Giants’ Perry Fewell Is Rewarded for Faith in Defense

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The most divisive figure among Giants fans this season has round glasses and a perpetual smile, and opts to use a code word — instead of cursing — to let his players know he is angry. That man, Perry Fewell, the Giants’ defensive coordinator, does not hesitate to say this has been his most challenging season. He lost eight players, including two starters, to serious injuries. He was without other mainstays for weeks at a time. He had to integrate rookies without having seen them in a proper training camp. He was at times embarrassed by the results. And because the Giants had not made the playoffs for two straight seasons, he had to endure calls for his job. Fewell said last week that he took no personal pride in where the Giants were — set to face the Green Bay Packers in a divisional playoff game Sunday — but considering the criticism Fewell endured from fans and the news media as recently as last month, his players are reveling in his resurgence. “He didn’t deserve it, not even a little,” linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said. “To have a game like last week? It made all of us feel good for him because he has been working all year.” Kiwanuka was talking about the Giants’ virtual whitewashing of the Atlanta Falcons in the wild-card round. The Giants shut down running back Michael Turner and limited receivers Julio Jones and Roddy White. They stuffed quarterback Matt Ryan’s two fourth-down sneak attempts, mostly because they had seen them before — in Fewell’s playbook. “We had a page on it,” Kiwanuka said. “How small a chance was there that there would be a situation where they would sneak it on a fourth-and-short? But it was in there.” Kiwanuka added, “Now we have to do it even better this week.” Where once it might have seemed preposterous to think this Giants defense could shut down quarterback Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, Fewell’s unit has had a renaissance over the past three games. And in the ever-changing world of the N.F.L. , the perception of Fewell has shifted drastically, too: where once it seemed he might be fired if the Giants missed the playoffs, now there is a chance Fewell could be considered as a head coaching candidate. Certainly a strong showing against an offensive juggernaut like the Packers will only help. “I know he could be a head coach,” said Kawika Mitchell, a former Giants linebacker. Mitchell also played under Fewell in Buffalo, where Fewell previously served as a defensive coordinator. He was the Bills’ interim head coach in 2009. “He’s organized, he can delegate and he has the personality,” Mitchell said. Several players said Fewell’s ability to motivate them was a notable difference from the previous coordinator, Bill Sheridan, whom Fewell replaced in 2010. When there is a big play — even in practice — Fewell has been known to run out to the pile of players. “He’s always getting in the middle of everything,” tackle Chris Canty said. “It’s inspiring.” Fewell also takes unusual approaches to teaching. During the team’s lockout-shortened preseason camp, Fewell used video clips to help players remember the names of plays. “So, if we had a play called Terminator, he would show a clip from the movie,” the rookie linebacker Mark Herzlich said. “There was one, I think it was called antelope or something, where he showed us like a scene from the nature channel where a cheetah is about to kill an antelope. It sounds weird, but it helped.” The veteran safety Deon Grant said that Fewell, unlike many coordinators, was open to suggestions. As opposed to forcing players into one kind of defense, Grant said, Fewell looks for the strengths of each player and tries to highlight them. Sometimes, that has meant having all three defensive ends on the field at the same time. Sometimes, it has meant using three safeties. “Last year, I was used on goal line,” the injured cornerback Terrell Thomas said. “Usually, corners come off on goal line, but I’m a good tackler, so he put me out there. I loved it.” Against the Packers, Fewell will be charged with containing one of the league’s most dangerous offenses. The Packers had 51 passing touchdowns this season, and Rodgers has thrown eight touchdown passes (against one interception) in his last two games against the Giants. Despite their recent success, the Giants have struggled at times against pass-heavy attacks — most notably in consecutive weeks against the New Orleans Saints and the Packers. The blowout loss to the Saints, in particular, was one of the rare times Fewell’s upbeat demeanor splintered and he excoriated his players. But Fewell’s rants are not vulgar. As a defensive assistant at Kent State from 1988 to ’91, Fewell worked under the defensive coordinator Chris Smeland, whom Fewell said used an expression he remembered as “jeez minetti!” to show frustration. “I didn’t know what ‘jeez minetti!’ meant, so I started saying ‘jeez oh Pete!’ because it was a way for me not to cuss at my players,” Fewell said. “Now I guess that’s just what I say.” Mitchell laughed hysterically as he recalled Fewell’s high-pitched delivery — “that’s what makes it,” he said — and Fewell’s current players grinned at the mention of “jeez oh Pete!” Only Mitchell, however — the former player — dared attempt an impression. They heard it enough earlier this season. “Watching the film of last week’s game, there weren’t many ‘jeez oh Petes!’ at all,” Fewell said. “It would be nice if we could do that again this weekend.”

Fewell Perry
Football
New York Giants
National Football League


Clifford Hardin, 94, Agriculture Secretary, Is Dead

Abstract: Clifford M. Hardin, who as the first secretary of agriculture in the Nixon administration succeeded in limiting subsidy payments to the nation’s largest farmers, died Sunday at his home in Lincoln, Neb. He was 94. The University of Nebraska, where Mr. Hardin was chancellor from 1954 to 1968, announced the death. In 1970, in delicate, secret negotiations with lawmakers, the soft-spoken Mr. Hardin put together a deal that would limit federal subsidies to any one farm to $55,000 on each of three basic crops: cotton, wheat and feed grains. Critics had long questioned what they considered a disproportion of federal supports going to the biggest farms. The 1970 farm bill also included a “set-aside” plan that Mr. Hardin had proposed. It called for farmers to agree to leave a certain percentage of their land idle to qualify for federal payments and price supports. None of the major farm groups, which were accustomed to having great influence in agricultural legislation, supported the bill. But it passed with bipartisan support in both houses. Mr. Hardin’s other achievements as secretary included extending the food stamp program and setting up a new bureau in the Agriculture Department to administer food programs for the poor. But a long slump in farmers’ incomes continued during Mr. Hardin’s tenure, and he was replaced by Earl L. Butz in November 1971. Clifford Morris Hardin was born on Oct. 9, 1915, near Knightstown, Ind. During the Depression, his father worked on agricultural ventures in Florida for half the year to supplement the family income. Clifford, then a teenager, managed the family farm during his absences. Mr. Hardin attended Purdue on a 4-H scholarship, earning undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. degrees there. He taught at Purdue, the University of Wisconsin and Michigan State College (now Michigan State University). In 1954, at age 39, he became chancellor at Nebraska, where he helped quadruple enrollment and persuaded the state’s Legislature to raise professors’ salaries. In 1962, Mr. Hardin set the stage for Nebraska to become a major collegiate football power when he hired Bob Devaney as coach. Mr. Devaney had been an assistant coach at Michigan State and had known Mr. Hardin there. The Cornhuskers under Mr. Devaney won two national championships, then three more under Tom Osborne , his successor. In an interview with The New York Times in 1983, Mr. Hardin explained his effort for national football prominence this way: “The people came through the Depression. They came through the drought years. I felt the state needed something to rally around. If we could pull this off, it could be the difference. I think in retrospect, it probably helped us get more money to build the university.” Mr. Hardin went on to be vice chairman for research for the Ralston Purina Company as well as chairman of its Canadian unit. He was later director of the Center for the Study of American Business — now the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis. He was also vice president and director of Stifel Nicolaus, an investment banking firm in St. Louis. Mr. Hardin is survived by his wife of 70 years, the former Martha Love Wood; his daughters, Sue Wood, Cynthia Milligan and Nancy Rogers; his sons, Clifford Wood and James Hardin; his sister, Phyllis Walls; 15 grandchildren; and 23 great-grandchildren. One of Mr. Hardin’s final acts as agriculture secretary was introducing Woodsy Owl as a mascot of the Forest Service. Woodsy became famed for his exhortation, “Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute.”

Nixon Richard Milhous
Crop Controls and Subsidies
Farmers
Deaths (Obituaries)
Farm Bill (US)
Law and Legislation
Agriculture
Agriculture Department


Newt Gingrich and Megyn Kelly Get Into Bizarre Exchange on Live TV

Abstract: Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, and the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly got into a televised tiff on Tuesday night in which he accused her of being “fascinated with sex” for her reporting on allegations of unwanted advances and groping by the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump. The bizarre exchange played out toward the end of an interview on Ms. Kelly’s news program, “ The Kelly File. ” The discussion turned from who was ahead in the polls — Mr. Trump or the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton — when Mr. Gingrich, a Republican and staunch supporter of Mr. Trump, accused Ms. Kelly and the news media of paying a disproportionate amount of attention to allegations by 10 women that Mr. Trump had forcibly kissed or groped them. Mr. Gingrich questioned why a speech Mrs. Clinton had given in Brazil to a bank that had paid her $225,000 was not also worthy of coverage. That was the start of a roughly two-minute exchange on live television that suddenly became less about the presidential candidates and more about a personal friction between Mr. Gingrich and Ms. Kelly . “You are fascinated with sex and you don’t care about public policy,” he told Ms. Kelly. Ms. Kelly: “Me? Really?” Mr. Gingrich: “That’s what I get out of watching you tonight.” Ms. Kelly: “You know what Mr. Speaker, I’m not fascinated by sex, but I am fascinated by the protection of women and understanding what we’re getting in the Oval Office and I think the American voters would like to know …” Mr. Gingrich then began to talk about how Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, would return to the White House “because you, after all, are worried about sexual predators,” an apparent allusion to Mr. Clinton’s affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. “Listen, it’s not about me. It’s about the women and men of America,” Ms. Kelly replied. She said polls showed that voters were concerned about the allegations against Mr. Trump and believed they were an issue. As the interview progressed, Mr. Gingrich turned to baiting Ms. Kelly. “Do you want to comment on whether the Clinton ticket has a relationship to a sexual predator?” Mr. Gingrich said, adding: “I just want to hear you use the words, ‘Bill Clinton, sexual predator.’ I dare you. Say, ‘Bill Clinton, sexual predator.’” Ms. Kelly said “excuse me” four times as he talked over her. She noted how her news program had covered the allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Clinton. “He’s not on the ticket,” Ms. Kelly said, referring to Mr. Clinton. “The polls also show the American public is less interested in the deeds of Hillary Clinton’s husband than they are in the deeds of the man who asks us to make him president, Donald Trump.” With the remaining time allotted winding down, she continued: “We’re going to have to leave it at that and you can take your anger issues and spend some time working on them, Mr. Speaker. Thanks for being here.” “And you too,” he said.

2016 Presidential Election
Fox News Channel
Newt Gingrich
Megyn Kelly


Kevin Durant to Face Former Team, the Thunder, for the First Time

Abstract: OAKLAND, Calif. — As much as Kevin Durant might try to play down the drama, when he steps onto the court here against his former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, for the first time on Thursday night, emotions will be running high for both sides. The last time the teams met, a little more than five months ago, Durant’s new team, the Golden State Warriors, rallied from a three-games-to-one deficit to beat Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals. “I wouldn’t say ‘weird,’” Durant said. “I’ll just be locked in to follow the game plan, and just playing. But once you step on the court and see the different jersey, I’m sure it will hit me.” Durant will be facing his old running mate Russell Westbrook, who signed an extension with the Thunder. Durant departed as a free agent in July. “I think it will be a lot of emotions,” the Warriors’ Draymond Green said. “They’re going to want to beat him really bad; he’s going to want to beat them really bad. “In turn, we’re going to want to beat them really bad because we want him to beat them really bad. So I think it will be a fun game to play in. It’s always a high-intensity game against them, and I expect nothing less.” Westbrook went into Wednesday night’s game against the Clippers in Los Angeles leading the N.B.A. in scoring, averaging 38.7 points. Durant was sixth at 28.5. Golden State had Wednesday off from practice after a 127-104 win Tuesday night at Portland. “I’m going to enjoy myself and get away from basketball,” Durant said. “At shoot-around, we’ll think about going over the game plan and stuff and how we’re going to try to win the game.” Durant has scored 20 or more points in 68 straight regular-season games, the longest such streak since Michael Jordan’s 69 consecutive outings in 1990-91. Warriors Coach Steve Kerr has insisted that his team will need time to come together. Durant has made strides in learning the system and leads the Warriors in scoring, slightly ahead of Stephen Curry, the two-time reigning most valuable player. “K. D. is meshing with us beautifully,” Kerr said. “He fits right into what we want to do. He’s a playmaker. He’s perfect for what we already do.” Kerr added: “I’m sure he’s going to be excited. Every player is excited when he plays against his former team. “It’s a little different for Kevin, because he’s a superstar and the spotlight is on him. Everybody’s going to be asking him questions. The TV cameras will be on him and Russ. I’m sure it will be nice for both players to get this one behind them so they can go on with their season.” For Golden State, winning at Oracle Arena would mean a lot regardless of the opponent. The Warriors took a 29-point beating at the hands of San Antonio in their season opener Oct. 25, prompting fans to flood the exits with more than five minutes remaining in a rare blowout loss at home. But Golden State has a three-game winning streak since then. All of the wins have come on the road. “I’ve played Oklahoma City plenty of times, so I know what it’s like; he doesn’t,” Curry said of Durant. “We haven’t won at home in a while, so that’s all I’m really worried about. Just getting a home win.”

Basketball
Golden State Warriors
Oklahoma City Thunder
Kevin Durant


Now a Weed, Once a Prehistoric Cavity Fighter

Abstract: Cyperus rotundus, commonly known as purple nutsedge or nutgrass, is considered one of the world’s worst invasive weeds . But new research suggests that prehistoric humans in what is now central Sudan may have gotten an unusual benefit from it. Stephen Buckley , an archaeological chemist from the University of York in England, analyzed dental calculus — a form of hardened plaque — in fossilized teeth from people who lived thousands of years ago, in the pre-Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Meroitic periods. In a paper published in the journal PLOS One, Dr. Buckley and his colleagues report that the teeth had remarkably few cavities and high levels of the chemical compounds found in purple nutsedge, suggesting that the plant may have protected against tooth decay. How might these early humans have used the plant? “They were eating the tubers, that is, the underground storage organ,” said the senior author of the study, Karen Hardy, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. “The purple nutsedge stores its energy and carbohydrates in these underground organs. The main usage by the prehistoric people most surely would have been food.” Other uses of the plant may have drawn on its medicinal or aromatic qualities, she said, adding, “This study provides direct evidence not only of the fact that they ate plants, but also has identified a specific plant that was collected and eaten, before agriculture developed.” RANJODH SINGH

Weeds
Teeth
Anthropology
PLoS One Journal
Invasive species
Stephen Buckley
Karen Hardy


Turkish Leader Says Qaddafi Must Step Down Immediately

Abstract: ISTANBUL — In his harshest comments to date on the situation in Libya , Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey , a regional power broker, told reporters here on Tuesday that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had chosen “blood, tears, oppression” and that he must “immediately step down.” Turkey has historic and business ties to Libya, and during more than two months of conflict it has tried to act as an intermediary between Colonel Qaddafi’s government and the rebels seeking his ouster. As a result, each side has accused Turkey of favoring the other, or of hedging its bets. But on Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan appeared to draw a line, saying during a televised news conference that Colonel Qaddafi had violently resisted calls for change and that he must leave power for the good of the country and the Libyan people. “Muammar Qaddafi, instead of taking our suggestions into account, refraining from shedding blood or seeking for ways to maintain the territorial unity of Libya, chose blood, tears, oppression and attacks on his own people,” Mr. Erdogan said. “Now, at this stage, the thing that needs to be done is Muammar Qaddafi to immediately step down from power that he holds in Libya.” About 25,000 Turkish workers were engaged in major construction projects in Libya at the beginning of the unrest in February, and Turkey led an extensive evacuation operation for its citizens and others . The two countries began a visa agreement last year, allowing Libyan citizens to stay in Turkey for at least three months without a visa and signaling a turn in diplomatic and business relations. A Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Mr. Erdogan had spoken with Colonel Qaddafi three times in private, “urging him to step down peacefully and allow establishment of an administration to reflect people’s demands,” but that Colonel Qaddafi had refused. A spokesman for the rebels, Jalal al-Gallal, called the announcement by the Turkish prime minister a welcome development, saying, “It just increases the isolation of the regime.” For weeks, Qaddafi opponents throughout eastern Libya had blamed Turkey — rightly or wrongly — for what they perceived as a slowdown in the NATO bombing campaign, and accused Turkey’s leaders of playing a double game. “This means there is no more hindrance in NATO,” Mr. Gallal said. Mr. Erdogan’s comments came ahead of an expected meeting between Arab and Western members of the Libya Contact Group in Rome this week. Colonel Qaddafi has dismissed a proposed “road map” to end the Libyan conflict that was put forward by Turkey last month and that included the withdrawal of armed forces from besieged cities, the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and democratic reforms. Colonel Qaddafi’s forces kept up their attack on the besieged city of Misurata on Tuesday, though they concentrated most of their firepower on the front lines, rather than the city. They also continued to threaten shipping lanes into the port, the city’s lifeline, which has been closed for days by shelling. The Red Star One, a vessel chartered by the International Organization for Migration , has been waiting offshore since Saturday for permission to dock and evacuate 1,000 mainly African migrants and dozens of wounded Libyan civilians, Reuters reported. Officials with the group called on NATO and Libyan authorities on Tuesday to assure the ship’s safe passage. In the southwestern mountain region, loyalist forces shelled a road leading from a critical border crossing near Dhiba, Tunisia , that was seized by rebel forces last week, The Associated Press said. Having been defeated in their attempt to retake the crossing, the Qaddafi militias now seem content to shell the road, trying to disrupt the rebels’ efforts to resupply towns in the area. At about 9 p.m. on Tuesday a large car bomb exploded near the courthouse that has become the symbol of the rebel movement in Benghazi, wounding at least two people and damaging buildings and cars nearby. A rebel military spokesman, Col. Ahmed Omar Bani, citing the size of the explosion, said: “We’re 90 percent sure it’s a car bomb.” He said they were also exploring the possibility that dynamite that someone was preparing to use for fishing had accidentally caused the blast. Crowds who gathered at the scene blamed Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists. As word of the explosion spread, it seemed to confirm the recurring fears in Benghazi that Colonel Qaddafi’s followers were living silently among them and intent on attacking symbols of fledgling rebel power, or the movement’s followers. In recent weeks, there has been a stepped-up security presence at the courthouse, where at a recent prayer service men with guns and uniforms formed a line around the worshipers. The rebels have mounting financial problems as well. Their finance minister, Ali Tarhouni, told reporters on Tuesday that the rebels had only enough money to administer the areas under their control for three to four weeks, Reuters reported. Mr. Tarhouni said that the rebels were hoping to borrow up to $3 billion — secured against Libya’s frozen assets — from countries like France , Italy and the United States to pay expenses including salaries. At the United Nations , the secretary general’s envoy for Libya, Abdul Ilah Khatib, a former Jordanian foreign minister, briefed the Security Council on the considerable hurdles involved in such mediation. Although both sides have expressed willingness to respect a cease-fire, they maintain mutually exclusive pre-conditions. Colonel Qaddafi wants all NATO military action to stop first, while the opposition insists on the departure of Colonel Qaddafi and his family as the initial step, he noted. Mr. Khatib said he was exploring ways to link a verifiable cease-fire with a lasting political process that includes all the relevant parties. “The main difficulty at this stage is getting all sides to agree on the essential elements of a political process that meets the aspirations of the Libyan people,” he told the council.

Libya
Turkey
Muammar Kaddafi
Arab Spring


Marcel Hirscher Dominates in Opening World Cup Race

Abstract: The overall World Cup champion Marcel Hirscher of Austria won the season-opening giant slalom by a huge margin in Sölden, Austria. Hirscher beat Fritz Dopfer of Germany by 1.58 seconds. Alexis Pinturault of France was third.

Skiing
Marcel Hirscher
Alexis Pinturault
World Cup Skiing
Alpine skiing
Ted Ligety
Austria


Support for Saudi Arabia Gives U.S. Direct Role in Yemen Conflict

Abstract: WASHINGTON — It was a frenetic Monday afternoon at Abs Hospital in northern Yemen, with doctors and nurses busily shuttling among the patients and a maternity ward filled with 25 women expecting to give birth. The bomb from the Saudi jet dropped into the middle of the hospital compound, a facility run by Doctors Without Borders, landing between the emergency room and a triage area for new patients. Nineteen people were killed, dozens were injured, and a humanitarian group that for decades has braved war zones across the globe decided it had had enough. Doctors Without Borders announced in the days after the Aug. 15 strike that it was pulling out of six medical facilities in northern Yemen, the latest turn in a war that has further devastated one of the Arab world’s poorest countries and has bogged down a Saudi military ill-prepared for the conflict. For the Obama administration, it was another public reminder of the spiraling violence of a war in which it has played a direct role. American officials have publicly condemned the hospital bombing — and the bombing of a school two days earlier — but the Pentagon has given steady support to the coalition led by Saudi Arabia, with targeting intelligence and fuel for the Saudi planes involved in the air campaign. Anger over the Saudi-led campaign and the United States role in the war is growing in Congress. On Wednesday, it prompted a group of lawmakers to circulate a letter that asks President Obama to withdraw his request for Congressional approval for a $1.15 billion sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, until Congress can have a broader debate about American military support for the Saudis. The past three weeks have seen an escalation in the conflict in Yemen — and in reports of civilian casualties — after peace talks among the warring sides broke down and Saudi Arabia resumed a blistering air assault in areas surrounding Yemen’s capital, Sana. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday with the aim of brokering a new peace deal, although there is little optimism about a lasting cease-fire in the near future. It is now 17 months into a military campaign that began after Shiite rebels, known as the Houthis, overran the Yemeni capital, forced the government into exile and began positioning missile batteries close to Saudi Arabia’s southern border. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have portrayed the Houthis as puppets of Iran, a charge that American officials view with deep skepticism, even though they say Tehran has provided the militia with some arms and money. The Abs Hospital was the fourth health facility supported by Doctors Without Border to be hit during the war. Teresa Sancristóval, the group’s emergency program coordinator, said that Doctors Without Borders had given the GPS coordinates of its facilities to the Saudi military, and that its representatives had traveled to the Saudi kingdom twice to protest. But the botched airstrikes continue. “Words are not enough when 19 people are killed,” Ms. Sancristóval said, adding that the group can no longer accept assurances from the government in Riyadh that their airstrikes will become more precise. “If you don’t know what you’re hitting, then don’t try to hit it,” she said. Ms. Sancristóval said Doctors Without Borders had pulled approximately 550 personnel from its facilities in northern Yemen, although the group would continue to provide medical supplies and funding to the hospitals. When the group announced its withdrawal last week, the Saudi coalition issued a statement saying it was in “urgent discussions” to broker the medical organization’s return to Yemen. Ms. Sancristóval said she was unaware of any substantive discussions. This month, a Saudi-led investigation into eight separate episodes in Yemen that had killed hundreds of civilians — including previous strikes that hit Doctors Without Borders facilities — largely absolved the coalition of the deaths. The investigation concluded that faulty intelligence was to blame in only one of the eight episodes, and said that aid groups, such as Doctors Without Borders, should not station medical facilities near Houthi encampments. But a spokesman for the investigation, Mansour bin Ahmed Mansour, said in an interview that investigators did not travel to Yemen and had no personnel on the ground there to collect evidence. “The circumstances do not allow the team to go on the ground,” he said. Speaking of an episode late last year, when a coalition airstrike bombed a Doctors Without Borders clinic near the Yemeni city of Taiz, Mr. Mansour said that the coalition had hit a “legitimate military target,” and that the aid group “should keep these tents away from the locations where there are militias.” According to United States Central Command, American military tankers have flown nearly 1,200 sorties since the war began and refueled more than 5,600 coalition aircraft — support that is drawing increasing protest from Congress. Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Obama administration’s support for the campaign in Yemen had caused anger to be directed at the United States from inside the war-racked country. “We try to maintain some distance from this, but that doesn’t sell inside Yemen,” he said. “I’m petrified about the long-term prospects of a Yemeni population that is radicalized against the United States.” The Saudi-led bombing campaign resumed this month after a monthslong pause for the unsuccessful attempt to draft a peace agreement. On Aug. 7, more than a dozen civilians were killed in an airstrike that hit a small marketplace near the village of Al Madeed, approximately 35 miles northeast of Sana. Sada al-Othari, a witness who owns a drugstore in the village, said that two of his customers were killed in the bombing and that there was no military target in the area. He gave a graphic account of victims burned beyond recognition and panicked locals who were reluctant to provide help, fearing a second airstrike would hit the rescuers — a tactic that the coalition has used during the campaign. On Aug. 13 an airstrike in Hayden District hit a religious school, killing 10 students and wounding dozens. A representative of Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, in Yemen decried the bombing. Wounded children were brought to another medical facility run by Doctors Without Borders. The day after that attack, a Saudi military spokesman denied that the airstrike had hit a school, saying the target was a Houthi training camp. The spokesman, Gen. Ahmed Asiri, said in a statement to Agence France-Presse that the dead children were just evidence that the Houthis were recruiting children as guards and fighters. “We would have hoped,” General Asiri said, that Doctors Without Borders “would take measures to stop the recruitment of children to fight in wars instead of crying over them in the media.”

Yemen
Bombs
Hospital
Saudi Arabia
Doctors Without Borders
Civilian casualties
Military
Arms Trade


In Albany, Secrecy Surrounds Budget Talks

Abstract: ALBANY — Around the Capitol this week, the top political leaders have been particularly cagey about answering questions. No, the state’s budget is not ready yet. And no, they do not really want to talk about why. A few details have dribbled out: New Yorkers should be prepared to swallow new taxes and fee increases, but no one is saying precisely what they will be. So when Gov. David A. Paterson opened his news conference on Friday by deploring the secrecy surrounding this year’s budget talks, it looked as if the public might finally be brought out of the dark. “I feel that the public deserves to hear from its governor,” Mr. Paterson said. “I don’t like this process very much. It is not nearly transparent enough.” But when pressed for specifics about the new budget, he said only, “Soon enough I’ll be able to go into specifics.” Even the smallest details seemed hard to ascertain. Democrats in the Assembly were told to be on call this weekend in case Speaker Sheldon Silver called a vote on the budget. But Mr. Silver’s press office could not say whether most of the Assembly Democrats would actually be staying in Albany. As for the issues complicating budget talks, Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Mr. Silver, said, “We’re not going to comment on any of the issues.” Other than to say that Mr. Silver and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, would be working through the weekend to sew up a deal, spokesmen for both leaders could not say when their next public appearance might be. Mr. Paterson’s appearance on Friday was his first press conference since Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver announced a “conceptual agreement” five days earlier and then retreated to their offices for negotiations that have produced a piecemeal budget. Financing for public safety, health care and transportation has been resolved, but the biggest issues — like taxes and school financing — remain unsettled. Mr. Bruno emerged from his office on Friday afternoon and made his first extended remarks since declaring on Sunday, “We’re there,” when he was asked how close the budget was to being finished. Mr. Bruno shed the most light on what the holdup was, saying that his Senate Republican conference was reluctantly going along with tax increases, but only if Mr. Paterson and Assembly Democrats agreed to a “sunset provision” in which the taxes would expire at a certain date. He also offered the bleakest assessment of the talks. “We just seem to be spinning our wheels, going round and round, talking about the same things and not getting conclusions,” he said. “And it’s very, very troublesome.” Rank-and-file legislators have been grumbling all week that they feel cut out of the budget deliberations. Ordinarily, the governor and the top two legislative leaders would not be making so many decisions on their own. And there are usually regular public meetings of the so-called conference committees, in which senators and Assembly members hammer out budget numbers for state programs like health care funding and transportation. But those committees all but stopped having public meetings last weekend. “The structure of the state’s budget process that has been in place for decades has collapsed this year,” said State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, Democrat of Upper Manhattan. “Things are getting done in bits and pieces, and it’s all being done in secret.” As the state prepared to enter its second week without a budget, there were no signs that the process was becoming any more open. After he spoke to reporters, Mr. Paterson walked back into his chamber on the second floor of the Capitol. When asked where he was going, he responded, “I’m going back to crack the whip.” When his press office released his schedule for the weekend a few hours later, there were no public appearances listed.

Budgets and Budgeting
Albany (NY)
States (US)


Tight Credit, Tough Times for Buyout Lords

Abstract: Just over a year ago, William E. Conway Jr., a founding partner of the Carlyle Group, celebrated the riches that easy credit were bringing to the kings of Wall Street. “I know that this liquidity environment cannot go on forever,” Mr. Conway wrote in a memo to colleagues at Carlyle, one of the world’s biggest buyout firms. “And I know that the longer it lasts, the worse it will be when it ends.” Was he ever right. On Friday, Carlyle Capital, a highly leveraged investment fund linked to Mr. Conway’s firm, teetered on the brink of insolvency as banks began calling in its loans. Yet another spasm of panic gripped credit markets, sending stocks tumbling and prompting the Federal Reserve to take new steps to pump money into the economy, which seems certain to sink into a recession. The Ides of March has arrived early for the buyout lords of Wall Street, as the intensifying credit crisis humbles some of the industry’s once-celebrated deal makers. David M. Rubenstein, the Carlyle co-founder who is the public face of the firm, is struggling to contain the damage to his reputation. Henry R. Kravis, a co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, has looked on as K.K.R.’s publicly traded investment fund has plummeted 52 percent in the last year. And Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group — feted just a year ago for his investment prowess and glorious lifestyle — is watching his celebrated buyout firm wizen in the stock market. Reflecting a bruising seven-month decline, Blackstone’s shares sank 3.1 percent to a record low of $14.58 Friday. The stock has plunged 53 percent since Blackstone went public amid great fanfare last summer. Throughout the financial industry, liquidity — the river of capital on which companies and markets depend — is running dry. Like Carlyle’s fund, Thornburg Mortgage, the troubled home mortgage lender, was struggling for survival Friday after worried banks demanded that the company put up more money against its loans. “Quite simply, the panic that has gripped the mortgage financing market is irrational and has no basis in investment reality,” Larry A. Goldstone, the chief executive of Thornburg, said in a statement. But on Wall Street, the collapse of stocks so closely tied to the names of famous buyout artists like Mr. Rubenstein, Mr. Kravis and Mr. Schwarzman underscores how quickly the markets have turned. Carlyle Capital said Friday that it was “considering all available options” after it received additional margin calls, prompting some analysts to warn that more funds could struggle to meet increasingly tighter financial requirements. The shares were suspended from trading on the Amsterdam stock exchange after plunging 58 percent the day before. Carlyle Capital employed enormous leverage, borrowing 30 times the value of its assets to invest in mortgage securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-chartered home loan giants. Its parent company has extended a $150 million line of credit, but as the credit markets deteriorate, the possibility remains that the investment company will not survive. Carlyle executives own 15 percent of the company, and while they admit that such a result would be embarrassing, they emphasize that the group itself remains in good health. It is unclear whether Carlyle will be pressed to inject some liquidity in the fund, which is run by John C. Stomber, a former executive at the investment firm Cerberus. “David has worked on his Carlyle reputation for 20 years,” a spokesman, Christopher Ullman, said. “We are innovative and we are successful, but in this situation there are challenges.” He would not disclose Mr. Rubenstein’s exact position in the fund. Carlyle Capital has unraveled with remarkable speed. The fund said on Thursday that it had missed four of seven margin calls worth a total of $37 million and said it expected to receive at least one more default notice. On Friday it said it had subsequently received additional margin calls and was told by lenders that further calls and “increased collateral requirements would be significant and well in excess of the margin calls it received.” Such additional requirements “could quickly deplete its liquidity and impair its capital,” it said. For the time being, the increasing panic in the credit markets has stanched what was once a rush of easy capital that financed some of the largest private equity deals of a generation. In February 2007, Mr. Schwarzman celebrated his 60th birthday in fin de siècle style. Also last year, Mr. Rubenstein mused about the inevitability of a $100 billion private equity deal. While the market rout is a blight on their reputations, to some, a good reputation is like any other tradable asset — to be sold when the market is rising. That is what Mr. Schwarzman, Mr. Rubenstein and Mr. Kravis did when raising funds from investors. But, like beaten-down stocks or bonds, reputations can quickly recover. “The whole point of acquiring a good reputation is to deplete it for gain,” said Frank Partnoy, a professor of finance at the University of San Diego Law School and a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley. “You expand your investor base and find the less sophisticated investor. But you can rebuild your reputation, too. Now is bad, but the memory of financial markets can be measured in days.” Significant differences do exist among the three investments. The Carlyle and K.K.R. vehicles were created expressly to profit from the flush liquidity cycle of the time by borrowing short-term funds, then investing in longer term, riskier debt. (KKR Financial has subsequently shifted its focus to corporate debt.) While this was a business embraced by commercial banks, it was new territory for private equity firms, which tend to invest with a longer-term framework and primarily in companies. Unlike Carlyle, KKR Financial, while experiencing a sharp decline in its stock, has no solvency problems and has $1.4 billion in cash. This summer, KKR Financial wrote off its remaining mortgage exposure and is now invested 100 percent in corporate debt. The company expects to pay out at least a $2-a-share dividend this year. K.K.R. executives own 12 percent of KKR Financial, according to a person with knowledge of the company who would not disclose what Mr. Kravis’s stake in the entity is. Mr. Kravis, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the decline of KKR Financial. Mr. Schwarzman, on the other hand, retains a 23 percent stake in Blackstone, having taken out $677 million during the public offering. In China, newspapers publish the daily, frequently declining share price of Blackstone, a rebuke to the China Investment Corporation’s decision to buy a 10 percent stake in a company held out to be the purest symbol of smart American money. Through a spokesman, Mr. Schwarzman declined to comment on Blackstone’s stock. The company is to report fourth-quarter earnings Monday. But people close to Mr. Schwarzman say he has been keeping up a relentless work schedule, raising what the firm hopes will be $15 billion for a new private equity fund and recently closing a $10 billion real estate fund. “The crowds are smaller at cocktail parties, the aura is stained, but there still is the letter B, as in billionaire, next to their name,” said Andy Kessler, a former hedge fund executive who has written books about Wall Street. “They may still have halls named after them at universities, but the idea that these guys are the kings of investing, that time has passed.”

Carlyle Group
Finances
Conway William Jr
Recession and Depression


Justice Attempts to Clear His Name

Abstract: When wildfires devastated Southern California in October, David Justice was one of hundreds to lose a home. He did manage to save his World Series rings from Atlanta and the Yankees, reminders of a 14-year career punctuated by postseason highlights. Now, five years after retirement, Justice is trying to save his reputation. He was cited in the Mitchell report as having purchased human growth hormone from Kirk Radomski, a former Mets clubhouse attendant, and admitting this to Brian McNamee, a former assistant strength coach for the Yankees. “Mac is lying, and he knows he’s lying,” Justice said Thursday in a telephone interview. “He was going to go to jail, and they told him: ‘Look, you get a free pass, but we need names. Tell us about everything you know.’ That’s what he did. I’m not saying everything’s a lie about everybody, because some of the stuff he said was pretty convincing because he offered details. But with me, he’s lying.” Justice spoke with the Mitchell investigators before the allegations by Radomski and McNamee, saying in his interview that he never used performance-enhancing drugs. The report says Justice did not respond to a subsequent interview request to answer specific charges; he said he never got the message. In any case, the report does not specify that Justice used human growth hormone, only that he purchased two kits from Radomski and asked McNamee about the drug. Radomski told investigators that Justice paid him by check, and that he cashed the check. But there is no evidence of the check in Mitchell’s report. “Where’s that check?” Justice said. “I want to see that check. I’m telling you, I don’t even know the guy. How do you have all these actual checks, and then all of a sudden, you get to my name and you don’t have no check? Come on.” Justice, now a broadcaster for the YES Network, said he did have a conversation with McNamee about human growth hormone. He said McNamee initiated the talk and told him the drug would help him recover from a groin injury. “Had it been in pill form, I’m not saying I would not have taken it, because of my lack of knowledge of what it was,” Justice said. “Just going off what Mac was telling me, he was saying it was going to help with my injury. But I ain’t using no needles. Everybody who knows me knows that. “When Mac offered it to me, I told him, ‘No, I’ll do it naturally.’” Justice dismissed the idea that he purchased H.G.H. from Radomski after the 2000 World Series. His final two seasons were plagued by more groin injuries, and his performance fell off sharply. “It really helped me, huh?” Justice said, facetiously. “That’s bull. I could never shake that groin injury the last two years in the big leagues, and I didn’t tear the cover off the ball, either.” According to the report, Justice “provided names of many players who, he suspected, had used steroids.” Yet Justice said he only told investigators what he assumed they already knew, to prove the point that Major League Baseball had to have known about a widespread drug culture for years. “I said, ‘Well, there was always talk with guys,’” Justice said. “Way back in ’88, they were talking about Canseco, and I was answering in terms of how I felt M.L.B. kind of knew what was going on. So I said, ‘Lenny Dykstra, people like that.’ These were names that everybody knew. But I told them I didn’t have proof of anybody.” Justice said he had no plans to file a lawsuit over the Mitchell report, because he said lawsuits were costly and unlikely to change people’s minds. “This is what we’ve all got to deal with,” Justice said, perhaps speaking for all of the players who deny information in the report. “Some people are going to believe you. Some people don’t care. And some people aren’t going to believe you.” Justice did not say whether he believed McNamee’s allegations about Roger Clemens within the Mitchell report. But he said his personal opinion of Clemens was unchanged. “I think Clemens was one of the most competitive, hardest-working dudes I’ve ever seen in a baseball uniform, and every time he took that mound, I felt like we were going to win,” Justice said. “It doesn’t change how I’ll remember him.”

Mitchell George J.
Baseball
Steroids
Justice David


Relentless, an Exercise Class Built on Relentlessness

Abstract: AS a fan of old-school workouts, I find many fitness classes too fancy and gimmicky. But once in a while, something comes along that excites and intimidates the skeptical, hard-core exerciser in me. That something right now is Relentless , a 75-minute class held on Tuesday nights at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side. Created by Sam Lopez, a former competitive boxer, Relentless delivers a barrage of cardio and strength moves meant to test and train the whole body. Mr. Lopez, 44, came up with the idea because he was looking for a workout that would help him stay in shape as he got older. “Agility, balance, coordination and endurance all go down as you age,” he said recently. “And I wanted to design something which would help athletes like me compensate for the decline in reflex response time.” The class incorporates a boxing component, as well as a step like the one used in certain aerobics classes. Other elements include a long body bar, which can run from 9 to 18 pounds, and free weights from 2 to 10 pounds. Participants engage in a host of moves, including lunges with weights, followed by jumping lunges. There are boxing kicks, squat thrusts, weighted squats, push-ups and more. It can make for an eye-popping succession, particularly considering the intensity demanded from sessions lasting more than an hour. What also makes this class stand out is the strong community that has developed among participants in the four years since it started. Relentless is offered as a series several times a year, and it is possible to sign up for single classes. Around half of the class members — there can be more than 50 participants at a time — are repeat students who have forged strong bonds. Sandy Terrero, 43, a supermarket designer who lives on the Upper East Side, said the club music Mr. Lopez plays made him feel as if he were at a social event. He said attending regularly over the past two years had helped him speed up his running times. “I used to run an eight-minute mile but can do just under seven minutes now and regularly run marathons and half-marathons, where I keep improving my time,” he said. “No matter how big of a hill I am going up in a race, my legs never burn as much as they do when I’m taking the class.” The friends he has made include Aviva Goel, 25, a graduate student at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She said she used to dabble in running before taking Relentless. Last year she ran her first race — the New York City Marathon — with Mr. Terrero. She credited her improved fitness level and her 45-pound weight loss to regular attendance at Relentless classes. In addition to the workout, Ms. Goel said she loved going to the program to see her friends. “I never thought I’d say this about exercise,” she said, “but this is a class I crave.”


As Donald Trump Pushes Conspiracy Theories, Right-Wing Media Gets Its Wish

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Ever since talk radio, cable news and the Internet emerged in the 1990s as potent political forces on the right, Republicans have used those media to attack their opponents through a now-familiar two-step. Political operatives would secretly place damaging information with friendly media like The Drudge Report and Fox News and with radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh — and then they would work to get the same information absorbed into the mainstream media. Candidates themselves would avoid being seen slinging mud, if possible, so as to avoid coming across as undignified or desperate. Yet by personally broaching topics like Bill Clinton’s marital indiscretions and the conspiracy theories surrounding the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr. , a Clinton White House aide, Donald J. Trump is again defying the norms of presidential politics and fashioning his own outrageous style — one that has little use for a middleman, let alone usual ideas about dignity. “They’ve reverse-engineered the way it has always worked because they now have a candidate willing to say it himself,” said Danny Diaz, who was a top aide in Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. Mr. Diaz spoke with a measure of wonder about the spectacle of the party’s presumptive nominee discussing Mr. Clinton’s sexual escapades . With Mr. Trump as the presumptive Republican standard-bearer, the line separating the conservative mischief makers and the party’s more-buttoned-up cadre of elected officials and aides has been obliterated. Fusing what had been two separate but symbiotic forces, Mr. Trump has begun a real-life political science experiment: What happens when a major party’s nominee is more provocateur than politician? That the Republican Party has embraced someone willing to traffic in the most inflammatory of accusations comes as wish fulfillment for an element of the right that is convinced that the party lost the past two elections because its candidates were unwilling to attack President Obama forcefully enough. Video From hinting that Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered to suggesting that George W. Bush knew the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were coming, Donald J. Trump has shared many outrageous conspiracy theories. Credit Credit Cooper Neill for The New York Times In this telling, in 2008, Senator John McCain should have focused on Mr. Obama’s relationships with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the onetime radical Bill Ayers, and on discredited claims about Mr. Obama’s birthplace and ties to Islam. And Mitt Romney lost four years later because he, too, ignored those issues, as well as other fixations of the conservative news media like the terrorist attack on the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Now Republicans have a candidate who, as Mr. Limbaugh put it on his show on Tuesday, “has gone there.” “Trump has gone to all of this Clinton conspiracy stuff,” Mr. Limbaugh said. Mr. Trump, he added, was “doing the job the American media and the Republican Party won’t do.” The Drudge Report was downright gleeful, running a “Vince Foster Lives!” banner headline on Tuesday. Roger J. Stone Jr., the political operative who is Mr. Trump’s longtime confidant and an unapologetic stirrer of strife, called Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney “losers” for their more restrained approaches. “Comity gets you beat,” he said, adding, “It takes guts to win — and Trump doesn’t look at polls, he just swings.” But that is precisely what has many Republicans, and some Democrats, nervous. “He’s never been involved in policy making or party building or the normal things a candidate would do,” said Jon Seaton, a Republican strategist. “His whole frame of reference is daytime Fox News and Infowars,” a website run by the conservative commentator Alex Jones. Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s former chief of staff, said Mr. Trump was making common cause with “the lunatic fringe,” citing his willingness to appear on the radio show of Mr. Jones, who has said that Michelle Obama is a man. Where Trump Breaks With the Republican Party Donald J. Trump is set to be the Republican standard-bearer, but when it comes to some of his policies, he is out of sync with many Republican leaders in Congress. “I fear that it, if not a mortal blow, at least does lasting damage as the demographic clock keeps ticking away on us,” Mr. Salter said of Mr. Trump’s effect on the party, alluding to its dwindling base of white voters. Mr. Salter echoed a widespread complaint, saying the news media were enabling Mr. Trump for the sake of ratings. But Mr. Trump’s style is indisputably good TV, as his primary race opponents discovered. And his asymmetrical style of political warfare poses a threat to Democrats and their likely nominee, Hillary Clinton, one that may not be so easily neutralized by the usual tactics. Already, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is testing out different responses — juggling how much to deploy the candidate herself and how much to outsource the fiercest counterattacks. It clearly has not yet settled on the most effective approach. “I don’t think Hillary’s campaign should engage in this sort of stuff,” said James Carville, a Democratic strategist, referring to Mr. Trump’s shift toward conspiracy-mongering. “But the pushback from surrogates and the ‘super PAC’ world is going to be pretty damn hard.” Anita Dunn, a former top aide to Mr. Obama, said “this is the time” for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign to determine how best to respond to Mr. Trump’s charges, noting that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is still in the race and that Mrs. Clinton will not effectively claim the Democratic nomination until at least June 7. But at least in the short term, Mr. Trump’s willingness to hurl the most incendiary charges has given him an overwhelming advantage. “He is winning the day,” Ms. Dunn said, “if you define winning the day by dominating the coverage.” She made clear that she did not. In the next breath, though, Ms. Dunn wryly braced for more incoming. Half-jokingly imagining Mr. Trump dredging up the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., she said, “We haven’t heard ‘David Koresh’ yet.”

2016 Presidential Election
News media,journalism
US Politics
Republicans
Donald Trump
US


Room to Live and Love in China's Cities

Abstract: BEIJING — Shortly after they met, Wu Zheng shocked her girlfriend, Charlene Lee, by kissing her on a Beijing street. “I said, ‘What, you do that here?’ I’m from Singapore, and we’re conservative. There is that constant fear,” recalled Ms. Lee, 30. “I felt it was no problem,” said Ms. Wu, 30, a native Beijinger, grinning at Ms. Lee as she stirred a bloody mary in a cafe. It wasn’t. Lesbians in China today are remarkably free, the result of profound social changes over three decades of fast economic growth, and of being female in a society that values men far above women. Invisibility provides lesbians with room to live and love amid the anonymity of China’s millions-strong megacities. “I think people are more tolerant of female gays than male gays,” said Li Yinhe, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “China is a very patriarchal society, so people feel if a man is gay that’s really shameful.” “Traditional society basically overlooks women in some ways, and there is a certain freedom in that,” she said. “But that free space isn’t necessarily power.” Lesbians’ freedom exists in a gray area. Like male homosexuals, lesbian couples cannot marry or legally form a family, creating problems in separation, illness or inheritance issues. Confronted too openly, relatives often object, too. “Chinese people can accept people being lesbian or gay. But not within their own family,” Ms. Wu said, who is an events manager and plans to start an online sex toy business. “In China it’s very weird,” Ming Ming, a lesbian documentary filmmaker, said. “If you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. But actually it’s not at all easy. The pressure to marry is enormous.” Traditionally, men are expected to carry on the family line, creating greater pressure on male gays to marry. In theory, that offers lesbians greater freedom. But in practice, “It’s a huge loss of face for a family when a daughter doesn’t marry,” said Ms. Ming. Also, China’s one-child policy has produced around 140 million only children, Ji Baocheng, president of Renmin University of China, told the official People’s Daily newspaper in March. This has increased pressure on lesbian only daughters to produce offspring. Lesbianism was officially taboo until 1997, when “hooliganism,” a catchall term that included homosexuality, was struck off the criminal code. The Communists’ narrow morality in the decades after the 1949 revolution contrasted with the preceding Republican period and the end of the last imperial dynasty, when women refusing marriage — many of them lesbians — gathered in villages in southern Guangdong Province to “comb their own hair,” as noted recently in People’s Daily. The phrase refers to the traditional practice of women tying their hair in a bun when they marry. Today, most major cities in China have lesbian bars or cafes offering support groups, talks and parties. In Beijing and Shanghai there are gay pride events, held privately in the hope of avoiding cancellation by the authorities (as happened this month with the biennial Beijing Queer Film Festival. The festival went ahead anyway, “guerrilla-style,” organizers said.) State media discuss lesbianism and commitment ceremonies, and the official Legal Daily newspaper even reported on a survey showing that about half of lesbians had experienced violence from relatives or partners. Campaigners for gay marriage say they are gaining ground, though very slowly. In terms of personal behavior, “The change is coming faster and faster,” said An Ke, organizer of Lala Salon, a weekly lecture and discussion at Half Dozen, a bar in Beijing. Speaking after a recent salon — on rape in eastern Congo — Ms. An said lesbians are, cautiously, “coming out.” “There are 70-year-olds, 50-year-olds who have come out. Seven years ago that wasn’t happening,” she said. “The age of women coming out is also getting younger and younger.” In the Beijing suburb of Tongzhou, Ms. Ming and her partner, Shi Tou, have been making a documentary film about more than 100 Chinese lesbians for seven years. Due out in 2012, they plan to show “Sweet Desert” at international film festivals and wherever they can domestically. Lesbian-themed films can be shown, discreetly, in bars and universities, said Ms. Shi, 42, who acted in China’s first feature film about lesbians, “Fish and Elephant,” screened in 2001 at the Venice Film Festival. Lesbian government and Communist Party officials refused to be filmed. Being openly gay in government is a career killer, Ms. Shi said. “There is so little about lalas in China,” Ms. Shi said, using the slang term by which Chinese lesbians refer to themselves. Debate about homosexuality is focused on men, and on issues like H.I.V., she said. Still, said Ms. Wu: “I think it’s really very free here. People close one eye — as long as you don’t demand too many human rights.” Yet interest in rights is growing. “Of course, we want more recognition,” said Ms. An, the salon organizer. An 18-year-old at the salon, who gave her name as Vagas, agreed. Previously she thought gay marriage “wasn’t that important, but now I think we need it, and not just for me, for everyone. We need the protection.” Ms. Li, the sociologist, has campaigned for same-sex marriage since 2002, repeatedly proposing it for discussion at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the government. “It has to come sooner or later,” she said. An online survey in March by the NetEase portal lady.163.com suggested that about one in four Chinese may support same-sex marriage, with 455,231 for and 1,549,488 against. While the survey of self-selected respondents may not offer an especially scientific view, Ms. Li said it mirrored her own findings — that a substantial minority could accept some form of legalized gay union. The law is an impediment, but so are family attitudes, most conservative in the countryside. Wu Zi, 34, a member of the Muslim Hui ethnicity from the far western region of Xinjiang, is small but stocky, useful, she says, for lifting extra-large iron woks in her job as chef at the Renjia Army Corps restaurant. Born in a small village about 60 kilometers, or 40 miles, northeast of Urumqi, the regional capital, Ms. Wu is one of eight children. She left home at 17. “I realized I’d have to get married if I stayed,” she said, shortly after beginning work at a branch of the restaurant in Beijing. In Urumqi, she lived with a woman for eight years before her partner succumbed to family pressure and married a man. The unhappy marriage lasted two years. Her former partner divorced, then remarried. Ms. Wu’s mother knows she is a lesbian, but her father, who died, never learned. “Our life was very difficult. My parents had to do a lot of hard farm work,” raising cows and goats, she said. “I could never hurt them.” “They were pressuring me to marry. So one year I came home and told my mother: ‘O.K., I’ll marry — a woman’.” Her mother took it well. “Perhaps because she has seven other children,” Ms. Wu said. Many lesbians marry, she said. “About 80 percent. And then they all have affairs with each other. The lesbian scene is very chaotic.” Like Ms. Wu, Xue Lian, 35, from rural Hubei Province in the southwest, doesn’t want to deceive anyone. She lives with her 65-year-old father in a small village 40 minutes’ drive west of Lichuan, a town of 70,000 in steep, green hills, near the Yangtze River. “I don’t know a single woman around here who is 30 and unmarried,” Ms. Xue said. “I’m nearly 40 and not married. It’s a huge topic of discussion. “I don’t actually know a single other lesbian in Lichuan. I guess they all suppress it and marry. I couldn’t do that. For me, it would be like rape.” Outgoing and charismatic, Ms. Xue has traveled the country doing odd jobs for over 15 years, the only way to find love, she said. She has sold fruit in markets, worked in a glass bottle factory and for an auto parts company. She has had four meaningful affairs. When she was in her 20s, she considered having a sex-change operation, “so I would be free to have a girlfriend here at home.” She now thinks she won’t. She learned from the Internet that she could be a lesbian and keep her body as it is, she said. Her moment of revelation came while surfing the Internet in the summer of 2006. “I read about lesbians in Nanjing, who used to gather near a bridge,” she recounted. With that, “I felt I had found a name for myself.” That summer she set up a blog, named Peripheral Person. Her last entry was in December 2010. “I don’t really like going online,” she said. She said she doesn’t want to leave her father — three siblings have married and moved away, and her mother is dead — but said, “Either my father will be unhappy, or I will be unhappy.” At a recent lunch in her dim, earth-floored home, her father told a visitor: “She’s a good daughter. But disobedient. She doesn’t marry.” Afterwards, in tears, Ms. Xue said: “I don’t think I’m a selfish person. But love is selfish.” Ideally, Ms. Xue would like to join Beijing’s large and growing community. For now, she waits at home, seeking solace in calligraphy. “My father often talks about who will look after me if I don’t marry, when he is gone, if I get sick,” she said. “It makes me feel so bad to make him worry. But then I do calligraphy for a day and I feel better.” For Ms. Lee, the Singaporean, “Beijing is my escape.” Ms. Wu agreed. “They say, the farther from your family, the better. And it’s true.” For the Beijing native, this city of 20 million is large enough to make it unlikely her family would ever hear about her sexual orientation. Yet she wants to return to Shanghai, where she lived before. It’s even more open, she said. “When I lived there, I was totally ‘out.’ Here, I’m not.”

China
Homosexuality
Beijing (China)
Women and Girls


Pope Francis’ September Visit to New York Is Expected to Be Just One Day

Abstract: Pope Francis ’ first visit to New York City, announced this week, will most likely last only a day, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan , the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, wrote on his blog Tuesday. A papal address at the United Nations , timed to coincide with the opening of a United Nations summit meeting on sustainable development, will be the cornerstone of the pope’s whirlwind trip to the city in late September, Cardinal Dolan wrote. Also almost certainly on Francis’ agenda, according to church officials: a visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the imposing Gothic edifice on Fifth Avenue that is midway through a $180 million restoration. The Vatican will decide the pope’s exact itinerary by around March 1, Cardinal Dolan added. “I have assured him of a warm welcome!” Cardinal Dolan wrote , reacting to the news. On Monday, Francis told reporters on his plane from the Philippines that Washington, New York and Philadelphia would definitely be stops on his trip to America, scheduled for Sept. 22 to 27. In Washington, he has been invited by both the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, and the minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, to become the first pope to address a joint session of Congress. While that speech has not yet been confirmed, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations and a member of the trip’s organizing committee, told the Catholic News Agency on Sunday that it would very likely occur. Archbishop Auza also told the news agency that in New York, ground zero was being discussed as a stop and a public Mass might be celebrated in Madison Square Garden.

Pope Francis
NYC
Catholic Church
UN
House of Representatives
Congress
Cardinal Dolan
John Boehner
Nancy Pelosi


Nets and Knicks Resuming Rivalry Amid Cooperation

Abstract: The intracity turf war between the Knicks and the Nets, still lukewarm after two years, will resume Friday night with a curious new wrinkle. As N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver noted with some pride on Thursday, the rival organizations have been working together as joint hosts of the 2015 All-Star Game. He jokingly wondered whether the collaborative spirit would survive the teams’ showdown at Barclays Center. “We’ll see what comes out of tomorrow night’s game,” said Silver, who accompanied the Nets on Thursday to City Harvest, a food bank in Queens, where the league was promoting its Commitment to Service initiative. “Maybe there won’t be such positive feelings after the game. But at least so far, everyone’s feeling very good.” Since the start of the 2012-13 season, when the Nets moved to Brooklyn from New Jersey, the clubs have been engaged in a crosstown marketing battle. The organizations have exchanged jabs through billboards, television commercials and interviews. The Knicks have won five of the eight head-to-head matchups since the Nets moved to Brooklyn. “We recognize both organizations are incredibly competitive, and they’re competing against each other not just on the court, but they’re competing for sponsors and season-ticket sales and everything else,” Silver said. “But they also recognize they’re both part of something larger: That’s the N.B.A.” Neither team started the season with big expectations from the outside. The Nets are 2-2 under their new coach, Lionel Hollins. The Knicks are 2-3 as they try to establish an identity under their new president, Phil Jackson, and new coach, Derek Fisher, who has installed the triangle offense. Silver was not asked to make a prediction. But his scouting report could give Nets fans some hope. “I watched the Knicks game last night; clearly they’re still learning the triangle,” Silver said, laughing. “I still don’t understand it. But they’re learning it.” The All-Star Game will take place Feb. 15 at Madison Square Garden. The festivities the night before, including the Slam Dunk Contest, will take place at Barclays Center. The Nets last beat the Knicks at Barclays Center on Nov. 26, 2012. In past games in Brooklyn, Knicks fans have been a vocal presence. Even as the verbal volleys between the organizations have felt contrived at times, the atmosphere at the games has usually been noticeably elevated. “The energy will be high,” Nets center Brook Lopez said. “I’m sure everyone will be up for the game, and it will be fun to go out and beat them.” Guard Jarrett Jack, who is new to the Nets this season, has been exchanging light banter since the summer with his friend Iman Shumpert, a Knicks guard. Jack said he was looking forward to his first experience in the environment. “It’s going to be like high school — that school you’re going to play that’s around the corner or up the street,” Jack said, adding, “It just breeds good competition.”

Basketball
NBA
Adam Silver
Knicks
Brooklyn Nets


Smaller Banks Don’t Need $30 Billion From U.S.

Abstract: President Obama's speeches suggest he doesn’t dislike all banks, just the big ones. Even though he used much of his State of the Union address last week to bash Wall Street and the money business, he threw a bone to the community banking sector. He pledged to divert $30 billion of money repaid from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to smaller banks to help them make loans to small businesses. Sounds good, doesn’t it? After all, small businesses are the backbone of American employment. Giving them access to capital should help them invest and hire more people. And small banks, it would appear, are the most effective conduit for providing capital to small businesses. According to the Independent Community Bankers Association, the primary lobbying group for the nation’s 8,000 smaller banks, institutions with less than $1 billion in assets hold only 12 percent of all bank assets but have made 40 percent of the small business loans currently outstanding. Big banks — those with $100 billion or more in assets — made only 22 percent of such loans. So Mr. Obama’s idea sounds logical. But there are problems that would probably make any plan that the White House proposes both unworkable and bad for taxpayers. First, community banks don’t need the money. While the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation regularly has to close down troubled small banks (including five on Friday), in aggregate, the industry is relatively flush. In the third quarter, banks with assets of less than $5 billion on average had tangible common equity equal to 9.62 percent of tangible assets. That’s a stronger capital position than big banks, whose equivalent ratio stood at just 7.97 percent on average, according to SNL Financial. Moreover, small banks appear to be hoarding the money they do have, lending out just 82 percent of their deposits. That’s a lower loan-to-deposit ratio than the 91 percent at big banks. And it may not be their fault: the Federal Reserve’s survey of loan officers released in October suggested that 35 percent of domestic banks were experiencing weaker demand for loans from smaller companies. But even if that were to change, small banks are unlikely to accept bailout cash without major changes to the way the program has been administered so far. Since the smaller banks don’t really need the money, Paul Merski, the chief economist for the Independent Community Bankers Association, says they would want some conditions removed. Among the concessions they would expect are lower dividend payments to the government on any capital it lent them, no stock warrants attached to the investment, and no restrictions on executive pay . These strings attached to the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout were safeguards the Treasury imposed to protect taxpayer money. The Treasury invested $205 billion in 707 banks, receiving senior preferred stock or other securities. To date these have generated a 3.1 percent absolute return. Fold in the sale of warrants the Treasury received over stock in 34 of the banks and the return jumps to 8.8 percent. Relaxing the requirements of the program rules would seem at odds with the president’s other objectives of reducing debt and closing the yawning budget deficit. It’s also not clear the Treasury could simply waive conditions without an act of Congress, where members may be disinclined to sanction another banking initiative financed by taxpayers. The government could still try to ease the flow of money to small businesses in other ways. It could set up an entity to buy small-business loans from community and other banks, and then sell them on to investors. This was the idea behind the Venture Enhancement and Loan Development Administration for Smaller Undercapitalized Enterprises, also known as Velda Sue, but that proposal never got off the ground. The troubled experience of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which play a similar role on a huge scale for mortgages, suggests that plan isn’t so good, either. Indeed, add up all the elements — slack demand for small-business loans, banks already flush with money and the potential for taxpayer losses — and the conclusion seems clear. The latest proposal to subsidize banks, even small ones, makes great political fodder. In any event, it’s a bad idea.

Banks and Banking
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Obama Financial Stability Plan
Obama Barack


Florida: Nuclear Plant Will Be Closed Permanently

Abstract: Duke Energy, the nation’s largest electricity company, said on Tuesday that it would permanently close its Crystal River Nuclear Plant, which has been shut since 2009 after botched repairs. Duke Energy, which is based in Charlotte, N.C., said it could be 60 years before the site was fully decontaminated and dismantled. Duke says it will use $835 million from an insurance settlement to refund customers for higher-cost replacement power. But Duke also said it would seek to recoup from customers its $1.65 billion investment in the plant, which is 70 miles north of Tampa. The plant was shut when its concrete containment building cracked. A repair attempt in 2011 resulted in new cracks in other parts of the structure.

Electric power
Nuclear energy
Duke Energy
Florida


Looking to 2012, but in the Senate

Abstract: The results of this year’s Senate elections are not even in the books, but senators and political analysts are already looking ahead to 2012, when the Senate math adds up to a daunting prospect for Democrats. The numbers are stark. Democrats will be forced to defend 24 seats in the 2012 election, including those of two independents aligned with them, compared with just 9 seats for Republicans. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the steep challenge Democrats will face. Many of the Democratic senators up for re-election hail from battleground states, including Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida and Jim Webb of Virginia. Others from traditionally Republican-leaning states may have it even harder, including Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, above, and Jon Tester of Montana. The sole Republican up for re-election in a traditionally Democratic state will be Scott Brown of Massachusetts. And while President Obama’s running for a second term will be a big factor, it could cut either way for Democrats, depending on his popularity at the time. Even if Republicans fall short of capturing control of the Senate on Tuesday, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has expressed confidence that his party will finish the job in 2012. The numbers seem to bolster his case. DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

United States Politics and Government
Elections
Democratic Party
Republican Party


Phil Mickelson Stays Collected and Takes the Lead at Pebble Beach

Abstract: Phil Mickelson stayed away from all the celebrity commotion Saturday. More important, he stayed away from bogeys on a tough day. Mickelson took only 21 putts and shot a six-under-par 66 to take a two-shot lead in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am in Pebble Beach, Calif., leaving him one round away from tying a record with his fifth victory at the event. “It’s fun to be back in the thick of it,” Mickelson said. It is his first 54-hole lead on the PGA Tour since the 2013 United States Open at Merion. Mickelson has gone 52 events worldwide since his last victory, at Muirfield in the 2013 British Open, gave him the third leg of a career Grand Slam. It is the longest drought of his career. He was at 16-under 199 and led by two shots over Hiroshi Iwata of Japan, who had a 69 at Spyglass Hill. Freddie Jacobson had a 68 at Monterey Peninsula, which for the first time all week played the toughest of the three courses because of brisk wind. He was three shots behind, along with Sung Kang, who had a 70 at Pebble Beach. Jordan Spieth, the world’s No. 1 player, was happy to have a tee time on Sunday. Spieth struggled on the par 5s for the third straight round, playing them at one over at Pebble Beach. He had to get up and down for par on the par-5 18th for a 74 to make the cut on the number. He has played the par 5s in even par for the week. “I’m not in contention,” Spieth said. “It will be the first stress-free round that I’ve really had in quite a while where I’ve played a Sunday not having a chance to win. It’s not good, but at the same time, I think I can get into a groove and not lose any hair over the back nine. I’m going to fire at some pins.” Mickelson got as much as he could out of his 66. He played at Pebble Beach with the rest of the celebrities, which is a tradition on this course, except that he teed off on the back nine and was on the opposite end of the golf course from the dancing, clowning and raucous atmosphere on a day that was gorgeous once the fog lifted. The six players behind him on the leaderboard have combined for four PGA Tour victories. Mickelson is going for his 43rd. LANGER LEADS AT TWINEAGLES Kenny Perry calls Bernhard Langer the Germanator. “Is he human?” Perry asked. PGA Tour Champions rivals have to be wondering about Langer, the 58-year-old German star. Langer followed his opening 10-under 62 with a 66 on Saturday to increase his lead to seven strokes in the Champions tour’s Chubb Classic at TwinEagles in Naples, Fla. Langer’s lead is the largest in the event after 36 holes. At 16-under 128, he is closing in on the tournament-record total of 20 under that he set in 2011 and that Perry matched in 2012. Langer won the event in 2011 and 2013. He has 25 victories on the 50-and-over tour. “I know when things go great, it’s unbelievable the scores that can be produced,” Langer said. “I once won a tournament by 17 shots. When everything gets going, you know, I can go low. But there’s still a couple of hiccups out there, which I got away with. Like the tee shot on 18 and the tee shot on 17, I wasn’t happy with.” However, he said his 5-iron shot to 12 feet on No. 17 and his bunker shot over water onto the green on No. 18 to save par would give him confidence going into Sunday. KO AHEAD AT HOME Top-ranked Lydia Ko shot a five-under 67 to take a one-stroke lead in her New Zealand Women’s Open title defense. Ko, an 18-year-old South Korea-born New Zealander, had an eight-under 136 total at Clearwater Golf Club in the tournament, which is sanctioned by the Ladies European Tour and the Australian Ladies P.G.A. Justine Dreher of France was second after a 70. SOUTH AFRICANS IN CHARGE Charl Schwartzel will take a one-shot lead into the final round of the Tshwane Open in Pretoria, South Africa, after a 66 took him to nine under par over all. Schwartzel, a former United States Masters champion, had three birdies and an eagle in the third round at Pretoria Country Club. His bogey on the last hole was his first dropped shot since the opening round. Schwartzel won the Alfred Dunhill Championship in South Africa in November for his first European Tour title in two years. In Pretoria, he leads Zander Lombard, a fellow South African. Two other players from South Africa, Haydn Porteous and Anthony Michael, are another two shots back at six under. Toby Tree, an Englishman, is the only non-South African in the top six.


C.I.A. to Get First Woman in No. 2 Job

Abstract: The C.I.A.’s deputy director, Michael J. Morell, is retiring after 33 years at the agency and will be replaced by Avril D. Haines, the top lawyer at the National Security Council, the C.I.A.’s director, John O. Brennan, announced Wednesday. The switch will put a woman in one of the agency’s top two jobs for the first time. Ms. Haines is an unusual choice because she is not an intelligence professional, though in her two years at the White House she has been deeply involved in intelligence programs and got to know Mr. Brennan when he was President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser. In April, the president had nominated Ms. Haines to become the legal adviser at the State Department, a job in which she would also have been the first woman. But with Mr. Morell’s departure, he evidently decided to shift her to the C.I.A. post. The agency’s deputy director is not subject to Senate confirmation. Mr. Morell, 54, is leaving voluntarily, officials said, after a full career that has included two recent stints as acting director of the spy agency, first after the departure of Leon E. Panetta in 2011 and then after the resignation of David H. Petraeus last year over a sex scandal. He was a leading candidate for the top job, but Mr. Obama chose Mr. Brennan in January, and colleagues said then that Mr. Morell was likely to retire. “As much as I would selfishly like to keep Michael right where he is for as long as possible, he has decided to retire to spend more time with his family and to pursue other professional opportunities,” Mr. Brennan said in a statement. He praised Mr. Morell for his “exceptionally sharp mind, tremendous energy and absolute dedication to mission.” Mr. Morell, a career intelligence analyst and former presidential briefer, previously oversaw the agency’s analytic efforts, which are separate from the clandestine service that sends spies overseas. He is viewed as a competent and well-liked manager who has rarely made waves with the public, though in recent months he drew attention for his role in helping to draft the administration’s disputed “talking points” on the lethal attack in September on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. In a statement, Mr. Morell recalled that he was at President George W. Bush’s side as his intelligence briefer when Al Qaeda struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and with Mr. Obama during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He will leave his job on Aug. 9; Mr. Obama said he would appoint him to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board . As legal adviser to the National Security Council, Ms. Haines, 43, leads the group of lawyers from security agencies that studies the legal implications of the most delicate operations, including lethal drone strikes, cyberattacks and intelligence collection on American soil. Mr. Brennan said her work at the White House and previously as an assistant legal adviser for treaty affairs at the State Department “has given her a range of experiences on many of the same issues that we focus on as an agency.” Last month, Mr. Brennan chose not to appoint a veteran female C.I.A. officer who had been the acting head of the agency’s clandestine service as the service’s permanent head. The woman, who is still under cover, was closely associated with the agency’s controversial former interrogation program, but the decision not to choose a woman to lead the clandestine service for the first time drew some criticism.

CIA
Michael J Morell
US National Security Council


Hopes Rest on a Successful Comeback by Sasha Cohen

Abstract: SPOKANE, Wash. — Desperate to restore a pulse to a flatlining sport, U.S. Figure Skating and NBC built their promotions for the national championships around the resuscitation of Sasha Cohen . It might have seemed a curious strategy, considering that Cohen, 25, had not performed in Olympic-style competitions in four years. On the other hand, she might be the only current American skater whom most people could name without a program or a Twitter message from Dick Button. So far, the approach has been prescient, even if the scheduling has been awkward. In her return to Olympic-style skating after taking a silver medal at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, Cohen finished second to Mirai Nagasu in the short program late Thursday night. Two American women will qualify for the Vancouver Olympics next month. “I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye,” Cohen said. Oddly, though, after promoting Cohen so heavily, NBC and the skating federation made it difficult to watch her perform or read about it in the morning paper. It is a curious way to elevate a declining sport, having the short program end at 2 a.m. Eastern time. Even Michelle Kwan, who is in graduate school at Tufts in the Boston suburbs, texted a friend to say she could not stay awake to watch. What Kwan and others missed was a restorative effort from Cohen, who struggled with tendinitis in her calf through the fall and early winter, withdrawing from two Grand Prix events. Only in the last two or three weeks did she grow confident and fit enough to compete at these championships. “She’s very deceptive,” said John Nicks, Cohen’s longtime coach. “She looks like a petite little China doll, but you’ve got a very tough young lady there. She had some very bad falls, some very hurtful falls, and got up like it was nothing and did it again and fell again and got up.” During Thursday’s warm-ups, Cohen fell on a double axel, but righted herself as she began to skate to a Pasodoble tempo. She took off on the wrong — inside — edge on her triple lutz and landed shakily on a double toe, then settled down and drew the crowd into her enchanting grasp. Since the 2006 Olympics, Cohen has been touring as a show skater. That, along with her age, has given her a presence, refined artistry and maturity that many younger performers still lack. Rachael Flatt, 17, uses pep to disguise her lack of speed and artistry. Nagasu, 16, jumped and spun mesmerizingly Thursday, but she is still given to bouts of crying and lapses of self-assurance. “It’s women and girls,” Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic champion, said of the difference between Cohen and her competitors. “I don’t want it to sound cruel. But what she has is a maturity and a confidence that other skaters are acquiring.” According to rules of the skating federation, Cohen could still make the Olympic team without finishing among the top two after Saturday’s long program. Such a decision might be tempting, given her achievement and reputation, but Nicks said he thought it would be “very unusual” to pick anyone who did not finish first or second. And there is no guarantee that Cohen will remain composed. She is a renowned short program skater who has often become distracted during the long program. Never has she skated two clean performances in the same competition. And it remains to be seen whether she still has the endurance for a demanding, four-minute routine. As Nicks said, Thursday was a start but only a start. Linda Leaver, who coached Brian Boitano, said that returning to competition is like “being thrown into a cold shower.” “On tour, you still have your job; the next night you get another chance,” Leaver said. “In this, you don’t get another chance.” At 25, Cohen said she felt wiser. Her upper body is also rippling with muscle, which presumably helps her jump and spin more powerfully. “One of my friends said, You need to be lighter, faster, stronger and have better endurance than you ever did before,” Cohen said. “I was like, All right, ramp it up a level.” The new scoring system has left her head full of numbers, Cohen said, as she makes sure that she spins the proper number of revolutions and holds her spiral for the required number of seconds. It’s something she does not like, counting instead of simply performing. But she also appears more relaxed, believing that her real accomplishment is simply showing up here. “I’ve been to two Olympics and I would love to go a third time, but it’s not the end all of my life,” Cohen said. Still, many are counting on her to succeed. Women from South Korea and Japan have come to dominate skating, and the United States risks not winning an Olympic medal in women’s competition for the first time since 1964, three years after 18 members of the American team died in a plane crash. “The sport is always looking for new stars, and right now they’re in short supply,” said Shep Goldberg, Kwan’s agent. “If Sasha makes the Olympic team, she’ll be the biggest American star in the Games, including Lindsey Vonn, given the popularity of figure skating.” Stars on Ice, the tour that Cohen headlines, could also use her renewed Olympic credentials to help boost ticket sales in a struggling economy. “She silenced the doubters tonight,” said Byron Allen, the producer of Stars on Ice. “I think Sasha is the biggest star at this competition. The higher her profile, the higher the ratings, the better it is for Stars on Ice, the better it is for all of skating.”

Figure Skating
Olympic Games
Cohen Sasha
National Broadcasting Co


Prowling the Skies in Search of Ringless Fingers

Abstract: I LOVE traveling, especially when someone else is paying for it. I’m not a recruiter for a Fortune 500 company. I’m a professional matchmaker and have been since founding my company in 1993. I deal only with male clients. And on recent trips to Vancouver, Boston, Charlotte and Seattle, more than 1,000 women showed up in each city to meet with me and to see if they qualified to be matched with one of my men. I’m always scouting for people. I’ve found that airports and airplanes are great hunting grounds. In fact, I met my first boyfriend at an airport. I find people wherever I go and don’t miss an opportunity when I see someone I think might be right for my database. Whether I’m at a restaurant, a play or sitting in an airplane, I will start a conversation with anyone, anywhere, anytime. That person may turn out to be a perfect client. Or the perfect woman for one of my clients. My clientele are investment bankers, lawyers, professional athletes and entrepreneurs. They are all very successful, fabulous and picky. They know what kind of qualities they want in a woman, and they hire me to find their perfect partner. It often takes me just a week or two to match a client with the right person. My success rate speaks for itself; so does my sixth sense. In the last 15 years, I’ve been responsible for more than 800 marriages and 1,000 more couples have entered into long-term, committed relationships. I fly first or business class. But I’ll walk up and down the entire plane scouting people. I did meet a man in coach who turned out to be a gazillionaire. He just likes to fly economy. Many people I approach are impressed by my gutsiness. I was in Phoenix recently, preparing to board a flight to Los Angeles. I saw an extremely handsome man walking through the airport carrying multiple tennis rackets. I chased him down. I tracked another fellow through baggage claim and literally ran up to him at the rental car area. I was out of breath, but interviewed him on the spot. My approach is straightforward. First, I’ll check out the ring finger. If there’s no ring, I’ll say something flattering. Of course, a man’s initial thought is that I’m hitting on him. I consider these meetings pre-dates. I can usually find out more about someone in five minutes than most people can in three months. Most men are receptive, though some find it amusing they spent the flight talking to a happily married matchmaker. I often think that airport bars may not be the best place to meet people. I don’t see a lot of talking. Most are focused on their travels. But you never know. Fate can step in. I was flying to Toronto recently and saw a guy on the flight I wanted to meet. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. As fate would have it, he was on the return flight later that day. I didn’t waste one minute. He’s now a client. So strike up a conversation with someone. You never know. And if you see a woman cruising the airplane aisles, checking you out, don’t be afraid. It’s not the air marshal. It’s probably me.

Dating (Social)
Airports
Spindel Janis
Airlines and Airplanes


Coverage of Olympic Games Delivers a Win for NBC

Abstract: A network buys the rights to the Olympics to beat its prime-time competition for 17 nights in a row. It doesn’t always fulfill its mission. But NBC did during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, which ended Sunday night. That, in part, means that the other networks did not put up much of a fight and that former Olympics-beaters like “American Idol” do not have their former potency. Still, if you’re the Olympic network — as NBC is — you take your victories and celebrate them. “We’re extremely happy,” Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Sports Group, said by telephone on Monday. He also said that NBC would profit from the Sochi Games. NBC averaged 21.4 million viewers a night. That is dandy by anyone’s standard — it is like carrying “Sunday Night Football,” which averaged 21.7 million viewers last season, every night. The Sochi figures are 6 percent better than NBC’s average of 20.2 million viewers at the 2006 Turin Winter Games, which, like Sochi, prevented NBC from carrying events live in prime time. Between the Turin Games and the Sochi Games, the Winter Games in Vancouver averaged 24.4 million viewers, largely because the competitions were primarily live in prime time. You can quibble that NBC would have done a notch or two better if American stars like Shaun White and Shani Davis had won medals; if Lindsey Vonn had not reinjured her knee before Sochi; if the United States female figure skaters, individually, and the United States men’s hockey team had won medals. If Steve Holcomb had added curling to his medal-winning abilities as a bobsledder. “To have over a 12 rating for three hours a night and beating the competition, most nights dominantly — even doubling the combined ratings of our broadcast competitors — we’re pleased,” Lazarus said. “For us to have a higher rating in Sochi than we did in Torino says a lot. Media gravity usually takes everything down. But sports events like the Olympics and awards shows defy that gravity.” Still, Brad Adgate, the senior vice president and director of research at Horizon Media, said that the median age of the Olympic television viewer had increased from about 48 years old in 2002 during the Salt Lake City Winter Games to slightly more than 55 for Sochi. That aging means that the further addition of events, like men’s and women’s slopestyle, that are designed to appeal to younger fans has not appreciably helped. “That’s a little alarming,” Adgate said, “but NBC crushed everybody in adults 18 to 49.” Big prime-time viewership means that the bulk of NBC’s advertising still comes from prime time. Yet it is clearer than ever that the Olympics are no longer only about prime time. The Olympics enriched NBC’s cable sports network, NBCSN, more than doubling the audience that watched the London Games to a daily average of 1.6 million, and boosting by nearly 1,800 percent the viewership that the network reaped in the four weeks leading to the Sochi Olympics. More important, live streaming of all Sochi’s events on desktops, smartphones and tablets became further ingrained among sports fans. Altogether, there were 61.8 million unique users streaming Sochi video from nbcolympics.com and by using apps like Live Extra, a figure that was up 29 percent from Vancouver. Streamers went particularly wiggy last Friday, when 2.1 million people watched the Canadian men’s hockey team shut out the United States. Not all are ecstatic that they cannot get the live streams if they do not get authenticated through their cable, satellite or telephone company accounts. NBC’s business model includes working with the video providers who pay them retransmission fees, not against them, as they would if they let loose the streams without demanding authentication. NBC soon plans to require authentication for the live stream of “Sunday Night Football.” The success of NBC’s live streaming has come with the rapid maturation of the smartphone and tablet market. According to IDC, a market research firm, shipments of smartphones to the United States soared from 45.8 million in 2009 to 136.6 million last year. Tablet shipments, only 10.1 million three years ago, reached 54.9 million last year. “Technology and time have changed things,” Lazarus said. “The media landscape is evolving.” For the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, one of NBC’s priorities is to retain the services of the two announcing stars to have emerged from Sochi: the figure skating analysts Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski. They talked for hours, delightfully and insightfully, on NBCSN. But they are not under contract. Whether they shift to prime time or continue their role on NBCSN remains to be decided. But when analysts emerge as Weir and Lipinski did, you don’t want other media companies, which are always looking for new talent, to grab them. “We’re in discussions,” Lazarus said. “We have some figure skating next month. They’re doing some work for ‘Access Hollywood,’ and they’re a nice fit for various elements of NBC Universal.”

2014 Winter Olympics
NBC
Mark Lazarus
Horizon Media
NBC Sports
NBC Sports Network
TV
Ratings