how much that will affect oxygen production and carbon dioxide absorption. Life on Earth started in the oceans, so the Tara data also provides new insights into creatures directly descended from those of a billion years ago, Dr. Bowler said. “By matching DNA-level information with what these organisms look like, we can learn more about them, more about how they work, and hopefully learn more about our own origins as well,” he said. The 110-foot research schooner Tara traveled as far north as the Arctic and as far south as Antarctica from 2009 to 2013. It had to evade pirates off the coast of Saudi Arabia, path-blocking ice in the Arctic and hurricane-force winds in the Magellan Straits linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. “It was an incredible time,” said the Tara Foundation’s executive director, Romain Troublé. As it journeyed across the oceans, Mr. Troublé and his team negotiated permission from more than 20 countries for the schooner to sample and dock. Researchers had to follow precise protocols at each of 210 sites, where they remained for two days at a stretch, battling the wind and weather to scoop up samples from the fragile boundary between the sea and the air. As the Tara docked in ports along the way, expedition scientists turned into cheerleaders for the sea, educating children and adults about the creatures they live near but do not know. The research team, which totaled more than 200 people, included experts from 35 countries and with more than 20 specialties. Members have begun analyzing their 35,000 samples, with just 579 explored in these five papers. The data will be made public and accessible to scientists across the globe. The boat, which has continued to sample in the Arctic and the Mediterranean since 2013, will sail up the Seine this year to highlight ocean security at climate change negotiations in Paris. “Nobody is speaking for the oceans,” Mr. Troublé said.

Fish
Climate Change
Global Warming
Oceans and Seas
Science Journal
Research
Microbiology


Second-Half Run Pushes Syracuse by Hazell and Seton Hall

Abstract: Wesley Johnson had 20 points, a career-best 19 rebounds and led a 15-point second-half run that rallied No. 5 Syracuse to an 80-73 victory over Seton Hall in Newark on Tuesday night. Kris Joseph added 16 points as the Orange (13-0, 1-0 Big East) overcame a 12-point first-half deficit. Jeremy Hazell almost single-handedly kept the Pirates in the game with 38 points. WEST VA. 63, MARQUETTE 62 Da’Sean Butler’s jumper with two seconds lifted No. 6 West Virginia (11-0, 2-0 Big East) over visiting Marquette (9-4, 0-1). KENTUCKY 104, HARTFORD 61 The freshman point guard John Wall set a university record with 16 assists and No. 3 Kentucky (14-0) crushed visiting Hartford (2-10). TEXAS 95, GARDNER-WEBB 63 Damion James had 14 points and 13 rebounds — his 43rd career double-double — and No. 2 Texas (12-0) beat visiting Gardner-Webb (3-8). KANSAS 81, BELMONT 51 Cole Aldrich had a double-double and blocked six shots, and No. 1 Kansas (12-0) rebounded from a sluggish first half to wear down visiting Belmont (7-5). KANSAS ST. 85, CLEV’LAND ST. 56 Jacob Pullen and Curtis Kelly sparked a first-half run that led No. 12 Kansas State (12-1) past visiting Cleveland State (4-10). CLEMSON 70, S. CAROLINA ST. 67 Demontez Stitt made two free throws after Andre Young’s steal in the final minute and No. 21 Clemson (12-2) avoided an upset in its final nonconference game. MISS. 90, JACKSONVILLE ST. 75 Terrico White scored 29 points and No. 16 Mississippi (11-2) connected for a university-record 14 3-pointers against visiting Jacksonville State (5-6). DUKE 84, LONG BEACH ST. 63 Jon Scheyer scored 22 points and No. 7 Duke (10-1) beat visiting Long Beach State (6-7). NEW MEXICO 90, TEXAS TECH 75 Darington Hobson had 23 points and 12 rebounds as No. 19 New Mexico (13-1) beat No. 20 Texas Tech (10-2) in Albuquerque. CORNELL 78, LA SALLE 75 The senior forward Ryan Wittman scored a career-high 34 points to become the career scoring leader at host Cornell (10-2). He needed 31 points to surpass John Bajusz (1983-87), who had 1,663. PURDUE 67, IOWA 56 E’Twaun Moore had 21 points and No. 4 Purdue (12-0, 1-0 Big Ten) beat host Iowa (5-8, 0-1). IN OTHER GAMES Nathaniel Lester and Charles Jenkins scored 17 points each and Hofstra (8-5) held off host Florida Atlantic (5-8) by 67-63. ... Markeith Cummings’s 27 points led host Kennesaw State (5-7) to a 79-66 victory over Fordham (2-9). ... Yorel Hawkins had 14 points as host Fairfield (9-3) beat New York’s St. Francis (3-8) by 65-58. ... Cory Higgins had 23 points to help host Colorado (8-4) to a 70-59 win over Yale (4-8). Women NOTRE DAME 85, C. FLORIDA 52 Ashley Barlow had 17 points and No. 3 Notre Dame (11-0) beat host Central Florida (3-6). U.N.C. 89, KENNESAW ST. 44 Italee Lucas had 16 points as No. 7 North Carolina (10-1) beat visiting Kennesaw State (4-7).


Justices to Hear Cases on Withheld Evidence and Bad Advice

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to decide whether the convictions of seven defendants in a notorious 1984 murder must be set aside because prosecutors withheld evidence about another suspect. The court also said it would hear a case on the consequences of bad legal advice about whether a criminal conviction would lead to deportation. The defendants in the murder case, almost all teenagers at the time, were prosecuted for sexually assaulting and killing Catherine Fuller, 48. Prosecutors presented no physical evidence, relying on eyewitness testimony. Twenty-five years after the trial, in 2010, lawyers for the defendants sought to reopen the case, saying their convictions had been tainted by violations of Brady v. Maryland , a 1963 Supreme Court decision that required prosecutors to turn over favorable evidence to the defense. They said prosecutors had withheld several kinds of evidence, most notably about another suspect, James McMillan. After Ms. Fuller’s murder but before the trial, Mr. McMillan was arrested and later convicted on charges of robbing and assaulting two other middle-aged women in the neighborhood. Several years later, Mr. McMillan was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering a woman in 1992, a few blocks from the alley where Ms. Fuller was killed. Last year, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals declined to reopen the 1984 case , reasoning that Mr. McMillan’s later, similar crimes were irrelevant to what prosecutors should have disclosed before the defendants’ trial. The 1992 murder, the court said, had “no bearing on the question of the materiality of any evidence that the government actually did withhold from the defense.” The courts are divided over whether such after-the-fact evidence can shed light on the importance of information withheld by prosecutors. In urging the Supreme Court not to grant review in the cases, Turner v. United States, No. 15-1503, and Overton v. United States, No. 15-1504, prosecutors said they could not have predicted the 1992 murder at the time of the 1985 trial. “A Brady violation cannot be predicated on the government’s failure to do the impossible and disclose evidence that does not yet exist,” the wrote, quoting from the appeals court decision. The case concerning legal advice involves Jae Lee, who moved to the United States from South Korea with his family in 1982, when he was 13. After graduating from high school in New York, he moved to Memphis, where he became a restaurateur and a small-time drug dealer. He was a lawful resident but not a citizen. Mr. Lee was prosecuted for possessing the drug ecstasy with the intent to distribute it, and his lawyer urged him to plead guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence. The lawyer falsely told Mr. Lee that he would not be subject to deportation after he served his sentence, which turned out to be a year and a day. On learning the truth, Mr. Lee filed a motion to vacate his conviction, arguing that he had received ineffective assistance of counsel. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that lawyers for people thinking of pleading guilty to a crime must advise their clients who are not citizens about the possibility that they will be deported. In Mr. Lee’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said he had suffered no prejudice, as the correct legal advice would not have helped him. Had he gone to trial, the court said, he would have lost and still have been deported. “It is unclear to us why it is in our national interests — much less the interests of justice — to exile a productive member of our society to a country he hasn’t lived in since childhood for committing a relatively small-time drug offense,” Judge Alice M. Batchelder wrote for the court. “But our duty is neither to prosecute nor to pardon; it is simply to say ‘what the law is,’ ” she added, quoting Marbury v. Madison .

Murders and Homicides
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Crime
Deportation


The Rays’ Ice Man Is Also Baseball’s Fastest Man

Abstract: Carl Crawford has an important ritual after almost every baseball game. He finds a tub, fills it with ice and submerges his body into the frigid water. “I just sit there and act as if I’m taking a bath,” said Crawford, the Tampa Bay Rays ’ left fielder. Crawford morphs into the ice man to help rejuvenate his muscular legs, the legs that help make him one of the most dynamic players in the major leagues. He is fast and he is fearless, an ideal combination for someone who hopes to damage another team every time he reaches base. As soon as Crawford gets on first, he changes the game. The pitcher slows down, the catcher gets anxious and everyone waits for Crawford’s legs to churn. Even Evan Longoria, who bats behind Crawford, changes his style. He might watch two strikes buzz by to let Crawford run. “I’m willing to take pitches because I know that he’s not going to get thrown out,” Longoria said. “He’s amazing.” Crawford, who is probably the fastest player in baseball, has solidified his position as the best base-stealer with a major league-best 20 in 20 attempts. He swiped a base in a 4-3 victory against the Yankees, giving him a steal in nine straight games. That includes a record-tying six steals against the Red Sox on Sunday. Jason Varitek, Boston’s catcher, is still trying to catch him. How fast is Crawford? Longoria estimated that Crawford, after taking his usual lead, can zoom to second in about 3.1 seconds. After Crawford victimized Boston so spectacularly, Red Sox Manager Terry Francona lamented how Brad Penny had twice thrown pitches to the plate in 1.28 seconds and Varitek had fired both of them to second in 1.9 seconds. Those are better than average times. “We can’t go faster than that,” Francona said. “He outran it.” Before Wednesday’s game, Crawford was sweating from batting practice and shagging fly balls. But other than analyzing the throwing times for the catcher and the pitchers, Crawford does no pregame preparation for stealing bases. “I’m fortunate it’s one aspect of my game that comes naturally,” he said. Crawford thought he was going to be an option quarterback at Nebraska, but Tampa Bay drafted him in 1999 and he shifted to baseball. While Crawford said he did not become interested in stealing bases until he was a minor leaguer, he now does it as well as almost anyone. He is 322 for 386 in career attempts, an 83.4 percentage. That is the third best in history among players with at least 300 steals. The scouting report on Crawford is that he has excellent speed, terrific instincts and a daring attitude, the hallmarks of great base stealers. Longoria gushed about how Crawford needs only two strides to get to full speed, something Varitek has on instant replay in his mind. “I haven’t seen closing speed like that,” Varitek said. “His acceleration to the bag is extremely good.” Crawford said his greatest trait might be his assertive attitude. “If I have a chance, if I feel like I can go, then I try and go and get it whenever I can,” he said. “I try to be aggressive.” Joe Maddon, the Rays’ manager, noted how Crawford is typically running in pivotal situations. Maddon praised Crawford for getting better leads lately and for never telegraphing that he is about to run. “He goes from stillness to quickness fast, if that makes sense,” Maddon said. It does. When Maddon was asked about the possibility of Crawford stealing 100 bases, he called it doubtful because Crawford’s body would take too much of a pounding. Crawford, whose career-high is 59, called 100 a “big, round number,” but he added that he would not be able to walk if he ran that frequently. If the big, round number is not a goal, what about a short, round number? So far, no catcher has nabbed Crawford. Can he keep the zero all season? “We’ll have to see,” Crawford said. “My intention when I go is not to get caught.”


Kenny Guinn, 73, Dies; Governor of a Prosperous Nevada

Abstract: LAS VEGAS (AP) — Kenny Guinn, who was governor of Nevada during a prosperous era for a state now facing severe budget problems, died Thursday after falling from the roof of his home here while making repairs. He was 73. The authorities were investigating whether the death was from natural causes or an accident. Mr. Guinn was a Democrat turned moderate Republican who served two terms as governor, from 1999 to 2007. The son of migrant fruit pickers who moved to Nevada from the San Joaquin Valley in California, he worked his way through college as a teacher. “No matter where we went, my parents always made sure we went to school, even if it was a short period of time,” Mr. Guinn told The Associated Press in 1999. “I knew full well I wanted to do something besides what my family had been doing all those years.” Mr. Guinn was elected in 1998 in his first bid for statewide office while drawing criticism that he was the hand-picked candidate of powerful special interests. By the time he left office, he had been ranked as one of the nation’s best governors by Time magazine. During his tenure he overhauled government agency operations, revamped budgeting and tax collections, pushed for a major student scholarship program, fought federal plans to bury nuclear waste in the desert outside Las Vegas and sought to diversify Nevada’s casino-dependent economy. He also oversaw the biggest tax increase in state history, then returned $300 million in excess revenues to residents. Kenneth Carroll Guinn was born Aug. 24, 1936, in Garland, Ark., and was raised in Exeter, Calif. He attended almost 30 schools as his parents followed the crops. He won a college football scholarship and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physical education from Fresno State University and a doctorate in education from Utah State University. He taught in Fresno and San Jose, Calif., while doing graduate work at Stanford. He moved to Las Vegas in 1964. He is survived by his wife, Dema, and two sons.

Guinn Kenny
Nevada
Governors (US)
Deaths (Obituaries)
Politics and Government


New York Today: A New Year Brings a New Subway Line

Abstract: Good morning on this frosty Friday. In addition to the start of a new year and a clean slate, this weekend marks a milestone nearly a century in the making : the opening of the Second Avenue subway line. Here’s what to expect over the next few days. Today No movement, yet. But while you wait, some suggested reading to get you up to speed: Explore the long history of this subway line , which the city first started planning in the 1920s, or learn about how its opening may affect rent in the area. You can also take a peek at the eye-opening contemporary art you’ll see along the new route. Saturday, Dec. 31 An inaugural New Year’s Eve ride with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s chairman, Thomas F. Prendergast. They’ll be joined that evening for a cocktail-attire event attended by some 500 people who have contributed to the project over many decades. Sunday, Jan. 1 The first section of the Second Avenue subway — an extension of the Q line , which currently ends at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue — is scheduled to open to the public at noon . When the clock strikes noon, the first Q train will leave the station at 57th and Seventh, traveling uptown to an upgraded station at 63rd and Lexington, and continuing to three new stations at 72nd, 86th and 96th Streets. The new line will not serve the Bronx, as once imagined, and a planned extension to Lower Manhattan is far from certain. There are plans to extend the line to 125th Street, but this second phase could take years and cost billions. The week ahead Q trains are to run every six minutes during peak hours. But for the first week of 2017, they will operate only between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Overnight service is slated to begin on Jan. 9. This first phase is predicted to help overcrowding on the 4, 5 and 6 lines, so here’s hoping that this is one New Year’s resolution that comes to fruition. You can stay in-the-know by following Emma G. Fitzsimmons , The New York Times transit reporter, for more updates. Here’s what else is happening: Weather Say it ain’t snow. Mother Nature is closing the curtain on 2016 with one final Friday flurry. We may see light, on-and-off snow showers this morning in otherwise cloudy skies, and the high near 40 will feel more like 25 with the wind. It’s a perfect day to curl up with a hot toddy and those new slippers grandma got you for the holidays. In the News • Could the election of Donald J. Trump be responsible for the recent surge in marriages in New York City? [ New York Times ] • The police are relying on garbage trucks to help thwart possible terrorist attacks on New Year’s Eve. [ New York Times ] • An education conundrum: If schools are being given money because they’re “failing,” should they still receive the funds once that label is removed? [ New York Times ] • Protecting Trump Tower has taken a great deal of money away from police precincts around the city, but the department hopes it’ll be reimbursed. [ DNAinfo ] • Political and religious leaders in Brooklyn respond to alleged vandalism of menorahs, likening the borough to “the Jerusalem of America.” [ Park Slope Stoop ] • Citi Bike hit a record this year, with roughly 14 million trips. [ Gothamist ] • Dania Williams, who was once selling drugs and engaging in other illegal activities, decides to turn her life around. [ New York Times ] • Today’s Metropolitan Diary: “ To the Man With One Shoe ” • Scoreboard: Devils doom Capitals, 2-1. Wild ravage Islanders, 6-4. Rangers rule Coyotes, 6-3. • For a global look at what’s happening, see Your Friday Briefing . Coming Up Today • Celebrate Kwanzaa with Ruben Studdard, an “American Idol” winner, at the American Museum of Natural History . Noon and 3 p.m. [$22, tickets here ] • Watch the lighting of one of the world’s largest menorahs — with music, latkes and more — at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. 3:30 p.m. [Free] • It’s Bar Car Night at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, where you can enjoy the Holiday Train Show with cocktails and music. 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. [$35] • Celebrate the legacy of the singer-songwriter George Michael with music, videos and dancing at Littlefield in Gowanus, Brooklyn. 10 p.m. [$5, tickets here ] • A New Year’s Eve Eve comedy show, featuring improv and dancing, at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Chelsea. 11:59 p.m. [$5] • Nets at Wizards, 7 p.m. (YES). Knicks at Pelicans, 7 p.m. (MSG). The Weekend Saturday • Indulge your heart and soul at the Harlem Gospel Holiday Celebration at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem. 11 a.m. [$20] • Bowl into the new year at a New Year’s Eve Family Bowl at Brooklyn Bowl on Wythe Avenue. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. [Free] • Take the children to a New Year’s Eve Dance Party at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan on the Upper West Side. 2:30 p.m. [Free] • Ring in 2017 at the Coney Island New Year’s Eve celebration — with live entertainment, free rides and fireworks — on the Coney Island boardwalk at West 19th Street. 6 p.m. [Free] • Laugh (and eat) your way into 2017 as stars from “Comedy Central” perform over dinner at Q.E.D. in Astoria, Queens. 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. [Tickets start at $20] • Devils host Capitals, 1 p.m. (MSG+). Islanders at Jets, 7 p.m. (MSG+). Rangers at Avalanche, 8 p.m. (MSG2). Knicks at Rockets, 8 p.m. (MSG). Sunday • Take a Polar Bear Plunge into 2017 on Coney Island, off the boardwalk at Stillwell Avenue. 1 p.m., but arrive early. [$40 suggested donation to Camp Sunshine] • ... And while you’re waiting for your polar bear pals to swim, you can hop on Deno’s Wonder Wheel , which will be open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. [$5 per ride] • “Come Calling” on New Year’s Day, a New York tradition dating to the 19th century, at the Merchant’s House Museum in the East Village. 2 p.m. [$20] • The Strauss Symphony of America performs waltzes and operettas at the Salute to Vienna New Year’s Concert at Lincoln Center. 2:30 p.m. [Tickets start at $55] • Looking ahead: Join the journalist Jennifer Mattson on Tuesday at the Prospect Heights Brainery for a workshop on how to keep your New Year’s resolutions . [$22] • Jets host Bills, 1 p.m. (CBS). Giants at Redskins, 4:25 p.m. (FOX). • For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide . Commute Here are the New Year’s Eve street closures taking effect this weekend. • Subway and PATH • Railroads : L.I.R.R. , Metro-North , N.J. Transit , Amtrak • Roads : Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s . • Alternate-side parking : in effect until New Year’s Day. • Ferries : Staten Island Ferry , New York Waterway , East River Ferry • Airports : La Guardia , J.F.K. , Newark • Weekend travel hassles: Check subway disruptions and a list of street closings . And Finally... Image New Year’s Eve in Times Square, half a century ago. Credit Jack Manning/The New York Times The tradition of a ball drop to ring in the new year has its origins in a party at The New York Times on Dec. 31, 1904. It was then that the newspaper moved its headquarters from Lower Manhattan to Longacre Square — at the intersection of 42nd Street, Seventh Avenue and Broadway, writes the Times reporter David W. Dunlap . The newspaper promptly renamed the spot “Times Square,” and because its move uptown coincided with the New Year holiday, The Times honored both occasions with fireworks. The Times Square tradition lived on, and by 1908, the pyrotechnics had been replaced by an electric ball. A New York Times electrician, Thomas P. Ward, remained in charge of the ball and its dramatic drop for half a century. You can read more about the history of the ball drop here . There will be no New York Today on Monday, in observance of the holiday. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2017! We’ll be back on Tuesday. New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email . For updates throughout the day, like us on Facebook . What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com , or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday . Follow the New York Today columnists, Alexandra Levine and Jonathan Wolfe , on Twitter. You can find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com .


Goodell Says Union Liked Some Safety Proposals

Abstract: Commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday that he was frustrated and disappointed when N.F.L. players dissolved their union last week, leaving an offer from owners on the table that Goodell said the union never completely responded to. The N.F.L. locked out players after the union decertified, and players will ask a federal judge on April 6 to grant an injunction to block the lockout and force the league to reopen for business. “We made a serious offer to them just a little bit before 12 o’clock,” Goodell said of Friday’s final negotiating session. “We put a lot of energy into it. It was responding to issues raised not just in mediation but beyond. And we were expecting for them to engage on that.” In an interview Wednesday in his New York office, Goodell said that union leaders told him they found some parts of the proposal attractive, specifically the health and safety changes that would have reduced the off-season training program by five weeks, cut organized team workouts from 14 per off-season to 10 and limited full-contact practices in the preseason and regular season. The owners’ proposal would have allowed current players the chance to remain in the player medical plan for life. But the economics remained the sticking point. On Friday, owners lowered their demand for additional money off the top of the revenue pool to $320 million per year, half of where it was at the start of the day. Salary and benefits under the union proposal for 2011 were $151 million, while the owners’ proposal had it set at $141 million. The 2009 cap — the last year a cap was in place — was set at $149.1 billion, although that figure, set in 2008, turned out to be inflated because of an overprojection of revenues by about $7 million before the economy crashed. Teams spent $140.6 million in 2009 on salary and benefits, according to the N.F.L. Management Council. On Wednesday, Goodell would not guarantee that the proposal would remain on the table when negotiations resumed because, he said, it was crafted specifically to avoid a work stoppage. “The longer time goes between that point and the time we get back to negotiating, the more things change,” he said. “That’s just a fact. We’ve made that clear to them.” Goodell also addressed concerns about how the negotiations were conducted. He said owners followed the instructions of the mediator in determining how often to meet and with whom, often leading to long stretches in which the sides did not meet face to face. And Goodell defended the demeanor of owners, some of whom were criticized by players for acting in what they perceived as a heavy-handed manner. “You may not agree with certain things people are saying,” Goodell said. “But you have to respect their position. That’s true on both sides. Things owners said, I’m sure people didn’t necessarily agree with, and there were things players said that owners didn’t agree with. That’s part of negotiations.” Players have intimated that the owners’ proposal came too late, and had it come earlier, it might have led to more progress. In a conference call earlier this week, Saints quarterback Drew Brees called the proposal “unreasonable” and said he thought it was made Friday “so they could go to the media right after we started asking a lot of questions that they couldn’t answer, so they could say that we walked away.” Also, the union’s request to look at all financial information was never fulfilled. Goodell said: “You always have the ability to extend. There was no mention of that.” Goodell said he would return immediately to negotiations with the mediator, George Cohen, although talks are unlikely to resume before the court decides on the injunction and the losing side appeals. Goodell said his contact with player leaders had been minimal since Friday, and he had no timeline for when a deal must be completed to avoid missing regular season games. He did not dismiss the possibility that owners, if ordered by the courts, might allow games to be played while the players’ antitrust suit continued through the courts, rather than make a settlement to avoid paying players, while they are suing owners, as owners did during the player strike of the late 1980s and early 1990s. If there is a season, the very first play of the game could look a lot different. Next week at their annual meeting, owners will consider a rules proposal to make one of football’s most dangerous plays, kickoffs, safer. Among the changes: moving the kickoff line to the 35-yard line from the 30, which would probably increase the number of touchbacks and decrease the number of returns. After a touchback, the ball would be placed at the 25 instead of the 20, where it currently goes to start a drive. The rule change would also eliminate all wedges used in blocking and would not allow any member of the kickoff team except the kicker to line up more than 5 yards from the kickoff line. Currently, players line up as far as 15 yards behind the line to get a running start. The out of bounds penalty would be 25 yards from the kickoff line, the 40-yard line of the receiving team), instead of 30 yards from the line as it is now. “The play is such and the injury data is such and the video is such that it needs revision,” said the Atlanta Falcons’ president, Rich McKay, the chairman of the competition committee, which unanimously endorsed the kickoff change. There are two other rules changes that owners will consider: ¶Instant replay would be used on all scoring plays. Right now, scoring plays are automatically reviewed only in the last two minutes of a half. And coaches would lose the third challenge, which the committee found was rarely used. ¶Rules defining a defenseless player would include eight categories: a player in the act or just after throwing a pass; a receiver attempting to make a catch or who has completed a catch but has not had time to protect himself; a runner already in the grasp of a tackler and whose forward progress has been stopped; a kickoff or punt returner attempting to filed a kick in the air; a player on the ground at the end of a play; a kicker or punter during the kick or the returner; a quarterback at any time after a change of possession; and a player who receives a blindside block when the blocker is moving toward his own end line.

Football
National Football League
McKay Rich
Anderson Ray
Goodell Roger
Lockouts
Organized Labor
National Football League Players Assn


Never Mind Walking; Some Insects Can Jump on Water

Abstract: Water striders are among the most familiar insects. They skate across puddles and mill around in quiet stream eddies. But they can also jump straight into the air to escape predators like frogs, fish and bigger insects. That’s no small trick, even if they are light enough that the surface tension of water supports easy horizontal movement. The way a water strider takes off is that it draws its legs inward, pushing down on the water surface slowly at first. Even as the leg motion speeds up, the insect never pushes down with enough force to break the surface tension of the water. That means no splash, and it leaves the water as a stable launch platform. Researchers at Seoul National University learned how the water strider accomplishes its jump using high-speed video to analyze its motions. Then, to test the validity of their analysis, they joined with Harvard scientists to create a tiny strider-size robot based on the same principles. The robot was powered by a length of an alloy that can be stretched, but that returns to its original length when heated. The alloy worked like a contracting spring pulling on artificial legs that were highly water-repellent, just like those of the strider. Using a mechanism inspired by the way a flea jumps, the legs were pulled in slowly at first, and then quickly. Videos of the robot show it soaring upward just like a water strider. It is possible that there may be some kind of application for this kind of robot down the line, but Kyu-Jin Cho, one of the senior authors of a report in Science on the project, and an associate professor at the biorobotics lab at Seoul National University, said, “We did this research to understand one of the most fascinating kinds of locomotion in nature.” One secret that remains is what muscular or mechanical action the water strider uses to start that inward pull of its legs. “We don’t actually know how the water strider does that,” Dr. Cho said.

Robot
Insect
Harvard
Seoul National University


Johnson & Johnson Plans to Cut 4,800 Jobs

Abstract: With generic competition looming for two of its blockbuster drugs and use declining for its drug-coated stents, Johnson & Johnson said yesterday that it would eliminate up to 4,800 jobs. The cuts would amount to 3 to 4 percent of the company’s global work force of 120,000 people, with the pharmaceutical and stent divisions hardest hit by staff reductions. The company declined yesterday to say exactly where the cuts would take place, other than to say that it would close a Mountain View, Calif., operation and eliminate the jobs of 600 of the people who work there. An additional 200 people there will be relocated. Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, N.J., said the job cuts and other streamlining efforts would save $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion a year. That will probably not be enough, though, to offset revenue losses from the expiration of patents on two important drugs over the next two years. Generally, when patents expire, brand companies quickly lose the bulk of their sales to generic competition. The company’s top-selling drug, Risperdal, an oral treatment for schizophrenia and other mental conditions, is expected to lose patent protection next year. Sales last year for the oral Risperdal were $3.3 billion. Topamax, a pill for epilepsy and migraine headaches, which had sales of $2 billion last year, is also expected to lose patent protection in 2008. But an application for pediatric use could extend the protection until 2009. The company also has problems with its stent business. The company announced recently that United States sales of its Cypher drug-coated stent, for helping keep coronary arteries open, had declined by 41 percent. The decline has followed questions by some doctors about whether the benefits of drug-coated stents offset their risk of eventually causing blood clots. In a note to clients yesterday morning, Glenn Reicin, a Morgan Stanley analyst, said the cost-cutting moves were positive for the company, whose shares ended the day up 43 cents each, to close at $60.50. But Mr. Reicin questioned how the company would be able to make up for the revenue shortfall in its pharmaceutical division. “The company still needs to flesh out an additional $1.1 billion from its pharmaceutical pipeline by 2010 from products that have yet to be identified,” Mr. Reicin told clients. In a conference with investors yesterday morning just before trading began on Wall Street, the company’s chief executive, William C. Weldon, praised the company’s drug development efforts. “I think we have a pipeline today that is probably as rich a drug pipeline as we’ve ever had,” Mr. Weldon said, adding that the company plans to file applications for Food and Drug Administration approval of 7 to 10 new compounds from 2008 to 2010. The company became the third major drug maker firm in the last month to announce a layoff plan. Bristol-Myers Squibb said last week it planned a revamping, with details to be made public later this year. AstraZeneca said last week it would eliminate an estimated 7,600 employees, 10 percent of its work force, to achieve $900 million in annual savings by 2010. Johnson & Johnson said it would take a charge of $550 to $750 million in the second half of this year to account for the revamping costs. The Mountain View location to be closed is a facility of Alza, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that makes and markets several neuroscience drugs, including Concerta for attention deficit disorder and Invega, a newer product to treat schizophrenia. The company said that 200 other employees who work at the Mountain View location for Alza and for another unit, Scios, will be relocated to other sites, including one in La Jolla, Calif.

Layoffs and Job Reductions
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Johnson & Johnson Inc
Sales
Food and Drug Administration


When the Soft Sell Needs a Hard Look

Abstract: ACTION AMBULANCE provides ambulance and transportation services to hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and special-education programs within school systems. Based in Wilmington, Mass., 17 miles north of Boston, the company has 260 employees and annual revenue of about $17 million. The company’s chief executive, Mike Woronka, who has worked in emergency medical services for 25 years, said his company fell squarely in the middle of seven direct competitors in terms of size and performance. THE CHALLENGE To take a more aggressive approach to sales in an industry where most companies focus on service for existing clients, pushing gently and gradually for new business. THE BACKGROUND Mr. Woronka became chief executive in 2006 after having worked at the company for a decade. During that decade, the ambulance business became increasingly competitive as rising health care costs led to hospital consolidation and as customers demanded dedicated resources with optimal response times. This drove up the cost of service, and Mr. Woronka sought a way to differentiate Action from its peers. The company had two account managers who, in the course of serving current customers, might also help develop new accounts. At industry events, they would meet health care providers looking to switch transportation companies, or they would network with hospital decision-makers to seek a greater percentage of their business. The company set no goals for landing new business, and account managers were paid a straight salary without commission. They had no incentive to cold-call or to pursue prospects actively. Mr. Woronka said this approach was typical in his industry, but he believed that through targeted outreach Action could both lure business from competitors and expand its territory. “Historically our business was based upon relationships, but times have changed and you can’t rely on them to grow your business anymore, or even keep your current base,” Mr. Woronka said. “So many people said you can’t sell ambulance services, that we were crazy to want to do things differently.” THE OPTIONS Mr. Woronka’s first option was to train his existing, salaried account managers in more aggressive sales tactics. This was the lowest-cost option, but it was also risky. His employees did not necessarily have the skills or motivation to chase new clients. Mr. Woronka also considered hiring a full-time sales representative to pursue additional accounts in expanded territories. This was more ambitious, as he saw no precedent among his competitors. Mr. Woronka would need to develop a detailed compensation plan to motivate the sales rep, who would most likely be paid about $100,000. Both the sales rep and the account managers would report directly to Mr. Woronka, even though he lacked experience in sales. Finally, Mr. Woronka could hire both a full-time sales rep and a sales manager. The sales manager would be paid about $150,000 — an expensive choice, when added to the rep’s salary. But the sales manager would oversee the sales rep and the account managers to ensure all employees with client interaction were working together as a team, freeing Mr. Woronka to focus on his chief executive duties. THE DECISION Before deciding whether to invest in a sales force, Mr. Woronka wanted to define reasonable expectations and quantify the opportunity. How long should it take to acquire leads, hunt them down and close deals? If a sales rep were to make 50 cold calls, how many appointments or meetings should result? How many proposals? And, ultimately, how many closed deals? Was the additional revenue a sales rep could generate enough to justify the cost of a salary and commission? Mr. Woronka decided to hire Suzanne Paling , a consultant and former sales manager, to help develop a sales strategy and performance metrics. Ms. Paling designed a sales reporting system and segmented Action’s different markets, reviewing sales cycles and establishing discrete goals for each type of client. For instance, a sales rep might be able to close three special-education deals in a month, but large, high-margin clients like hospitals might require more than a year. After establishing productivity standards, Ms. Paling advised Mr. Woronka to hire a professional sales rep who would earn most compensation through commissions, bonuses and incentives. While many chief executives agree to higher base salaries for seasoned sales reps, Ms. Paling says she believes this sends the wrong message. Instead, she recommends that owners offer a base salary that is 20 to 30 percent higher for a specified training period. During this time — which could be three to six months, depending on the length of an industry’s sales cycle — the rep gets acclimated and builds a pipeline. After training, Ms. Paling said the sales rep should transition to a lower base salary and begin to generate about 60 percent of his or her $100,000 compensation through commissions. But Mr. Woronka went against Ms. Paling’s advice. Before committing to a new hire, he decided he wanted to see if his existing account managers could assume the additional responsibilities. Ms. Paling agreed to work with Action’s account managers to coach and train them in sales. WHAT OTHERS SAY Steve Wilson, chief executive of Texzon Utilities , an energy broker in Red Oak, Tex.: “Asking an account manager to begin selling wouldn’t work. We can all develop skills, but salespeople are somewhat born. With that much competition in the area, you need to be aggressive. Hiring the professional salesperson is the right move, but I don’t think the sales manager is a position you have to have. The C.E.O. can manage the sales team and get them working together.” Jack Hayhow, chief executive of OpusKC , which is based in Mission, Kan., and creates online training programs: “I doubt it would work with the existing people. You can’t teach a pig to sing; it annoys the pig and wastes your time. To open new accounts, you’re looking for a hunter. Once the salesperson lands the deal, he should turn it over to the account managers. We use an internal phone person to cold-call to identify prospects, set appointments and quantify the opportunity, and then another person establishes and builds new relationships that eventually lead to sales. Chief executives who haven’t had a lot of experience in sales can’t manage a sales force. I’d hire the sales manager first, and then let her recruit the salesperson. Maybe I’d ask the sales manager to spend a short period of time making sales beforehand because I’d want to make sure she had firsthand experience dealing with your exact customer base.” Michael Sappington, chief executive of gloStream , an electronic medical records company based in Troy, Mich.: “He should hire the most experienced salesperson he can find. If you don’t have the skills as a sales manager, you need to find someone who has the skills, a player-coach who can execute and also has management responsibilities. You might pay more up front, but there can be a real benefit. You have to communicate with that person; he needs to have a really good relationship with the leadership team so he can translate the vision to the customer. I might have that person report to the chief executive in the short term, but once he sees success brewing he should hire a sales manager, too.” THE RESULTS Offer your thoughts on Mr. Woronka’s decision on the You’re the Boss blog at nytimes.com/boss . Next week, on the blog and in this space, we will publish an update on how Action Ambulance is doing.

Small Business
Entrepreneurship
Sales
Customer Relations
Ambulances
Action Ambulance


Courting Video Advertisers With Infinite (and Growing) Air Time

Abstract: WHICH came first, a rising interest among marketers in digital video as an advertising medium or a decision by a leading trade association to significantly expand an annual series of presentations by companies that offer digital video? If it is a chicken-and-egg question, it would assuredly involve a subservient chicken , in honor of the pioneering online video that Burger King introduced a decade ago and revived last week . Last year, the presentations, known as the Digital Content NewFronts, lasted five weekdays. This year, the association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has scheduled events on eight weekdays, from April 28 through May 7. There are 23 official presentations planned for the 2014 NewFronts and at least one unofficial event, sponsored by the satirical website The Onion. The NewFronts were inspired by the upfronts, the annual presentations by the broadcast and cable television industry that are meant to encourage marketers to buy commercial time ahead of the coming fall season. Although the amount of money spent by marketers on digital video is growing by double-digit percentages each year, compared with single-digit percentage gains for television, the total is still dwarfed by television’s take. The digital-video total last year, according to the I.A.B. and PricewaterhouseCoopers, was $2.8 billion; by comparison, broadcast and cable ad revenue last year was about $74.5 billion, with more than $20 billion of that sold during the upfronts. Another major difference between the upfronts and the NewFronts is a relative scarcity of desirable television commercial time, because a finite number of programs can be scheduled by each broadcast network or cable channel. By contrast, online video is theoretically infinite, meaning the urgency that often characterizes the upfronts is absent from the NewFronts. Because there is “no scarcity” in commercial time online, the NewFronts is “all marketing,” said Barry Lowenthal, president of Media Kitchen, a media agency in New York. Still, the presentations “create a really good conversation in the industry,” he added, “and that’s always valuable.” The website BuzzFeed took part in the NewFronts for the first time with a two-hour presentation on Monday about the philosophy behind its popular video clips, including so-called branded content for marketers like General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Nestlé Purina PetCare. Rather than participate in the NewFronts, “we could have done something a separate time, a separate day, in, say, September,” said Jonathan Perelman, general manager for video and vice president for agency strategy at BuzzFeed. But at this time of year, “advertisers and agencies are talking about, thinking about” their video strategies, he said, “and we decided, ‘Let’s be a part of it.’ ” Image From left, Jonathan Perelman, Ze Frank and Jonah Peretti, all BuzzFeed executives, at the website’s NewFronts presentation for buyers of online-video advertising, which is expanding rapidly. Credit Kate Driscoll/BuzzFeed “I think it was a success,” Mr. Perelman said of the presentation, adding: “Ultimately, we want to see business come out of this. And I suspect it will.” BuzzFeed, like most companies presenting during the NewFronts, is a digital native; others include AOL, Google, Microsoft, Vevo and Yahoo. Another first-time participant in the NewFronts, whose presentation preceded BuzzFeed’s, is a digital immigrant — i.e., a legacy-media company: The New York Times, which used its event to formally introduce its video offerings under the banner of Times Video , with the slogan “Beyond words.” (Other legacy-media participants in the 2014 NewFronts include Condé Nast, National Geographic, PBS, Time Inc. and Time Warner Cable Media.) Unlike BuzzFeed, whose presentation was meant, Mr. Perelman said, to be “informing and educational,” The New York Times offered a steady stream of announcements about new projects and deals, including new video series like “Bits,” “Luminaries,” “36 Hours” and “Verbatim,” which features members of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe dramatizing legal transcripts. There will also be “a slate of shows” to be co-produced in partnership with the video-sharing website Vimeo, said Rebecca Howard, general manager for video at The Times. Meredith Kopit Levien, executive vice president for advertising at The Times, announced that the Acura division of Honda would be the “launch sponsor” for Times Video. Sotheby’s International Realty will sponsor a new series, “Extraordinary Angles,” she added. The NewFronts will continue on Tuesday with presentations from Glam Media, the Condé Nast Entertainment division of Condé Nast and AOL. Condé Nast Entertainment plans to announce that it will bring out in July a new video brand, The Scene, a platform that will offer series and clips from sibling brand channels like video.vogue.com and video.gq.com along with content from independent partners like Variety, Major League Soccer and Jash , which specializes in comedy. Condé Nast Entertainment will also announce plans to add three brand channels to its network — Bon Appétit, Lucky and The New Yorker — and produce more than 100 series during 2014, including 21 current series that are being renewed. The unofficial event for The Onion, mischievously titled “Ble$$ed Are the Advertisers: A Gala Celebrating Mankind’s Noblest Pursuit,” is also to take place on Tuesday. Although crashing the NewFronts is in keeping with the website’s satirical spirit, it was not the original plan, said Derek Cuculich, a spokesman at The Onion. “We were trying to be a good soldier, trying to be on the I.A.B. schedule,” Mr. Cuculich said, but could not get the time slot that Onion executives wanted. So “we’ll do our own thing,” he said, adding, “It’s going to be a blast.”

Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Online advertising
The New York Times
Upfront
Web television
BuzzFeed
advertising,marketing
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry


Tebow and Quinn Battle to Be Denver’s Backup Quarterback

Abstract: Denver Broncos Coach John Fox has seen enough to name Kyle Orton his starting quarterback. What he has not determined is who will be No. 2. Fox said Tim Tebow and Brady Quinn had two more preseason games to win the job as Orton’s primary backup. The Broncos began training camp trying to trade Orton, but when no teams made an offer, they opened the competition and Orton quickly showed he was worthy of the top spot. “Well, we’ve talked to the quarterbacks, in particular Kyle,” Fox said after practice Monday. “We’re going to name him the starter for the opener against the Raiders. We’ve not really reached a conclusion on 2 or 3 yet, and won’t, probably, until after the preseason games.” REDSKINS QUARTERBACKS Washington Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan said he would not announce a starting quarterback for the regular season until “right before” the opener against the Giants. Shanahan said that John Beck and Rex Grossman were “very close right now” and that he would feel “very comfortable” going into the season with either as the starter. GORE WANTS NEW DEAL The two-time Pro Bowl running back Frank Gore said that talks with the San Francisco 49ers over a contract extension were “going slow” and that he would be upset if he did not get a new deal before the start of the regular season. BRITT TO MEET WITH GOODELL Tennessee Titans wide receiver Kenny Britt will meet Tuesday with Commissioner Roger Goodell to discuss his arrests during the lockout. HAYNESWORTH PLEA New England defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth pleaded no contest to a charge of simple assault to resolve a case in which he was accused of touching a waitress’s breast while having drinks with friends at a Washington hotel.

Football
Denver Broncos
Orton Kyle
Tebow Tim
Quinn Brady


F.A.A. Urges Pilots to Use a Digital Transmitter

Abstract: LAS VEGAS, Sept. 10 — The type of beacon on the plane flown by the adventurer Steve Fossett when he disappeared last week emits false signals 98 percent of the time, the Federal Aviation Administration has concluded. As a result, after Feb. 1, 2009, the F.A.A. and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will no longer monitor signals from these devices, the agencies said in a memorandum issued Friday. The devices, known as emergency locator transmitters, or E.L.T.’s, have been standard in aircraft for decades, but the agencies have concluded that the older models, which operate at a frequency of 121.5 megahertz, are antiquated and unreliable. Furthermore, the analog frequency that the beacons use is often trespassed accidentally by radio signals emitted by other devices, including some stadium scoreboards and video arcade equipment, said Lt. Jeffrey Shoup of NOAA. The authorities have not picked up any signals from Mr. Fossett’s plane, which vanished on Sept. 3 in northern Nevada. After February 2009, planes with old transmitters will have to rely on their distress signals being picked up by planes flying overhead, rather than by the satellites that monitor such signals. The F.A.A. is urging — but not requiring — plane owners to switch to the digital transmitters that emit a signal 20 times stronger at 406 megahertz, to be spotted by satellites. The newer transmitters send identification numbers that the authorities know and can use to contact the owners quickly to determine if there is a real distress. With the old transmitters, including the one on the single-engine Super Decathlon flown by Mr. Fossett, Coast Guard and Civil Air Patrol officers must visit the site matching the coordinates of each distress signal to discover if a real problem exists. Lieutenant Shoup said the decision to switch to 406 megahertz was made in 1999 by a Montreal-based consortium of 38 nations that operates the world’s search-and-rescue satellites. But Ross Aimer, chief executive of Aviation Experts, a consulting firm in San Clemente, Calif., said that until Friday’s memorandum, few aviators knew about the transition. He said he had not known the date when the F.A.A. would stop monitoring the older devices, so it is possible that Mr. Fossett also did not know of it. Only 10 percent of the 200,000 planes in the United States have 406 megahertz locator transmitters, and most are commercial airliners, because replacing the transmitters can cost more than $4,000, including the device and the retrofitting. The unreliability of Mr. Fossett’s beacon may be one reason the search for the record-setting aviator has failed so far, but other high-tech measures should make up for that. Late last week, the Nevada Wing of the Civil Air Patrol added to its fleet of more than a dozen search planes a special aircraft that is equipped with cameras capable of seeing 15 times more detail than the human eye. The Archer, an acronym for Airborne Real-time Cueing Hyperspectral Enhanced Reconnaissance, was developed for classified military uses in the 1990s, but the Civil Air Patrol obtained $6 million from Congress in 2002 to buy several and adapt them for search missions. “It’s a better set of eyes than a human set,” said Col. Drew Alexa, the patrol’s director of advanced technology. “It can see things that are anomalous in the vegetation such as metal or something from an airplane wreckage.” While the Archer has not located Mr. Fossett, it has been instrumental in the discovery of at least eight previously unnoticed plane wrecks in the rugged Sierra Nevada region. Those wrecks will be examined more closely once the Fossett search ends, officials said. Also, Amazon.com and Google teamed up over the weekend to start a “distributed search” for Mr. Fossett. The companies obtained satellite images of the region in which Mr. Fossett is being sought, and have broken it into thousands of pieces. Volunteers are being issued sections to search, with at least 10 people being issued the same squares.

Airlines and Airplanes
Wireless Communications
Federal Aviation Administration
Fossett Steve


Democrats Sketch Ad Plan for Defending House Seats

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Democrats’ strategy to preserve their House majority became clearer Thursday as the party made a $28 million investment in television advertising for the final weeks of the fall campaign, a plan meant to build a defensive firewall to protect freshmen and some vulnerable longtime incumbents. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reserved television time on behalf of 40 lawmakers, 18 of whom were first elected two years ago, when President Obama ran atop the party’s ticket. Nine others are Democrats who were elected in 2006, when the party swept control of Congress from the Republicans. The list of at-risk Democrats also contains well-established members, including John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, chairman of the Budget Committee; Ike Skelton of Missouri, chairman of the Armed Services Committee; and Paul E. Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, a senior member of the Financial Services Committee. None of the 40 districts are held by Republicans, a signal that the Democratic plan is rooted in defense. The decisions, which were confirmed by party strategists and advertising buys made on local television stations, help define more precisely the battlefield on which the two parties will fight for control of Congress over the next four months as Republicans work to reclaim the majority. The Democratic committee plans to make two more waves of advertising buys to reserve time for television spots in the closing two weeks of the race. In addition to the junior members, party strategists have identified vulnerable veterans, including Chet Edwards of Texas, who is seeking his 11th term; Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, who is seeking his 10th term; and Leonard Boswell of Iowa, who is seeking his eighth term. Several incumbent Democrats are bracing for something they have rarely faced: serious competition. Their predicament is the latest sign of distress for their party and underlines why Republicans are confident of making big gains in November and perhaps even winning back the House. Democrats are playing defense in every corner of the country, hoping to use their fund-raising advantages to preserve their 40-seat majority in the House. The $28 million in advertising commitments represents the bulk of the $34 million in cash that the party committee had available at the end of June. “I feel very confident about the ability of my members, who are the greatest salespersons in America, to go into their districts and make the case for what we did,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday, adding that the party’s accomplishments in Congress would ultimately prove to be winning issues in November. While Ms. Pelosi and other party leaders worked aggressively to persuade Democrats to support key pieces of legislation, like health care, the economic stimulus and energy legislation, the list of 40 districts on Thursday suggested that support for the party’s agenda was not a requirement for its campaign dollars. Five first-term Democrats who supported the health care bill are receiving help from the campaign committee, but 10 Democrats who opposed the measure are also receiving support. An independent arm of the committee decides which races merit investment. The Democratic House committee has a $17 million advantage over its Republican counterpart, so Democrats can afford to invest in far more districts. Yet only one of the contests being focused on is an open seat, in the Third Congressional District in Kansas, where Dennis Moore, a Democrat, is retiring. “If you want to get an idea of what the Democrats’ strategy is this fall, just follow the money,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “The political environment has become so toxic that Democrats in Washington are gearing up to spend millions of dollars to defend what were once perceived as some of the most entrenched incumbents in Congress.” Some of the 40 districts are represented by Democrats who have been viewed as ripe for a Republican takeover, but others provide the first sign that the ranks of vulnerable Democrats may be deeper than previously acknowledged. The list also was being studied by Republicans for any head fakes — districts in which Democrats were trying to entice their rivals into spending their limited resources. The 40 districts that Democrats selected, which can be added to or subtracted from, were based on polling, candidate fund-raising and the strength of Republican opposition. The group includes five seats in Ohio, four in Pennsylvania, three in Arizona and in Virginia, and two each in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York and Texas. Several of the decisions signal new signs of worry from Democrats like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, Betty Sutton of Ohio, Allen Boyd of Florida, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia and Jerry McNerney of California. “The D.C.C.C. is going to aggressively use every tool — media, voter contact programs and research — to retain the House,” said Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for the committee. “Voters will have a clear choice this November.” The Republican committee has $17 million in available cash, according to records filed this week, and intends to make its first television advertising decisions as soon as next month.

Elections
Democratic Party
United States Politics and Government
House of Representatives
Advertising and Marketing


Europeans Pursue Labyrinths of Nuclear Waste

Abstract: BURE, FRANCE — Reached by narrow roads that meander through picturesque villages, a high-tech laboratory sits in a corner of France so remote that until construction started on it a decade ago, the local inn was not connected to the electricity grid. Beneath a plateau surrounded by fields of colza and wheat, the underground laboratory, located near the village of Bure, in the eastern French region of Lorraine, is run by the Agence Nationale pour la Gestion des Déchets Radioactifs, or Andra, the national authority charged with the safe disposal of nuclear waste. The laboratory’s work is to test what might happen if spent nuclear fuel were to be stored permanently in caverns cut deep into rock. France plans to do just that; others are seeking to follow suit. As the global nuclear power industry strives to limit the immediate fallout — both physical and political — from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power station in Japan, Europe is poised to enshrine a final solution for its long-term radioactive wastes, the industry’s most persistent public-relations problem. A directive being debated in Brussels would commit the Continent to following the example of France, Finland and Sweden, which are preparing to dig deep underground labyrinths to store the highly toxic waste forever. The directive, which is expected to come before the European Parliament on June 22, would oblige all 27 members of the European Union to submit plans to the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, for similar nuclear waste repositories deep underground. Spent fuel is stockpiled at present in interim storage facilities with a life span of 50 years to 100 years, yet some of the elements that it contains remain radioactive for up to a million years. Scientists have been researching the idea of burying such waste deep in the Earth’s crust for much of the past half century; Finland, Sweden and France decided to go ahead with deep disposal projects about a decade ago. The task is unlike any other because of the sheer amount of time involved. Setting up geological repositories takes decades, starting with studies to find a suitable rock structure, and testing the metals that could be used to build waste-storage canisters. Computer models must be constructed to examine how the different substances, and possible environmental variables, would interact over time. Then, the results of the modelling exercise must be tested on site, by tunneling and equipping cavernous galleries, while official authorizations and public support must be won. Once operational, the repositories will be monitored for 100 years, starting from when spent fuel is first put in. Then they will be sealed for posterity. The repositories are supposed to remain hermetically sealed for at least 100,000 years — roughly the length of time human beings have existed on Earth — by which time any radioactivity seeping out should be no stronger than the Earth’s own background dose. The world’s first such repository is expected to become operational in Finland in 2015, the second in Sweden in the early 2020s and the third in France in 2025. Metal canisters full of spent fuel, which will have already been cooling for years, will be fitted into concrete-lined holes in the tunnel walls. Bentonite clay, a soft medium that traps water, will be packed around the canisters to give an extra layer of protection. As the repository is filled, it will be progressively sealed, using purified clay and concrete, tunnel by tunnel, gallery by gallery. France, with 58 nuclear reactors, has the world’s second-biggest atomic energy park, after that of the United States. France derives 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; its nuclear plants have produced 90,000 cubic meters, or 3.2 million cubic feet, of spent fuel since 1977, when the first reactor was switched on. France reprocesses its spent fuel, extracting plutonium and depleted uranium from the fuel rods, a process that leaves only a residue to be disposed of as nuclear waste. This residue, with a total volume of about 14,550 cubic meters, is a cocktail of radioactive elements with different chemical properties and half-lives. Containing some of the longest-lasting isotopes, it is the most dangerously radioactive waste. Captured in molten glass and stocked in special warehouses at reprocessing plants for 40 to 50 years while it cools, it is this brew that, under present plans, is to be sent in special containment canisters for deep disposal. At the Andra lab here, an elevator takes eight minutes to descend 500 meters, or 1,650 feet, from the surface to the laboratory, where construction workers are drilling tunnels even as scientists monitor experiments that will run for several years. They are observing the effects of heat on the surrounding rock, the corrosion of the steel to be used for the canisters, the movement of water and radioactive isotopes through the rock, and the production of gases. Six years in the digging, the laboratory now extends over a kilometer underground, and plans have been drafted to double its size. The proposed repository site is 3 kilometers, or 1.9 miles, away. The laboratory is cut into a seam of Callovo-Oxfordian clay, a highly compacted seam of Jurassic sedimentary rock that is 400 meters to 600 meters, or 1,302 feet to 1,969 feet, deep and runs from southern England to the French border with Germany. Gérald Ouzounian, the international director at Andra, said that research had found that this hard clay had a water content of just 15 percent, and that water remained in the clay rather than moving through it. This is critical for the repository, because it must prevent radioactivity seeping out into groundwater and contaminating soil, plants, animals, and ultimately, human beings. “The enemy is water,” Mr. Ouzounian said. “Having only 15 percent water in clay is like not having any water at all.” Mr. Ouzounian, a geochemist, said that studies showed the seam to be highly homogenous with little fracturing, reducing the risk of radioactivity escaping through fissures in the rock. Clay, he added, has negatively charged ions on its surface while most radioactive isotopes are positively charged. “This is key to the design of the repository,” he said. “The clay rock has such power of retention that if there were to be any release from the canister at any phase of the storage period, the radioactive elements would also be trapped on the surface of the minerals in the clay.” Even after the canisters have disintegrated, which Andra expects to happen in about 4,000 years, the rock should provide an impermeable barrier, he said. “The most conservative calculations show that radionuclides cannot move more than a few meters at most over a period of the order of a million years.” Still, such assurances cut little ice with opponents of the plan. “No geologist can guarantee that there will never be water infiltration in the places intended for storage,” said Jean-Marie Brom, a research director in particle physics at C.R.N.S., the French national research institute, and a veteran anti-nuclear campaigner. A Greenpeace review of research on geological repositories, published in September, listed several scientific caveats, including a lack of understanding of the multiple chemical interactions that may occur; doubts about the accuracy of computer modeling over long time scales; and the possibility of an earthquake or other disturbance to the site during the repository’s life. “Are we really ready,” said Helen Wallace, the report’s author and a physicist who works with Greenpeace, “to say we understand enough about this option of putting it underground, which does mean at this stage of scientific knowledge crossing your fingers and hoping none of these things really do go wrong?”

Nuclear Wastes
France
Environment
European Union
Finland
Sweden


Not Yet a Star, Taylor Townsend Flashes Star Power

Abstract: PARIS — You may or may not subscribe to Andy Murray’s theory that the American teenager Taylor Townsend is heading for finer tennis moments. She needs to play smarter, needs to get fitter and needs to work through, under big-match pressure, which of her many weapons is best deployed in which situation. On Friday, it was all too much, too soon for Townsend at the French Open as she was soundly and professionally beaten, 6-2, 6-2, by the 14th-seeded Spanish veteran Carla Suárez Navarro in the third round of Townsend’s debut Grand Slam tournament. But there can be no doubt at this heady phase of her nascent career that it is both a great deal of fun to watch her play and a great deal of fun, even in defeat, to listen to her talk about it all afterward. “If I got a wild card into Wimbledon, I would pass out right now,” she said. “I just love the atmosphere. I would, oh my God, I’ll probably cry. I’m not a crier, either. So that means a lot.” For the moment, that Wimbledon wild card will have to await the largess of the organizers. If it does not come, Townsend, who will remain ranked in the 100s after her run here, will have to enter the qualifying tournament. But the savvy team at the All England Club does not like to miss a good emerging story line or leave out a youngster who may stir the emotions. At 18, Townsend has undeniable star quality, which does not mean that she will get to be a star. The style of game she has stuck by is one of the toughest to succeed with on the professional circuit in an era of high-tech strings and dipping passing shots delivered from no-longer-compromised positions. Townsend is committed to the attack, often the sneak attack. She is committed to mixing the low percentage with the high percentage, which is a great boon to those who love a big dollop of style with their daily tennis substance. On Friday, she played some serve and volley, which is even rarer in the women’s game than the men’s. She played sharply angled drop shots, and in the third game of the second set, she sprinted forward and whipped a cocksure forehand winner off a skidding, crisply struck backhand from Suárez that looked safe from attack. It was a masterstroke out of nowhere that left many grinning in disbelief. Star power. Lots of it, and on Friday, lots of glaring errors, too. “She was just a little going for too much way too soon,” said Zina Garrison, the former Wimbledon finalist from the United States who is one of Townsend’s coaches. “Just be more patient, just a little more patient.” Kamau Murray, Townsend’s other coach, who has known her since she was 6, would also like patience from the public, particularly when it comes to her work-in-progress physique. “I would like the media to be more appreciative of the process and acknowledge progress as opposed to only acknowledging the finished product,” he said. “She’s learning, and she’s open. She’s not in denial, but the message we are trying to send is: It takes time.” With body-image issues a widespread concern, it is tempting to avoid focusing on, or even mentioning, female athletes’ weight. That is particularly true in the wake of Townsend’s dispute in 2012 with the United States Tennis Association: Its player development program’s leadership opposed her playing in the junior tournament because of dissatisfaction with her physical conditioning and initially withheld travel funding (she played anyway). But with the increasing physicality of the game, Murray agrees that Townsend would benefit from playing at a lower weight, both to avoid injuries and to become even quicker. Can she compete now? Absolutely. Could she increase her week-in, week-out chances by becoming fitter? Absolutely. “She’s not in what anyone would consider world-class condition,” Murray said. “But if you think she’s good now, you just wait.” It would be great for the all-court game if she could fulfill her abundant potential. There is more variety on the women’s tour than many realize: quite a gulf between the relentless big hitting of Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams and the guile and light-footed defense that defines Agnieszka Radwanska. But there is no woman at the highest level who plays with the same reckless abandon and genuine desire to push forward as Townsend. This is not a case of a youngster trying on some new clothes for a tournament or two. This has been Townsend’s regular look for years, and her offensive-minded hunches and sense of when she can and should get to the net are now deeply ingrained. Asked if she would have to become just another power player to succeed, she skipped a beat, pointed her left index finger playfully at her interlocutor and said, “No, I won’t.” “It’s just so natural for me, and I know that that makes my game special,” she said. “So I’m definitely not going to take that away, because there are a lot of people who can hit the ball very hard all day long. If you want to make it to the top, there has to be something that separates you from all the people who can do the same thing. That’s what makes me different.” She won this way as a junior, becoming No. 1 in the world. She won this way this month when she snagged the only women’s wild-card spot available to Americans at the French Open. And she has now won this way in Paris, beating Vania King in the first round then Alizé Cornet, the 20th seed, in the second. But Garrison knows that her left-handed protégée will have to grind plenty to make a consistent impact on the tour, where baseline battles are the rule. Townsend won 15 of 19 points at the net against King, 21 of 30 against Cornet, and just 5 of 11 against Suárez. Still, Townsend is committed to cranking back the clock while pushing the game forward. Garrison said people had compared Townsend’s game to that of the surly but immensely gifted Chilean Marcelo Rios. “I always tell her we don’t want the attitude,” Garrison said. “But you know, I think she’s very unique. She has great hands. She has power, and we always say she really is retro to the new age. She has everything, and she has both, so it’s just a matter of putting it all together.” A very complicated matter, but tennis fans should be delighted that one young, charismatic woman is willing to try.

French Open
Tennis
Wimbledon Tennis,Wimbledon
Women and Girls
Taylor Townsend


Long May They Wave? No Way, Says Park Avenue

Abstract: THE other day, a resident of East 89th Street named Margaret Ternes imagined a conversation between Park Avenue neighbors. “Why don’t you come for cocktails,” she said in a mocking tone, “and look at the dirty laundry in front of my living room window?” Hardly the sort of invitation a self-respecting hostess would offer, but for Ms. Ternes, the executive director of the Fund for Park Avenue, that was the point. By “dirty laundry,” she meant the multicolored banners that for nearly a decade have been displayed on lampposts along the Park Avenue Malls, the medians where Ms. Ternes’s group tends trees and flowers. The banners are hoisted by the city’s Department of Transportation and can be found throughout the five boroughs, advising passers-by that they live in the financial capital of the world, or suggesting that they log on to nycvisit.com , the city’s visitor information site. But the banners, some of which are underwritten by corporations, spark outrage on the Upper East Side along Park Avenue, where residents have long tried to banish them. They say the banners have no place on the distinctly residential thoroughfare and weaken the beautification efforts of groups like Ms. Ternes’s. Community Board 8 urged the Department of Transportation to remove the Park Avenue banners last year, but the agency declined to do so. Last month, the board again requested their removal. Scott Gastel, a transportation spokesman, said the department was aware of the community’s position, but does not make exceptions. “We’re maintaining the program as is,” Mr. Gastel said. Still, opponents say the banners raise questions beyond mere aesthetics for some Upper East Siders. A longtime resident named Judith Steckler, for example, is dismayed by what she sees as “the selling” of New York, and is also perplexed about just whom the advertisements target. “Do New Yorkers really need their own city advertised to them?” asked Ms. Steckler, who lives on Park Avenue at 77th Street, and is a member of Ms. Ternes’s Fund for Park Avenue. “The out-of-towners aren’t walking on Park Avenue. There are no stores.” She further doubted that tourists got ideas about how to spend their time from the banners since, as she pointed out dryly, visitors to the city tend to make their plans in advance. NYC and Company, the city’s marketing arm, produces about half of the city’s banners, according to Tiffany Townsend, a spokeswoman. In response to Ms. Steckler, Ms. Townsend suggested that the banners could be useful to New Yorkers by, for example, announcing popular events like Restaurant Week and dates for museum exhibits. Ms. Ternes disagreed, and added that her approach to local issues has not always been diplomatic. Years ago, she said, she wrote to the president of Continental Airlines, which then advertised on some of the banners, and declared, “No one on Park Avenue will ever fly on Continental ever again.” She got results: “They were down within 24 hours.”

Park Avenue (NYC)
Advertising and Marketing


Palestinian Leaders See Validation of Their Statehood Effort

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Under most circumstances, an Israeli leader’s frank admission that he would never agree to a Palestinian state would be a disaster for the Palestinian leadership. But when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said precisely that in the heat of the recent election campaign, it seemed to have the opposite effect, validating the unilateral approach the Palestinians have decided to follow. “We will continue a diplomatic intifada. We have no other choice,” said Assad Abdul Rahman, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central council and executive committee, its top decision-making body. With Mr. Netanyahu having dropped, for now at least, the pretense of seeking a two-state solution, the Palestinians can argue to Europe and the United States that they no longer have a negotiating partner, strengthening their case for full statehood and recognition in the United Nations, as well as membership in important international bodies. They are already members of the International Criminal Court and Unesco. “If somebody said, ‘We are with two states, and real negotiations,’ we would return to negotiations,” said Assad Abdul Rahman. “But there is no partner for that.” In addition to considering seeking full statehood at the United Nations, the Palestinians may now curtail security coordination with Israel, reducing Israel’s ability to seize suspected militants in the West Bank, two P.L.O. officials said. “There is a feeling that if there really is no hope for the peace process, the best thing they can have is an Israeli government that will advance its own isolation,” said Nathan Thrall, senior analyst with the Middle East and North Africa Program of the International Crisis Group . The P.L.O.’s executive committee is expected to meet Thursday to discuss how President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority should respond. The P.L.O.’s central council had called for curtailing security coordination on March 5, part of a cycle of retaliation between Israel and the Palestinians over the past several months. It was framed as a response to Israel’s withholding since January of $127 million a month in taxes it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf. That, in turn, was Israel’s way of punishing the Palestinians for joining the International Criminal Court , where they hope to pursue war crime accusations against Israeli officials. But the decision on when, or whether, to take such a step was left to Mr. Abbas and the P.L.O.’s executive committee. Mr. Abbas appeared to be waiting until after Israel’s elections . If Mr. Abbas does approve curtailing security coordination, he is likely to move in small steps that would be reversible, Mr. Abdul Rahman said. One move could perhaps be to refuse to withdraw Palestinian forces when Israeli troops raid a Palestinian-ruled area, said a P.L.O. official who spoke anonymously because he was discussing secret deliberations. In Netanyahu’s Next Knesset, a More Compatible Coalition Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party achieved a surprisingly strong victory in Tuesday’s election. Now, he is likely to build a right-wing coalition of 67 of the 120 members of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament. The official said the Palestinians were studying various United Nations treaties to see which they might join. They were focusing on what the official described as “technical” treaties such as on tourism, water and the environment. He did not provide further details. The official said they were unlikely to take the bolder step of seeking membership in United Nations organizations because of United States laws that would cut financing to United Nations bodies that accept Palestine as a member state. In a news briefing on Wednesday, a United Nations spokesman, Farhan Haq, said: “It’s incumbent on the new Israeli government, once formed, to create the conditions for a negotiated final peace agreement with the active engagement of the international community that will end the Israeli occupation and realize the creation of a viable Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel. This includes the cessation of illegal settlement-building in the occupied Palestinian territory.” Responding to this statement, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, said, “If the U.N. is so concerned about the future of the Palestinian people, it should be asking why President Abbas is in the 10th year of a five-year presidential term or why Hamas uses the Palestinian people as human shields.” Palestinians were also likely to step up lobbying for more European countries to recognize Palestine as a state. Most countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa already do. “The battlefield now is Europe,” the P.L.O. official said. “Whenever we go to Europe and ask, ‘Why aren’t you recognizing Palestine?’ they say, ‘We will recognize it when it’s good for the peace process,’ ” he said. “Now you have an Israeli P.M. who says he doesn’t recognize a Palestinian state.” Palestinian officials said they were still weighing whether to try to seek full statehood recognition from the Security Council. They failed in a previous bid , in December, for a Council resolution that would have set a deadline to establish a sovereign Palestinian state. The United States and Australia voted against it. Riyadh Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, said it would make sense only if the United States “goes along with such an idea,” which is far-fetched, in the estimation of most diplomats. There is also the possibility that, having accomplished his purpose of eking out a victory, Mr. Netanyahu may now try to reassert his support for a two-state solution, no matter how tenuous. Yet in light of his statement that “anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel,” analysts said reversing course would be difficult. “Having heaped a rhetorical disavowal of his two-state position on top of all the practical policies he implemented which undermined the credibility of that position, he’s now got an awfully long distance to walk that back,” said Daniel Levy, head of the Middle East program for the European Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Levy suggested that the Palestinians might first test Mr. Netanyahu’s good will toward negotiations by demanding that he resume transferring the tax revenue to the Palestinians. “You have to get him to do that, and let’s see what happens,” he said. Mr. Abbas has long preferred negotiations for statehood rather than acting unilaterally. But even if Mr. Netanyahu agreed to peace negotiations in principle, it would be difficult for Mr. Abbas to accept without tangible successes to show Palestinians, like a halt to building in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank or releasing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention, said Ghassan Khatib, the vice president of Birzeit University in the West Bank. After all that has been said, Mr. Khatib added, “Abbas cannot politically afford negotiations without any achievement at all.”

Israel
Palestinians
Benjamin Netanyahu
PLO
Palestinian Authority
West Bank