Flynn’s Encore Features Little to Applaud

Abstract: DETROIT — To most of the N.F.L., Matt Flynn is just another journeyman quarterback, moving from team to team, starting a game here and there. His name hardly signals fear. The thought that Flynn would be at the helm of the Green Bay Packers for a crucial Thanksgiving game at the Lions, however, sent an extra chill through Detroit in recent days. After all, Flynn was transcendent in a spot start against the Lions in the final game of the 2011 regular season, carving out a place in the Packers’ record book alongside superstars like Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre and Bart Starr by throwing for franchise bests of 480 yards and 6 touchdowns. On Thursday, the Lions quickly put to rest any hopes that Flynn, starting this time because of an injury to Rodgers, would have a magical encore. By game’s end, Flynn’s ugly statistical line included no touchdowns, two fumbles, an interception and seven sacks, including one for a safety late in the third quarter. The Lions chased and harassed Flynn to the point that he said he was “embarrassed,” and his career day appeared only a distant memory. “That game a couple years ago, that was just one of those days where everything was working, and we were hitting on everything,” Flynn said after the Packers’ 40-10 loss Thursday. “I know, personally, that not every game is going to be like that.” Flynn’s inability to recreate his stellar performance was quite a relief for the Lions, who won their first Thanksgiving game in a decade — a key victory in the N.F.C. North race. Lions fans were particularly concerned about Flynn, debating on Detroit sports radio shows whether he would strike again. After the game, Flynn spoke about how he knew this time around would be different. “I wasn’t trying to go out there and duplicate anything,” he said. Much has happened for Flynn, 28, since his record-setting performance nearly two years ago. In that game, Flynn started in place of Rodgers as the Packers rested their starters before the playoffs. Green Bay lost its first playoff game to the Giants, and the Seattle Seahawks signed Flynn, who had backed up Rodgers for four years, to a three-year contract that March worth about $25 million, positioning him to be a starter for the first time in his career. Flynn’s effort against Detroit was widely credited as one of the reasons he got that payday. Flynn, though, lost Seattle’s starting job in training camp to a rookie, Russell Wilson. Flynn did not play a snap until Week 14, when he came in for mop-up duty during a 58-0 blowout of the Arizona Cardinals. With Russell entrenched as the Seahawks’ starter, Flynn was traded in the off-season to the Oakland Raiders, with whom he again competed for — and lost out on — a chance to be the starter. Flynn started one game for Oakland, in Week 4, in place of the injured Terrelle Pryor, losing two fumbles and throwing an interception as the Raiders lost to the Washington Redskins, 24-14. Flynn ended up being cut by the Raiders and signing with Buffalo, where he briefly sat on the bench before being released again. With the 2013 season slipping away from him, Flynn returned to the Packers, his old team, in early November. The Packers desperately needed quarterback options after injuries sidelined Rodgers and his backup, Seneca Wallace. Flynn was expected to back up Scott Tolzien, a third-year player who had not taken a snap in a regular-season game until a couple of weeks ago. But Tolzien struggled in his second start, against the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, with the Packers falling behind, 20-7. That is when Flynn got the call. Away from the Packers for a season and a half, Flynn seemed more at ease with the offense, leading Green Bay back and forcing overtime and then a tie. His stat line included 21 completions, 218 passing yards and a touchdown — not record-shattering numbers, but good enough for the Packers to make him the starter for the key Thanksgiving game. All of that set up another big, but improbable, moment for Flynn, this time at Detroit instead of at home. This time, he said, he knew that he would face a “different defense” and that he just had to try to execute the offense. “I did a pretty poor job of that,” he said after the loss. Flynn’s coach, Mike McCarthy, stuck with him throughout the game, even as his offense recorded only seven first downs and 126 net yards. It was unclear whether Flynn would return to the bench on Dec. 8, when the Packers host the Atlanta Falcons, but McCarthy was not overly critical after the game. “It wasn’t just one person’s problem today,” McCarthy said. “They dared us to throw the football at them. We tried, and they won.”

Football
Packers
Matt Flynn
Detroit Lions


Escaping a Meeting With the Indians’ Ace, the Yankees Can’t Take Advantage

Abstract: Masahiro Tanaka is not recognized as a superstitious pitcher. There is no rabbit’s foot or unusual talisman in his locker. Unlike some players, he freely walks on the first-base line when entering and exiting an inning. Perhaps a little luck was what he needed on Friday night as the Yankees lost to the Cleveland Indians, 7-3, at Yankee Stadium. The loss dropped the Yankees to 1-4 this season against the Indians, who entered the day in last place in the American League Central. “They’ve given us trouble,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “The one thing about baseball is, I’ve said it doesn’t always make sense.” Image The Yankees’ Brendan Ryan forced out the Indians’ Yan Gomes at second base and threw to first to complete a double play in the second inning. Credit Andy Marlin/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Even though they will not face the reigning A.L. Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber this weekend, the Yankee will have dealt with a collection of Indians starters with some of the most vibrant young arms in the majors. And with their defense lapsing, an Indians starter stymied the Yankees for a second straight game. Carlos Carrasco held the Yankees to one run and five hits, striking out 11 over six and two-thirds innings. In his two previous outings in the Bronx — both victories — Carrasco combined for 12 scoreless innings and 11 strikeouts. He began the day — along with Kluber and Saturday’s scheduled starter Danny Salazar — ranked in the top 10 in a bevy of pitching categories. “He was extremely tough on us,” Girardi said. Tanaka kept the Yankees in the game early. After an eight-pitch first inning, Tanaka skated past trouble in the second. With two runners on, Tanaka snagged a scorching one-hopper off the bat of Abraham Almonte to turn a double play. But the breaks began to shift toward the Indians in the third. With two outs and Jose Ramirez on third base by way of a triple, Francisco Lindor sent a 2-2 pitch just past the glove of third baseman Chase Headley and into left for a single. The Yankees scratched out a run to tie the game in the fourth on a single by Greg Bird, but a matter of inches once again put Tanaka in a deficit in the fifth. Almonte led off with another comebacker to Tanaka, but this time the ball deflected off his glove. Shortstop Brendan Ryan barehanded the ball, but his throw to first was late. Tanaka tried to work his way out the jam, notching two outs and allowing only one base runner, before Lindor stepped to the plate. Tanaka appeared to be out of the inning when Lindor hit a soft grounder to Ryan, but he bobbled the ball transferring it from his glove to his throwing hand. As Ryan looked up to the sky in disbelief, Almonte scored. Girardi said it was a play Ryan would normally make 99 times out of 100. “I didn’t really want to look at it, I was too upset,” Ryan said. “I’m not really sure what to say. Probably the easiest play you could possibly have and it cost us a run.” It got worse for Tanaka an inning later. Leading off, Carlos Santana fouled off a 3-1 pitch behind the plate. Catcher Brian McCann gave chase, reaching over the wall just right of the Indians dugout, only to have the ball pop out of his mitt and roll into the stands. On the next pitch, Santana homered to right field for a 3-1 lead. “Errors are obviously part of the game,” Tanaka said through an interpreter. “They’ve been playing great defense all throughout the season. Plus, if I had been throwing the ball better, that maybe would not have happened. It’s part of the game.” One reason for the Indians’ strong starting pitching but less than stellar record is their bullpen performance this season. Once Carrasco exited, the Yankees almost overcame a three-run deficit. In the eighth, with one run in and the Yankees mounting a rally with runners on first and second, Bird hit a slow grounder to second base where Ramirez lifted his glove a split second too soon, allowing the ball to roll into right field and bring home another run. Jacoby Ellsbury walked to load the bases, but Stephen Drew flew out to left field to end the threat and the Indians tacked on three insurance runs in the ninth. INSIDE PITCH MICHAEL PINEDA threw 62 pitches for Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in his second rehab start since going on the disabled list on July 30 with a right flexor forearm muscle strain. Pineda lasted four and two-thirds innings, allowing one run on three hits with three strikeouts.

Baseball
Masahiro Tanaka
Cleveland Indians
Yankees


Taiwan Stands Behind Use of Force Against Protesters

Abstract: TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s prime minister said on Monday that the government had been justified in using force to remove demonstrators from the cabinet building earlier in the day, as students continued to occupy the nearby legislature in a protest against a trade bill with China. “What happened yesterday wasn’t police suppressing a street march,” Prime Minister Jiang Yi-huah said. “It was protesters breaking into the Executive Yuan, trying to occupy this building and paralyze our administrative workings,” he added, referring to the cabinet building. At least 174 people, including 119 police officers, were wounded as the police wielded wooden clubs and later used water trucks to block the growing protest. In a statement posted online, the protesters who have occupied the legislature, or Legislative Yuan, since last week said that they “strongly condemn the violence against the unarmed, weaponless students.” Mr. Jiang said that 61 people were arrested when the police cleared the building Monday morning, and that 35 of them faced possible prosecution. The government faces broadening concerns, as some student groups have now called for a work and school strike across this self-governed island of 23 million to allow more to attend the demonstrations in Taipei, the capital. Video Taiwanese riot police used water cannons on protesters in Taipei as demonstrations continued against a controversial trade pact with mainland China. Credit Credit Stringer/Taiwan/Reuters In an hourlong news conference on Monday at the Executive Yuan, just hours after it had been cleared of demonstrators, Mr. Jiang urged students not to push for a strike. “The nature of this matter is that all levels of society have different views as to the signing of the service trade agreement, but that is no reason to use as a pretext for a national work and school strike,” he said. The China trade bill, which would allow cross-strait investment on dozens of service trades ranging from banking to funeral parlors, has touched deep roots of concern, including Taiwan’s own history of authoritarian rule and its uneasy relationship with China, an emerging giant that considers the island part of its own territory that must eventually be reunited. While many of the student demonstrators opposed the deal outright, others said they supported lowering trade barriers on some industries. Their most fundamental objection, they said, was to the way the deal was moved through Taiwan’s legislature. Members of Kuomintang, the governing party, forced the motion through to the legislative floor without a promised item-by-item review. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party cried foul. Many demonstrators have described the moves by the Kuomintang as “authoritarian,” a pointed reference to the party’s all-powerful role in Taiwan before democratization in the 1980s and ’90s. “Spread propaganda and ignore the opinion of the public, this is neither democracy nor rule of law,” a student leader, Lin Fei-fan, chanted from the rostrum of the occupied legislature on Sunday. The Kuomintang holds a comfortable margin in the legislature, meaning it can eventually ratify the trade pact, which was signed by semiofficial organizations representing Taiwan and China last June. Image Students in Taipei, Taiwan, opposed to a government trade deal with China resumed their protest on Monday, a day after a clash with riot police officers erupted at the Executive Yuan. Credit Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images “What the government has been doing is trying to play this as low-profile as possible,” said Lin Jih-wen, a political science research fellow at Academia Sinica , a state-funded research institution in Taipei. “It doesn’t want society to discuss this and wanted to just pass this in a short period of time. That exposed not only the outrage of the students but also the general public.” President Ma Ying-jeou, who has made closer relations with China a crucial goal, said the accord was necessary for Taiwan to maintain its economic competitiveness. He said that without this pact, which was a follow-up agreement to the 2010 Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement between the two sides, Taiwan will be unable to pursue agreements with other countries and trade organizations, like the United States-led Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trade between China and Taiwan has rapidly expanded during Mr. Ma’s six years in office, nearly doubling to reach $197 billion last year. But some of the debate over the trade pact revolves around concerns that China may use economics to further its claims to Taiwan. “Sovereignty lurks behind this at all times,” said Titus C. Chen, an associate research fellow at the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “It’s a unique Taiwan concern. I think this service agreement is just one more building block for President Ma to inch toward a peace agreement or fundamental relations with China.” The students occupying the legislature said they will continue their protest until the trade bill is returned to committee for an itemized review, and they have asked for passage of a law that will allow for closer scrutiny of agreements with China. Unlike the protest in the Executive Yuan, the government has expressed a willingness to tolerate the occupation of the legislature for the time being. “The Legislative Yuan is a place for the people’s representatives to discuss laws and governmental affairs, and sometimes, because there isn’t consensus, things stop for several days,” Mr. Jiang said.

Taipei
China
Kuomintang,Chinese Nationalist Party
Taiwan


Minutes In, Brady’s Season Is in Jeopardy

Abstract: FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Although the possibility of quarterback Tom Brady ’s being injured has hung over the New England Patriots since the Super Bowl , the worst of the Patriots’ fears appeared to be realized Sunday after Brady left the season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs with a knee injury that will probably end his season. Brady was knocked from the game in the first quarter after an awkward hit by Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard, a blow that made the Patriots’ 17-10 victory seem irrelevant. Officially, the Patriots had no statement. But according to a person who was briefed on the injury, it is a major ligament injury that jeopardizes the season for Brady. The Patriots are apparently holding out hope that further tests will reveal something less severe and that Brady may be able to return before the season ends. After the game, Patriots Coach Bill Belichick claimed he knew nothing, including where Brady was or who was evaluating him. “We’ll see what happens,” Belichick said. “I am not sure what we are dealing with yet.” The Patriots will turn to the little-used Matt Cassel as their starter — he played well enough for the Patriots to hold off the Chiefs — but will clearly be in the market for veteran help because the team’s third-string quarterback, Kevin O’Connell, is a rookie. They could pursue the recently retired Daunte Culpepper, whose best seasons were as Randy Moss’s quarterback in Minnesota, or the 44-year-old Vinny Testaverde, who played for Carolina last season and the Patriots in 2006. Also in the market for a job is Chris Simms, who was released by Tampa Bay on Aug. 30. The injury came on a day that was supposed to answer all the questions about the mysterious right ankle injury that hung over the Super Bowl loss to the Giants at the end of last season. That injury kept Brady out for all four preseason games. But on the second drive of the game, Pollard lunged at Brady while he was releasing a pass and caught Brady’s left leg extended and planted. Brady limped off the field to an uncertain future — for him and for the Patriots. “Tom being who he is, the competitor it is, it hurts, to be honest with you,” Moss said. “Every time the fans cheered, I looked over at that door. I was like a little kid at the candy store, just hoping you would see that No. 12 come out those doors.” But Brady did not come back. Without him, the Patriots soldiered on behind Cassel, but they needed a defensive stand in the final minute to keep the Chiefs out of the end zone. The Patriots were supposed to roll into this season on a mission to redeem the last one. This is largely the same team that marched to a perfect regular season in such dominant fashion that the Giants’ victory in the Super Bowl is considered one of the sport’s great upsets. The question that hung over the redemption story line was Brady’s health. He has never answered how much his ankle injury hampered him in that loss to the Giants. Pollard had already been blocked by running back Sammy Morris and was on the ground when he took one more lunge at Brady, who was releasing a pass to Moss. Pollard caught Brady’s leg extended forward, and Brady crumpled to the turf with 7 minutes 27 seconds left in the first quarter. He rolled around, holding his knee with both hands. The Patriots did not deviate from the script in reacting to the injury, saying they had to keep going no matter who was hurt and who was playing. “You’re so wrapped up in what you have to do, you really don’t have time to think about it,” center Dan Koppen said. “You’ve just got to move on.” Cassel had a few shining moments in his first extended action. Brady has started 127 straight games, not missing one since he took over for Drew Bledsoe as the starter in the 2001 season, and rarely leaves games. Cassel had grand 70 passing yards over the last two seasons. Cassel started well, digging the Patriots out of a hole when they were pinned on their 2 by a Chiefs punt. On third-and-11, Cassel dropped back into his end zone and lofted a 51-yard pass that Moss caught in stride. Cassel finished that drive with a 10-yard touchdown pass to Moss, and the Patriots seemed to stave off disaster. “This is something I’ve been preparing for a long time,” Cassel said. It did not seem to hurt the Patriots’ cause when Kansas City had injury trouble of its own, with quarterback Brodie Croyle separating his right shoulder early in the third quarter. He was replaced by Damon Huard. But the Patriots could not quite put the Chiefs away. Kansas City was trailing by 7 late in the final minute of the fourth quarter when Huard lofted a 68-yard pass to receiver Devard Darling. But the Chiefs could not score from the 5, and the Patriots survived. How they handle the rest of the season is another question.

Brady Tom
New England Patriots
Football
Kansas City Chiefs


Second Time Around, Cubs Hand Tanaka His First Loss in Majors

Abstract: CHICAGO — After 21 months and 42 starts in which he never lost in the regular season, Masahiro Tanaka finally felt the sting of defeat. Perhaps it was the rain that poured down upon him, or the fact that for the first time this year his opponent had seen him once before. Or maybe it was just because his teammates could not supply enough offense to bail him out of a substandard effort. Whatever the cause, Tanaka took the loss Tuesday night as the Chicago Cubs beat the Yankees, 6-1 , at Wrigley Field, and for the first time in a regular-season game since Aug. 19, 2012, Tanaka was the loser. Including an impressive 6-0 opening to the season that captivated fans on both shores, Tanaka had amassed a 34-0 combined record in those 42 regular-season starts and one relief appearance. The streak began on Aug. 26, 2012, when he was with the Rakuten Golden Eagles, and it included eight starts with the Yankees. Before the Cubs, the last team to beat Tanaka in a regular-season game was the Seibu Lions in Japan. He also lost Game 6 of the Japan Series to the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants in October, but he refused to go down easily in that game, throwing 160 pitches. He returned to the mound the next night to earn the save for Rakuten in Game 7, an example of the dogged competitiveness that helped him go unbeaten for such a long stretch. After the 2012 loss to the Lions, he won four more games that year and went 24-0 in 2013 before signing with the Yankees for seven years and $155 million, and stretching the streak deep into May. “I was able to get the streak going because of the support of my teammates,” he said through his interpreter, referring to the Golden Eagles as well as the Yankees. “I am a little bit disappointed, because a lot of the fans were looking for me to keep on winning. So next time out, I’ll try to get a win and get it going again.” On a wet night, Tanaka (6-1) struggled with all his pitches, he said, but mostly with his signature split-finger fastball. He left it up in the zone too frequently, and he was punished for it. The Cubs were the first American team to see him twice, and ever since his arrival in the United States, Tanaka had come with a caveat: Once teams get a second look at his windup, his timing and his stuff, they might get a bead on him. Tanaka dominated the Cubs on April 16, holding them to two hits in eight scoreless innings as the Yankees won, 3-0. But on Tuesday he allowed four runs, three of them earned, and eight hits. Three of the hits were by Luis Valbuena, who had two doubles and scored two runs. On April 16, Valbuena went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts. Mike Olt struck out three times in three at-bats in April, but against Tanaka on Tuesday he had a hit and two runs batted in. Yankees Manager Joe Girardi, however, was dubious of the notion that a second crack at Tanaka had improved the Cubs’ chances. “I wouldn’t make too much of that,” Girardi said. “I just think he didn’t have his good split.” Also at issue was the rain and a gooey mound, from which Tanaka kept slipping. At one point, Larry Rothschild, the pitching coach, came running out of the dugout along with Tanaka’s interpreter to request that the grounds crew manicure the mound. But even after that, Tanaka still slipped. “I can’t make the weather my excuse,” he said. “I think it was the first time I got rained on since I came here. But that happens. I need to be able to adjust to that.” Tanaka, who threw 88 pitches, also made two fine (and nearly identical) defensive plays to prevent runs from scoring. Twice in the fourth inning, with runners on third base, Tanaka charged off the mound and fielded balls with his glove, shoveling them to catcher Brian McCann, who applied the tag both times. The Yankees did not score until the sixth inning, when Brett Gardner led off with a double to left field. Gardner moved to third on Derek Jeter’s grounder to short and eventually scored on Mark Teixeira’s single to center. The Yankees loaded the bases with two outs in the ninth, but as the rain began to fall again, Jeter grounded out against reliever Hector Rondon to end the game. Jeter, who is in his final season as a player, was honored before the game by the Cubs. Starlin Castro, the Cubs’ shortstop, who has always admired Jeter, presented him with a green and white No. 2 plate from the Wrigley Field scoreboard. Although he has played only four games here, Jeter said before the game that when he was a boy, his family made regular trips to Chicago from their home in Kalamazoo, Mich., about two and a half hours away. He recalled driving to Wrigley after his last day of classes at Kalamazoo Central High School shortly before the 1992 amateur draft, in which the Yankees selected him with the No. 6 pick. “You’re just sitting there, looking out, hoping you’ll get the opportunity to play in the major leagues,” Jeter said. He did, of course, and with two hits on Tuesday, he has 3,355. Because Wednesday is a day game after a night game, Jeter may not play, which would make his last game at Wrigley Field the first game Tanaka lost. INSIDE PITCH Carlos Beltran, who is on the 15-day disabled list with a bone spur in his right elbow, is scheduled to swing a bat Monday, Joe Girardi said Tuesday. If Beltran feels no pain, he will continue in his rehabilitation. If he feels any pain, the next likely step is surgery, Girardi said. An operation to remove the spur would probably keep Beltran out another eight to 10 weeks. “If he can take his A swing and not have the pain and not have to hold back, then he’s a player,” Girardi said. ... Derek Jeter spent time with the Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks. “He treated me well when I was coming up and I had an opportunity to meet him,” Jeter said. “You always remember how it makes you feel when you first meet them.”

Baseball
Yankees
Chicago Cubs
Masahiro Tanaka


Cream Rises in Chase, but One Driver Doesn't Seem to Belong

Abstract: CONCORD, N.C., Oct. 14 — As the Bank of America 500 Nascar race came to a calamitous end Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, only three drivers in the 12-car playoff field emerged with a realistic chance of driving away with the Nextel Cup championship. Jeff Gordon, the race winner, has stood atop the points standings almost exclusively since March in his bid for a fifth series title. After surviving a finish that was nearly a disaster for him, Gordon has a 68-point lead over Jimmie Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate and the defending Cup champion. That is to be expected; Gordon and Johnson have been the class of Nextel Cup this season. But what makes this Chase so strange is the third driver still in the mix with five races left. It is not Tony Stewart, the two-time champion, who dropped 198 points back with a seventh-place showing at Lowe’s. Matt Kenseth? He is in 12th after wrecking three times Saturday night. The shocking answer is Clint Bowyer, who is well in range, 78 points back, after finishing second Saturday night. Going into the playoff, Bowyer could have been voted least likely among the 12 to have his name on the list of contenders. Bowyer is in his second year of Cup competition and his first playoff. He was the last to qualify and he was among the most inexperienced of make the 12-car field, which includes five former series champions. Before making the Chase, Bowyer’s most memorable moment in Nascar came this year in the season-opening Daytona 500. His No. 07 Chevrolet slid across the finish line upside-down with sparks flying — in 18th place. Bowyer was perhaps the third-best contender on his own Richard Childress Racing team, behind Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton. Bowyer had never even won a Cup race before the Chase began. He remedied that by capturing the first race in the Chase at New Hampshire on Sept. 16. Five weeks later, Harvick and Burton are all but mathematically out of the Chase, as are six other drivers. Yet Bowyer is still standing right next to Gordon and Johnson, who have 120 career victories and 5 titles between them. “Well, it’s very gratifying,” Bowyer said early Sunday after the race. “You know, only our second year together, we’re running up front and doing what we’re paid to do. You know, we won a race, we’re running for a championship. It’s been an awesome year so far.” While Gordon gives every indication he will win the championship, he cannot disregard Bowyer. Bowyer led three times for 79 laps Saturday night. When the race resumed with five laps to go after a red-flag stop to clear oil from the track, Bowyer was third behind Gordon and Kyle Busch. Gordon had a fuel problem and his car sputtered momentarily, allowing Ryan Newman to surge into the lead. On the way to the checkered flag, however, Newman blew a tire, and Gordon had one more shot in a two-lap finishing sprint. He held on to the lead this time, with Bowyer right behind. “He’s impressing a lot of people right now,” Gordon said. “To me, a real key to one of the top drivers is when the moment comes, when the Chase for the championship is on the line, is are you capable of stepping up? And we see it every year, you know, guys step it up, take it to the next level, and they are the guys to beat. And he’s doing that.” So is Gordon, who is having a charmed finish to a season highlighted by the birth of his first child in June. After the ending Saturday night, even Gordon is wondering if this is meant to be. “Well, I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t care what happens with the championship, this is my year just because of being a father,” Gordon said. “And even with the wins that we’ve had so far and the kind of year on and off the racetrack for me personally, it’s just been the most incredible year.” Should he win the championship, Gordon said, “It would be just one of those dream years that I don’t think I could ever even touch again.”

Automobile Racing
National Assn of Stock Car Auto Racing
Bank of America Corp
Bowyer Clint


Edward Snowden, Ex-C.I.A. Worker, Says He Disclosed U.S. Surveillance

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A 29-year-old former C.I.A. computer technician went public on Sunday as the source behind the daily drumbeat of disclosures about the nation’s surveillance programs, saying he took the extraordinary step because “the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.” During a 12-minute video interview that went online Sunday, Edward Joseph Snowden calmly answered questions about his journey from being a well-compensated government contractor with nearly unlimited access to America’s intelligence secrets to being holed up in a Hong Kong hotel room, the subject of a United States investigation, with the understanding that he could spend the rest of his life in jail. The revelation came after days of speculation that the source behind a series of leaks that have transfixed Washington must have been a high-level official at one of America’s spy agencies. Instead, the leaker is a relatively low-level employee of a giant government contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, that has won billions of dollars in secret government contracts over the past decade, partly by aggressively marketing itself as the premier protector of America’s classified computer infrastructure. The episode presents both international and domestic political difficulties for the Obama administration. If Mr. Snowden remained in China, the White House would have to navigate getting him out of a country that has been America’s greatest adversary on many issues of computer security. Then the United States must set up a strategy for prosecuting a man whom many will see as a hero for provoking a debate that President Obama himself has said he welcomes — amid already fierce criticism of the administration’s crackdown on leaks. The court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who released a vast archive of military and diplomatic materials to WikiLeaks, resumes Monday. Mr. Snowden, who said he was seeking asylum abroad, perhaps in Iceland, gave the interview to The Guardian, the British newspaper and global Web site that during the past week published a string of articles about classified National Security Agency programs. Both The Guardian and The Washington Post, which also published articles disclosing the surveillance programs, identified Mr. Snowden on Sunday as the source for their articles. In his interview with The Guardian, Mr. Snowden said his job had given him access to myriad secrets that the United States government guards most jealously, including the locations of Central Intelligence Agency stations overseas and the identities of undercover agents working for the United States. But he said he had been selective in what he disclosed, releasing only what he found to be the greatest abuses of a surveillance state that he came to view as reckless and having grown beyond reasonable boundaries. He was alternately defiant and resigned, saying at one point that the C.I.A. might try to spirit him out of China, and speculating that it might even hire Asian gangs to go after him. “If you realize that that’s the world you helped create and it is going to get worse with the next generation and the next generation and extend the capabilities of this architecture of oppression, you realize that you might be willing to accept any risks and it doesn’t matter what the outcome is,” Mr. Snowden said. Some outside experts said the push in recent years to break down barriers between spy agencies and share information across the government had greatly expanded the universe of government employees and outside contractors with access to highly classified intelligence. “In past years, someone like Snowden may not have had access to briefings detailing these collection programs,” said Cedric Leighton, a former deputy director of the National Security Agency, “but now with the push from a ‘need to know’ to a ‘need to share’ philosophy, it’s far more likely for an I.T. contractor like him to gain access to such documents.” Mr. Snowden’s disclosures prompted some calls from Congress on Sunday to hold hearings about the surveillance programs or reopen debate on portions of the Patriot Act. The disclosures also were published just as the Obama administration was grappling with the fallout from its many investigations into leaks to the news media. After it was revealed in May that the Justice Department had secretly obtained phone logs for reporters at The Associated Press and Fox News, criticism of the administration’s leak investigation was heightened. Mr. Obama said he was “troubled” by those developments, and ordered Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to review the Justice Department’s procedures for investigating reporters. As part of that review, Mr. Holder and senior department officials have met with editors and media lawyers to try to assuage their fears that the administration is trying to silence the press. A day before The Guardian published its first article on how the government was collecting Americans phone data, Mr. Holder met with lawyers for several media outlets about legislation and other measures that may help protect reporters. Image President Obama has ordered Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to conduct a review. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times A White House spokesman declined to comment on Sunday. A spokesman for James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, referred questions to the Justice Department. In a statement, the department said it was in the initial stages of an investigation into the matter, though it did not name Mr. Snowden. In a weekend interview with NBC News, Mr. Clapper warned that the revelations could create serious risks to national security. “We’re very, very concerned about it,” he said. “For me, it is literally — not figuratively — literally gut-wrenching to see this happen, because of the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities.” Mr. Snowden, a native of North Carolina, told The Guardian that he signed up in 2003 for an Army Special Forces training program because he wanted to fight in Iraq. “I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression,” he said. But he said he had quickly become disillusioned with the military. “Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone,” he said. After breaking his legs during a training accident, Mr. Snowden was discharged from the Army and took a job as a security guard at an N.S.A. secret facility on the University of Maryland’s campus, according to The Guardian, which said it had confirmed his story. Despite not having a high school degree, he was later hired by the C.I.A. to work on information technology security, serving in Geneva. In 2009, he joined the N.S.A. as a contractor at a facility in Japan, where, he said, he watched “as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in.” Most recently, Mr. Snowden has been part of a Booz Allen team working at an N.S.A. facility in Hawaii. Three weeks ago, he made final preparations to disclose the classified documents, The Guardian said. It said he had copied the documents and told a supervisor that he needed to take a few weeks off to deal with medical problems. He then flew to Hong Kong. While it was not clear whether Mr. Snowden had remained in Hong Kong, if he had, his presence could complicate any possible American effort to extradite him for prosecution. A British colony until its return to China in 1997, Hong Kong retains autonomy from the mainland in its immigration system and its rule of law. Hong Kong has an independent immigration system, but it is part of China for purposes of foreign policy. Hong Kong has an extradition agreement with the United States, in case American officials can provide a legal basis for seeking Mr. Snowden’s transfer to the United States. Hong Kong also has a very long tradition, dating back to British control, of close cooperation with the United States on criminal and criminal intelligence issues. There was no indication in the Guardian article that Mr. Snowden had ever acquired legal residency in Hong Kong, so he would appear to be subject in principle to the 90-day limit that all American passport holders have for visa-free stays there. Another complexity for Mr. Snowden is that the new administration of President Xi Jinping of China is pursuing better relations with the United States, including a meeting with Mr. Obama on Friday and Saturday in California, and may be more inclined than usual to put pressure on officials in Hong Kong to hand over Mr. Snowden. On Sunday evening, Booz Allen released a statement confirming Mr. Snowden’s employment. “News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm,” the statement said . “We will work closely with our clients and authorities in their investigation of this matter.” The revelation that Mr. Snowden worked for Booz Allen is perhaps the most awkward for Mike McConnell, a former head of the N.S.A. and director of national intelligence who in 2011 was promoted to vice chairman at Booz Allen. He is now responsible for driving Booz Allen’s cybercapabilities and advancing its relationship with his former agency. Mr. McConnell said in an interview last year that the United States was not using its full capabilities to address threats from foreign cyberattacks because of privacy concerns. “If you harness all the capabilities of our nation, you could have a better understanding of foreign threats,” he said. “But what makes it hard is that everyone has an opinion. There’s very little appreciation for the threat, and there are so many special interests, particularly civil liberty groups with privacy concerns. That mix keeps us from getting to the crux of the national issue.”

Edward Snowden
Government Surveillance
NSA
Classified Information
Barack Obama
Guardian British Newspaper
Washington Post
Booz Allen Hamilton
John Michael McConnell
Hong Kong


Bomb in Yemen Kills 11 Soldiers

Abstract: A car bomb exploded Monday next to a military checkpoint in the central town of Radda, killing 11 soldiers, security and military officials said. The bombing came on the same day that the military launched a wide offensive against militants in surrounding Bayda Province, which has become an stronghold of Al Qaeda. (AP)


12 Hours Before Yangtze Disaster, Tourists Enjoyed a Morning on Land

Abstract: CHIBI, China — The tourist park here beside the Yangtze River was bustling on Monday with cruise ship passengers on a port of call. They strolled through the lush grounds, laughing and taking pictures. Some sat next to a lake and a line of toy cannons pointed over the water. “There were more than 400 people here that day in the park,” said a man sitting next to the cannons on Thursday who gave only his surname, Zhou. “Some of them fired off these cannons. They were happy playing here.” Those were the among the final peaceful moments in the lives of about 440 people who are now presumed dead after their ship, the Oriental Star, capsized 12 hours later, farther upstream by the town of Jianli. The ship, also called the Eastern Star, tipped upside down during a raging thunderstorm that struck after 9 p.m. There were 456 people on board, and only a handful are known to have survived. Their last port of call was this small town in Hubei Province on the southeastern bank of the Yangtze, about 72 nautical miles from where the boat capsized, or 95 miles by car. Chibi is known across China as the site of the pivotal Battle of Red Cliffs in the ancient legend of the Three Kingdoms. Many Chinese learn about the battle from childhood. Chibi is a regular stop on riverboat tours of the Yangtze ; it lies east of the famous Three Gorges and the large dam built in that area, considered the highlight of such tours. Years ago, Chibi was turned into a tourist park with fake ramparts, watchtowers and battlefield tents. This is where the dead and missing tourists of the Oriental Star walked on land for the last time on Monday, taking photographs of one another posing next to battlements and statues of ancient warriors. Investigating Why the Oriental Star Capsized on the Yangtze River At about 9:20 p.m. that evening, the Oriental Star had passed a cargo ship that had anchored to wait out the storm. At the time, park employees did not know they would be the last outsiders to see most of the tourists alive. “They fired off a lot of shots,” said Mr. Zhou, who charges tourists about $5 to fire 13 white balls from the toy cannons at paper targets standing in the lake. “They liked the cannons.” A shopkeeper in the park, Jiang Siqiang, 35, said many of the tourists had looked at his souvenirs: goose-feather fans, small figurines of the heroes of the Three Kingdoms and cakes of tea leaves. “They didn’t buy much,” he said. “But there was one man who bought fried dough sticks to eat. He was hungry.” Mr. Jiang said another cruise ship from Jiangsu Province, where the Oriental Star also began its journey, had arrived at Chibi about half an hour before the Oriental Star on Monday morning. It then left half an hour earlier. “If the Oriental Star had left here a half-hour earlier or a half-hour later, it would have been safe,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been caught in the storm.” A website that tracks global ship movements, MyShips , shows the Oriental Star stopping at Chibi at 5:01 a.m. and setting off again at 11:38 a.m. Employees here said the tourists had entered the park around 7:30 or 8 in the morning. They had just spent the night aboard the ship after a stop in Wuhan, a city of 10 million that is one of the major ports on the Yangtze. Chibi was the last scheduled stop on land before the ship was to reach another city, Jingzhou, late that night or the next day. A security guard said the hundreds of tourists disembarked on a floating dock in the river, then walked past a row of empty reconstructed battlefield tents facing the water. They ascended stairs to fake ramparts with a view of the Yangtze. Then many of them walked down wet steps to a platform at the river’s edge where they could see, just dozens of meters away, the word for “red cliffs” written in red on a rock jutting from the water. It is the iconic image of the site, known to many Chinese. People often pose for photos on the viewing platform. Mr. Jiang, the shopkeeper, said he did not think the accident would deter people from taking the cruises. “These boats are safe,” he said. “Planes go down all the time, and people still fly in planes.”

Boat Accidents
Yangtze River
Chongqing Oriental Ferry Company
Chibi
Cruises


Private School Girls Stampede to Scouting

Abstract: Two dozen fourth graders from the Chapin School, all in regulation green vests that were dotted with badges, popped up from their chairs to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Girl Scout promise : “On my honor. ...” The girls, members of Troop 3157 of the Junior Girl Scouts , had a snack — string cheese — and discussed the troop’s closing ceremony in June, where they would present the fruits of their “create your own business” projects. These include custom pillows, knitted iPod cases and baked goods for people with food allergies . Then it was on to the day’s outing: a trip to a local landmark. “O.K.,” said the troop leader, Alyssa Moeder . “Who knows what Gracie Mansion is?” “It’s where the mayors used to live,” answered a petite, curly-haired 10-year-old named Grace. “But Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t live there,” she confided. “Why?” asked Missy Rice, co-leader of the troop. “Because,” Grace said, “he has a much better house.” Scouting has come to New York’s private schools, a world known more for couture and expensive co-ops than for cookies and campcraft. Besides Chapin, schools with newly formed troops include Berkeley Carroll, Brearley, Dalton, Packer Collegiate, Spence and Trinity. There are now 550 Brownies (first to third grade) or Junior Girl Scouts (fourth and fifth grade) in 25 Manhattan and Brooklyn private school troops, up from 200 girls and 9 troops last year, and from just a few dozen participants the year before. This growth, helped along by mothers who were scouts themselves, caught the Girl Scout leadership by surprise. “We were living with a false assumption,” said Dolores Swirin, the chief executive of the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York. “It was sort of an inferiority complex on our part. The thinking was that there were too many competing activities.” The push has paid off in increased membership, prestige and visibility for the Girl Scouts, and has also produced a nice little dividend. In New York, cookie sales are up 11 percent so far this year, while they are flat or up only slightly in other parts of the country. Of the five New York City scouting districts, the East River “service unit,” which includes most of the private schools, “has the highest sales rate this year,” said Dina Rabiner, a project specialist for the scouts. Recruitment efforts began five years ago with Ms. Moeder, who had been a Brownie during her childhood in Queens and whose mother had been a scout leader. She was looking for a troop for her daughter Nicole, who was a kindergartner at Chapin. At the invitation of a friend who was on the Girl Scout Council board, Ms. Moeder attended the organization’s annual tribute dinner, “and it was quite moving to see all they were doing with the programming,” she said. So Ms. Moeder, a first vice president in Merrill Lynch ’s private banking and investment group, joined the board, too. Soon after, Ms. Moeder said, when she sent fellow kindergarten parents an e-mail message to generate interest in establishing a Brownie troop the following school year, “we were full within 48 hours and had a waiting list.” Ms. Moeder has just sent out e-mail registration forms for a Brownie troop at Chapin that will include her younger daughter, Sarah, who is 6. “We’re already oversubscribed,” she said. Madelyn Adamson, a onetime Campfire Girl (a group like the Scouts), had a similar experience when she started a troop at Columbia Grammar for her daughter Elissa. “We thought we’d get 10 girls, and we got 25,” she said. “The only issue that came up was parents saying, ‘My daughter doesn’t like wearing uniforms. Does she have to wear a uniform?’ We let them choose between a sash and a vest.” In fact, Ms. Swirin said, the uniform is optional. “You’re considered in uniform,” she said, “just wearing the membership pin.” The New York Girl Scouts, who have 22,356 members across six levels ranging from Daisies (generally kindergarten and sometimes first grade) to Ambassadors (11th and 12th grade), have long had troops in public and parochial schools. But Ms. Swirin said, “Girl scouting had not had a presence in the independent schools for generations.” Sensing the beginnings of a revival, the organization realized the gold that could be mined and hired Ms. Rabiner about 18 months ago to spearhead the expansion in private schools. “It’s kind of a courting process,” she said. “The progressive schools have been less willing, but they’re starting to come around. Some schools just told me, ‘We don’t do Girl Scouts.’ ” She declined to name the schools. Not surprisingly, the Boy Scouts are hoping to follow the girls’ lead. “We’ve identified neighborhoods where there’s a heavy concentration of kids and not enough troops to support them,” said William Kelly, spokesman for the Greater New York Councils, Boy Scouts of America. “The Upper East Side is one of those target areas.” While otherwise staying uninvolved, some schools, including Trinity, Columbia Grammar and Chapin, have made classrooms — and sometimes snacks — available for troop meetings. These gatherings, which in some instances occur only monthly, make scouting a relatively easy sell for students juggling homework, piano lessons and sports. “The activities are very appealing to this age level, and the girls get a finished product, whether it’s a badge or the sale of a box of cookies,” said Stanley Seidman, the director of the lower school at Columbia Grammar. Scouting’s newfound popularity among the private schools, he suggested, is a reaction against life lived on the Internet. “There’s a wholesomeness about scouting that should be encouraged,” he said. “It may not be quite the thing in the view of our more sophisticated parents, but I think it’s great.” Troop leaders play a significant role in organizing activities. One mother, a docent at the Metropolitan Museum, organized a special tour there; another, a yoga instructor, led her troop in a yoga class. Last year, Ms. Moeder’s troop did their own version of “Project Runway,” an activity that involved a trip to the garment district, the purchase of fabric and the creation of patterns, and that culminated in a fashion show. “I also had my dermatologist come and talk to the girls about skin care,” Ms. Moeder said. “Afterward, she told me there was nothing she could tell them they didn’t already know.” Ultimately, cookie selling and tent pitching are great equalizers. Like other Girl Scouts, the scouts in private schools busily push thin mints, Samoas and Do-Si-Dos and brave overnight trips to Camp Kaufmann in Dutchess County , a local scouting tradition. “They had to clean the bathroom at Girl Scout camp,” Ms. Moeder said. “For a lot of them, it was the first time they had to clean a bathroom.”

Girl Scouts
Private Schools
Chapin School
Women and Girls


Apple-Samsung Case Shows Smartphone as Lawsuit Magnet

Abstract: The smartphone in your hand is a marvel of innovation, packing sophisticated computing and communications technologies into a sleek digital device. It is also a litigation magnet. In the last few years, the companies in the smartphone industry have spent billions of dollars buying patents and hundreds of millions suing one another. On Friday, that battle reached a peak with the decision by a federal jury in San Jose, Calif., to award Apple $1.05 billion in damages from Samsung for infringing on just six patents. The case underscores how dysfunctional the patent system has become. Patent litigation has followed every industrial innovation, whether it is steam engines, cars, phones or semiconductors, but the smartphone wars are bigger, global and unusually complex. And it is the courts, rather than the patent office, that are being used to push companies toward a truce. In the end, consumers may be the losers. “It is hard not to see all the patent-buying and patent lawsuits as a distortion of the role of patents,” said Josh Lerner, an economist and patent expert at Harvard Business School. “They are supposed to be an incentive for innovation.” By one estimate, as many as 250,000 patents can be used to claim ownership of some technical or design element in a smartphone. Each patent is potentially a license to sue. Samsung says it will challenge the jury’s decision, which covered design basics like the shape of the iPhone itself and its array of small on-screen icons. So the courtroom conflict could continue for years, and even then, the case is but one of dozens of suits and countersuits in 10 countries between Apple and Samsung, the world’s two leading smartphone makers. But Apple has more than Samsung in its sights in its litigation campaign against the Korean electronics giant. Samsung is the leader among companies using Google’s Android mobile operating system. So while Apple may be suing Samsung in courtrooms from Germany to Australia, the real enemy is up the road from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., at the Googleplex in Mountain View. Ultimately, the Apple-Samsung roadshow is just the main attraction in the global smartphone patent wars. The roster of litigants includes Microsoft, Nokia, HTC, Google’s Motorola Mobility subsidiary and others. In a recent case between Apple and Motorola, Judge Richard A. Posner, a prominent federal appeals court judge in Chicago, said in court that the use of patents in the smartphone industry showed a system in “chaos.” In June, Judge Posner dismissed the case, chastising both sides. He heaped scorn on Apple’s broad claims for its user-experience patents and on Motorola’s claim that Apple should pay a rich royalty on its basic communications patents. Both companies have appealed. The disputes are fueled, legal experts say, by companies rushing to apply for patents as both defensive and offensive weapons, and by overburdened government examiners granting patents too easily. “The smartphone patent battles are enabled by lots of trivial patents that never should have been granted in the first place,” said James E. Bessen, a patent expert and lecturer at the Boston University School of Law. “That’s where Judge Posner was coming from in his ruling.” To the winners of the patent wars, the rewards will be rich. Mobile computing, or smartphones and tablets, is the most lucrative and fastest-growing market in business. It has made Apple the most valuable company in the world. As Samsung passed Apple in the last year to become the largest smartphone maker, its profits surged along with its sales. Despite the hostilities, experts say the smartphone patent wars will eventually end in an industrial armistice. The California court decision, if it holds up on appeal, could have that effect. “This ruling sends a message to all the handset makers that you have to make truly differentiated products that look different,” said Colleen V. Chien, an assistant professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law. “And that’s the message Apple wanted to send with its litigation.” Most legal experts thought Apple would have the most trouble winning infringement judgments on its design patents, which are generally considered weaker than engineering patents for hardware or software, known as utility patents. But the jury found that Samsung infringed on three of the four design patents in the case. The fourth was a patent for shape of a tablet computer — a rectangle with rounded corners. “This could open up a whole new front in the patent wars, as companies race to file applications for design patents,” said Kevin G. Rivette, a Silicon Valley consultant and former vice president of intellectual property strategy for I.B.M. Yet Mr. Rivette is convinced that the smartphone patent wars will subside and an accommodation will be reached. The sheer number of smartphone patents and the speed of innovation in product development undermine the power of the patents. That is very different than the role patents play in an industry like pharmaceuticals, where a blockbuster drug may be covered by a single patent or a few. In chemistry, the molecule is the patentable idea. Smartphones are very different. An infringement ruling can slow a rival down for a few months, but not block it. Samsung engineers, for example, have already devised an alternative to one of the patents found to have been infringed upon in the California decision — the “bounce” feature. Pull a finger from the top of the iPhone’s touch screen to the bottom and the page bounces. On the newest Samsung smartphones, the same downward finger stroke brings a blue glow at the bottom on the touch screen, not a bounce. “In this industry, patents are not a clean weapon to stop others,” Mr. Rivette said. “The technology, like water, will find its way around impediments.”

Inventions and Patents
Smartphones
Software
Suits and Litigation
Apple Inc
Samsung Group


Day 81: The Latest on the Oil Spill

Abstract: N.A.A.C.P. Critical of BP’s Hiring The N.A.A.C.P. has sent a letter to BP expressing concerns that minority members helping with the Gulf of Mexico cleanup tend to be assigned tougher, lower-paying jobs than whites. Benjamin T. Jealous, the civil rights organization’s president, said in the letter dated Friday that he wanted to meet with BP’s chief executive. The N.A.A.C.P. also says minority contractors are not receiving equal consideration for work. And it claims that contractors are busing in workers from out of state instead of hiring local residents who have lost their livelihoods because of the spill. Louisiana Governor Says Berm Is Working Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said the sand berm the state built in front of the Chandeleur islands has stopped oil from going farther inland. The governor said Louisiana National Guard troops had collected 500 pounds of oiled debris on the sand berm. He said on Friday that a dredge had renewed work on the berm after bad weather and high waves battered Louisiana in recent days. Environmentalists and coastal scientists have questioned how well the sand berm would work. They say it will be washed out quickly and do little to stop oil. Mr. Jindal is pushing for more natural coastal defenses, like rock barriers and sand barriers. An interactive map tracking the spill and where it has made landfall, live video of the leak, a guide to online spill resources and additional updates: nytimes.com/national .

Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Offshore Drilling and Exploration
Accidents and Safety
BP Plc
Gulf of Mexico


Japan Lifts Its Ban on Lobster Imports

Abstract: PORTLAND, Me. (AP) — Japan has lifted a ban on imports of North American lobster that had been linked to a misunderstanding over safety, industry officials said Thursday. The ban took effect this week after the Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to eat the green substance known as tomalley that is found in the body cavity of lobsters. Tomalley can be contaminated by red tide even though lobster meat remains safe to eat. In place of the ban, lobster from areas with known red tide contamination will be tested for paralytic shellfish poisoning, which is caused by red tide, said Bonnie Spinazzola, executive director of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association in New Hampshire. Lobster found to be below a certain threshold will be allowed into the country, she said.

Lobsters
Recalls and Bans of Products
Food and Drug Administration
Japan


Intel Chief Calls on Peers to Invest in U.S.

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Paul S. Otellini , the chief executive of Intel , made an uncharacteristic lunge toward the limelight on Tuesday, holding up his company’s $7 billion investment in new computer chip factories as a patriotic gesture for other businesses to follow. Although he had already told shareholders and Wall Street analysts of the company’s investment plans, Mr. Otellini used the opportunity of a speech before the Economic Club in Washington to vow that Intel would spend more money than ever to expand chip factories in the United States. He made that promise despite a precipitous decline in sales and profits of computer chips, the layoffs of at least 5,000 workers and the closing of older chip plants in Asia and the United States. He also urged companies trying to survive the recession to follow Intel’s model of investing in future products. Such a message comes from a company that earned $11 billion in cash last year and uses its manufacturing prowess and financial strength as an edge over rivals. “I thought it was very important for Intel, who is clearly a bellwether company, to be able to make this announcement in an environment where, quite frankly, there is a lot of doom and gloom,” Mr. Otellini said in a telephone interview after the speech. The severity of the economic decline prompted Mr. Otellini to make a rare speech tied to investing in the United States, he said. “This is all about confidence,” he said. “Economic cycles are about confidence.” Intel’s investment will go toward chip plants in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico, not the factories overseas. “We believe in the company and in this country,” Mr. Otellini said. These facilities will produce a new line of cheaper and more energy-efficient chips late this year. Historically, Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has invested in the plants, which cost more than $3 billion each, even during lulls in demand for computers. As a result, the company believes that the more advanced chip-making technology gives it more than a year’s lead over rivals. Advanced Micro Devices, Intel’s main competitor, has found the cost of building chip factories so prohibitive that it is trying to turn over that part of its operation to a newly created company to stay focused on design. On Tuesday, A.M.D. said it would need to delay a shareholder vote on the creation of the company, jointly owned by A.M.D. and an investment firm based in Abu Dhabi, until next week.

Intel Corp
Computer Chips
Company Reports
Otellini Paul S


A Big Deal, Even in Manhattan: A Tower Goes for $1.8 Billion

Abstract: Records are still being broken as fast as they can be set in New York real estate. Tishman Speyer Properties, the company that bought Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 billion last month in the biggest real estate deal in the country, has agreed to sell the 41-story skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street for $1.8 billion to a New Jersey real estate family, the Kushners. The price is more than three times what a group led by Tishman Speyer paid for the building six years ago and the highest price ever paid for a single office building in the United States. The Kushners, who own 22,000 apartments and more than five million square feet of office and industrial space in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, are relatively unknown as real-estate players in Manhattan . But they are making a head-turning splash buying a tower that has served as a symbol of corporate power and elegance since it opened in 1957. Brooks Brothers has a store on the ground floor. Tenants include high-powered law firms and bankers. At the top of the building is the Grand Havana Room, an exclusive cigar bar that offers stunning views to the politically connected and the fabulously wealthy who are its members. “This is a great acquisition for our company,” said Jared Kushner, 25, a principal at Kushner Companies, who signed the contract to buy the building Monday night. “We are upping our presence in Manhattan. It’s a logical expansion for us.” Kushner also owns the Puck Building downtown. Earlier this year, Mr. Kushner paid an estimated $10 million for a majority stake in The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper with a small but influential readership in New York’s real estate, political and media circles. Mr. Kushner’s father, Charles B. Kushner, is a company founder and a newsmaker in his own right. A major Democratic fund-raiser, Charles Kushner was convicted last year of 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign donations. He was released from prison earlier this year. Now the Kushners have acquired a major trophy. “This’ll wind up being the highest price in the country for a single building,” said Dan Fasulo, director of market analysis for Real Capital Analytics, a research and consulting firm. “It’s amazing. But nothing surprises me anymore in this market.” With vacancy rates low, rents rising and few new buildings coming on line, local and international tycoons, pension funds and other investors have lined up with billions of dollars to buy New York real estate. The sale of 666 Fifth Avenue will surpass the previous record for an office building, which was set last year when Tishman Speyer bought the MetLife Building for $1.72 billion. But while Tishman Speyer bought the MetLife Building for $604 per square foot, the company sold 666 Fifth for twice that, or $1,200 per square foot. In 2000, Tishman Speyer led a group that bought Rockefeller Center, a commercial and retail complex, for $1.85 billion. “New York City is the greatest place in the world to own real estate,” said Rob Speyer, a senior managing director at Tishman Speyer. “We’re thrilled with the outcome and wish the Kushners great success.” Mr. Speyer said the partnership, which includes TMW, a German investment firm that also owns the Chrysler Building in partnership with Tishman Speyer, had always planned to acquire the tower, improve it and then sell it off. He said deal was unrelated to a separate partnership’s purchase of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, a collection of 11,200 apartments in 110 buildings overlooking the East River. But the Tishman family’s history is intertwined with 666 Fifth. The 1.5 million-square-foot tower was developed by Tishman Realty and Construction and was originally known as the Tishman Building. The firm broke up in 1976, and the building was sold two years later for $80 million. Tishman Speyer and TMW bought it in 2000 for $518 million. They expanded and upgraded the retail portion of the tower and allowed Citigroup to put its corporate logo at the top of the building, for an undisclosed seven-figure annual rent.

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


Apple and Android Note-Taking Apps Make Paper a Memory

Abstract: Like a lot of people in the ’80s, I bought a microcassette recorder to capture great ideas the way Michael Keaton’s character did in “Night Shift.” (“ Idea to eliminate garbage: edible paper .”) My recorder quickly gathered dust because it was much easier to retrieve ideas and reminders from good old inedible paper. So when I first saw apps like Evernote (free on Apple and Android ), PhatPad ($5 for iPad ) and Notability ($1 for iPad) for note-taking and organizing, they struck me as software versions of those old recorders: places where ideas go to die. I was wrong. These and other apps make it so easy to record, circulate and retrieve your most important thoughts that they’re worth far more than the few bucks you’ll spend on them. As for the other mobile software on this list, they’re headed by the new girl on the block, Siri, and she’s available only to those who bought her shiny new chariot, Apple’s iPhone 4S. If you’ve written off Siri as a cocktail party prop, as I initially did, give it another shot. Moments after a conversation in which a friend told me his e-mail address, I knew I’d eventually forget it. I opened Siri and told it to send me an e-mail with my friend’s address in the subject line. Siri didn’t render the address I spoke with perfect accuracy, but when I tapped the screen I was able to edit the e-mail draft before sending. I told Siri to remind me to be at home when my son got off the bus, and it set up an alert that reached my mobile devices and appeared on my desktop version of Apple’s iCloud service . Siri also helps with less time-sensitive notes. I’m a longtime user of the Notes app, but instead of tapping out a missive, I’m now getting accustomed to saying “write a note to myself” and then dictating the text. The text immediately appears in Notes, and if I want to export it later, I can e-mail it from within the app. As a free-standing app on all of Apple’s mobile devices, Notes is nimble but rudimentary. The same goes for the free Android app that I use for the same purposes, Freenote . For a more comprehensive note-taking and organizing system, I’ve found nothing better than Evernote. Here, Android users actually have an advantage over Apple users, but I’ll get to that. Evernote holds all your digital ephemera and helps you with the filing. You create notes in the form of text, audio clips or photos, and as soon as they’re entered into the app, you can retrieve them from any other Web-connected device. Likewise, if you enter a note on the Web version of the service, it appears in the app or on Evernote’s free desktop version. That synchronization is a trick Apple’s iCloud service can also perform, but on Evernote you can quickly get access to a wider range of your stuff. You can label your notes and sort them by subject matter or date, among other things, and you can search them by keyword. The app’s description suggests that if you take a picture of text, that text will be searchable, but this feature did not work for me. Heavy users of Evernote might want to consider upgrading to the service’s paid version ($5 a month, or $45 annually), which offers more storage. Given Evernote’s all-around quality, I was puzzled by its failure to include a user-friendly alerts system. The Evernote Corporation, creator of the app, released a feature in June that lets users copy a link to a note into a calendar application, but it’s a flawed approach. Where, for instance, would you paste a link into Google Calendar? So when I want to set up an alert, I instead use Apple’s Calendar app in conjunction with its iCloud service and, on Android, Google’s calendar. When I typed a reminder into Apple’s Calendar, my Apple devices received alerts. And as long as I kept Calendar in an open tab on my laptop’s browser, the alerts reached me there too. On Android, Google Calendar sent text and e-mail alerts to any device that was logged on to Google. Since most Android users log on to the service to use various features — not the least of which is the Android Market, which Google owns — alerts are essentially automatic. If you own a Macintosh computer and an Android, you’re probably best off using the Google calendar, since that will push alerts to your mobile device as well as the desktop, whereas the Apple calendar will not. Some people remain wedded to the idea of handwritten notes — even when the writing appears on a touch screen — and for them, the best apps I’ve found so far are Notability and PhatPad. From a sketching and handwriting standpoint, PhatPad is smoother, and unlike many similar apps, it lets you lean your wrist on the screen and write without problems. Notability’s audio features, on the other hand, are better than those of PhatPad. With Notability, if you record a lecture or a presentation and take notes simultaneously, you can touch a word and hear what was said when you wrote the word. For students, doctors and coaches, among others, this feature will be highly useful. On Android, I’d recommend Skitch (free on Android and Apple ), a slick sketchpad that lets you decorate and share snapshots, or just doodle on a blank page. Evernote this year bought Skitch, but so far that has helped only Android users, who can drop their Skitch creations into the Evernote service and organize them accordingly. One assumes that the same connection will eventually reach the Apple version. If Evernote could manage to buy a calendar app in the meantime, its service might be all things to all people. Quick Calls The Professional Chef iPad Edition ($50), an interactive textbook for aspiring chefs, is extremely comprehensive and highly polished, with videos, text and slide shows. Google Translate (free on Android), an amazingly nimble translator, recently expanded its conversation mode to encompass 14 languages.

Mobile Applications
Android (Operating System)
Translation


Mets Go Quietly in Loss to Vazquez and Marlins

Abstract: MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — With huge swaths of seats unfilled, Sun Life Stadium was eerily quiet Monday night. So were the Mets ’ bats. The Mets had 10 hits, but three of them came in the final inning, as they were routed by the Florida Marlins, 9-3 . For the second time in a week, the Mets were subdued by Marlins starter Javier Vazquez , who beat them, 6-0 , at Citi Field on Aug. 30. Vazquez was almost as good Monday. He allowed six hits and one run, struck out seven and walked none in seven innings. He easily outshined his counterpart, Chris Capuano, who was pulled after four innings, having given up six runs and eight hits. “The ball was up, and it was flat,” Capuano said of his pitches. “It was another one of those nights I could not make the adjustment.” The Mets scored their first run in the fourth inning, when David Wright hit a triple and scored on Angel Pagan’s groundout. Jason Bay added a two-run homer to left in the ninth. “It’s great for Jason,” Manager Terry Collins said of Bay, who had two hits and raised his average to .233. “I hope he does finish strong.” Capuano threw a wild pitch in the first that allowed Emilio Bonifacio to score and gave up a run-scoring single to Logan Morrison later in the inning. Jose Lopez homered in the third, making it 3-0, and the Marlins ended Capuano’s night with a three-run fourth, highlighted by a two-run single by Bonifacio. D. J. Carrasco, who replaced Capuano, did not fare much better, allowing three runs and seven hits in two innings. Carrasco gave up a run in the fifth and two more in the sixth, when Gaby Sanchez hit a two-run single to left.

Baseball
New York Mets
Florida Marlins
Vazquez Javier


Cardinals, Minus an Ace, Were Able to Piece Together a New Plan

Abstract: MILWAUKEE Sometimes, the plan works. That is how the Milwaukee Brewers arrived in the National League Championship Series. They added important pieces along the way, but mostly, the players they counted on produced the way they hoped. The St. Louis Cardinals came to spring training with two ace starters, and a week later, they were down to one. Adam Wainwright, the runner-up for the National League Cy Young Award last season, felt a sensation in his elbow the first day he threw to hitters. An examination revealed the worst: Wainwright needed reconstructive elbow surgery and would miss the season. “It was devastating,” said John Mozeliak, the Cardinals’ general manager. “But we knew that after about a 24-hour pity party for the club, it had to end. Then it had to be, what can we do to right this? We had to adapt.” There was no way, Mozeliak decided, to directly replace Wainwright, who had earned 39 victories the previous two seasons. At the time, the Cardinals could not have known that another right-hander, Edwin Jackson, who started their 12-3 victory in Game 2 on Monday, would become available in a trade in July. The Cardinals’ best hope was that a reliever, Kyle McClellan, could hold down Wainwright’s spot while they figured out how to contend. The Cardinals had another ace starter, Chris Carpenter, but they lost 11 of his first 15 starts. Yet even if Carpenter had started as well as he finished, losing Wainwright was bound to sting. “I don’t think anybody ever replaces the loss of a No. 1,” Manager Tony La Russa said. “I don’t care if you have another No. 1 like Chris; that’s a major hit. But what is one of the subjects all coaches, all managers cover every year? Nobody goes through a season where everything falls into place. Adversity, slumps.” The Cardinals had more than their share. Mozeliak said they planned to outslug other teams, and to a large extent, they did. The team led the league in runs, weathering injuries to David Freese and Allen Craig and shorter disabled list stints by Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday. Lance Berkman rewarded Mozeliak for gambling $8 million that he could handle right field. As he started on his slow road to recovery, Wainwright liked what he saw. He knew firsthand that injuries do not have to be devastating. As a rookie in 2006, he took over the closer’s role from the veteran Jason Isringhausen, who missed the postseason with a hip injury. Wainwright responded by closing out the Mets in the N.L.C.S. and the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. “In a way, we lost our closer this year, too,” Wainwright said, referring to Ryan Franklin, who lost his job after blowing four of his first five save chances. “Jason Motte stepped up. So the teams are similar in that regard. It’s just a very strong-willed group.” Wainwright said La Russa and the pitching coach, Dave Duncan, never allowed players to feel sorry for themselves. Even when the Cardinals fell 10 ½ games behind the Atlanta Braves in the wild-card race, on Aug. 25, Wainwright still believed the team was good enough for October. “I’ve had so much fun watching them and cheering them on,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of fun doing interviews, telling reporters how good we were and then getting killed for it when we weren’t playing good. But I had tremendous faith in this team, and the guys in that locker room never wavered.” Mozeliak also praised the team’s attitude, but by the end of July, he said, it was clear the roster was not deep enough. For the second summer in a row, Mozeliak turned to his major league roster, not his minor league depth, to make a major trade. The Cardinals, it turned out, had so much offense that they could spare a bat while keeping their best prospects. A year after trading Ryan Ludwick in a deal for starter Jake Westbrook, Mozeliak shipped off another outfielder for pitching. Colby Rasmus and three others went to the Toronto Blue Jays. The Cardinals got a left-handed reliever (Marc Rzepczynski), a right-handed reliever (Octavio Dotel) and Jackson, a starter the Blue Jays had obtained from the Chicago White Sox. “I think it was just a couple of pieces that they needed to fill in to what they already had, and it just made one complete piece,” said Jackson, who allowed two runs in four and a third innings Monday. “We came over, and definitely the guys made it easy on us.” Jackson was 5-2 down the stretch and beat Philadelphia in the division series. Dotel, Rzepczynski and the left-hander Arthur Rhodes, who was signed after Texas released him, stifled the Phillies at pivotal moments. Rafael Furcal, acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers for a prospect, also did damage. The Cardinals, a work in progress without an ace, have made it all work. And although Wainwright is limited to throwing in the bullpen, he said he would not miss the ride. “You weren’t going to keep me away,” Wainwright said. “No way was I going to be anywhere besides where these guys are.”

Baseball
St Louis Cardinals
Wainwright Adam
Mozeliak John
Carpenter Chris


Derek Jeter Takes a Swing, and Steps Into Tiger Woods’s Spotlight

Abstract: NASSAU, Bahamas — The isolated, low-key setting at Albany Golf and Beach Resort Club was the perfect place for the superstar to make his debut. Not Tiger Woods, who will make his first competitive start of 2016 on Thursday, but Derek Jeter, the retired Yankees shortstop who played in a group with Rickie Fowler on Wednesday in the Hero World Challenge pro-am. Jeter has known Woods since the late 1990s, when they both were in the nascent stages of their Hall of Fame-worthy careers. Jeter has had a standing invitation to play in this tournament, which Woods hosts, but he never felt comfortable enough with the state of his game to unveil it in public. Even when Jeter hosted a charity golf tournament, he limited his playing to hitting one shot with every group because he did not want to embarrass himself, he said. “I embarrassed myself a lot through my career, but never intentionally,” he said Wednesday. “So I stayed away from it.” Since retiring from baseball after the 2014 season, Jeter has poured his competitive juices into golf, lowering his handicap to a 10. “It’s probably the most frustrating thing I’ve done, because the ball’s not moving, right?” Jeter said with a laugh. “I can hit it, but it just doesn’t go where I want it to go. So I’ve gotten addicted to trying to improve.” He added, “You’ve got to find something that sort of quenches that competitive thirst after you retire.” The reason he chose golf, he said, is that with the exception of pro-am rounds, he can play with friends in peace. “You go out with three or four people that you know and nobody bothers you or interrupts you, and you have fun,” he said. “I love the game.” As a youngster, Jordan Spieth was a promising left-handed pitcher and shortstop in Dallas before he decided to focus on golf. He could not help rooting for Jeter, except when the Yankees were playing against his hometown Rangers. “I cursed the guy plenty of times for what he’s done against us,” Spieth said. “At the same time, it was with full respect, obviously.” He added: “You’re not kind of in the presence of a sports figure like Derek Jeter very often. There’s not that many alive — you think of Michael Jordan, you think of Tiger, Jack” — a reference to the 18-time major winner Jack Nicklaus. “It’s pretty special.” Spieth, 23, who has thrown out the ceremonial first pitch before a Rangers game, can relate somewhat to Jeter’s reluctance to play golf in front of a crowd. He said he would not relish taking fielding practice before a Rangers game. “It doesn’t necessarily surprise me doing something uncomfortable to you with a lot of people watching and all they’ve seen you do is your skill to the highest level,” Spieth said. He added: “It’s interesting, because you think the guy’s been on the biggest stage, performing the best and very clutch, and then he does something so silly as playing in a pro-am and the fact that a few people are watching makes him nervous. But that’s I guess how it works.” Spieth was looking forward to talking to Jeter, and vice versa. “It’s just fun getting an opportunity to meet a lot of these guys that you admire from afar,” Jeter said. “It’s always fun to see these guys who are the best in the world at what they do.”


Ending an Albania-Serbia Game and Inciting a Riot, With a Joystick

Abstract: TIRANA, Albania — After investing thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours meticulously planning for his moment, Ismail Morina realized he had made a rookie mistake. It was 9:25 p.m. last Oct. 14, and Morina, a 33-year-old Albanian crane operator, was standing in one of the towers of the Church of the Holy Archangel Gabriel in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia . From there he could see into Partizan Stadium, where the soccer teams of Serbia and Albania were playing a tense qualification game for the 2016 European Championship. The match was scoreless as halftime approached. In Morina’s hands was a remote control piloting a four-rotor drone, which at that moment was gliding across the rim of the stadium trailing a large nationalist flag bearing the double-headed black Albanian eagle. That flag was about to incite a riot , a diplomatic incident between two Balkan countries, and headlines across the world. But there was one problem: Morina did not know which team was which. “Serbia was wearing red and Albania white,” he said. “I was expecting it to be the other way around!” As the drone hovered above the field, players, officials and fans looked to the sky in confusion. “I remember how quiet it went,” Morina recalled. “And then they saw the black eagle. ...” Morina’s problem was that he had flown his drone too close to a player in red, Serbia defender Stefan Mitrovic, and Mitrovic grabbed the flag and pulled the device to the ground. “I didn’t realize he wasn’t Albanian until it was too late,” Morina said. Image Kosovar troops on Saturday with Ismail Morina, who piloted the drone that stopped the 2014 Albania-Serbia match. On any given day, dozens of people stop him to pose for pictures. Credit James Montague As the Albanian and Serbian players fought for control of the flag, Serbian ultras and others invaded the field , and flares and other missiles rained down from the stands. The Albanian players ran down a tunnel, the match officials followed, and the game was abandoned. Conspiracy theories were offered as to the identity of the pilot. Initially it was reported in Serbia that the culprit was the brother of Albania’s prime minister , Edi Rama. The Albanian dressing room was searched by Serbian police officers looking for evidence, but they came up empty-handed. In fact, at that moment, the drone’s real pilot was moving through the back streets of Belgrade, hiding from the police as he tried to escape the country. The remote control was on the floor in the church tower. The fallout was intense. The Serbian government considered the drone and the flag a provocation. “If someone from Serbia had unveiled a flag of Greater Serbia in Tirana or Pristina, it would already be on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council,” Serbia’s foreign minister, Ivica Dacic, told the newspaper Blic. UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, initially ruled the game a forfeit by Albania, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport reversed that decision in July , awarding a 3-0 victory to Albania and docking Serbia 3 points for failing to control the crowd. The sanctions ended any chance Serbia had of qualification for next year’s Euro 2016 tournament in France. But on Thursday, Albania and Serbia will meet again , in the central Albanian city of Elbasan. Nearly a year later, the drone incident — and Morina — remain the talk of the town. The seeds for it were planted in 2010, he said. He had finished his shift working on a crane in Milan, where he had lived for the six years with his Italian wife and two children. When he went home and turned on his TV, he saw Italy playing Serbia in a 2012 European Championship qualification game. The match was abandoned after seven minutes because of crowd violence, but in the disturbances, two Serbian supporters wearing masks scaled a fence and used a flare to burn an Albanian flag. “I couldn’t believe it,” Morina said. “If I had gone for a shower, I would probably have missed it. But I didn’t.” A Drone Remembered 7 Photos View Slide Show › Image Marko Djurica/Reuters UEFA frequently separates teams that have political issues. Armenia and Azerbaijan are separated during UEFA tournaments because of their unresolved conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Ukrainian and Russian club teams were separated during last season’s Europa League and Champions League draws over the conflict in East Ukraine. Yet when the draw for the Euro 2016 qualification campaign was made in February last year, Albania and Serbia were allowed to be placed in the same group because, a UEFA official said , they have not been directly at war. (Significant numbers of ethnic Albanians live throughout the Balkans, most significantly in Kosovo, where in 1999 Serbia tried to crush an uprising. Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, but Serbia does not recognize it.) When Morina saw the draw for the 2016 tournament, and that the first Albania-Serbia game would be in Belgrade, he decided the setting would be “perfect.” After seeing a drone in a Milanese shop window, he bought several and began to practice flying them, destroying one in the process. “I got used to it quickly because it was like when I drive my crane; I had a joystick,” he said. A reconnaissance trip to Belgrade was wasted because he believed — incorrectly — that the game would take place at the home to Red Star Belgrade, known as Marakana stadium. When Morina realized his error, he used Google Maps to choose five or six new sites. In the end, he decided on the Church of the Holy Archangel Gabriel, which was across the street from Partizan Stadium. “It was easy,” he said. “Quiet, with a park all around. There was no one to stop me.” After his drone was pulled from the sky, Morina made his escape on foot, trying to get back to the car he had parked almost a mile away. When he saw two policemen, he said, he rolled under a parked car and waited for them to pass. Soon he was on the highway south, and a few hours later he had crossed into the safety of Kosovo. “I still thought I had failed at this point,” he said. “Then I got a call from a friend in Italy. He told me, ‘Man, you’re famous.’ ” Morina’s mission, he said, had been to send a message. The flag he attached to the drone bore the double-headed black Albanian eagle, a map of Greater Albania — a nationalistic concept that also includes territory in Macedonia, Greece and Serbia — and the date Albania won independence from the Ottomans in 1912. At the bottom was the word Autochthonous, an obscure English word that means indigenous, or native. “I am a patriot, not a nationalist, and I chose it to say to the Serbs that it is the Albanians that are native to the Balkans,” he said last week, sitting in a cafe in the Albanian capital, Tirana. “That is not to say the Serbs can’t live here,” he added. “But they have to respect our flag.” In Albania, the drone has made Ismail Morina a national hero. On any given day, dozens of people — students, war veterans, even the police — stop him to pose for pictures. His actions are still discussed on Albanian television regularly, although not always favorably. “One analyst on TV said I was both from ISIS, because the flag was black, and that I was paid by the Serbian secret service!” he said. Thursday’s rematch could be a significant moment. Assured of at least a third-place playoff spot, Albania can move to the verge of qualifying for its first major international tournament by beating Serbia. But the Albanian soccer federation has told Morina not to come; the match has been deemed high risk by UEFA, meaning no Serbian supporters — aside from 70 students — will be allowed to attend. But even after the game, life will not be the same again for Morina. He is now back in Albania permanently, having left Italy three days after the drone incident because, he said, “people knew where me and my family lived.” He knows of the threats made against him online and has even heard tales that there is a reward for his capture. “I’m not worried about the Serbian state, but extremist groups,” he said. He pulled out a gun that he bought recently. He says he keeps it with him, loaded, at all times. It is a Zastava pistol. Made in Serbia. A few days later, Morina was flipping through his private messages on Facebook at a restaurant outside Tirana. There were a number of threats. One picture, sent from a Serbian who claimed to be a former member of the country’s special forces, displayed an arsenal of guns and knives. “Maybe I’ll send a picture of my Zastava,” Morina joked, clearly worried. But in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Morina was arrested. The police reportedly seized the pistol and about 30 tickets to Thursday’s match. More important, they said Morina did not have a permit for the gun. It is unlikely that he will be allowed to watch the match in jail.

Soccer
Drones
Serbia
Albania
Flags
Civil Unrest
Euro 2016 UEFA European Championship


Hungary Faces Criticism Over Corporate Tax

Abstract: LONDON — Already under attack over controversial new media laws, Hungary faced new criticism on the first working day of its presidency of the European Union — this time being accused of discriminating against big foreign investors. Following complaints from more than a dozen West European corporations, the European Commission , the bloc’s executive, said it would investigate whether Hungary was breaking the law by levying a new crisis tax that will hit foreign companies hard. A country of 10 million, Hungary faces six months of unusually close scrutiny while it takes charge of E.U. business. Critics say the center-right Hungarian government is centralizing power and adopting populist policies with a nationalist edge, a charge rejected by the government in Budapest. The rotating presidency of the E.U. is less important following the creation of a full-time E.U president and foreign policy chief by the Lisbon Treaty. But it retains significant power for a variety of policies, from the environment to fisheries. Hungary is only the third East European nation to take over the presidency since the Union was enlarged, first in 2004 and then in 2007. Although Slovenia’s six-month term was largely uneventful, the Czech Republic’s presidency proved prone to accidents, and critics say Hungarian leadership could prove equally controversial. A landslide election victory last April brought the ruling Fidesz party to power, returning Viktor Orban to the post of prime minister. Mr. Orban, who held the job from 1998 to 2002, has now struck a nationalist tone, criticizing foreign banks and speculators and spurning further help from the International Monetary Fund. The media law places broadcast, print and online media under a new regulatory authority that can impose heavy fines and whose independence has already been questioned by the European Commission. The law has been criticized by the German government and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. “Such concentration of power in regulatory authorities is unprecedented in European democracies, and it harms media freedom,” its media freedom representative, Dunja Mijatovic, said in a statement issued late last year. Criticism from Fidesz of the governor of the Hungarian National Bank, Andras Simor, whose salary was cut, have prompted fears that his independence is being undermined. Dimitar Bechev, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Fidesz was causing concern because it was a mainstream center-right party that was moving “in a more radical direction.” “There is a common thread running across these policies, a desire to reassert a sense of national identity and national control,” he said. European corporations from outside Hungary believe they are being targeted by the crisis tax, which will be imposed on the telecommunications, retail and energy sectors. The companies made an official complaint, saying that the legislation discriminates against European businesses from outside Hungary, which is forbidden by the bloc’s rules. They argue that, because of the threshold at which they will be imposed, these taxes will largely affect foreign companies. The Hungarian government says that the tax is needed because further austerity measures would hurt growth prospects and undermine hopes of recovery. A Hungarian government briefing document on the tax suggests that it would raise around €1.8 billion, or $2.4 billion, over three years. One Hungarian official, not authorized to speak publicly, said that at least one large corporation headquartered in Hungary would have to contribute as well as foreign companies. The companies that made the complaint include the energy firms RWE and E.ON, Deutsche Telekom and the Dutch bank ING. Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle of Germany has been among the critics of the Hungarian law. “Taxes that are primarily directed at foreign companies are problematic in principle in the European internal market,” he told the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Olivier Bailly, spokesman for the European Commission, said the commission wrote to the Hungarian government in October asking for information and had received a response even before the companies sent their complaint. “We are now looking at the formal complaint and the letter from the Hungarian government,” Mr. Bailly said.

Hungary
European Union
European Commission
Politics and Government


Stampede Kills at Least 24 at Hindu Ceremony in India

Abstract: LUCKNOW, India — At least 24 people were killed and 20 others were injured in a stampede that occurred Saturday as worshipers were crossing a crowded bridge to reach a Hindu religious ceremony in northern India, the police said. The stampede took place on the outskirts of Varanasi, a city in Uttar Pradesh, a state known for its temples. Organizers were expecting 3,000 people at the ceremony, but more than 70,000 crowded into the ashram of a local Hindu leader on a bank of the Ganges River, a police officer, S. K. Bhagat, said. “We were not prepared for such a large crowd,” said Raj Bahadur, a spokesman for the organizers. The stampede happened as the police started turning people back from the overcrowded bridge, Mr. Bahadur said, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. That set off a rumor that the bridge had collapsed, and people started running for safety, he said. Nineteen people were killed at the scene, and five others died at a hospital, said Daljit Chaudhary, another police officer. Four of the 20 injured people were still in serious condition, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was deeply saddened by the episode. “I have spoken to officials and asked them to ensure all possible help to those affected,” he wrote in a Twitter post . Deadly stampedes are fairly common at Indian religious festivals, where large crowds gather in small areas.

Stampede Fatalities,casualties Varanasi Hinduism