2nd Ebola Case in U.S. Stokes Fears of Health Care Workers

Abstract: DALLAS — A nurse here became the first person to contract Ebola within the United States, prompting local, state and federal officials who had settled into a choreographed response to scramble on Sunday to solve the mystery of how she became infected, despite wearing protective gear, and to monitor additional people possibly at risk. The news further stoked fears of health care workers across the country, many of whom have grown increasingly anxious about having to handle Ebola cases. The confirmation on Sunday of the second Ebola case in Dallas — four days after the death on Wednesday of the first patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, a Liberian who arrived in this country in September — opened a new and more frightening chapter in the unfolding public health drama. While the new Ebola patient was not publicly identified, officials said that she was a nurse who had helped treat Mr. Duncan at a hospital here and that she may have violated safety protocols. It was the first confirmed instance of Ebola being transmitted in this country. Officials expanded the pool of people they had been monitoring, because the nurse had not been among the 48 health care workers, relatives of Mr. Duncan and others whom they were evaluating daily. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that health officials look more closely at the protective gear that nurses, doctors and hospital assistants use when treating Ebola patients. It also, for the first time, was considering the idea that patients with the virus should be transferred to hospitals with special containment units and experience in treating the disease. Image Mayor Mike Rawlings spoke to residents of the street. Credit LM Otero/Associated Press The Dallas hospital at the center of the two Ebola cases, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, was facing renewed scrutiny over whether it had properly trained its workers. It sent Mr. Duncan home on Sept. 25 under the belief he had a sinus infection, only to have him return Sept. 28 when his conditions worsened. The C.D.C. said it would conduct a nationwide training conference call on Tuesday for thousands of health care workers to ensure they would be fully prepared to treat a patient with Ebola. “The care of Ebola patients can be done safely, but it’s hard to do it safely,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the C.D.C., told reporters Sunday. “Even a single, inadvertent innocent slip can result in contamination.” The stricken nurse reported a low-grade fever overnight Friday, officials said. It appeared that she drove herself to the emergency room of Presbyterian Hospital, where she worked, and was admitted and put in isolation 90 minutes later, the officials said. Image In response to the latest report of the second victim in Dallas, officials moved swiftly to clean and decontaminate many places where the nurse had been. Credit Cooper Neill for The New York Times She had extensive contact with Mr. Duncan on multiple occasions after his second visit and admission to the hospital on Sept. 28, Dr. Frieden said. The nurse had been monitoring herself for symptoms of Ebola, under a regimen prescribed by the C.D.C. Health officials will now investigate who had been in contact with Mr. Duncan after he was admitted to the hospital and while he was in isolation, Dr. Frieden said. Before her trip to the emergency room, officials said, the nurse had not been at work for two days. A preliminary blood test was done at the state public health lab in Austin, and the positive result was received late Saturday evening, officials said. Late Sunday afternoon, the C.D.C. confirmed that she had Ebola after completing its own tests. The woman was in stable condition on Sunday. Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer of Texas Health Resources, which oversees Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, told reporters on Sunday that the worker had worn protective gear when coming in contact with Mr. Duncan, although he did not detail the type of contact. How Hospital Workers Are Supposed to Treat Ebola Safely A look at the C.D.C. guidance on protective clothing for workers treating the disease. “This individual was following full C.D.C. precautions,” Dr. Varga said, adding, “Gown, glove, mask and shield.” Asked how concerned he was that the worker tested positive despite the precautions, he replied, “We’re very concerned.” Despite Dr. Varga’s reassurances about C.D.C. precautions having been followed, Dr. Frieden said it appeared that the woman had breached safety protocol at the hospital, possibly when removing the protective gear. Speaking on the CBS program “Face the Nation” and later at a news conference, he said that questioning of the worker had not identified precisely how a breach occurred, and that the cause of her infection was not known. Dr. Frieden said that everyone who had treated Mr. Duncan was now considered to be potentially exposed and that other cases of Ebola were possible. “We’re deeply concerned about this new development,” he said on the talk show. The C.D.C. has said that for health workers in the United States, gloves, gowns, masks and face shields or goggles would be protection enough. But many health workers across the country, seeing images of people in Africa completely encased in full-body hazardous-material suits, have requested similar protection. “A lot of us are starting to get worried,” said Debra Buccellato, an emergency room nurse in Santa Rosa, Calif. “I’m a single mom, so if I got sick there’d be a huge void.” Image Debra Buccellato, an emergency room nurse in Santa Rosa, Calif., said she had not undergone any active training for Ebola. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times Ms. Buccellato, 38, said supervisors at her hospital had distributed information about C.D.C. guidelines, but added, “I have not seen any active training or practice drills, and I haven’t seen any new or upgraded personal protective equipment.” She said that she had emailed her manager to ask for more training, but that she was not sure that hazardous-material suits were the best option for her 90-bed facility, Sutter Santa Rosa Hospital. “I don’t know how realistic it is to go to that level when you have X amount of patients to take care of and time issues,” Ms. Buccellato said. For now, she said, she plans to start wearing a face mask for her entire shift. On Sunday, National Nurses United, the country’s largest union and professional association of nurses, continued to sound the alarm and call for hazardous-material suits at all hospitals. Image The authorities distributed informational fliers. Credit Louis Deluca/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated Press “I’m angry about this,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director. “We want the first line of defense to be the most prepared. Our hospitals are resisting us. The C.D.C. doesn’t say that we need hazmat suits. If this doesn’t change dramatically, we will picket every hospital in this country if we have to.” President Obama on Sunday directed the C.D.C. to expedite its investigation into how the health care worker contracted the deadly virus, according to a White House statement . In an indication that the White House was taking steps in advance of any possible spread of the disease, Mr. Obama also directed federal officials to make sure that hospitals and health workers across the nation “are prepared to follow protocols should they encounter an Ebola patient,” the statement said. Mr. Obama was briefed by Lisa Monaco, the president’s assistant for homeland security, and then spoke by telephone with Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services. While other patients with Ebola have been treated in the United States in recent weeks, the nurse is only the second person — after Mr. Duncan — whose condition was diagnosed in the United States. All of the other patients — including medical personnel, relief workers and journalists — received a diagnosis while working in West Africa near Ebola victims, and were brought to this country for treatment. Is the U.S. Prepared for an Ebola Outbreak? A look at the government agencies and private entities that were involved in the case of the first person found to have Ebola in the United States. Four hospitals in the United States — Emory University Hospital in Atlanta; Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha; the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.; and St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont. — have high-containment units for isolating patients with dangerous infectious diseases, and medical teams at those facilities have conducted extensive training and drills for dealing with pathogens like Ebola. But in Dallas on Sunday, officials were trying to persuade residents to remain calm, and reminded them that their risk of exposure was low. “You cannot contract Ebola other than from the bodily fluids of a symptomatic Ebola victim,” said County Judge Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive, who himself has had close contact with those who lived with Mr. Duncan. “You cannot contract Ebola by walking by people on the street or by being around contacts who are not symptomatic. There’s nothing about this case that changes that basic premise of science.” City officials moved swiftly to clean and decontaminate many of the places where the nurse had been or had even briefly touched, including her apartment in a complex on Marquita Avenue, the complex’s common areas and the car she took to the hospital. Police officers were prohibiting access to her apartment. Officials believe the woman’s pet dog was inside the apartment, but was doing fine. Image A police officer provided security on Sunday at the Dallas residence of a nurse who had contracted Ebola. A barrel, left, held hazardous materials from a cleanup. Credit LM Otero/Associated Press “We have a plan in place to take care of the pet, and we do not believe that pet has any signs, and we’ll move accordingly later today,” Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas said. Remaining calm was easier said than done for many of the woman’s neighbors. Early Sunday, city officials knocked on the doors of nearby homes and called residences in the four blocks surrounding the complex to inform people that someone who lived in the neighborhood had tested positive for Ebola. “It’s a little creepy,” said Kara Lutley, 25, who lives across the street from the nurse’s apartment building. “It’s been in Dallas, but it hasn’t been this close.” At the hospital, the car the woman arrived in was decontaminated and secured so no one could go near it, officials said. “We decontaminated hand railings, everything in the parking lot, so everybody can feel comfortable that the exterior was taken care of,” Mr. Rawlings said. The hospital also took the unusual step on Sunday of prohibiting ambulances from bringing new patients into its emergency room. Officials said that the hospital was open, but that they had decided to put the emergency room on so-called diversion status because of staff limitations. “While we are on diversion we are also using this time to further expand the margin of safety by triple-checking our full compliance with updated C.D.C. guidelines,” hospital officials said in a statement. “We are also continuing to monitor all staff who had some relation to Mr. Duncan’s care even if they are not assumed to be at significant risk of infection.”

Ebola
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital
Dallas
Nursing
Medical test
Epidemic


EasyJet Profit Climbs as Battle for Business Passengers Intensifies

Abstract: PARIS — With Europe’s economic slump threatening to further crimp company budgets, the battle for business travelers is growing ever more heated among the region’s airlines. This is particularly true on short-haul routes, where incumbents like Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, British Airways and Alitalia — with their comfortable lounges, frequent-flier programs and shuttle-like frequencies — were once the preferred, and in some cases, the only option for busy executives jetting between European capitals. But in recent years, most of those same legacy carriers have gradually pared back those perks on European routes as they have struggled to cut operating costs amid years of losses. Meanwhile, the region’s largest budget carriers have continued to add capacity, to expand into more cities and, increasingly, to move into the big airports where many business travelers want to fly. The low-cost airlines have also made a more direct play for a higher-spending clientele, offering add-ons like reserved seating, flexible tickets and priority boarding that, on some routes, make their service almost indistinguishable from their higher-fare rivals. On Tuesday, easyJet showed how well this strategy was paying off. The British budget carrier said net profit for the year that ended Sept. 30 rose 13 percent to 450 million pounds, or about $705 million, from a year earlier. Pretax profit, a more closely watched measure of earnings, rose 21.5 percent to £581 million. Revenue rose 6 percent, to £4.5 billion. EasyJet’s larger rival, the Irish carrier Ryanair, has also expanded aggressively throughout the economic slowdown, with similarly beneficial results. This month, Ryanair reported a 32 percent jump in earnings for the six months to Sept. 30 and raised its outlook for the current financial year, citing robust bookings for the coming winter months, as well as a strong increase in demand from business travelers. As part of efforts to shed a reputation for gruff and inflexible service, Ryanair has introduced a series of changes, including a revamped website, a new mobile booking application and reductions in certain charges like baggage fees. To attract more business customers, and to compete better with easyJet, Ryanair in October also added flexible tickets, fast-track security and reserved seating. “What you’re looking at is a structural change in business-class travelers in Europe today,” said Chris Tarry, an independent airline consultant in London. “What is the difference between sitting in a single-class airline like Ryanair or EasyJet and a full-service airline — besides maybe a free bread roll of indeterminate quality?” he said. “From a passenger point of view, you’ve got convergence.” Image Carolyn McCall, easyJet’s chief executive, said the carrier was seeing increasing repeat business from corporate travelers. Credit Jacky Naegelen/Reuters Both Ryanair and EasyJet claim that 20 to 25 percent of their passengers are flying on business, a figure that has increased significantly as the European economic downturn has dragged on. Analysts said a prolonged regional downturn could continue to play in the favor of low-cost airlines with the biggest networks. “If I’m a company, the two easiest things for me to cut are marketing and travel costs,” said Mr. Tarry. “So intra-Europe, you are going to keep looking for even better value from a corporate travel point of view.” Carolyn McCall, easyJet’s chief executive, said on Tuesday that the carrier was seeing increasing repeat business from corporate travelers, which she attributed to the new features of flexible tickets, allocated seating and priority boarding. The airline said that 62 percent of passengers who booked a flight for business in the past year had booked again with easyJet, better than the 57 percent rebooking rate for leisure passengers. Over the past year, easyJet, which is based in Luton, England, has also increased its presence at several airports popular with business travelers, particularly at Gatwick Airport near London, where a quarter of its total fleet of 226 single-aisle Airbus planes is based. The carrier has increased capacity at Gatwick by 15 percent over the last six months with 25 new takeoff and landing slots that it acquired in March from Flybe, a struggling British regional carrier. EasyJet’s earnings also benefited from recent labor unrest at Lufthansa and Air France. A two-week pilots’ strike at the French carrier in September forced the cancellation of more than 8,500 flights and disrupted the journeys of nearly one million passengers. EasyJet said it had reaped £5 million in additional revenue in September from passengers who had been unable to fly on Air France. Ms. McCall said the strong annual profit had prompted easyJet’s board to recommend increasing the airline’s dividend to 40 percent of annual profit, or 45.4 pence a share, from 33 percent, in line with a proposal this year to return more cash to shareholders. EasyJet said it carried 65 million passengers over the year, up 7 percent from a year earlier, and planned to expand seating capacity by a further 5 percent over the next 12 months. The recent decline in global oil prices is expected to reduce the carrier’s fuel bill £22 million to £77 million over the next year, the company said. However, the group warned that nonfuel operating costs were expected to rise by around 2 percent, driven mainly by higher maintenance costs on some of its older planes, as well as investments linked to new bases it plans to open next spring at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam and in Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city. In an attempt to remain one step ahead of Ryanair’s business-friendly initiatives, easyJet also revealed on Tuesday that it had been testing a new loyalty program with roughly 15,000 passengers in Britain, France and Switzerland. The trial program, which has been operating for the last three months, offers members increased booking flexibility, ticket price guarantees and a dedicated customer service hotline.

Airlines,airplanes
Earnings Reports
easyJet


Time Inc. Expected to Cut $100 Million in Costs, and Jobs

Abstract: Adding another blow to what is becoming an increasingly grim industry, the magazine publisher Time Inc. is expected to announce next week that it will cut $100 million in costs and make significant layoffs. Time Inc., publisher of magazines including Time, Fortune and People, is coordinating its announcement with the third-quarter earnings report of its parent, Time Warner, sources said. The earnings report is scheduled for Wednesday morning. The $100 million in cuts is expected to come largely from layoffs, said sources, who asked to be anonymous as they were not authorized to discuss the decision. No magazines appeared likely to close, one source said. At Time Inc., cuts have already been heavy. A year ago, it announced it was dismissing about 600 people , or 6 percent of its staff. Since 2007, it has shut magazines including Business 2.0, Cottage Living, Southern Accents and Life, which it had revived as a newspaper supplement. A stricter expense-account policy has been in place for some time, and some magazines have decreased the weight of the paper they use. And last week, Fortune announced that it would no longer be published every other week and would reduce its frequency to 18 issues a year, from 25. Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said he expected third-quarter revenue at Time Inc. to fall about 19 percent, to $900 million. Most of that is because of weaker advertising, Mr. Nathanson said. “For the year, we’re at about $3.7 billion, and this company had done almost $5 billion as late as 2007 ,” Mr. Nathanson said. From 2004 until the end of this year, Time Inc. is expected to have cut about $800 million in costs, Mr. Nathanson said. Over all, he said that he expected Time Warner would post earnings of 54 cents a share, up from the 30 cents a share it posted in the third quarter of 2008. (The company has spun off its cable unit since then.) Dawn Bridges, a Time Inc. spokeswoman, declined to comment. Layoffs and cost-cutting are becoming standard practice in the magazine industry. Forbes announced on Monday that it was dismissing 40 to 60 people from its editorial staff. That followed layoffs of about 100 people in the last year or so. And most Condé Nast magazines are reducing their budgets by about 25 percent, which has included handfuls of layoffs at many magazines. Condé Nast also closed four magazines , including Gourmet, this month. Some Time Inc. employees at People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Money, Fortune and Fortune Small Business are covered by union contracts, which mandate severance in case of layoffs. The agreements largely apply to reporters; most editors are considered management, and are not covered, said Bob Townsend, local representative for the Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America. Those guild employees are eligible for severance packages in a layoff, of two weeks’ pay for every year of employment, with a cap of 52 weeks’ pay. Longtime employees receive a bonus, with 20-year veterans getting an additional eight weeks’ pay, and 25-year employees an additional 10 weeks, he said.

Time Inc
Layoffs and Job Reductions
Magazines


Nets Face Stiff Test; Then the Game Starts

Abstract: As one of the best one-on-one players in the N.B.A., Joe Johnson has dispatched his share of the league’s most suffocating defenders. But his most stubborn adversary — the persistent thorn in his side, the one who will never go away — might be a 51-year-old assistant coach named John Welch. Last season, Johnson started to make one-on-one games with Welch part of his workout, whether after practice or before a game — although Johnson is always on offense, and Welch is always on defense. Johnson has been nicknamed Iso-Joe, not always affectionately, for his desire for the ball and for his success with it when he is isolated against a defender. He said he used his sessions with Welch to keep his skills sharp. But the competitions are entertaining, too, for observers and participants alike. The juxtaposition of Johnson, who is listed at 6 feet 7 inches and 240 pounds, and Welch, who is rather small in comparison, creates an amusing image. More noteworthy, though, is how much of a fight Welch provides. “Man, he fouls a lot — any chance you give him, he’s going to foul you,” Johnson said. “But when you go up to shoot, he pretty much becomes a nonfactor.” Johnson’s impromptu scouting report of his coach included one compliment, albeit a backhanded one: “At his age, he has great feet, can really move his feet.” Welch, whom the Nets declined to make available to comment, is a basketball lifer, a gym rat, a disciple of Jerry Tarkanian and George Karl. He played for Tarkanian for a season at Nevada-Las Vegas and played professionally for a few years in New Zealand. Before joining the Nets last season, he spent eight seasons as an assistant with the Denver Nuggets under Karl. When Jason Kidd departed last summer after a season as the Nets’ head coach, taking much of his staff with him to the Milwaukee Bucks, Welch remained in Brooklyn. Under Lionel Hollins, the new coach, Welch has many responsibilities, like helping to formulate game plans and taking a hands-on role in player development. Image Welch defending Johnson during a recent warm-up. “He’s a trash talker,” Johnson said. Credit Jason Szenes for The New York Times Before donning a suit and taking a seat near Hollins during games, Welch works up a sweat feeding players passes in shooting exercises, providing asphyxiating defense during finishing drills and issuing a steady onslaught of barbs, encouragement and instruction. “That’s all he does,” Johnson said. “He’s a trash talker.” Late last season, before a game against the Sacramento Kings, Johnson and Welch engaged in one of their spirited battles. Many of Johnson’s familiar moves in crucial situations were on display, and Welch was doing his best to foil him. “You can’t hit my arm when I fake,” Johnson said after trying one of his moves. Welch looked at Johnson with mock disgust. “You’re like a little kid: ‘He’s touching me, he’s touching me,’ ” Welch said, smiling and mimicking the voice of a whiny child. The one-on-one play continued, as did the repartee. At one point, Johnson starting backing Welch toward the basket. Welch set his feet and bounced his chest into Johnson’s shoulders whenever Johnson came toward him. All the while, he swiped at Johnson’s arms. “You don’t like it when I hit you,” Welch said between bumps. Still dribbling, Johnson suppressed a laugh. “I love it,” he said. Johnson is not the only benefactor of Welch’s tactile coaching style. Two hours before a recent game, Welch was working with guard Bojan Bogdanovic and forward Mirza Teletovic. Periodically, while the players were doing their shooting drills, Welch had them try to finish off the dribble while he played his typically smothering defense. “Score on me,” Welch said to Bogdanovic. Bogdanovic sized him up, drove to the right and came to a jump stop. Welch, who was with him all the way, swung his arm down and knocked the ball away. Bogdanovic walked back to midcourt, smiling and shaking his head. “That’s clean,” Welch said. Minutes later, Welch took a defensive stance and faced up against Teletovic. “Hit me,” Welch said. “Get a piece of me.” Teletovic took a few hard dribbles to his left and drove his shoulder into Welch’s chest, sending him stumbling several yards toward the baseline. Welch laughed after regaining his balance and said: “There you go. That’s a bump.” Image Welch pointed at Mirza Teletovic as Bojan Bogdanovic, second from right, watched. “He’s old, but believe me, he’s very tough,” Bogdanovic said. Credit Jason Szenes for The New York Times Welch, as he is before every game and after every practice, was soaked in sweat and red in the face. Bogdanovic, 25, who began playing professionally in Europe when he was a teenager, said Welch had been trying to make him a more physical player in his first N.B.A. season. It was a continuing adjustment, he said, but Welch’s instruction was helping. “He’s old, but believe me, he’s very tough,” Bogdanovic said. “It’s good for me. He’s fouling me all the time, on every shot, on all my layups. He’s yelling at me all the time to be strong.” Alongside the more formal lessons are the improvised one-on-one sessions Welch has with Johnson and other players. Jarrett Jack, who was traded to the Nets last summer, was a participant after a recent practice, taking turns with Johnson trying to beat Welch off the dribble. Laughter and shouting emanated from their end of the court long after other players had retreated to the locker room. “Coach Welch is all about hand checking and body blocking,” Jack said. “He’s a guy that can really, really move his feet, and he’s got great hands. He’s no slouch. He’s strong.” Jack said such games, while fun, also helped him fine-tune his improvisational play and create muscle memory for “instinctive game situations.” All teams have a coach who can play so-called dummy defense on players, but Nets players said few were as aggressive as Welch. Johnson, 33, who has been in the league since 2001, said the only coach who had tried to play defense on him in a similar fashion was Nick Van Exel, a former N.B.A. point guard who was an assistant with the Atlanta Hawks from 2010 to 2012. “They’re all like this tall,” Johnson said of Welch and Van Exel, holding his palm across his midsection, “so there ain’t much they can do.”

Basketball
John Welch
Lionel Hollins
Brooklyn Nets
Joe Johnson


Turkish Jets Shoot Down Drone Near Syria

Abstract: ISTANBUL — Turkish fighter jets shot down a drone aircraft close to the Syrian border on Friday after it violated Turkey’s airspace, the military said in a statement. “An aerial vehicle of unknown origin was detected inside our airspace on the Syrian border,” the statement said, adding, “Our aircraft on patrol mission on the border fired and shot down the vehicle within the rules of engagement.” Since Russia began its military intervention in Syria on Sept. 30 with a series of airstrikes, Turkey has complained several times of incursions by Russian aircraft into its airspace. The Russians have said that the incursions were unintentional, but NATO, of which Turkey is a member, has moved to bolster the alliance’s defenses . Syria and Rebels Battle for Aleppo as Cease-Fire Collapses A drastic escalation of fighting in Aleppo has shattered a partial truce. News agencies in Russia reported on Friday that the aircraft was not Russian. However, Reuters quoted an anonymous United States official as saying that American officials suspected that it was Russian. In Moscow, the Defense Ministry said that all of its warplanes operating in Syria had returned safely to base and that its drones were conducting aerial reconnaissance “as usual.” “All airplanes of the Russian aviation group in the Syrian Arab Republic have returned to the Hmeimim air base after accomplishing their combat tasks,” Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Defense Ministry spokesman, told reporters on Friday, according to the Interfax news agency. Turkey has in the past brought down several drones operated by the Syrian Air Force, which is loyal to the country’s embattled president, Bashar al-Assad. The last time Turkey shot down an aircraft on its border with Syria was in May , when the military claimed that a Syrian warplane had violated its airspace in the eastern region of Hatay. Syrian state television said the Turkish fighter jets had shot down a drone.

Turkey
Drones
Syria
Russia
Military aircraft


Cultural Bent Hangs Over Oracle’s Battle for Sun

Abstract: Oracle ’s battle with European regulators over its acquisition of Sun Microsystems boils down to a conflict about the importance of free software and the government’s role in protecting it. The verbal salvos heated up this week after the European Union issued formal objections on Monday to a bid by Oracle, the giant software maker, to buy Sun for $7.4 billion. Oracle immediately pilloried the objections, saying they were based on “a profound misunderstanding” of the software market. On Tuesday, the European Union struck back, with a spokesman for the union’s competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, dismissing Oracle’s criticism as “facile and superficial.” At one level, the sharp exchanges fit a familiar pattern in antitrust disputes between Brussels and American technology companies, including Microsoft and Intel. The Americans tend to portray the European authorities as technically clueless bureaucrats, while the Europeans cast the big American businesses as arrogant bullies. But the Oracle case also reflects very different views of open-source software by antitrust officials in the United States and Europe. The European regulators want Oracle to sell off a unit of Sun that manages the most popular open-source database program, MySQL. Like all open-source products, MySQL code is distributed free, and the company tries to make money by charging corporate customers for technical support and extra features. The European antitrust officials fear that Oracle, the largest maker of proprietary database software, will have little incentive to sustain and invest in MySQL, a potential rival. The United States Justice Department does not share the European concerns. After the Brussels decision on Monday, the American antitrust regulators made an unusual statement, saying that it had concluded there was a “large community of developers and users of Sun’s open-source database” who would likely keep maintaining and improving MySQL regardless of Oracle’s future decisions about the product. Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the trans-Atlantic “megawar” over open-source software was not surprising. “It makes sense that the Europeans come to the defense of open-source companies because the big proprietary companies are nearly all American,” he said. (The exception is SAP, the large German maker of business management software.) European governments have long viewed open-source software as a potential tool of economic development and independence. The vision was laid out nine years ago in a report by a technology advisory group to the European Commission. Open-source software, the report concluded, presented “a great opportunity” for the region that could perhaps “change the rules in the information technology industry,” wresting the lead in software from the United States and reducing Europe’s reliance on imports. Several European countries have policies that encourage government agencies and municipalities to consider open-source software like MySQL and Linux, an alternative to the Windows operating system from Microsoft. The wider economic role of open-source software, legal experts say, appears to have figured into the thinking of Europe’s antitrust regulators. “There is a greater sensitivity to the importance of open-source software in Europe,” said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. “They value the competition from open-source software — and the need to support that competition — more than in the United States.” Dennis Oswell, an antitrust lawyer with the firm Oswell & Vahida in Brussels, said the move against Oracle also reflected a greater willingness by European regulators to move against potential threats to competition before there is evidence of harm. “The Europeans are keen to police markets prospectively — even lightning-quick ones like technology — to ensure effective competition in the future,” Mr. Oswell said. By contrast, he said, American regulators “see low prices and competitive markets today and say, ‘O.K., let’s not worry too much about what might or might not happen tomorrow.’ ” The review of the Oracle-Sun deal proceeded on different timetables in the United States and Europe, though the investigators did make some joint calls on Sun and Oracle customers as part of their inquiries. After the acquisition plan was announced in April, the investigation by both sets of regulators focused mainly on Java, a widely used programming language and Internet technology created by Sun, according to a person close to Oracle, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak for the company. By August, the person said, the focus of Europe’s investigation had switched to MySQL, which took Oracle somewhat by surprise. The European authorities asked Oracle to divest MySQL, and Oracle resisted. Ms. Kroes first publicly raised concerns about MySQL in September — two weeks after the Justice Department’s antitrust division had approved the Oracle-Sun deal. She said at the time that nurturing open-source software was vital when the world was emerging from an economic slump. Ms. Kroes met last month with Safra A. Catz, Oracle’s president, but made no progress. Oracle’s stance was that MySQL and Oracle database products rarely competed head on. MySQL is a fast, lightweight database, used mainly in software applications for the Web. Oracle’s database, by contrast, is a heavier program intended for running more mainstream corporate applications like sales management. “Europe is absolutely right that there is a competition problem in enterprise and database software markets, but MySQL doesn’t actually compete with Oracle,” said Roger Burkhardt, chief executive of Ingres, an open-source database company that does compete directly with Oracle in the corporate market. MySQL, the person close to Oracle said, is more naturally a competitor to Microsoft’s database software, SQL Server. And Oracle has every reason to keep investing in MySQL to challenge Microsoft, the person said. A public hearing in the Oracle case is scheduled in Brussels for Nov. 25. The European Union’s ruling is due on Jan. 19. The European setback is a new and uncomfortable experience for Oracle and its chief executive, Lawrence J. Ellison. His company has had two previous deals cleared in Europe without conditions: Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft in 2004, and its purchase of Siebel Systems a year later. Both were makers of proprietary business software.

Oracle Corp
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Sun Microsystems Inc
European Union


Composite Bats Out

Abstract: Composite bats will no longer be used in the Little League World Series. Little League officials announced a moratorium on the equipment based on research it commissioned from the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. Composite bats have metal shells enclosing woven fibers inside the barrels. Critics say the bats endanger youngsters because balls fly off them at high speeds. Supporters say they are lighter and easier to handle.

Sporting Goods
Little League Baseball and Softball
Little League World Series
Amateur Athletics


Murray Hill and Bingo at the Bowery Poetry Club

Abstract: They say this city is a playground, so this week the Miser found some excellent ways to play without having to pay ... much. Every Monday lay all your cards on the table for a most irreverent Bingo Nite . The drag queen Linda Simpson calls the numbers, and the shots, along with her wisecracking co-host, Murray Hill, at the Bowery Poetry Club starting at 7:30 p.m.-ish. Their sharp wit is a fine prize in itself, but the $2-a-card fee does go to a cash jackpot. Admission is free and tables fill quickly, so arrive early or just stand at the bar, where the sponsor, the Magic Hat Brewing Company, offers $4 drafts from 7 to 10 p.m. As Linda Simpson’s Web site puts it, “This ain’t your grandma’s bingo!” (308 Bowery, between Houston and Bleecker Streets, East Village; bowerypoetry.com or lindasimpson.org .) Yankees and Mets fans can get revved up for this weekend’s Subway Series at the Delta Dugout in Madison Square Park. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, amateurs can take a swing at virtual pitching and batting stations or enjoy inexpensive stadium-style snacks while watching highlight reels of New York baseball on a giant screen in the middle of the park — just a few of the baseball-themed activities Delta Airlines is sponsoring there. The dugout opens at 10 a.m. and ends after a live showing of each Subway Series game. Expect appearances by former players, including a musical performance by Bernie Williams, along with prize giveaways. (Madison and Fifth Avenues, between 23rd and 26th Streets; complete schedule, facebook.com/delta .) Accidentally throw your Wii wand at the television screen? The Chinatown Fair Video Arcade offers an excellent substitute for gamers, with the best of classics like Street Fighter and Dance Dance Revolution. Open every day, noon to midnight, with prices from 25 cents to $1.50, this arcade is one of the most economical options for getting your game on in the city. (8 Mott Street, at Chatham Square; 212-964-1542.) FATHER’S DAY DEAL Nothing says “Thanks, Dad” like a live radio show and free clementines. O.K., many things do, but none quite as interestingly as the Horse Trade Theater Group’s “ Cognac Live Radio Orchestra .” The group describes the evening as a “sweet tirade of radio plays, audio sketches and character pieces,” accompanied by sound effects, synchronized with the narrative by foley artists, and featuring musical acts and a dance crew. Shows are pay-what-you-will on the third Sunday of each month. (7 p.m., Under St. Marks theater, 94 St. Marks Place, between First Avenue and Avenue A, East Village; horsetrade.info )

Bingo
Baseball
Computer and Video Games
New York City


Big Inning by Indians Puts Red Sox on Brink

Abstract: CLEVELAND, Oct. 16 — Paul Byrd of the Indians throws pitches that are slow, slower and slowest. He teases hitters, trying to persuade them to swing at pitches that look so tantalizing and end up producing frustrating results. He is about precision, not power. Pitching, precision and a different sort of power prevailed on Tuesday night, prevailed in significant fashion as Byrd helped the Indians defeat the Red Sox , 7-3, in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series. Byrd did not allow a run for the first five innings and the Indians battered Tim Wakefield and Manny Delcarmen in a seven-run fifth on the way to a three-games-to-one lead in the best-of-seven series. By the time fans throughout New England sip their coffee on Wednesday morning, how many times might they mention 2004? A few million? A few billion? The Red Sox made history that season by rallying from a 3-0 deficit to stun the Yankees, take the A.L.C.S. and win their first World Series title in 86 years. Now the Red Sox are in almost as dire a position as they peer ahead to Game 5 on Thursday night. Josh Beckett, whom Manager Terry Francona decided not to pitch Tuesday on short rest, will start for Boston. Francona started Wakefield, who had not pitched since Sept. 29, and Wakefield gave up five earned runs in four and two-thirds innings. Boston’s last three starters have not made it past the fifth, which is not the recipe for winning. If the Red Sox are searching for omens, Beckett pitched a shutout for the Florida Marlins in Game 5 of the 2003 National League Championship Series when they trailed the Chicago Cubs, 3-1, in that series. The Marlins rallied to stop the Cubs, with Beckett relieving in Game 7, and then beat the Yankees in the World Series. “We’re still alive,” Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia said. “We’ve got an opportunity to go out and get better. That’s all we can do right now.” There was a terrible omen hovering over Tuesday’s game for Boston. Since the Red Sox have had a long and, until recently, tortured history, they have an endless list of forgettable dates. Tuesday was one of them. Wakefield worked on the fourth anniversary of the night he gave up Aaron Boone’s dramatic home run at Yankee Stadium to end the 2003 A.L.C.S. Once again, Oct. 16 was unkind to Wakefield. For the first four innings, Byrd and Wakefield matched zero after zero. With Wakefield floating knuckleballs that eased in at around 65 miles an hour and Byrd throwing fastballs that were only 20 miles an hour faster, this duel matched Byrd’s description of it: the slowest-tossing right-handed starters in playoff history. That succession of zeroes ended in the fifth. Casey Blake lifted a high knuckleball over the left-field fence for a home run. After a single, a hit batter and a fielder's choice, Cleveland had men on first and third. Asdrubal Cabrera's foul pop-up bounced out of the glove of first baseman Kevin Youkilis, so Cabrera's at-bat continued. Cabrera followed with a liner that deflected off Wakefield's glove for a run-scoring single. Had Wakefield not touched the ball, the Red Sox would have at least nabbed an out at second and might have had a double play. Instead, the Indians led, 2-0. One out later, Víctor Martínez singled in another run. Delcarmen replaced Wakefield and promptly gave up a three-run homer to Jhonny Peralta. Blake, who started the damage, ended it with a run-scoring single. “It hurts,” Wakefield said. “One big inning cost us the game. I couldn’t stop the bleeding.” Once the Indians took a 7-0 lead, Byrd was not as effective anymore. Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz began the sixth with back-to-back homers, causing Indians Manager Eric Wedge to visit the mound. After a brief discussion, Wedge replaced Byrd with Jensen Lewis. As Byrd returned to the dugout, he stared at the adoring fans and lifted his glove to them. He yielded two runs and six hits in five-plus innings, a solid outing. After Byrd left, Boston’s too-little, too-late resuscitation continued as Manny Ramírez belted a 451-foot homer to center. Ramírez realized the ball was gone, so he stood at home, raised his arms like Rocky Balboa and forgot to peek at the scoreboard. Ramírez, the former Indian, was booed as he trotted around the bases and heard derisive chants later in the game. It was the first time a team had hit back-to-back-to-back homers in a league championship series game. The only other time it happened in the postseason was when Derek Jeter, Tim Raines and Paul O’Neill did it for the Yankees against the Indians in the division series in 1997. The Red Sox did not make it four straight homers, or make the Indians sweat anymore, because Mike Lowell grounded out. Watching Byrd is like watching a pitcher who took a time machine from the 1967 season and landed in 2007. He swings his arms back before each pitch, sometimes double pumping during his delivery. He wears his uniform pants like an old-school pitcher, too, with the red stirrups showing up to his calf. The Red Sox were baffled by Byrd’s precision and managed four singles in five innings. Byrd doubled pumped in his delivery before striking out Ortiz in the first and also retired Ortiz with two runners on in the third. Since Byrd was slow and steady, the Indians are one victory from winning this amazing race.

Cleveland Indians
Baseball
Boston Red Sox
Byrd Paul
Wakefield Tim


Nebraska’s Martinez Upstages Washington’s Locker in a Rout

Abstract: SEATTLE — Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini said he could not predict how the redshirt freshman quarterback Taylor Martinez would perform in his first start in a hostile environment. But when Pelini observed Martinez before Saturday’s game, he let out a small sigh of relief. “I felt pretty good about it, but you never know until you see it,” Pelini said. For Martinez, Saturday’s game at Washington was a chance to prove he could maintain his composure and deliver on the road. For the Washington senior Jake Locker, an impressive performance against the eighth-ranked Cornhuskers could have vaulted him back into the Heisman Trophy race. At the end of Nebraska’s 56-21 dismantling of the Huskies in front of 72,876 at Husky Stadium, Martinez looked like the more prestigious passer, having completed 7 of 11 for 150 yards and a touchdown while also rushing for 137 yards and 3 scores. “I think he’s a pretty dynamic athlete,” said Pelini, whose team tied the scoring record for an opponent at Husky Stadium, which was set by California in 2005. “The ceiling is still pretty high for him, but that’s why we went with him, because I think he can be a pretty special football player.” Martinez, a native of Corona, Calif., made the most of his return to the West Coast. Locker, on the other hand, threw a wobbly pass into double coverage that was intercepted by Eric Hagg during the first drive of the game. “That’s not the way you want to start a game off,” Locker said. Martinez needed just two plays to lead the Cornhuskers (3-0) 48 yards for a touchdown, finding Mike McNeill with a 24-yard scoring pass. Martinez’s 55-yard completion to Brandon Kinnie on Nebraska’s next drive set up Martinez’s first rushing touchdown. It was a welcome site for the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Nebraska fans who made the trip to Seattle and dominated the seating sections in both end zones. Seeing all the red on the way to the stadium, Pelini heard someone say, “Is this a home game?” But the Huskies (1-2) answered. Running backs Chris Polk and Jesse Callier helped Washington drive 80 yards, and Locker scored on a 7-yard run. Early on, the stadium was loud. But Martinez, who made important plays through the air and on the ground, never seemed shaken, leading four scoring drives in the first half. “I don’t know if you could ever rattle the guy,” Pelini said. “He’s kind of got a quiet confidence about him.” The Cornhuskers put Cody Green in at quarterback for one second-quarter series, but on the first play, deep in Nebraska territory, he was stripped, and Washington recovered the ball. Polk’s 2-yard touchdown run two plays later made the score 21-14 and provided a little momentum, but Washington could not sustain it. Locker was 2 of 10 for 20 yards and an interception in the first half, after which the Huskies trailed, 28-14. Washington Coach Steve Sarkisian did not place the blame solely on Locker. “I think the first part of it is this is the top pass defense in America,” Sarkisian said. “These guys are really good. It was hard to get open, and when we did, I thought maybe Jake was pressing a little today.” Martinez added to his impressive road debut on the first play of the second half, sprinting around the edge for an 80-yard touchdown, prompting the thousands of Nebraska fans to chant, “Go, Big Red!” Locker never found a rhythm, finishing 4 of 20 for 71 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions. “Anytime you get in a situation where it’s not really working for you, I think you can ask a lot of guys, and they’ll say they’re trying to make something happen,” Locker said. “A lot of times, if you’re able to, you can turn the momentum of the game around, but we weren’t able to today.”

University of Nebraska
Washington University
Football
College Athletics
Martinez Taylor


British Government Again Reduces Stake in Lloyds Banking Group

Abstract: LONDON — The British government has further reduced its stake in the Lloyds Banking Group for the second time in less than a month, the lender said on Monday. The government, which is keen to reduce its holdings in Lloyds, announced in December that it would engage in a measured sale of a portion of its stake in the bank as part of a prearranged trading plan that runs through the end of June. The British government took significant stakes in Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland after the lenders received billions of pounds as part of a bailout during the financial crisis. On Monday, Lloyds said that the government had reduced its stake in the company to 22.98 percent, which followed the sale of another portion of its stake in late February. The British government had a 24.9 percent stake in the bank when it announced the new trading program in December. “Today’s announcement shows further progress made in returning Lloyds Banking Group to full private ownership and enabling the taxpayer to get their money back,” a Lloyds spokesman said in a news release. The government held as much as a 40 percent stake in the British lender, but it has reduced its holdings since September 2013 as the bank’s prospects have improved. Last month, Lloyds said that it returned to an annual profit in 2014 and would return 535 million pounds, or about $804 million, to shareholders in its first dividend since the bailout. Lloyds received £17 billion from the British government in the bailout.

Lloyds Banking Group
Banking and Finance
Royal Bank of Scotland
Great Britain


Some Blame Hydraulic Fracturing for Earthquake Epidemic

Abstract: YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Until this year, this Rust Belt city and surrounding Mahoning County had been about as dead, seismically, as a place can be, without even a hint of an earthquake since Scots-Irish settlers arrived in the 18th century. But on March 17, two minor quakes briefly shook the city. And in the following eight months there have been seven more — like the first two, too weak to cause damage or even be felt by many people, but strong enough to rattle some nerves. “It felt like someone was kicking in the front door. It scared the stuffing out of me,” said Steve Moritz, a cook who lives on the city’s west side, describing the seventh quake, which occurred in late September. It was the strongest one, with a magnitude of 2.7. Nine quakes in eight months in a seismically inactive area is unusual. But Ohio seismologists found another surprise when they plotted the quakes’ epicenters: most coincided with the location of a 9,000-foot well in an industrial lot along the Mahoning River, just down the hill from Mr. Moritz’s neighborhood and two miles from downtown Youngstown. At the well, a local company has been disposing of brine and other liquids from natural gas wells across the border in Pennsylvania — millions of gallons of waste from the process called hydraulic fracturing that is used to unlock the gas from shale rock. The location and timing of the quakes led to suspicions that the disposal well was responsible for Youngstown’s seismic awakening. As the wastewater was injected into the well under pressure, the thinking went, some of it might have migrated into deeper rock formations, unclamping ancient faults and allowing the rock to slip. As the United States undergoes a boom in the production of gas from shale, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has come under fire from environmentalists and others for its potential to pollute the air and contaminate drinking water. But the events in Youngstown — and a string of other, mostly small tremors in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, British Columbia and other shale-gas-producing areas — raise the disquieting notion that the technique could lead, directly or indirectly, to a damaging earthquake. Scientists say the likelihood of that link is extremely remote, that thousands of fracking and disposal wells operate nationwide without causing earthquakes, and that the relatively shallow depths of these wells mean that any earthquakes that are triggered would be minor. “But still, you don’t want it to happen,” said Mark Zoback , a geophysicist at Stanford University. Others point out that among the thousands of small earthquakes in central Arkansas since last year that were thought to be linked to disposal wells was one of magnitude 4.7, and that a disposal well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado — for wastewater from weapons production, not gas drilling — was tied to numerous quakes in the 1960s , including several of magnitude 5.0 or higher that caused minor damage in Denver and other cities. Deeper geothermal wells have caused damaging quakes as well. “It’s true that you can’t have an earthquake larger than a given fault can provide,” said Serge Shapiro , a professor at the Free University of Berlin who has studied what scientists refer to as induced seismicity. “But an earthquake even of magnitude 4 in a populated area can be an unpleasant thing.” Officials with D & L Energy , the Youngstown company that has been disposing of the waste, and with the Ohio government say there is no proof of a link between the disposal well and the earthquakes. “Right now we can’t definitively say yes or no,” said Tom Tugend, deputy chief of the gas and oil division of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources . But the state has asked the company to plug the bottom 250 feet of the well with cement as a precaution, to ensure that it is sealed from the deeper rock where the earthquakes are thought to have occurred. State officials are also working with researchers from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a part of Columbia University, who have installed four temporary seismometers within several miles of the well. If more earthquakes occur, the instruments will help determine location and depth more precisely. “It should help us make the case one way or another — is this related or not,” said John Armbruster, a Lamont seismologist. C. Jeffrey Eshelman, a spokesman for the Independent Petroleum Association of America , said that as far as the industry was concerned, “it has been impossible to determine whether hydraulic fracturing has anything to do with” the quakes like those in Ohio. “But it’s in our best interest to understand what’s going on,” he said. “Although they are minor incidents, they are still something to be taken seriously.” Scientists say that although it is known that wells — and reservoirs and quarries, among other things — can induce earthquakes, it can be difficult to prove a connection because there is not enough data. So specific cases often become a subject of debate. “Scientific research needs to be done to understand the data on fluid injections and volumes,” said William Leith, senior science adviser for earthquake and geologic hazards at the United States Geological Survey, which has re-established a project to study induced seismicity in response to the string of suspicious quakes in shale-gas areas. In Arkansas, the State Oil and Gas Commission was concerned enough about a possible link between disposal wells and earthquakes that in July it ordered that one well be shut down, and it placed a moratorium on new ones in an 1,100-square-mile area. Three other disposal wells closed voluntarily. While small earthquakes are still occurring in the area, their frequency has declined substantially. In Oklahoma, a state seismologist concluded that there was a “possibility” that a series of small quakes in January about 50 miles south of Oklahoma City were induced by a nearby fracking operation. “The reason I can’t make any real conclusive statements is just because of the limitations of the data,” the seismologist, Austin A. Holland, said. In northwestern England, however, an independent report commissioned by a drilling company, Cuadrilla Resources, concluded that two quakes of magnitude 1.5 and 2.3 near the city of Blackpool last spring were related to a fracking well. The report suggested several ways to avoid further quakes, including monitoring and limiting the pressures and volumes of fluid used. Fracking is known to cause very slight tremors — far weaker than even the Youngstown quakes — when the fluid is injected into the shale under high pressure. Drilling companies often send sensitive instruments called geophones into the drill holes to analyze these tiny tremors because they indicate whether the rock is fracturing as expected. But the larger earthquakes near Blackpool were thought to be caused the same way that quakes could be set off from disposal wells — by migration of the fluid into rock formations below the shale. Seismologists say that these deeper, older rocks, collectively referred to as the “basement,” are littered with faults that, although under stress, have reached equilibrium over hundreds of millions of years. “There are plenty of faults,” said Leonardo Seeber , a seismologist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “Conservatively, one should assume that no matter where you drill, the basement is going to have faults that could rupture.” Drilling and disposal companies do not usually know that those faults exist, however. Seismic surveys are costly, and states do not require them for oil or gas wells (although larger companies routinely conduct seismic tests as part of exploration). Regulations for disposal wells are concerned about protecting aquifers, not about seismic risk. The federal Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates oil- and gas-related disposal wells unless its cedes its authority to the states, has no seismic requirements for its disposal wells, an agency spokeswoman said.

Earthquakes
Hydraulic Fracturing
Ohio
Drilling and Boring
Natural Gas
Science and Technology
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Texas


Girl’s Mother Won’t Testify at Trial of Stepfather

Abstract: Nixzaliz Santiago, the mother of Nixzmary Brown , will not have to testify in the murder trial of her husband, Cesar Rodriguez, a judge in Brooklyn ruled Monday. Mr. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Jeffrey T. Schwartz, has built his defense around a claim that though Mr. Rodriguez admits beating 7-year-old Nixzmary repeatedly, it was Ms. Santiago who dealt the fatal blow in January 2006. Nixzmary, Mr. Rodriguez’s stepdaughter, died after weeks or months of being abused and deprived of adequate food. To bolster his defense, Mr. Schwartz had sought to compel Ms. Santiago to testify. But when he asked some of his proposed questions at a brief, tense hearing on Monday in State Supreme Court, without the jury present, Ms. Santiago again and again invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself. “When did you come to this country?” Mr. Schwartz asked Ms. Santiago, 29, who was actually born in Puerto Rico. “I take the Fifth,” she said through a Spanish interpreter. Mr. Schwartz asked what was the last school grade she had completed. “The Fifth,” Ms. Santiago replied. “The fifth grade?” Mr. Schwartz asked. “No, I take the Fifth,” she said. Mr. Schwartz ran through his list of questions. Were Ms. Santiago’s parents legally married? How old was she when she first got pregnant? How much time has she spent in the work force? The Fifth, Ms. Santiago replied each time. One of Ms. Santiago’s lawyers, Sammy Sanchez, said in court before the hearing that because Mr. Schwartz was trying to blame her for the murder, there was little his client could safely say on the stand. Ms. Santiago’s lawyers were also concerned that if prosecutors cross-examined her, they might elicit information that could be used at her own murder trial. At the hearing, the judge, L. Priscilla Hall, listened for a few minutes to the defense lawyer’s one-sided examination of the reluctant witness before calling a halt. Because Ms. Santiago would not answer Mr. Schwartz’s questions, Justice Hall said, there was no legitimate reason for her to testify. “I could not be sure,” Justice Hall said, “that questions posed, even though seemingly innocuous, would not open the witness to incriminating herself.” The hearing afforded Ms. Santiago and Mr. Rodriguez one of their occasional opportunities to see each other. When Ms. Santiago entered the courtroom, she looked in Mr. Rodriguez’s direction, but he was blocked by his lawyers. When she was on the stand, Mr. Rodriguez looked up at her once or twice but mostly looked down. Ms. Santiago did not look his way again.

Santiago Nixzaliz
Brown Nixzmary
Murders and Attempted Murders
Child Abuse and Neglect
Courts


U.N. Report Says Congo’s Army Aids Rebel Groups

Abstract: KHARTOUM, Sudan — A new United Nations report says that the Congolese Army continues to funnel weapons to rebel groups that are smuggling millions of dollars in gold and other minerals out of Congo, helping sustain one of Africa’s bloodiest and most complicated wars. The lengthy report, which has not been made public but was provided to The New York Times, details a vast, rebel-driven criminal network in eastern Congo with tentacles touching Spanish charities, Ukrainian arms dealers, corrupt African officials and even secretive North Korean weapons shipments. None of this is especially shocking. For years, eastern Congo has been a steaming cauldron of ethnic tensions, competing commercial interests, land disputes and regional politics playing out at gunpoint. Most of the fighting is not soldier versus soldier but soldier versus civilian, and millions of people are thought to have died from gunshot wounds or easily preventable diseases since the war broke out in the mid-1990s. Women especially have borne the brunt of the conflict, with hundreds of thousands raped and mutilated, a sexual violence epidemic that has caught the eye of global figures, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The United Nations report lays bare exactly how various rebel groups finance their brutality, tracing the flow of illegal minerals from the lush green mountainsides of Congo, formerly Zaire, to Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, and eventually to markets in Europe or smelters in the Far East. The report charges that government officials in several African countries are working hand in hand with the rebels to help smuggle out minerals and bring in guns. According to the report, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, one of the most notorious rebel armies, “has a far-reaching international diaspora network involved in the day-to-day running of the movement; the coordination of military and arms-trafficking activities and the management of financial activities.” This document is likely to add momentum in the United States and elsewhere to efforts to crack down on Congo’s illicit mineral trade. Congolese officials estimate that 80,000 pounds of gold are smuggled out of the country each year, which at today’s high gold prices is worth more than $1 billion, much of it going straight into rebel hands. Already the Enough Project , an antigenocide group based in Washington, and Eve Ensler, an American playwright who has been supporting Congolese women’s projects for years through the organization V-Day , among others, have been urging Congress to pass legislation that would bar American companies from buying Congo’s “conflict minerals,” which include gold, tin and coltan, a metallic ore used in many cellphones and laptop computers. Several bills have been proposed. This effort is akin to a successful movement in the early years of this decade to crack down on blood diamonds, the term given to the gems unearthed in the rebel-held areas of West Africa that fueled gruesome civil wars in Liberia, Angola and Sierra Leone. It is a bleak picture of Congo that the report paints. Despite the billions of dollars the United Nations has spent on peacekeeping , countless so-called peace treaties and pledges of regional cooperation, the eastern part of the country remains in the grip of incredibly violent criminals, some of them high-ranking officers in the national army. Nothing seems to be working. Recent military operations to sweep out the rebels have mostly failed and instead led to widespread massacres and human rights abuses. The rebels, meanwhile, continue to seize mines and use their networks in Europe and the United States to raise cash. Timothy Raeymaekers, a professor at the University of Ghent in Belgium, who specializes in studying Congo, said the report contained “some substantial new information.” “It’s high time the U.N. gets serious about this criminal connection,” he said. The United Nations Security Council is expected to discuss the Congo report this week. But the United Nations is in a difficult position. It recently cut ties to Congolese Army units accused of widespread human rights abuses. But at the United Nations headquarters in New York, diplomats are trying to delay the release of the new report because “there is a lot in there that makes us look complicit,” admitted one United Nations official, who asked for anonymity because he said he could be punished for speaking candidly. The official called the conflict in Congo “messy and ragged.” There is little doubt about that. Take the recently integrated rebel forces, which agreed earlier this year to join the Congolese Army. Many still have dubious loyalties. In one documented case, a commander ordered his troops to fire in the air to let rebels in the bush know the army was coming. In other cases, army commanders gave or sold weapons to the very armed groups they were supposed to be wiping out. There is also creeping warlordism. Local army commanders are taxing timber, charcoal, tomatoes, anything that passes through their roadblocks, making $250,000 a month, the report said. Commanders are even conscripting civilians to haul wood through the forest, reminiscent of the Belgian colonial days when pith-helmeted officers whipped Congolese porters with hippopotamus hide. Some Congo experts describe a “shadow army” within the national army, with rebels keeping their weapons to themselves and maintaining a separate chain of command, many of them still loyal to neighboring Rwanda. Jason Stearns, a researcher who has spent extensive time in eastern Congo, said the recent integration effort “has led to a deep ethnicization of the army.” “While I don’t see full-fledged war breaking out again,” he said, “the situation will remain extremely volatile.”

Congo (Formerly Zaire)
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare
Defense and Military Forces
Smuggling


Charlotte Beers, on the Importance of Self-Assessment

Abstract: This interview with Charlotte Beers was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant . Ms. Beers, former chairwoman and C.E.O. of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide , now runs seminars called “The X Factor” for women who are leaders.  Q. Tell me about your early management roles. A. I was in my early 30s, and I was the first management supervisor at J. Walter Thompson who was female. I had been an account supervisor, but management supervisor was more people, more levels. I thought I was really doing well, and I certainly was comfortable with the business. But then a friend of mine told me that one of our colleagues described my management style as menacing. I thought of myself as a friendly, gentle Southern belle. But I began to watch myself — something I think we all have to do — and I realized that I did end meetings on a threatening note. I created urgency when there was none. I was taking on the persona of “I really mean business” that I had learned from an earlier boss. So I learned to watch myself more. I had to self-correct about talking too much and interrupting other people. Now that trait can be very helpful when you have to make a decision, but I also interrupted the process and discussion in meetings. Q. Was this something that you became aware of yourself, or was it explicit feedback? A. That comment from one of my peers about me coming off as menacing was devastating. It was exactly the opposite of the way I pictured myself. Nothing’s more helpful than finding out how others see you. If you can conduct that exercise in an impersonal way, you have information you can’t get any other way. It’s like doing consumer research. I did mine inadvertently, but I’ll never forget how helpful it was. Q. In your experience, do managers do that, or do they avoid it? A. When you do have some power, you can lose the sense of how you’re behaving and who you are, and you don’t want to do that. It’s dangerous. It’s very addictive to be given some power. One of the things I watch in other people is how they use the power they are given. It’s very important to me when I’m assessing someone. Q. Tell me more about that. A. I’m trying to understand how they used the power to hire and fire and promote and make those kinds of invisible choices that really affect other people’s lives. If they don’t have some generosity of spirit and some quality of teaching, I worry that they’re not going to bring along a strong culture. Q. And how do you tell whether somebody has those qualities? A. I would probably ask them, “What do you think is the most important thing in deciding to fire someone?” They might go through some business-school buzzwords, and then I say, “Well, then, how do you actually do it?” If they send a note, or they delegate it or they arrange three people in the room with them, I know that they’re not prepared to take full, personal responsibility. When I had to fire someone, I did it one-on-one. Q. So what is an answer you like to hear in that context? A. What I’m looking for is whether they are able to assess the whole person, not just some failing of theirs at work, because sometimes a person can be in the wrong slot. We are all inferior people to work with in some way, including ourselves. The trick is to match your failings with somebody’s strengths. That’s the game. These are very important moments of leadership. Q. You mentioned earlier the importance of doing a self-assessment. Can you elaborate on that? A. I have made that a big part of my teaching for women in the executive world. Don’t let someone tell you who you are. Keep your own scorecard, and it has to include the good, the bad and the ugly. Q. What other lessons do you pass along? A. For most of us, it’s a mistake to just let the quality of our work speak for itself, because sooner or later the quality of your relationships will prevail over the work. That was a watershed insight for me. You have to recognize there will be a moment in time when you will not be able to be represented by the quality of your work but rather by the relationships you have. If you’re in a crisis, what matters is what you’re made of and what you believe and how well you can express that. What I say to people is to get ready for those moments by practicing every chance you get to take the lead, to step out in front of the work. Don’t hide behind it. When those moments come along and you need to draw on resources that are internal and your personal belief system, if you don’t know what they are, others will tell you what they are. People can then come to you and say, “Well, you just don’t know how to lead from the front,” a critique I’ve never understood. Self-knowledge is so obvious-sounding that I hate to use it like that, but in fact you can be masterful at doing the work and you can be good in team relationships, but one day you will be called on to have difficult, complex relationships and a different part of you has to be used for that. Q. How did you get that self-knowledge? A. In my case, I was forced into it because I hit a wall, so sometimes the most useful way is just to get blown apart and have to step back and say, “What can I learn?” A lot of times it’s something you can learn, and I think that mistakes are great teachers. Sometimes a company’s culture is a big influencer in how you see yourself, and you have to sift through that and see if it’s a fit. Part of it is knowing yourself so well that you know where you fit, and knowing yourself so well that you know why you work. Q. What about lessons from your childhood and teenage years? A. I don’t recommend it, but I think adversity in childhood is pretty useful. I had two brothers who were a bit older than me, and my sister’s 10 years younger. The three of us grew up feeling like our back was always against the wall. We grew up too young. My father was an alcoholic, and he was volatile. You learn coping mechanisms. You keep your expectations real, and you learn what you’re made of. My mother was not a cuddly woman. They never knew what my grades were. They assumed I did fine, so we had a kind of a take-care-of-yourself game. It wasn’t so bad, but at one key time, my mother said: “Anyone can get married. What are you going to do?” And I remember thinking, “You mean I can do almost anything?” I was influenced by the fact that it looked like we would have to do a lot on our own. It all helped me develop emotional self-sufficiency. Q. Other management lessons? A. This is an art form, but you have to understand that the more diverse people are, and the more uncomfortable they make you, the more likely you are to create something new together. Entertaining a certain amount of discomfort is a very important management tool. Q. Can you elaborate? A. In the digital age, people put too much stock in logic, data, the facts. But all the excitement and innovation is in the illogical, and the interpretation of this data by someone who’s still breaking the rules. So you as a manager have to be able to entertain chaos. Otherwise, you’ll never get close to the creative process. I worry that more and more today we lean toward that which is provable, when all the excitement is in the hard-to-prove. Q. Other thoughts about culture? A. I remember being on a panel, and the moderator asked all of us to complete the sentence, “The hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do is ... .” Every single person said, “Change the culture.” It’s an illusion that you can really change a culture in a highly dramatic way in any hurry, and the strongest companies are those that have deeply layered cultures, unless of course they’re driving them into the ground. Then what you can do is change the edges and the top and keep the stuff that matters and strip away the rest. It’s like a brand. There are some things about a brand that you can’t afford to change. So culture is about how we do things around here, and I have found that most of the time the culture is informal and interpreted by instinct. The most dangerous thing is a company with no culture, where one guy speaks of it one way and one woman speaks of it another. Then you’ve got a company that’s rudderless. So there are worse things than a deeply entrenched culture. Q. Let’s shift to hiring. What do you look for? A. Well, I think as a C.E.O., one-third of my time was spent on hiring the one right person, because that hire could shift the future of the agency. It’s time-consuming and it’s courtship. What am I looking for? I think it’s very hard to measure the weaknesses in people. They’re hidden, and sometimes they’re hidden from themselves. If you don’t know the weaknesses, you can’t allow for them. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to hire them. We’ve all got weaknesses. I can tell you mine in 3-D, but I want to know theirs, and I have to stay with them until we both discover it, so I know that it’s not a killer if they come work for us. Q. How do you do that? A. I say to them, “Here’s a time when I made this kind of mistake and what I learned about it,” and then I say, “I want one like that from you.” And they really try, they reach back, and most people say, “Well, I work too hard and everybody got mad at me.” If that’s all they’re going to say to me, then we’re not going very far in the interview. I’m asking for a real sense of revelation and personal understanding of their capacities, because then they won’t be blindsided. I’m always reaching for the intangible and the invisible. I really don’t look at résumés about sales increases and that sort of thing, although I’m happy they had some productive results. I’m trying to find out if they have confidence about the things that matter, their own ability to think and to get to the true center of things. So you try to learn things about them. Let’s say somebody has a very short fuse. They’re not going to discuss this with you, so what you do is you keep asking about their experiences, and say: “Give me an example. What’s an example of that?” That will lead you to understanding more about them. Q. Sum it up for me. A. I’m looking for something that allows me to see all of you, the interior tensile strength — which I know you have — and then how that can trap you sometimes, because I know it will. What you’re looking for is the ability to deal with the unknown, and the other thing you’re looking for is some kind of longer-term potential. I’m trying to understand emotional and intangible assets. How is their tenacity? What’s their energy like? What’s their optimism and belief system? For instance, I have quite a bias against people who are naturally cynical. It can be amusing in certain situations, but in fact it’s very derailing. I once gave a speech at the Association of National Advertisers and said, “The way I see things at many companies is there are one or two people originating and the rest are sitting in a semicircle, critiquing.” Boy, were they insulted.

Beers Charlotte
Executives and Management (Theory)
Women and Girls
Hiring and Promotion
Advertising and Marketing
Ogilvy & Mather


In Patz Trial, Suspect’s Family Tells of His Odd Behavior

Abstract: He demanded that his daughter hold his hand as she crossed the street, even though she was a teenager. He could be stubborn and taciturn and strict with his rules. He warned his daughter about a dark world — one in which there “were no good people.” The woman, Becky Hernandez, said with resignation that she had come to learn that her father, Pedro Hernandez, was a peculiar man. He told her about visions of an angelic “lady in white” and demons that choked him, and she remembered him watering a dead tree branch, thinking it would grow. “It was just my dad,” Ms. Hernandez, 27, testified on Monday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, where her father is on trial on charges of killing and kidnapping Etan Patz , a 6-year-old boy who disappeared on the walk to his school bus stop in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan in 1979. The defense started laying out its arguments last week by assailing the credibility of Mr. Hernandez, whose own words, in admissions made to investigators, are the heart of the prosecution’s case . Mr. Hernandez’s lawyers have sought to portray their client as having limited intelligence and difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality, as well as with making friends. They argue that Mr. Hernandez, 55, has schizotypal personality disorder, which can include symptoms such as severe social anxiety, paranoia and odd beliefs. Dr. Michael First, a psychiatrist, testified that Mr. Hernandez showed signs of paranoia when he covered up windows and said he was being watched through the cracks in the ceiling of his jail cell. Dr. First said Mr. Hernandez’s lack of close friendships and his stoic demeanor were also indications of the disorder. Mr. Hernandez’s lawyers showed video of Mr. Hernandez, taken from a psychiatric interview in 2014 while he was in jail, in which he describes his visions, like black shapes moving around his room at night. In one moment, his eyes darted nervously around the room. Prosecutors have countered that Mr. Hernandez was malingering — feigning symptoms in order to avoid being convicted of killing Etan — and said that even if he had the disorder, it did not mean his confessions were false. At one point during a lengthy cross-examination, Joel Seidemann, a prosecutor, asked if Mr. Hernandez could have knowingly created the characters that he claimed he saw with Etan in the basement of the bodega where he worked when the boy went missing. Dr. First said it was “a possibility.” Yet, Dr. First added, “he could also be imagining or making up the fact that he strangled Etan Patz.” Dr. First said he had ruled out the possibility Mr. Hernandez was malingering in part because Mr. Hernandez had shown signs of the disorder before his arrest in 2012. Carmen Foschini, a younger sister of Mr. Hernandez’s, testified that out of 12 siblings, she was the closest to Mr. Hernandez in childhood. She said he was protective and caring. “He was a good brother,” she said, adding, “He was always there for us.” He did not appear to have many friends, she said, except for a boy who lived near them and who, years later, was one of the people to whom Mr. Hernandez confided that he had killed a child. But, she conceded, the friend had a crush on her, and that could have been the reason he was often around. Prosecutors argued Mr. Hernandez’s lack of friends could have been a reflection not of a personality disorder but of a strict and abusive father who kept his children from playing team sports or bringing friends home. Ms. Hernandez described seeing Mr. Hernandez having a conversation, even moving his hands, although no one was with him, and she recalled hearing him screaming loudly in his sleep. But he tried to keep these experiences to himself, she said. “He doesn’t like to tell us,” she said, “because he doesn’t want to scare us.” At various moments during her testimony, when she recalled him struggling, and failing, to assemble a desk and an entertainment center, Mr. Hernandez was slumped in his chair and looking down. Ms. Hernandez also said that she had found cocaine belonging to him in the family’s car. She acknowledged that she had been placed in an uncomfortable position. “This is my life,” Ms. Hernandez said, her voice breaking as she sat on the witness stand. “This is not easy to do — to stand here, in front of strangers, and tell them things about my life, things about my dad, things about my mom, so that people can judge me.” Soon after, her mother and Mr. Hernandez’s wife, Rosemary, who had been watching her daughter testify, walked out of the courtroom in tears.

Etan Patz
Pedro Hernandez
Becky Hernandez
Murders and Homicides
Missing person
SoHo Manhattan
Child Abuse


Struggling for an Emmett Till Memorial That Withstands Gunshots

Abstract: Along a secluded gravel road that runs between a riverbank and cotton fields in the Mississippi Delta region, a purple sign marks the area where Emmett Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in the summer of 1955. For eight years, the sign has been riddled with bullet holes. The 14-year-old from Chicago was visiting the South when he was accused of whistling at a white woman and murdered. His death became a rallying cry for the civil rights movement, but several signs meant to memorialize the killing — including the one on the riverbank between the towns of Glendora, Miss., and Webb, Miss. — have been vandalized by spray paint and bullet holes. Others have been stolen. It took a visiting filmmaker, Kevin Wilson Jr., to rally support for replacing the sign by the Tallahatchie River when he shared a photo of it on his Facebook page this month. “I’m at the exact site where Emmett Till’s body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River 61 years ago,” Mr. Wilson wrote on Oct. 15. “The site marker is filled with bullet holes. Clear evidence that we’ve still got a long way to go.” Online outrage, and a fund-raising campaign, soon followed. So far, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission has raised more than $18,000 to buy a new sign, and an official with the commission said the group was looking to install a new type of memorial — one that presumably could withstand gunshots. Patrick Weems, the project coordinator for the commission, also known as the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, said on Monday that the group hoped to work with the same architect who had restored the Tallahatchie County Courthouse, where Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were tried and acquitted in the murder of the African-American teenager. (The two later publicly confessed to the killing in a magazine article .) Image In this 1955 file photo, Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, wept at her son’s casket at a Chicago funeral home. Credit Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated Press Mr. Weems said there were plans to turn the riverbank area into a park with a gazebo, where people could pray or observe a moment of silence. The commission hoped that a larger structure might withstand the periodic acts of vandalism against sites that honor the boy’s life. “How do we replace it in a way where this doesn’t happen?” Mr. Weems said of the sign. “I think it’s a lot less likely for someone to go out of their way to vandalize a gazebo.” The plans, he said, would commemorate a killing that laid bare a history of violent attacks against African-Americans at the hands of whites. Back in 1955, Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, had insisted on having an open-casket funeral to show the world what had happened to her son, who had been beaten beyond recognition and shot in the head . More than 100,000 people filed past the coffin to view his body, which was displayed unembalmed for four days. In 2005, 50 years after the murder, federal officials opened a new investigation into the killing. Till’s body, which had never undergone an autopsy, was exhumed and reburied in a new coffin. Mr. Weems said the group has raised the idea of asking the National Park Service to designate the land a historic site, where any case of vandalism would prompt a federal investigation. Vandals have hit several Till memorials in the area over the past decade, according to Dave Tell, an associate professor at the University of Kansas, who is working on a book about the effort to commemorate the teenager’s death. Image An undated portrait of Emmett Louis Till. Credit Associated Press “For 49 years and 11 months there was not a single marker in the entire state of Mississippi to the memory of Emmett Till” after Till was murdered, Professor Tell said in an interview on Monday. That changed in 2005, when two memorial signs were placed along a 30-mile stretch of highway. Professor Tell said the signs were vandalized within months with black spray paint, and the letters “KKK” were scrawled on them. Three years later, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission installed eight signs about the murder, including the one on the riverbank. Two were stolen, including one in Sumner, Miss., where the trial was held. The sign sat on land owned by the son of John W. Whitten Jr., one of several lawyers who defended Mr. Bryant and Mr. Milam. “The local community is very suspicious that the sign was removed from the property,” Mr. Tell said. Mr. Weems said the commission was looking at options to replace that sign. The one along the riverbank was replaced once before, after it was shot and then stolen within months, Mr. Tell said. Local officials had vowed to replace the sign every time it was vandalized, but the new sign was “immediately shot up again,” Professor Tell said. He added, “And it’s been sitting there now for eight years with bullet holes in it.” Mr. Weems said that the commission had decided to dedicate its resources to developing a virtual tour of the sites rather than restoring the damaged signs. The vandalism has divided residents in a part of the country where “it doesn’t take too much scratching beneath the surface to see that race is still an issue,” Mr. Weems said. “I think there was some people who said, ‘Oh, it’s another sign that got shot; this happens all the time,’ ” he added. “And others said, ‘No, this is absolutely what it looks like: This is a racist act and we need to stand together.’ ”

Emmett Louis Till
Murders and Homicides
Civil Rights Movement
Historic preservation
Vandalism
Race and Ethnicity
Mississippi


Texas Instruments Is Selling Its Sensors Unit for $3 Billion

Abstract: Texas Instruments said yesterday that it had reached a deal to sell its sensors and controls unit to a private equity firm, Bain Capital, for $3 billion in cash, ending an auction that had attracted several private equity firms as bidders. The division, which has $1 billion in annual revenue and 5,400 employees, is a small part of Texas Instruments and is not closely tied to the company's main business of making semiconductors for cellphones and other electronics. Texas Instruments, which is based in Dallas, put the unit up for sale in September. Morgan Stanley ran the auction. Reports that Bain Capital was near a deal for the unit surfaced about two weeks ago. The division, based in Attleboro, Mass., makes temperature and lighting sensors and controls for use in homes, cars, planes and industrial settings. A little more than half its sales come from outside the United States. Texas Instruments has been divesting businesses that are either not directly related to its dominant position in the wireless chip business or not successful enough to help lift the average profit margins of all its businesses. The company has sold divisions that made memory and personal computer chips. The chief financial officer, Kevin P. March, said, "The semiconductor business has not only been growing much faster but the profitability in that business has also expanded very strongly, exceeding the profitability of our sensors and controls business." Mr. March said the company had no specific plans for the $3 billion, but he noted that Texas Instruments had used excess cash in recent times to increase its dividend, buy back shares and make acquisitions. He declined to say if the company planned to sell other businesses. Bain Capital, based in Boston, said that it would keep the division's current management after the transaction, which has been approved by the board of Texas Instruments and is expected to be completed before July. A managing director at Bain, Stephen M. Zide, said, "There is a considerable amount of value that can be unlocked by focusing solely on growing sensors and controls' competitive position" in a market that it already leads. The sale does not include the radio frequency identification business, which is part of the sensors division. That fast-growing technology is being used by companies and governments to keep track of products, assets and even people with transmitters that send signals over short distances. Shares of Texas Instruments fell 27 cents yesterday, to $34.18.


Rested Phillies Ready for Improbable Rays

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The World Series has come to the land of cowbells and catwalks, where cownose rays swim in a 10,000-gallon tank above the fence in right-center field. Tropicana Field is home sweet dome to the Tampa Bay Rays , the surprise story of this baseball season. “If I would have told you in March that Tampa Bay would be the American League pennant winner, you’d have laughed,” Commissioner Bud Selig said. “It’s a great story all the way around.” Selig was also referring to the Rays’ opponent, the Philadelphia Phillies , who are back in the World Series for the first time since 1993. The Phillies have more losses than any franchise in American professional sports history. The Rays had never exceeded 70 wins until this season. Yet the matchup may be one of the more exciting in recent memory. The future of the sport will be displayed on its grandest stage. “The players on these two teams are going to be the guys, 10 years from now, that are the superstars in this league,” Phillies reliever Chad Durbin said. “There are some young guys on both teams that are superstars already.” For the first time, the opening game of the World Series will feature two starting pitchers younger than 25. The Phillies’ Cole Hamels and the Rays’ Scott Kazmir are both former All-Star left-handers who are 24. If you are 30 years old on these teams, you are ancient. Every starting pitcher but the Phillies’ Jamie Moyer is younger than 30. So are 13 of the 16 regular position players. The clubhouses, naturally, have a youthful vibe. The Mohawk haircut is the rage for the Rays, and Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel had customized rubber ducks placed in the locker of each player before Tuesday’s workout. When the Phillies played Milwaukee in the first round, second baseman Chase Utley said he thought Manuel was too uptight. He told Manuel to relax with a colorful suggestion involving a comical reference to a duck. It gave Manuel an idea. “I wanted our players to be loose and I wanted them to play like they always have,” Manuel said. “So I bought them some rubber ducks. And before they go out on the field, they look up in their lockers and see a duck.” The Phillies had plenty of time to work on duck designs. They clinched the National League title in Game 5 at Dodger Stadium last Wednesday, leaving six full days off before the World Series. The Rays finally finished off Boston in Game 7 on Sunday. For the Phillies, that is a bad omen. In the last two World Series, a team coming off a seven-game L.C.S. victory has emphatically beaten a team with at least six days off. “It’s obviously a good thing for us to be riding the momentum at this point, especially coming off a big win like that and going into the World Series,” Rays third baseman Evan Longoria said. “Where they’ve been kind of stagnant for the past few days waiting to see who they would play, we’ve been playing.” The Phillies dismissed such talk, naturally, and for baseball, it would be good to have a lengthy World Series. The last four have finished in five games or fewer, the longest such streak since 1913 to 1916. Then again, however the series goes, baseball has reason to be happy with the matchup. The sport prizes parity, and in the last four years, eight different teams have shown up in the World Series. In the last decade, half of all teams (15 of 30) have taken part. And although the Phillies and the Rays seem like upstarts, they earned their way here: this is the first World Series since 2001 without a wild-card team. “Any doubters now should be ashamed of themselves,” Rays outfielder Cliff Floyd said. “This is not a fluke team.” Maybe not, but the Rays are trying to do something that has never been done. According to Jayson Stark of ESPN.com , no team in any of the four major American pro sports has had the worst record in its sport one season and won a championship the next. For the Rays to do it, they may need more help from David Price, their not-so-secret bullpen weapon who closed out the Red Sox on Sunday in his eighth career game. Price is not among the Rays’ four starters — after Kazmir, the Rays will start James Shields, Matt Garza and Andy Sonnanstine — but he could neutralize Utley and Ryan Howard, the Phillies’ left-handed sluggers, in relief. “He said basically from the first pitch to the last pitch, I don’t have a problem putting you in any situation,” Price said, referring to Manager Joe Maddon. “That’s what he’s told me since I got here. It hasn’t changed.” The Phillies know about late-arriving rookies. In 1980, when they won their only title, they let Marty Bystrom start the decisive N.L.C.S. game after just six major league appearances. “I don’t think anybody expected Price to come out of the bullpen and do what he did,” said Dallas Green, a senior adviser for the Phillies and the manager of the 1980 club. “He just dominated a pretty good hitting team. Those are probably the kind of guys that are going to be difference-makers.” The Rays may improvise, but the Phillies have a sure thing in closer Brad Lidge, who has converted all 46 of his save chances since opening day. Lidge’s setup men, J. C. Romero and Ryan Madson, have a combined earned run average of 0.77 this month. The Phillies need more shutdown pitching to contain a Tampa Bay offense that has 22 home runs in 11 postseason games. The Phillies also have power, with 10 homers in nine playoff games. “We’re at a very even level,” Hamels said. “I can’t say who to favor — I’m going to pick my side, no doubt — but I think it really is going to bring a good, competitive level to this World Series.”

Philadelphia Phillies
Tampa Bay Rays
World Series
Baseball


Schwarzenegger Orders Increase in Renewable Energy Use

Abstract: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order Tuesday requiring that California draw 33 percent of its electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind power by 2020. The requirement is stricter than any other state’s except Hawaii’s, which calls for 40 percent by 2030. “Right now, we are relying too heavily on coal -fired power plants,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said at a news briefing in Sacramento, shortly before signing the order. About half the 50 states have renewable energy requirements, often called renewable portfolio standards. The climate bill passed by the House in June would establish this type of mandate at the national level, requiring 20 percent of the nation’s electricity to come from a combination of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency measures by 2020. The Senate has yet to vote on a companion measure. In 2008, Mr. Schwarzenegger signed an executive order establishing a 33 percent renewable target by 2020. But Tuesday’s order was more definitive and provided guidance to state regulators about how to carry out the requirement. Mr. Schwarzenegger said that increasing production of renewable energy was an important part of California’s strategy to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases. The details have recently been the subject of political wrangling. Last weekend, the Legislature, which Democrats control, passed bills with a 33 percent requirement for renewables. But Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said he would veto the bills, calling them “poorly drafted,” “overly complex” and likely to raise costs. In particular, he and many environmental officials were concerned that the bills would have severely restricted the amount of renewable electricity that could come from outside California. “I am totally against protectionist policies,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said Tuesday. Gino DiCaro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, said that while any renewable energy requirement was likely to increase costs for manufacturers, the executive order was “a step in the right direction” relative to the Legislature’s bills, which would have imposed heavier costs. The executive order explicitly states that renewable energy from “resources and facilities located throughout the Western Interconnection” is welcome. The Western Interconnection is the power grid that spans the West. Establishing a requirement, however, is far different from meeting it, as California is already finding out. The state’s interim mandate of 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources and energy efficiency by 2010 looks likely to fall short. The San Diego Gas and Electric Company, the furthest behind of the state’s three big utilities, says it currently gets 10 percent of its electricity from such sources.

California
Schwarzenegger Arnold
Alternative and Renewable Energy
Executive Orders
Wind Power
Solar Energy