For Times Sq. Suspect, Long Roots of Discontent

Abstract: This article was reported by Andrea Elliott , Sabrina Tavernise and Anne Barnard , and written by Ms. Elliott. Just after midnight on Feb. 25, 2006, Faisal Shahzad sent a lengthy e-mail message to a group of friends. The trials of his fellow Muslims weighed on him — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan , the plight of Palestinians , the publication in Denmark of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. Mr. Shahzad was wrestling with how to respond. He understood the notion that Islam forbids the killing of innocents, he wrote. But to those who insist only on “peaceful protest,” he posed a question: “Can you tell me a way to save the oppressed? And a way to fight back when rockets are fired at us and Muslim blood flows? “Everyone knows how the Muslim country bows down to pressure from west. Everyone knows the kind of humiliation we are faced with around the globe.” Yet by some measures, Mr. Shahzad — a Pakistani immigrant who was then 26 years old — seemed to be thriving in the West. He worked as a financial analyst at Elizabeth Arden , the global cosmetics firm. He had just received his green card, making him a legal resident in the United States . He owned a gleaming new house in Shelton, Conn. His Pakistani-American wife would soon become pregnant with their first child, whom they named Alisheba, or “beautiful sunshine.” Four years later, Mr. Shahzad stands accused of planting a car bomb in Times Square on a balmy spring evening. After his arrest two days later, on May 3, while trying to flee to Dubai , the few details that surfaced about his life echoed a familiar narrative about radicalization in the West: his anger toward his adopted country seemed to have grown in lockstep with his personal struggles. He had lost his home to foreclosure last year. At the same time he was showing signs of a profound, religiously infused alienation. But the roots of Mr. Shahzad’s militancy appear to have sprouted long before, according to interviews with relatives, friends, classmates, neighbors, colleagues and government officials, as well as e-mail messages written by Mr. Shahzad that were obtained by The New York Times . His argument with American foreign policy grew after 9/11, even as he enjoyed America’s financial promise and expansive culture. He balanced these dueling emotions with an agility common among his Pakistani immigrant friends. As Mr. Shahzad became more religious, starting around 2006, he was also turning away from the Pakistan of his youth, friends recalled, distancing himself from the liberal, elite world of his father, Bahar ul-Haq, a retired vice marshal in the Pakistani Air Force. And while in recent years Mr. Shahzad struggled to pay his bills, it is unclear that his financial hardship played a significant role in his radicalization. He still owned his home and held a full-time job when he began signaling to friends that he wanted to leave the United States. In April 2009, the same month Mr. Shahzad got his United States citizenship, he sent an e-mail message to friends that foreshadowed his militant destiny. He criticized the views of a moderate Pakistani politician, writing, “I bet when it comes to defending the lands, his opinion would be we should do dialogue.” The politician had “bought into the Western jargon” of calling the mujahedeen, or foreign fighters, “extremist,” wrote Mr. Shahzad, who urged the recipients of the message to find “a proper Sheikh to understand the Quran.” One of the recipients responded by asking Mr. Shahzad which sheikhs he followed. Writing in Urdu, Mr. Shahzad replied, “My sheikhs are in the field.” A few months later, he abruptly quit his job and left for Pakistan, where, officials say, he was later trained in bomb-making by the Pakistani Taliban. But precisely what combination of influences — political, religious and personal — drove Mr. Shahzad to violence remains a mystery, even to those close to him. “We all know these things, what the geopolitical problems are,” said Mr. Shahzad’s father-in-law, M. A. Mian, 55. “Every day we sit in our living rooms with our friends and we discuss these issues.” “But to go to this extreme, this is unbelievable,” he said, adding: “He has lovely children. Two really lovely children. As a father I would not be able to afford to lose my children.” Military Upbringing Faisal Shahzad grew up somewhat rootless. He identified proudly with his tribal Pashtun heritage, yet knew little of his father’s ancestral village, Mohib Banda, a collection of mud huts ringed by sugar and wheat fields in northwestern Pakistan. Mr. Shahzad’s father, Mr. Haq, had entered the Pakistani Air Force as a common airman before climbing the ranks as a fighter pilot who excelled at midair acrobatics, with posts in England and Saudi Arabia . By the time Mr. Shahzad was 12, his father had been transferred from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, to the Pakistani city of Quetta, followed by Rawalpindi. As the son of a senior military officer, Mr. Shahzad was swaddled in privilege, tended to by chauffeurs, servants and armed guards in an insular world made up almost exclusively of military families. Mr. Shahzad’s household was a blend of strict and liberal; Mr. Haq, who spoke British-accented English and drank alcohol socially, was stern with his children and quick to anger, friends and former colleagues recalled. When Mr. Shahzad entered high school in the mid-1990s, his family had settled in Karachi, a throbbing mega-city in the south. By then, Pakistan had plunged into chaos. As political instability and sectarian violence roiled the country, many Pakistanis blamed the United States. After propping up the Pakistani military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, in the 1980s, the American government was now imposing hefty sanctions in retaliation for Pakistan’s nuclear program. The economy stalled as anti-Americanism spread. Mr. Shahzad came of age during Pakistan’s state-sponsored jihad against India ’s military in the breakaway region of Kashmir — a conflict that granted legendary status to Pakistani jihadists. “We used to see the mujahedeen as heroes,” said one graduate of Mr. Shahzad’s high school, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “When I look back, I think, ‘What was I thinking? What were we all doing?’ But in that era, it made sense. We all wanted to do something.” It is unclear how formative these events were for Mr. Shahzad, who continued to lead a somewhat sheltered existence, living with his family in a neighborhood of stately homes fringed by palm trees and bougainvillea. His school, located on a military base, taught the same rigid curriculum — with an anti-Western slant and a strict form of Islamic studies — imposed nationally by General Zia. After graduating, Mr. Shahzad enrolled in Greenwich University, a business school in Karachi known for drawing affluent underachievers with fancy cars. Mr. Shahzad proved a mediocre student. (In high school, he had gotten D’s in English composition and microeconomics, according to a transcript.) But what he lacked in academic prowess he made up for in ambition, friends recalled; he was determined to finish his degree in the United States. Taking advantage of a partnership between his college and the University of Bridgeport, in Connecticut , Mr. Shahzad applied for a student visa. On Jan. 16, 1999, at the age of 19, Mr. Shahzad left Pakistan for a new life in America. Driven to Success The wide, maple-shaded streets leading to the University of Bridgeport seem a long way from Karachi. The quiet, tidy campus overlooks a tranquil stretch of the Long Island Sound, where ferries pass in the distance. When Mr. Shahzad started classes there, more than a third of the college’s students were foreigners — 15 of them from Pakistan. Mr. Shahzad stood out. He walked with a confident air, showing off his gym-honed muscles in tight T-shirts. He carried the air of a privileged upbringing, coming off as aloof and, at times, snobbish. While the Pakistani students stuck together, playing cricket and collecting free meals at the campus mosque, Mr. Shahzad had a wider circle of friends and a fuller social calendar. A skilled cook, he drew students to his dorm room with the scent of his simmering lobia, a Pakistani lentil dish. He worked out obsessively and, on weekends, hit New York City ’s Bengali-theme nightclubs. He loved women, recalled a former classmate, and “could drink anyone under the table.” He showed little interest in Islam. Mr. Shahzad rarely seemed pressed for cash — he had a large television in his dorm room and drove a Mitsubishi Galant . But he still looked for work. Nimble with his hands — he would later take to gardening and painting — he landed a job designing intricate gold pendants for a jeweler at a mall in Milford. While Mr. Shahzad did not seem to distinguish himself academically, he came across as witty, street smart and “fast on his feet,” recalled one classmate. He and his Pakistani peers were chasing the same dream, the classmate said: “Back then, it was all about fast cars and becoming something.” While Mr. Shahzad seemed eager to carve out a life in his host country, his anger at America flared early. The classmate recalled walking into Mr. Shahzad’s apartment a few days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to find him staring at news footage of the planes hitting the towers. “They had it coming,” Mr. Shahzad said, according to the friend, a Pakistani-American. The friend said Mr. Shahzad believed that Western countries had conspired to mistreat Muslims. “He would just go off,” said the friend, adding that he paid little heed to Mr. Shahzad’s eruptions, dismissing them as a product of his fierce Pashtun pride. “He was always saying, ‘If these people come to my land, it’s not going to be good,’ ” the friend recalled. By late 2001, Mr. Shahzad seemed focused on his American future. Having graduated from the University of Bridgeport with a bachelor’s degree in computer applications and information systems, he was working as a clerk for Elizabeth Arden in Stamford. The following year, while holding the same job, Mr. Shahzad began taking night courses at the University of Bridgeport’s business school. He had bought a black Mercedes, as well as a $205,000 condominium in Norwalk. Two years later, Mr. Shahzad sold the apartment at a $56,000 profit. His broker, Keven Courbois, was struck by Mr. Shahzad’s sense of responsibility, given that he was only 25. “I thought it was great: Look at this guy who is handling a condo on his own,” Mr. Courbois said. At times, Mr. Shahzad seemed deeply frustrated with his job at Elizabeth Arden, complaining to a friend that the company never raised his $50,000 salary. (The company declined to discuss Mr. Shahzad’s employment.) In July 2004, three months after selling his condo, Mr. Shahzad bought the gray, two-story house in Shelton, in a quiet, hilly neighborhood of well-tended flower beds and rambling older homes. He was preparing for marriage. His parents agreed on a suitable match: Huma Mian, an ebullient 23-year-old from Denver who had recently graduated with a degree in accounting, and whose Pakistani-American father was a prominent oil industry engineer and economist. On Dec. 25, 2004, they held a lavish wedding in Peshawar, Mr. Shahzad’s ancestral turf, celebrating with a rare touch of modernity: the women and men danced together. Mr. Shahzad’s “bachelor days” were behind him, the former classmate recalled. He was ready to settle down. New Religiosity Two years later, when Mr. Shahzad wrote the e-mail message telling friends that Muslims must defend themselves from “foreign infidel forces,” he seemed to be living a stable suburban life. That June, he took a new job as an analyst at the Affinion Group, a financial marketing firm in Norwalk, telling a friend that his annual income had jumped to $70,000. Two months later, he finished his master’s degree in business. On weekends, Mr. Shahzad hosted barbecues, mowed his lawn and played badminton in the yard. His wife was pregnant. Mr. Shahzad had long been critical of American foreign policy. “He was always very upset about the fabrication of the W.M.D. stunt to attack Iraq and killing noncombatants such as the sons and grandson of Saddam Hussein ,” said a close relative. In 2003, Mr. Shahzad had been copied on a Google Groups e-mail message bearing photographs of Guantánamo Bay detainees, handcuffed and crouching, below the words “Shame on you, Bush. Shame on You.” The following year, Igor Djuric, a real estate agent who helped him buy his house, recalled that Mr. Shahzad was angered by President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. If anything struck Mr. Shahzad’s friends and family as different, it was his new religiosity. He no longer drank, and was praying five times a day, stopping into mosques in Stamford, Norwalk and Bridgeport. Some of his friends thought nothing of it; plenty of Pakistani immigrants went through more spiritual phases. What set Mr. Shahzad apart, they said, was not his Islamic devotion, but the particular religious frame through which he had begun to interpret world events. His 2006 e-mail message echoed the same arguments found on militant Internet forums: that the West is at war with Islam, and Muslims are suffering humiliation because they have strayed from their religious duty to fight back. “The crusade has already started against Islam and Muslims with cartoons of our beloved Prophet,” wrote Mr. Shahzad, who went on to quote verses from the Koran as proof of what “Allah commands about fighting for Islam.” During casual conversations with friends, Mr. Shahzad had taken to citing Islamic theology. He was a fan of Ibn Taymiyyah, a 14th-century scholar who inspired a puritanical following, and Abul Ala Mawdudi, a chief architect of the Islamic revival and founder of Pakistan’s largest Islamic political party, Jamaat-e-Islami. On visits home, Mr. Shahzad began to clash with his father. Mr. Haq had long been wary of political Islam, and found his son’s evolution troubling, friends recalled in interviews. The scrutiny went both ways. Mr. Shahzad glared when Mr. Haq once asked him to fetch water to mix with his whiskey, a family friend recalled. “He wanted to change his father,” said the classmate. By late 2008, Mr. Shahzad seemed to oscillate between contentment and frustration. He doted on his two small children, even changing diapers to the amazement of his more patriarchal relatives. But he felt demeaned at work, complaining of a manager who used to “insult him,” a close relative recalled. He felt that American Muslims were treated differently after 9/11, said the classmate. “He used to say that when they refer to us, they say ‘Americans of Pakistani origin’ — they don’t say ‘Americans with German origin,’ ” the relative recalled. “These kinds of things, they were all the time cooking in his head.” During a visit to Pakistan in 2008, Mr. Shahzad gave perhaps the clearest indication yet that he was heading down a militant path. He asked his father for permission to fight in Afghanistan, friends of the father and the relative recalled. Mr. Haq denied the request and appealed to the friends for help in managing his son, they said. The following year brought a turning point. Back in Connecticut, Mr. Shahzad told his former classmate that he was ready to leave the United States. He was tired of his commute. He found it stressful to keep up mortgage payments on a single income, even though he had urged his wife not to work, said Dr. M. Saud Anwar, a pulmonologist in Connecticut who shares acquaintances with Mr. Shahzad. “He was like, ‘Why am I paying so much for everything — why am I even here?’ ” the classmate recalled. As time went on, Mr. Shahzad’s pride kept him from asking for money from either his family or his wife’s, according to a close relative and the classmate. His plan was to wait until he became an American citizen, so he could find lucrative work with an American company in the Middle East and live among Muslims, the classmate recalled. Mr. Shahzad got his citizenship on April 17, 2009. That same month, he sent the e-mail message to friends saying that his “sheikhs are in the field.” (Dr. Anwar provided portions of the e-mail message, which he obtained from Mr. Shahzad’s friend, to The Times and the Federal Bureau of Investigation .) Return to Pakistan Over the next few months, Mr. Shahzad and his wife held yard sales. The marriage appeared to be strained; Mr. Shahzad was pressuring his wife to wear a hijab , Dr. Anwar said. He also insisted that the family return to Pakistan while he searched for a job in the Middle East; his wife wanted him to find the job first, recalled the close relative. On June 2, Mr. Shahzad called his wife from Kennedy Airport . He said that he was leaving for Pakistan, and that it was her choice whether she wanted to follow him, the relative recalled. Ms. Mian refused. Later that month, she packed up her children and moved to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where her parents were living. Mr. Shahzad stayed with his parents in Peshawar. He appears to have stopped paying his mortgage; the bank foreclosed on his Connecticut home in September. One month later, at a family gathering in Peshawar, Mr. Shahzad seemed angered by the American-led drone strikes along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a close friend said. He was “condemning the attacks and the government for not doing anything about it,” the friend said. Mr. Haq was reassured about his son’s plans when Mr. Shahzad agreed to start working in the family’s farming business. “He bluffed them,” said one of the father’s friends. In December, he left home, saying he would be back in a couple of days, the relative recalled. He never returned. By then, according to federal investigators, Mr. Shahzad had set himself on a course to attack Times Square. When he returned to the United States on Feb. 3, he circled back to his first days in America. Looking for work, he dropped by to see the jeweler who had hired him in college. He took out a lease on a small apartment just miles from the university campus. His movements over the next few months remain largely a mystery. Last week, his landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak, walked through Mr. Shahzad’s apartment, pointing out the spot where he had been building a wooden replica of a mosque. He looked around, as if searching for clues. Mr. Shahzad had been nice, pleasant — a perfect kind of tenant. He had even lined the burners of the stove with aluminum so they would not get tarnished. “Where are you going to find a guy like this?” the landlord said. “ Nice guy and look what happens.”


Patience Along the Path to Employment

Abstract: For Victoria Serans-Vidal, 47, patience is not just a virtue; it’s a way of life. It is a key component to her job as a home health care aide, a crucial element in her child-rearing strategy as a single mother of two sons, and reason for the discipline she has exercised for years while waiting to attain legal immigration status in the United States. “That was my way out, that was my opened door,” said Ms. Serans-Vidal, who obtained a special visa last year. “I had always said that if I became legal, I would work. I was always repeating that: ‘I need to work. I need to work.’ ” Her proclamations proved genuine. She currently works seven days a week, taking off just two weekends each month. And what Ms. Serans-Vidal lacks in time, she makes up for in gratitude for the chance to better provide for her children. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “After so many years of not working, all you want to do is work. I’m like a kid with a new toy.” Ms. Serans-Vidal came to the United States from Galicia, Spain, in 1986 on a diplomatic visa and went to work as a nanny and housekeeper for an Argentine diplomat in Manhattan. She left an infant daughter behind in the care of her parents. “It was very, very difficult,” Ms. Serans-Vidal said. “There was a lot of crying. But I wanted to make a better life for my daughter. I thought: I’m going to go make some money and after a few years, I’ll come back.” She made periodic visits home until her employer stopped working for the Argentine-American Chamber of Commerce and Ms. Serans-Vidal’s last visa expired, in 1991. She stayed in the United States illegally, while her daughter grew up overseas. “For a while, we had problems,” Ms. Serans-Vidal said of their relationship. “She felt like I abandoned her. Now she’s grown up and understands things, and the relationship is wonderful.” In 1997, she quit her job before giving birth to a son, Elohim. She and Elohim’s father moved to Long Island City, Queens. The couple had another son, Hashem, in 2004, but split up two years later. Ms. Serans-Vidal said she had been a victim of domestic violence. Ms. Serans-Vidal said the boys’ father occasionally gave her money, but she relied mostly on food stamps to feed her family. Her immigration status hindered her ability to find employment. “You find yourself without freedom, really,” she said. “You feel captive. You feel your hands are tied. You feel discouraged. You feel like you have no way out, no way to progress.” Seeking an escape from her circumstances, Ms. Serans-Vidal began doing research and discovered hope in the form of the East River Development Alliance, an organization that helps impoverished people. It provided counseling and support services, and was instrumental in her getting a U visa, available to undocumented immigrants who are victims of crimes like domestic violence and sexual assault. She is now applying for citizenship. The alliance also helped Ms. Serans-Vidal with her job search by contacting the Community Service Society, one of the seven organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The society gave Ms. Serans-Vidal $300 from the fund for clothing for job interviews and $112 for a MetroCard. Ms. Serans-Vidal had enrolled in the alliance’s home health aide training program. It was the type of work she knew she was best suited for, given the challenges she had faced with her son Hashem. His mild autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have required her to exercise creativity and resilience when helping him with homework. “You can apply that with the clients,” Ms. Serans-Vidal said. “You understand the problems with the kids, their shortcomings, and then you sympathize more with the sick people. You have to be kind. You have to be patient.” Time and time again, her patience has steadied her and been a source of hope for her ambitions, which include getting a high school equivalency diploma and possibly pursuing a nursing career. “Right now, it’s like a dream,” she said. “I am focused on what I have to do now: my job and my kids. But I already have been through things, and I know I’ll be able to do it one day. The dream helps me keep on going.”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Philanthropy
Community Service Society of New York


Israel: Dead American Tourist Is Identified

Abstract: An American tourist killed in a forest outside Jerusalem over the weekend has been identified as Kristine Luken, a Christian evangelical in her mid-40s. The police had originally identified her as Christine Logan. Her body was found on Sunday, hands bound and bearing multiple stab wounds.

Christians and Christianity
Murders and Attempted Murders
Israel


Britain’s Great Train Robber Freed

Abstract: LONDON — Nearly a half-century after the notorious heist that became known as the Great Train Robbery, the last of the men still serving time for stealing $7 million from that Glasgow-to-London mail train was formally paroled Friday after Britain’s justice minister decided he was likely to have only a short time to live. The man, Ronnie Biggs, who was handed the papers formalizing his release at his bed in a hospital in the provincial town of Norwich, was part of a 15-member gang who stopped the mail train by resetting track signals to red in remote countryside 40 miles northwest of London on Aug. 8, 1963, netting a sum in untraceable banknotes equivalent to more than $70 million today. Although 13 members were rounded up quickly, and two others were later, the bulk of the money was never recovered. While he was only a minor player in the robbery, Mr. Biggs played a major part in turning it into the long-running saga it became in modern British folklore by scaling a 30-foot wall at London’s Wandsworth Prison with a rope ladder in 1965 after serving barely a year of his 30-year sentence and fleeing abroad, first to Australia and later to Brazil. He stayed in Brazil for more than 30 years before returning voluntarily to Britain in 2001 to resume serving his sentence, in ill health and saying that he wanted to “walk into a pub and order a pint of bitter.” In Brazil, his languid lifestyle in the bars of Rio de Janeiro and other antics designed to mock his Scotland Yard pursuers, including recording with and appearing in a film with the Sex Pistols , made him a stock character for Britain’s mass-circulation tabloids. The legend he made of himself, as a likable Cockney rogue in a real-life soap opera, a version never accepted by many of those involved in tracking him down, remained part of the family script even as he won his release. “Ronnie Biggs is about to close his last chapter, ” Michael Biggs , Mr. Biggs’s son, told reporters at the Norwich hospital. “He is a free man. He will now be retreating fully from public life.” Mr. Biggs, who turns 80 on Saturday, was told of the decision by officials who went to his bedside at the hospital, where he is severely ill with pneumonia, after suffering strokes. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said that guards assigned to watch Mr. Biggs at the hospital had been withdrawn, and that he had been transferred to the supervision of the country’s probation service. Michael Biggs said his father reacted with his “usual good humor,” shaking hands with the prison guards and waving them off with his hands. The decision to free the train robber was an about-face by the justice minister, Jack Straw, who announced last month that he had rejected Mr. Biggs’s bid for release on compassionate grounds because he remained “wholly unrepentant” about his role in the robbery and had “outrageously courted the media,” mocking his Scotland Yard pursuers, when he was on the run. Ironically, Mr. Straw’s initial denial of parole appeared to have been based in part on the fact that Mr. Biggs had made himself Britain’s most famous lawbreaker, making any decision about him politically contentious. The robbery became the subject of numerous books , television documentaries and films . In a skit in the 1960s comedy revue Beyond the Fringe, the actors Peter Cook and Alan Bennett satirized Scotland Yard’s pursuit of the robbers. Mr. Biggs’s success in eluding the law for so long, and making a comfortable life for himself while he was on the run, sat ill with many in Britain . The driver of the train that was robbed, Jack Mills, was severely beaten with an iron bar and never recovered from his injuries. Mr. Mills did not return to work, and he died in 1970. “One can’t forget,” Peter Rayner, a former supervisor for Britain’s railway network who knew Mr. Mills, said after he learned of Mr. Biggs’s release. “The perpetrators have been treated as folk heroes rather than the criminals that we on the railway believe them to be.”

Robberies and Thefts
Biggs Ronnie
Crime and Criminals
London (England)
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)


Colorado Approves Same-Sex Unions

Abstract: DENVER — With a stroke of the governor’s pen, Colorado on Thursday legalized civil unions for same-sex couples, a major shift for a Western state where voters outlawed same-sex marriages in 2006. The law makes Colorado the 18th state to allow gay marriage or some form of same-sex union, and its signing comes days before the Supreme Court hears two major cases on marriage equality. For many gay Coloradans, it was a jubilant — if almost unreal — moment. “When we started fighting for it, this was a foregone conclusion that it wasn’t going to happen,” said Jerry Cunningham, the publisher of the magazine Out Front Colorado. “It’s kind of amazing. It’s creating an awareness that we can have relationships. It validates it and legitimizes it, and says it’s O.K.” Across Colorado, couples are already making plans. Denver’s fourth annual gay and lesbian wedding expo is being held at the end of April (“Begin planning your own dream civil union!”) and the county clerks in Denver and Boulder are planning to open their offices at midnight on May 1 — when the law takes effect — to hand out the first civil union licenses. Even as Gov. John W. Hickenlooper signed the law, activists and gay couples acknowledged that it failed to grant full marriage equality to same-sex couples, and they wondered whether Colorado was now — or would ever be — ready to head in that direction. “We are going to move forward,” said Brad Clark, executive director of One Colorado , an advocacy group for gay and transgender Coloradans. Any effort to legalize same-sex marriages would require Colorado voters to undo a constitutional amendment that limited marriages to unions of one man and one woman, and it would stir strong opposition from conservative groups across the state. But gay-marriage advocates say opinions in Colorado — and across the country — are changing fast. They cite support from politicians ranging from President Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican who changed his stance on same-sex marriage after learning his son was gay. In Colorado’s statehouse, the issue still divides people along party lines. Last year, a civil union bill died after it did not receive a vote on the floor of Colorado’s Republican-controlled House. This year, with Democrats controlling both chambers of the statehouse as well as the governor’s office, the measure was all but guaranteed to pass. Only three Republicans voted for the bill, with others rejecting it because it lacked religious exemptions for adoption agencies and other groups, or saying the civil unions came too close to legalizing gay marriage. Mario Nicolais, a Republican lawyer in Denver who describes himself as a “straight white guy who goes to church,” advocated as a conservative for civil unions, saying they would strengthen families, spread equality and be good for the state’s image and its residents. “We knew this would happen,” he said. “There are too many people, and the demographics are changing too rapidly. It’s just such a groundswell.”


F.D.A. Scientists Find No Serious Misconduct in Avandia Tests

Abstract: A review of a disputed clinical trial on the safety of the controversial diabetes drug Avandia did not uncover serious misconduct or fraud, according to findings by scientists at the Food and Drug Administration that were made public Monday. But those conclusions drew sharp criticism from the F.D.A. scientist who originally sounded the alarm about the study, in an indication of how heated is the debate over the drug, inside and outside the agency. Agency officials posted the dueling viewpoints on the F.D.A. Web site before a two-day meeting of an advisory panel, set to begin on Wednesday, that will revisit the debate over the drug. Avandia’s use was severely restricted in 2010 after several analyses, by the F.D.A. and outside researchers, found that it significantly raised the risk for heart attacks. Regulators in Europe removed it from the market. The panel is being asked whether to widen access, retain the restrictions, modify them, or remove Avandia from the market. Once a top-selling diabetes drug, Avandia is now used only as a last resort for patients who have not responded to other drugs and whose condition is so serious that a potential heart attack is worth the risk. More specifically, the panel is being asked to consider the results of a review the agency requested in 2010 of a clinical trial conducted by the drug’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline. The trial found no increased risk for heart attacks by Avandia users. But critics, including an F.D.A. scientist, said the design of the trial was flawed and riddled with errors. A memorandum by the scientist, Dr. Thomas Marciniak, also posted on Monday, questioned whether the review could be objective because, while it was conducted by researchers at Duke University, it was financed by Glaxo. He also noted that Glaxo had provided all of the documentation to Duke, which he argued further compromised the independence of researchers. Image Avandia has been found to raise the risk of heart attacks. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images The F.D.A. staff reviewers, however, confirmed the conclusion of Duke researchers that any errors by Glaxo had no effect on the conclusions of the trial, known as Record. In an unusually frank memo that was also posted on Monday, three top F.D.A. officials called Dr. Marciniak’s criticisms unprofessional and insulting to F.D.A. staff members and to Glaxo. “We do not find a cardiovascular ‘signal’ of concern in Record,” the F.D.A. officials’ memo concluded. “The mortality data are, in fact, reassuring.” The review by Duke found no difference in the rate of death between patients who had taken Avandia and those who had taken older diabetes drugs. Several outside specialists have asked why the F.D.A. was devoting time to the drug, saying the evidence showed it was dangerous. A previous F.D.A. analysis of more than 50 studies linked Avandia to an elevated risk of heart attack; one study linked it to more than 47,000 cases of heart attack, stroke or heart failure from 1999 to 2009. However, since the Record trial is the only randomized clinical trial to directly evaluate the cardiovascular risks of Avandia, others have said its results should be taken seriously. The panel is expected to make its recommendations at the end of the two-day meeting. The F.D.A. typically follows the advice of its advisory committee.

Pharmaceuticals
Avandia
Clinical trial
GlaxoSmithKline
FDA
Medical test
Diabetes


Manhattan: Mystery Rash at the Waldorf

Abstract: Five employees at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel came down with rashes last night and were taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell hospital for treatment, the Fire Department said. The workers were on the fifth floor about 10 p.m., the Fire Department said. It was not clear what caused their rashes. “For precautionary reasons, they were removed for observation,” a spokeswoman for the hotel said early today.


Globetrotting Gary Player Helped Golf Discover the World

Abstract: One night not long ago, Gary Player , golf’s tireless globetrotter, checked the Official World Golf Rankings and nearly burst with pride. England’s Luke Donald topped the list. Five of the top 10 hailed from international waters. He smiled widely as he remembered back to a year ago, heading into the P.G.A. Championship, when Europeans held all four of golf’s major titles. “I thought I would never live to see that,” said the 76-year-old Player. And just last month, his fellow South African Ernie Els, who was inspired by watching Player’s victory at the 1978 Masters on television, captured the Open Championship again. “It’s fantastic,” Player said. “It’s a great feeling to know I may have played a small role in helping them to succeed.” Professional golf wasn’t truly a global game until Player became the most successful foreign star on the U.S. golf circuit. Fifty years ago, when Player lifted the P.G.A.’s Wanamaker Trophy for the first time, he was one of four international players in the field. This week, 73 of the 156 competitors representing 20 countries will try to live up to his standard. When Player reached Aronimink Golf Club, a long tree-lined course near Philadelphia, for the 1962 P.G.A. Championship, he was in a foul mood after missing the cut a week earlier at the Open Championship by a stroke. Player arrived early to prepare and awakened while the sky was still dark. He began practicing before the holes were cut in the green. Instead, he used an empty milk bottle as a target. He practiced until dusk. Player never was afraid of hard work. “Talent alone will take you only so far,” he said. Player led by two strokes entering the final round, but when Bob Goalby, his closest pursuer, birdied 14 and 16, Player’s lead was trimmed to one shot. That was in danger of disappearing when he sprayed his drive to the right on 18. The encroaching forest of trees seemed to obstruct a direct route to the green, but Player thought otherwise. “I took a 3-wood and I aimed it 100 yards left of the green and hit the biggest slice around the corner and onto the green,” he recalled. Player’s approach stopped 35 feet, or about 10 meters, from the hole and he toasted his third major championship with a big glass of milk. “I arrived there with my tail between my legs and left with it high in the air,” Player said. When Aronimink held the 2003 Senior P.G.A. Championship, Player returned to the spot of his improbable shot at 18. “I said, ‘How did I ever do that?”’ Player recalled with a chuckle. His fellow competitors still marvel at how he ever maintained his rigorous travel schedule. For years, Player commuted from South Africa to tournaments all over the globe. He has logged more than 15 million miles, and is considered the world’s most-traveled athlete. Much of it occurred before the days of nonstop flights, when a trip from Johannesburg to the U.S. took 50 hours, he said. “With six children and no disposable diapers,” he points out. “I’d love these guys today to travel and play the tour the way I did. They have no idea.” Player doesn’t hesitate to add, “If I lived in the U.S., I would have won a lot more majors, there’s no question about it.” As a 20-year-old assistant professional at Johannesburg Country Club, Player began competing internationally at the 1955 Egyptian Open. The same year he sold his two-door Ford to fund his dream of qualifying for his first Open Championship at St. Andrews in Scotland. He said he left South Africa with £200 in his pocket. “My father got an overdraft on his account,” he recalled. “I couldn’t afford a room the first night, so I curled up on the beach where they filmed ‘Chariots of Fire.’ I put my water proofs on and had a good sleep. It wasn’t bad at all.” The following year he went to Austria for a tournament featuring the largest purse in golf outside the United Sates. Before he departed, Player made a promise: If he were victorious, wedding bells would soon ring. He was a man of his word, sending a cable back home to his sweetheart, Vivienne, which read: “We’ve won £5,000 and will marry immediately.” Soon, America beckoned. Player’s father, Harry, who was a captain in a gold mine spending most of his working days 12,000 feet underground, determined it was time for his son to compete against the best. He wrote the Augusta National co-founder Clifford Roberts requesting an invitation for his son to the 1957 Masters in Georgia and said if one were extended he would “pass the hat” at home to cover his tournament expenses. The response from Augusta was succinct: “Pass the hat.” Player was one of 11 international players in the field. Upon seeing how far the game’s best pros hit the ball, the 5-foot-7, 150-pound, or 1.7-meter, 68-kilogram, Player intensified his workout regimen and weakened his grip to add distance. In 1961, he became the first foreign winner of the Masters and topped the U.S. money list. His last of nine major titles personified the grit and determination that became his hallmarks. Els was 8 years old when Player won the 1978 Masters, shooting a 64 to rally from seven strokes back on the final day. “I don’t know who leapt up higher, me or my dad, when he made that putt on 18 to win,” Els recalled. The competitive fires still burn within Player. His fanatical devotion to physical fitness has kept Player active in his golden years, too. Just last month, he competed in the Bad Ragaz P.G.A. Seniors Open in Switzerland and broke his age all three days by a combined 15 strokes. In April, Player joined Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer as honorary starters of the Masters and recounted this story of his longevity in the game. “Both Jack and I said we were retiring at 35,” he said. “We had won the Grand Slam and that was it. We had enough. Arnold said, ‘Well, I’m going on forever.’ And then we walked in when we were both 60, and Arnold said, ‘Is this a mirage? Both here at the age of 60?’ And now I’m 70 and more.” And still golf’s global ambassador.


Haunted by War, Syrian Artists Put Raw Emotions on View

Abstract: Last Friday, a digital image of Gustav Klimt’s iconic painting “The Kiss” superimposed on a bomb-ravaged wall in Syria went viral. The Saatchi Gallery, in London, shared the picture on its Facebook page and within five hours it had received more than 21,000 Facebook “Likes” and was subsequently transmitted across the globe. The striking image, “Freedom Graffiti,” by Tammam Azzam, a Syrian artist, is part of his recent series, “Syrian Museum,” which merges iconic Western masterpieces by such painters as Leonardo da Vinci, Henri Matisse, Goya and Picasso, with recent photos of Syria’s devastated cityscapes. Mr. Azzam said his intention was to draw a parallel between “the greatest achievements of humanity with the destruction it is also capable of inflicting.” “Each is particularly relevant to what has befallen Syria,” he said. “Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ shows the love and relationship between people, and I have juxtaposed this with the capacity of hate the regime holds for its people.” Mr. Azzam, who was born in Damascus, has been living in Dubai since he and his family fled Syria with the help of his gallery in September 2011, seven months after the start of the uprising there. “When I lost my studio in Damascus and needed new ways to express myself and my sadness with the events that were unfolding in Syria, I began working with digital art,” he said in an e-mail interview. “It became my form of protest.” Mr. Azzam is one of about two dozen artists who have escaped Syria with the help of the Ayyam Gallery, a contemporary-art gallery devoted to emerging Middle Eastern talent. Founded in Damascus in 2006 by two cousins, Khaled Samawi and Hisham Samawi, the gallery became a haven for Syrian artists and has now become a conduit for Syrian artists to express their responses to the devastation of their country. Opening showrooms in Dubai and Beirut, Ayyam quickly expanded beyond Syria. This year, it opened its first Western location, in London, on Jan. 24, and it plans to inaugurate a fifth space in Jidda — the first internationally owned gallery in Jidda — on Feb. 27. The London location, on New Bond Street, was designed by Nadim Karam, a Lebanese architect and sculptor who is perhaps best known for his monumental public art works. He is also the subject of the first London exhibition, “Shooting the Cloud,” on show until March 9. Mr. Karam, who grew up in Beirut, has his own opinions about how artists can respond to violence and war. Image "Freedom Graffiti' by the Syrian artist Tammam Azzam. Credit Ayyam Gallery “We have to live the best we can, even during wars,” Mr. Karam said in a telephone interview from Beirut. “War is a factor that is there and will sometimes stop you, but as soon as it slows you have to move forward again, and that’s when the creativity arises again. It’s important to show the creative part of this region, an image that is different from what people think of, the terror and death.” Mr. Karam says Ayyam represents not only his work but also his philosophy. “When I feel that I have done a lot to push the limits, I feel that Ayyam has done the same,” he said. “That’s why this London project is important. It’s a different expression of what the Middle East can be. It’s a platform for me to be able to show the playful, whimsical aspect of what’s being created.” Ayyam did not start out with ambitions to become a politically engaged art gallery, however. Hisham Samawi, who was born in Syria and has an M.B.A. from Columbia University, said he was originally just looking for entrepreneurial opportunities in the booming Middle Eastern art market in 2006. Christie’s had just opened its first salesroom in Dubai, attracting international buyers, and the gallery scene in the United Arab Emirates was becoming a hub for Middle Eastern contemporary art. Mr. Samawi contacted his older cousin, Khaled, an avid art collector who had worked as a banker in Geneva and had “retired” to Syria, and asked if there might be anything to leverage in the contemporary art scene there. Seeing no major contemporary galleries in Damascus, but many graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University, they decided to try and cultivate a scene. They put out a call for entries to an art competition and received 150 submissions; from those, they selected 15 young artists to represent. “Our first year was tremendous because Damascus was really starting to open up,” Hisham Samawi recalled. “It was almost having this rebirth and a lot of people were visiting — there were a lot of boutique hotels popping up everywhere. They would hear about the gallery and come see us; they were coming to see the oldest city in the world and were just blown away by the contemporary art there. A lot of people were flying in and collecting our young artists. That was 2006.” In 2008, they put out another call for talent in Dubai and opened a second gallery there; the next year, they opened their third gallery in Beirut. They were quickly developing a reputation as a go-to source of homegrown Middle Eastern talent. Their formula was a success, with works priced at $10,000 to $30,000 selling at a clip. When the revolution in Syria began in 2011, however, they had to make changes. “We had seen what happened in Tunisia and in Egypt,” Mr. Samawi said. “My partner was in Syria; the gallery’s inventory and artworks were there, and the artists were there. We thought the chances were high that we’d have to move things out of Damascus. We started with our artists and employees.” That meant helping about 8 employees and their families, plus about 25 artists and their families arrange visas, raise relocation funds and find new homes and studios in different countries so they could continue to work. They shipped 3,000 paintings from Damascus to Dubai and turned the Damascus gallery into a safe haven for the artists who, for one reason or another, could not leave Syria. “We converted the gallery into a refuge for the artists to come be together and to continue working — that was about two years ago,” Mr. Samawi said. “At that time, to keep them more connected to the rest of the world, we had Web cams doing live feeds of them working during the days.” About five are still in Damascus, while the rest are in Dubai, Cairo or Beirut. “Mentally they’re still there even if they’re living somewhere else,” Mr. Samawi said. “Now that they’re out and their safety isn’t in jeopardy, they feel a bigger need to express their thoughts and to respond to what’s happening in Syria. If there’s one thing that has come out of this terrible situation is the art that’s coming out is extraordinary and the reaction that people all over the world are having to it.” For his part, Mr. Azzam, the Syrian artist, has vowed to realize his “Freedom Graffiti” as a real wall painting when he is finally able to go home. “I have decided to bring this piece to life when I am able return to Syria,” he said. “There are over 10,000 walls now in Damascus with this bullet-ridden quality after the bombings of the regime.” Mr. Azzam said he was quite sure that he would be able to find one he could use.

Syria
Art
Gustav Klimt
Arab Spring
Damascus
Beirut
Saudi Arabia


Newark Mayoral Race Seen as Referendum on Booker

Abstract: NEWARK — One is a municipal councilman and high school principal, son of a celebrated and controversial black poet, who negotiated a truce among this city’s gangs and urged them to fight a white conspiracy and “seize power, block by block, city by city, place by place.” The other is a law professor raised by his grandmother and the Boys and Girls Club after his mother was murdered, who went to prep school on scholarship, then to Duke and Columbia, before returning to Newark to work free on civil rights cases, raise his family and help start a network of charter schools. The one who wins the mayoral election on Tuesday — Ras Baraka, son of the poet Amiri Baraka , or Shavar Jeffries — will inherit an infamously restive city at a time of extremely high stakes. Defined for nearly a decade by its celebrity mayor, Cory A. Booker, Newark has its highest murder rate in 24 years and a stubborn 13 percent unemployment rate. The state has sent in troopers to try to quell the violence and has warned that it may have to take over the city’s troubled finances. School politics have become so raucous that the state-appointed superintendent declared that she would stop attending school board meetings until members could restore order. But for all the issues, the question at the heart of the many debates between the candidates is who is the real Newarker. It is the legacy of Mr. Booker, now Senator Booker, who elevated the city’s profile nationally but never shook accusations that he was only a visitor on his way to higher office, and who left unresolved the debates over education and gentrification. To many, the nonpartisan election — after a campaign that has included screaming matches, arrests and accusations of vandalism — is both a referendum on his tenure and a defining moment for the future. (Luis A. Quintana, the interim mayor until June 30, is not running.) Mr. Baraka, described by both sides as the front-runner, has long cast himself as the anti-Booker. In a majority black city that still ritually commemorates the riots of 1967, he has appealed to long-held suspicion of outsiders with slogans like “Believe in Newark” and “When I become mayor, we all become mayor.” “I’ve never seen you involved,” he told Mr. Jeffries in a debate on Wednesday, and then warned, “Newarkers, we’ve seen this movie before.” Mr. Jeffries noted that he was raising his family in the South Ward. “My kids are not in the suburbs,” he swiped at Mr. Baraka, whose children live with their mother in central New Jersey. “You don’t have more skin in the game than when you have your wife and your babies on Chancellor Avenue with our life on the line.” Mr. Jeffries’s background is certainly not parallel to Mr. Booker’s; he grew up here, the senator in a well-to-do Bergen County suburb. But he is seen as the heir to his New Newark, where 20 percent of children go to charter schools, and a Whole Foods is rising in a long-abandoned department store building downtown. Mr. Jeffries has appealed to the city’s Hispanics, who make up 33 percent of the population, by stoking fears that the Baraka brand of black nationalism will divide the city. Image Shavar Jeffries talking with Florence Wise while campaigning for mayor in Newark’s West Ward. Unlike his opponent, Mr. Jeffries is raising his children in Newark. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times “This is about what kind of politics prevails in Newark at this point,” said Clement A. Price , a professor at Rutgers and the city’s official historian, who has not taken sides in the contest. “Is it a political culture that wants to ‘take back Newark,’ return to a Newark Cory Booker usurped, or will the city move forward, in part as a result of the kind of paradigm we saw when Cory came to town?” Street confrontations and an onslaught of ads and mailings between the campaigns have made the 2002 race between Mr. Booker and Mayor Sharpe James, chronicled in a documentary called “ Street Fight ,” seem civil by comparison. Last April, Mr. Baraka and Amiri Baraka Jr., his brother, abruptly arrived at Mr. Jeffries’s house, arguing with him to get out of the race. Amiri Jr. was videotaped in January screaming at volunteers putting up signs for Mr. Jeffries, warning them he would “destroy our community.” Last month, two campaign workers for Mr. Jeffries were arrested and accused of setting fire to Mr. Baraka’s campaign bus in February. And the office of Mr. Jeffries’s campaign manager was vandalized. Independent groups have spent more than $3.5 million on a series of television ads, seeing this as a proxy war over education, between those who back charter schools, including Gov. Chris Christie, and unions that oppose them. “They’re coming. From Wall Street. From Trenton. To sell us Shavar Jeffries,” warned one ad by a coalition of unions backing Mr. Baraka. “Chris Christie’s allies and the Wall Street hedge fund types have an agenda. Shut down Newark public schools. Shut out parents. And destroy our schools for their personal profit.” “Newark is not for sale,” another ad declares — an echo of the argument made against Mr. Booker in 2002 by Mayor James, who went to federal prison and is now supporting Mr. Baraka. (His son is running on the same ticket for Municipal Council.) Mr. Jeffries and the groups backing him, largely education reform groups that supported Mr. Booker, have hammered Mr. Baraka on crime, noting that murders in the South Ward, which he represents, have risen 70 percent since he joined the council in 2010. Anonymous mailings circulate news stories reporting that Mr. Baraka wrote letters seeking leniency for one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders. “Who is he fighting for?” one asked. “Are gang leaders our kids’ heroes?” Last week, another pro-Jeffries group circulated a video showing Mr. Baraka talking to a crowd of gang members, urging them to question why Puerto Rican and white store owners would not hire blacks, and proclaiming himself “a conspiracy theorist.” “We got to plan to remove them and then we got to seize power,” Mr. Baraka told them. Mr. Jeffries hired the advertising firm that made New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mixed-race family famous to make an ad that underscored his family life (Mr. Baraka is not married). Mr. Jeffries’s wife and two children draw frequent comparisons among his admirers to Barack Obama’s. And the campaigns have employed a parade of celebrities: Spike Lee, Cornel West and Lauryn Hill for Mr. Baraka ( she sang “Happy Birthday” at a fund-raiser when he turned 44 in March; he had appeared on her breakthrough album). For Mr. Jeffries, 39, there have been Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney, and, this week, Eva Longoria, one of Mr. Booker’s celebrity surrogates, who appeals to Hispanic voters. Mr. Baraka has benefited from name recognition. Amiri Baraka, who died in January, was a leader of Newark’s cultural and political life following the riots of 1967. Nina Simone sang lullabies to Ras Baraka when he was a child; Maya Angelou read him poems. Image Mr. Baraka, left, shouting in a debate with Mr. Jeffries in Newark. A nonpartisan election for mayor will be held Tuesday. Credit Julio Cortez/Associated Press He and his father, who helped elect the city’s first black mayor, Kenneth A. Gibson, and then criticized him as too moderate, were among Mr. Booker’s most persistent critics. Asked at a public discussion last month with Mr. Price, the city’s historian, to choose his role models as mayor, Mr. Baraka did not mention Mr. Gibson, but instead, Chokwe Lumumba , the black radical who became mayor of Jackson, Miss., and Marion Barry of Washington. He has argued that economic development, not more police officers, is the first step to reducing crime. He pledges to embrace Operation Ceasefire , which cities like Boston have used to try to counsel gang members to abandon violence, calling it “a very conservative idea not to engage” gang members in fighting crime. Despite Mr. Baraka’s attempts to paint him as an outsider, Mr. Jeffries is very much a son of Newark, born to a 19-year-old single mother who was killed by her estranged husband. Mr. Jeffries, then 10, was sent to live with his grandmother. After law school, he led the Boys and Girls Club, where he had spent much of his childhood, and served under Gov. Jon S. Corzine as an assistant attorney general, working on anti-crime strategies. He is an associate professor at Seton Hall Law School. But while Mr. Jeffries has raised more money, Mr. Baraka has found louder support. At a debate sponsored by the N.A.A.C.P. last month, Mr. Baraka arrived with poster-size photographs showing projects planned for the South Ward — and buses of supporters. Mr. Jeffries cautioned the crowd of about 350 not to be fooled by the pictures. “Drive through the South Ward and murders are up 70 percent,” he said. He was drowned out by boos. He persisted, attacking Mr. Baraka for a lack of results. “The elders used to say, empty wagons make a lot of noise,” he said. Mr. Baraka retorted: “Noise got us the Civil Rights Act! The Voting Rights Act!” The crowd thundered approval. Mr. Baraka’s language has alarmed some business leaders: He told The Star-Ledger last year that the city’s businesses and its mostly black community had a “master-slave” relationship. Among Mr. Jeffries’s biggest supporters is Ray Chambers, the private-equity investor and philanthropist . And polls done by the campaigns show that the race has grown closer in recent weeks, particularly as Mr. Jeffries’s allies have shown television ads pointing out that Mr. Baraka earned more than $200,000 between his jobs as a member of the Municipal Council and as the principal of Central High School. On streets with vacant lots and gated storefronts, some voters say they resent Mr. Baraka’s attempts to portray Mr. Jeffries as an outsider, rather than a Newark success story. “We have to teach our kids it’s all right to want to do better,” said Kimmie Smalls, 53, a retired toll collector who had come to Mr. Jeffries’s South Ward headquarters to volunteer last week. “With Shavar, my grandson sees he doesn’t have to be an athlete to succeed; he can be a lawyer. That’s a positive thing to me.”

Ras Baraka
Shavar Jeffries
Cory A Booker
Newark NJ
Mayoral races


On Eve of Primary, Clinton Ad Invokes bin Laden

Abstract: BLUE BELL, Pa. — The six-week Pennsylvania primary drew to a contentious finish Monday as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked images of Pearl Harbor and Osama bin Laden in a television advertisement that questioned Senator Barack Obama ’s ability to lead in a crisis. As she sought to spark a comeback in the Democratic nominating contest, Mrs. Clinton warned voters not to “take a leap of faith or have any guesswork” when they cast ballots Tuesday. The Obama campaign accused her of employing “the politics of fear.” With 158 pledged delegates at stake in Pennsylvania, the largest state remaining on the party’s primary calendar, the candidates raced from Scranton to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia — and a smattering of suburbs along the way — to rally their supporters and win over a dwindling lot of undecided voters. While Mr. Obama spent nearly twice as much on television advertising in the state as Mrs. Clinton in the final days of the race, she broadcast a new commercial that used historic images from critical moments in the country’s past to ask voters whom they could trust in the White House. It did not mention Mr. Obama, but closed with “Who do you think has what it takes?” Mr. Obama, after three days of criticizing Mrs. Clinton with some of his sharpest language of the campaign, did not directly engage her. But his campaign quickly responded with an advertisement of its own that asked voters: “Who in times of challenge will unite us — not use fear and calculation to divide us?” Pennsylvania has become a major battleground in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, with the future of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign most likely resting on the outcome. Even a wide victory by her would not overcome her deficit in pledged delegates or in the popular vote of states that have held nominating contests, but it would ensure that the race moved on to contests in Indiana and North Carolina in two weeks, on May 6. As she spoke Monday in her father’s hometown, Scranton, Mrs. Clinton reinforced the message of her advertisement, arguing that Mr. Obama was untested. “I don’t want you to take a leap of faith or have any guesswork” about the next president, she said. “We’ve had enough of that,” she added. Her commercial was the first in which a Democratic candidate had used Osama bin Laden in the presidential race, although Republicans, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, have done so. In her commercial, Mr. bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is featured along with grainy images of the stock market crash of 1929, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Hurricane Katrina . In an interview Monday with Larry King on CNN , Mrs. Clinton said the advertisement addressed the reality “that the new president will inherit some of the most dangerous and difficult decisions that any president has had to make in a very long time.” “I want people to think seriously about leadership, because that’s what I’m offering in this campaign,” she said. Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, responded that Mrs. Clinton was invoking Mr. bin Laden “to score political points.” He added, “We already have a president who plays the politics of fear, and we don’t need another.” As Obama supporters worked to drum up support, they said they were still hearing rumors that Mr. Obama was Muslim and questions about his patriotism. At an evening campaign stop, a voter asked Mr. Obama how he could allay such concerns. “It frustrates me that people would even have a question about something like that, because they don’t ask the same questions of some of the other candidates,” said Mr. Obama, who told a story about an American flag he received at the funeral of his grandfather, a World War II veteran. “If they don’t vote for me, it should be because they think Senator Clinton or Senator McCain have better ideas. It shouldn’t be because they think that I am less patriotic or because they question what my religious faith is.” The Clinton campaign manager, Maggie Williams, pleaded for volunteers Monday to help work phone banks and perform other get-out-the-vote tasks. “To put it as simply as I can, more calls equal more votes,” Ms. Williams wrote in an e-mail message to supporters. The central battlegrounds included Pittsburgh, where both candidates stopped Monday, and the Philadelphia suburbs, including Blue Bell, where Mr. Obama arrived Monday afternoon. He sat beneath a blossoming dogwood tree, surrounded by about three dozen people who had been invited by the campaign, and took questions about the economy, education and foreign policy. He did a series of television interviews but did not take reporters’ questions. “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” he said when asked about former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas officials. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist, told reporters Monday evening that he believed it was “very difficult” for Mrs. Clinton to win the nomination. But he conceded that it was likely she would win Pennsylvania. “It’s one more stop along the way,” Mr. Axelrod said.

Presidential Election of 2008
Pennsylvania
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Obama Barack
Political Advertising


In Book, Pope Exonerates Jews in Death of Jesus

Abstract: VATICAN CITY (AP) — In a new book, Pope Benedict XVI makes a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ. The Second Vatican Council made a similar declaration in 1965. But Benedict is the first pope to personally do so, and Jewish scholars said Wednesday that his arguments were a milestone attack on the “foundation of anti-Semitic persecution.” The book, “Jesus of Nazareth — Part II,” argues in detail that there is no biblical basis for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible.

Benedict XVI
Jews and Judaism
Anti-Semitism


Little Impact Is Foreseen Over Change for Emissions

Abstract: A move by Gov. David A. Paterson to increase the free allowances for carbon-dioxide emissions that New York gives power plants is unlikely to undermine efforts by nine other states that signed a landmark pact to reduce global warming , officials said on Friday. Last fall, 10 states from Maryland to Maine agreed to cap the emissions from hundreds of power plants and to make them pay for polluting. Under this carbon-trading pact, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, each state issues its own tradable permits, or allowances, for each ton of carbon-dioxide pollution. States auction most of the allowances, but many power producers have complained about being forced to pay for them. Mr. Paterson’s willingness to increase free allowances angered environmentalists and surprised officials in the other states. They reacted by reaffirming their commitment to the current carbon-trading pact. “We think it’s a New York issue, and we don’t see it having any impact in other states, including New Jersey’s program,” said Jeanne Herb, the policy director for New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, in a widely echoed sentiment. “Nor do we envision that it will have any real impact on the auction prices.” Officials in Massachusetts and Rhode Island said they expected little impact in their states. In New York, Morgan Hook, a spokesman for the governor’s office, seemed to play down Mr. Paterson’s efforts to change the policy. “There has been no commitment to increase the free allowances yet,” Mr. Hook said. “The governor has made a commitment to look at the regulations if there is a need to look at the regulations.” That could happen, he said, when the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation learns definitely how many power producers were eligible for free allowances from the last carbon auction, in December. Two of Mr. Paterson’s top aides said in interviews on Thursday that the governor had promised to address the industry’s concerns, and that a preliminary review by the Department of Environmental Conservation had already indicated that the number of free allowances was not enough. Mr. Hook also said that the next three auctions would not be affected even if the state decided to reopen its regulations because any change would face requirements including a period for public comment. Experts emphasized that even if New York made the change, the overall number of allowances in the program — the region’s total amount of carbon emissions allowed — is capped and therefore cannot rise. Many states, including New Jersey, have already made provisions to ease the cost burden on power plants that had made fixed arrangements to sell their power long before carbon-trading was in place, which is the source of New York’s problem. Changing the rules for how carbon allowances are allocated may be more difficult in other states, many of which would have to consult their legislatures, rather than do it through the executive branch, as New York can. Still, the carbon market was clearly rattled by the news. Trading of carbon allowances reached a record level on Friday, most likely because of the news about New York, said Evan Ard, a spokesman for Evolution Markets, a carbon markets broker. But Mr. Ard said prices — which are perpetually low — were not volatile. The carbon-trading pact “has struggled with credibility from Day 1, given the starting overallocation of emissions allowances,” Alex Rau, of the carbon-trading firm Climate Wedge, said in an e-mail message. “And behavior from the regulators like this will only undermine what little confidence there has been in the market,” Mr. Rau continued. Donald McCloskey, the director of environmental strategy and policy at PSEG, a New Jersey-based energy company, said he would not seek more free allowances from New Jersey regulators. Mr. McCloskey said New York’s potential move merely strengthened the case for a national carbon-trading program like the one the Obama administration hopes to introduce. Under a national system, he said, “these interstate differences would be removed and largely reduced by having one carbon market, one set of rules that the whole nation operates under.”

Carbon Dioxide
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Paterson David A
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Global Warming
States (US)
New York State


Economy Is Setting the Tone for Midterm Elections

Abstract: Over the past several months, a handful of high-profile Senate races — Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Illinois and Nevada — have tilted in the Democrats’ direction. This has generated hope in President Barack Obama ’s party that the November elections may not be so bad after all. It’s a mirage. All of these changes are due to sui generis Republican woes. Today, it’s an even bet that Republicans will pick up the 39 seats in the House of Representatives necessary to take control and gain a net of more than a half-dozen Senate seats. What’s lethal for the Democrats is that the election is being framed by the economy and views are locking in, with voters getting more, not less, pessimistic. A Bloomberg poll of Americans last week underscored the deep and pervasive economic pessimism. Most voters said they thought the country was really off on the wrong track and remained in a recession , even though the downturn actually ended last September. Trends in a couple of groups are especially unsettling for Mr. Obama and the Democrats. Fewer than one in five independents said the country was on the right track, and a plurality of that group gave the president negative ratings. In 2008, Mr. Obama carried the independent vote 52 percent to 44 percent. Mr. Obama captured the approval of 56 percent of women age 30 to 59, who also were major supporters of Democratic congressional candidates in 2006 and 2008. In the survey, more of the women in that age bracket said they thought the economy was getting worse rather than better, and more believed that they were worse off than when Mr. Obama became president. Ray Fair, a Yale University economist who projects electoral results based primarily on economic performance, currently sees Democrats winning 50.5 percent of the House popular vote, which would probably be enough for the party to retain control, though sharply down from the current 255 majority to a 178 split (with two vacancies). This is predicated, he said, on “reasonably strong” economic growth in the third quarter. Currently, the consensus forecast is for growth of a little less than 3 percent, which probably would reduce Mr. Fair’s forecast for Democrats. Ann Selzer, the Des Moines, Iowa, pollster who conducted the Bloomberg survey, said it would be exceedingly hard to reverse these perceptions about the economy over the next three and a half months. “If Democrats had a bullet that would create jobs without adding to the deficit, maybe,” she said, emphasizing the word maybe, “that would be an issue to run on.” The most credible political strategists from both parties analyze the politics similarly. “This election is mostly driven by the economy,” says John Weaver, a Republican strategist and former top adviser to that party’s 2008 presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona. “The White House, for reasons inexplicable to me, has chosen not to focus on jobs and the economy; nothing matters more, and Obama doesn’t strike a very empathetic pose at times.” Geoffrey Garin, one of the top Democratic pollsters and political advisers, says this drives his concerns. “The lack of optimism that people are feeling about the economy really sets the tone for this election,” he said. The gap between the reality of an economy, which, while struggling, is rebounding from the depths and the public’s perception that it is worse than before reflects communications shortcomings as well as events beyond the control of either Mr. Obama or his party. Last week, the administration claimed that its 2009 economic stimulus package saved between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs. Many respected private analysts, like Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, concur. The public disagrees, costing Democrats a traditional advantage. “Stimulus has become a code word for overspending and deficits, not job creation,” Mr. Weaver said. “Democrats have lost that debate amongst swing voters.” Talk to voters about the stimulus and it’s not uncommon for them to start railing about bailing out the banks or rescuing the inept auto companies. There is less talk about programs that prevented teachers or cops from being laid off or creating green jobs. Mr. Garin suspects that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April has been a double-negative whammy for Mr. Obama. It has distracted the White House’s focus from the overarching economic issue. And voters figure that the spill itself has substantial economic consequences, he says. “People are angry everywhere, from border to border, coast to coast,” Mr. Garin worries. That is apparent in a recent calculation by Stu Rothenberg, an election expert, that 79 House contests are in play or competitive in the November election. Of those, 67 are held by Democrats. While there is concentration in some states — seven in New York, five in Ohio — the issues are national in scope, affecting Democratic-held seats in 35 states. So why are Democrats doing better in those handful of Senate races, including Nevada, where Harry Reid, the majority leader, was written off in May? The answer is self-inflicted Republican wounds. These are caused either by candidates taking politically unpopular positions, like privatizing Social Security , or by the party’s purging of their strongest candidates, as in Florida, where it is possible that Governor Charlie Crist will win as an independent, after being driven out of his party’s primary by a more conservative candidate. At the same time, there are at least as many Senate races, including Washington, Wisconsin, California, North Carolina and Indiana, that have moved more in the Republicans’ direction. Yet Mr. Weaver, who expects his party to have a banner November, says the gains may not be enduring and may even signal problems in 2012. “We’re still the party of the angry white man, and we seem to have not learned anything about reaching out to new voters, Hispanics or younger people,” he said. “Even with our success in November, we’re creating a huge deficit structurally going into the next presidential election.” That won’t much matter, he says, in the midterm elections. Voters now seem eager to punish the incumbent party for their economic insecurities.

United States Economy
Elections
Democratic Party
Obama Barack


Brush Fire Halts Train Service Between Newark and New York

Abstract: A brush fire that billowed giant plumes of black smoke into the sky halted train service between New Jersey and New York on Tuesday afternoon. Both New Jersey Transit and Amtrak reported that train travel between Newark and New York’s Pennsylvania Station had been temporarily suspended. Amtrak said at 3 p.m. that Northeast Corridor service had been restored, but that passengers could expect delays. New Jersey Transit also said train service had resumed with delays of up to 60 minutes. The police in Secaucus said the fire began near railroad tracks in the vicinity of Penhorn Avenue and Secaucus Road. An additional brush fire in Kearny, N.J., started in the area of 1800 Harrison Avenue shortly after noon, the Kearny Fire Department said. It was deemed under control at 2:08 p.m. PATH trains are honoring New Jersey Transit tickets and passes at the Newark Penn, Hoboken and New York 33rd Street stations, New Jersey Transit said on Twitter . Midtown Direct trains were being diverted to Hoboken. At Secaucus Junction, Nadine Ruiz saw black smoke rising above the tracks on Tuesday afternoon as she was heading to class at Montclair State University. “To see that much smoke was a little alarming,” said Ms. Ruiz, who lives in Jersey City. Trains had stopped running. Ms. Ruiz messaged her professor to say she would miss class. “The smoke got bigger and you could see flames from the station,” she said. Photos began emerging on social media around 12:30 p.m., with the dark smoke visible from Brooklyn.

Wildfires
Delays
Amtrak
New Jersey Transit
PATH
Newark NJ
NYC


Aspiring to Rate Rooms When Everyone’s a Critic

Abstract: THANKS to the Internet and its spawns like Facebook and Twitter, everybody’s a critic. But not everybody is a good critic. Take hotel ratings. Like many other travelers, I have devised my own strange system for choosing a hotel, once I have settled on the location and price range. It encompasses word of mouth, hopeful guessing through past experiences with a given brand and wild speculation based on a haphazard sampling of the copious Internet reviews at various Web sites. These online reviews, while often entertaining and informative in the aggregate, are typically written by anonymous people — some of whom, for all I know, could be in a federal penitentiary and just killing time with wistful critiques of places they have never seen. This is not a great system, but hey, adventure is grist for my little mill. There are, of course, professionally compiled hotel reviews, including those published by Mobil and AAA. Both employ legions of trained reviewers who roam the country with clipboards, anonymously checking into hotels to evaluate them on an exhaustive list of criteria. Their reviews, which assign rankings, are typically short and to the point. Those guides are useful, as are the avalanche of amateur reviews that appear on Internet travel sites like IgoUgo .com (which even provides reader forums and travel journals) and TripAdvisor.com, which has tens of thousands of user-generated reviews of hotels. I especially value TripAdvisor because, with practice, you can readily sort out the cranks from the vast majority of earnest reviewers who simply want to share their personal views about a hotel stay. TripAdvisor does not pull punches. Take just two reviews appearing in recent days of a certain hotel in Times Square that heavily promotes itself to budget-minded tourists. “A body bag was pulled out of the elevator,” one unhappy guest related. “To shut the door to the bathroom, we had to unplug the TV,” reported another, cryptically. Anyway, you would think there would be no room for another hotel rating business. And you would think that would especially be the case now, given the gloom-by-the-room economic conditions in hotels and the slump in travel, in general. But no. On Monday a new company, Oyster Hotel Reviews, opened its doors online, with a stated goal of becoming the premier source for independent, professionally produced and in-depth hotel reviews. It’s at www.oyster.com . The plan, said Elie Seidman, the chief executive and co-founder, is to establish a big base of “rigorous and independent” reviews, each about 2,000 words, accompanied by reviewer-produced candid photographs of practically every nook of each hotel. Right now, the Web site is limited mostly to reviews of hotels in Miami and the Caribbean. But the New York City hotel section will go live in a week or so, followed by the section on Las Vegas hotels. Others will follow. Oyster, which has financing from Bain Capital, operates on an interesting journalistic model for the Internet because it hires journalists as full-time employees, not independent contractors. Its reviewers train with a 60-page manual. And each review is heavily illustrated with high-resolution photographs, more than 100 for each review, enough to offer a full view of that lavish lobby as well as the questionable state of the shower stall caulking. “The reviews are very structured,” Mr. Seidman said. “Here’s the room, here’s the location, here’s what the food is like, here are the amenities. We verify that the spa is a spa, and not a small room with an old treadmill that they’re calling a spa.” He said the site had 15 people on the editorial staff, “all with core journalism backgrounds.” Ten of those people “travel, effectively, full-time, and go to 60 or 70 hotels in a year,” he said. “We pay for all the expenses, the plane ticket, taxis, meals, rooms and, of course, salaries and benefits.” And they’re hiring. When was the last time you heard that? (Aspiring hotel reviewers need to look up job postings on the Oyster site, and be sure to note the demanding qualifications required of job candidates.) “It is my hope that by the end of next year, we’ll employ 150 full-time people” as hotel reviewers, Mr. Seidman said. In four to five years, he expects to have reviews of 20,000 hotels, most of them in resort spots and big cities around the world. My own assessment, in this early stage, is that the reviews now online are solid and useful, and the photographs are invaluable. The site is limited right now, as I said. And the company, which depends on advertising on the site, is carrying a big payroll and high travel expenses in a tough time for the travel industry. On the other hand, standards even at many quality hotels are slipping these days as costs are cut and rooms go unsold. I’m hearing more complaints about hotels now than I have in many years. So it will be good to have some extra cops walking the beat. With cameras.

Travel and Vacations
Hotels and Motels
Computers and the Internet
TripAdvisor.com


Bills Zero in on Weak Spot in Jets’ Game Plan

Abstract: ORCHARD PARK, N.Y., Sept. 30 — In their postgame comments, Jets Coach Eric Mangini and his players seemed to be in mild shock, speaking at such low volume that it was often difficult to hear what they were saying. But eventually a theme emerged loudly after several turns explaining what happened Sunday in a 17-14 loss to the Buffalo Bills . “They threw the ball a little bit more than we expected,” defensive end Shaun Ellis said, summing up a miscalculation that cost the Jets the game. “We came in here expecting them to run the ball 30-plus times. But they came out throwing, hitting us with some short little passes and deep outs.” It was not unreasonable to expect Buffalo to rely on the run. They had the most impotent offense in the N.F.L. through three games and a rookie quarterback making his first start. But rather than giving the ball to running back Marshawn Lynch, the Bills put the game in the hands of quarterback Trent Edwards, a rookie from Stanford who was starting in place of the injured J.P. Losman. Edwards threw on 9 of Buffalo’s first 12 offensive plays, signaling immediately that the game would not proceed the way the Jets had anticipated. Edwards completed 22 of 28 attempts for 234 yards with a touchdown and an interception. It was the first time this season that Buffalo had passed for more than 200 yards. Although the Jets sacked him twice, Edwards did not face consistent pressure. “We had a couple turnovers and a couple sacks,” Mangini said. “You’re always trying to get as much pass rush as you can, but there’s also things they can do with some very dangerous players. If you show max pressure, they throw the quick screen there.” Edwards demonstrated a quick release and an ability to find open receivers, particularly toward the middle of the field. He seemed to especially victimize the rookie cornerback Darrelle Revis. When the Jets double-covered Bills’ wideouts, Revis was often left man-to-man with Josh Reed, a receiver who finished with four catches for 64 yards, including a 27-yard reception in the second quarter on which Revis was left chasing him downfield. “Darrelle was in a lot of man-to-man isolated coverage with no help,” Mangini said. Reed said that as the game progressed, the Bills coaches continued to call plays that isolated Revis in the slot. “After a couple plays, Coach called the number he was on,” Reed said. “We kept making plays so we just kept going to it.” In a close game, the offense struggled, putting added pressure on the defense. Mike Nugent missed a 37-yard field goal as time expired to end the first half. The kick, which bounced off the right upright, would have put the Jets ahead, 3-0. In the third quarter, Chad Pennington was intercepted at the Jets’ 27 with the Jets trailing, 10-7. On the ensuing Buffalo drive, defensive tackle Sione Pouha stopped Lynch on third-and-goal from the 1. But after calling a timeout, Edwards faked a handoff on fourth down, rolled to his right and tossed to tight end Michael Gaines in the end zone for a 17-7 lead with seven minutes left in the third quarter. Still, the Jets’ defense made its share of plays. Linebacker Victor Hobson sacked Edwards on the opening drive, and later recovered a fumble as the Bills were driving in Jets territory. And, true to the game plan, Buffalo was mostly bottled up while running for 86 yards, including 79 for Lynch. But a week after defeating the Miami Dolphins, 31-28, the Jets have serious questions about their defense. Mangini stressed that the Jets would simply need to be better. Ellis seemed optimistic that things would improve. “We are still a work in progress,” he said. “Teams are attacking us in different ways.” His voice was soft, but his message was loud and clear.

New York Jets
Football
Buffalo Bills
Mangini Eric
Lynch Marshawn
Losman J P


Cheney Says Obama Has Increased Risks

Abstract: Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Obama had made the country less safe, asserting that the new administration’s changes to detention and interrogation programs for terrorism suspects would hamper intelligence gathering. Mr. Cheney said the moves suggested that terrorism was now being treated as a law enforcement problem. “He is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack,” Mr. Cheney said of Mr. Obama in an interview on the CNN program “State of the Union.” Since taking office, Mr. Obama has reversed many of the policies championed by Mr. Cheney in his eight years of serving under President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama has announced plans to close the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within the year, suspended military trials for terrorism suspects and prohibited the interrogation practice known as waterboarding . But on Sunday, Mr. Cheney said those very policies had produced intelligence — still classified — that helped uncover specific plots. “I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11,” Mr. Cheney said of Bush administration policies, echoing statements he made in an interview last month with the Web site Politico.com. “I think that’s a great success story,” he said. “It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles.” Mr. Cheney said the Bush administration decided after the 2001 attacks to make fighting terrorism a function of the military rather than law enforcement. “Up until 9/11, it was treated as a law enforcement problem,” he said. “You go find the bad guy, put him on trial, put him in jail. “Once you go into a wartime situation and it’s a strategic threat, then you use all of your assets to go after the enemy. You go after the state sponsors of terror, places where they’ve got sanctuary. You use your intelligence resources, your military resources, your financial resources — everything you can — in order to shut down that terrorist threat against you. “When you go back to the law enforcement mode, which I sense is what they’re doing, closing Guantánamo and so forth, that they are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that’s required, and that concept of military threat that is essential if you’re going to successfully defend the nation against further attacks.” In what CNN promoted as his first televised interview since leaving office in January, Mr. Cheney touched on a number of other subjects, including the economy, his failure to persuade Mr. Bush to pardon his former aide I. Lewis Libby Jr. and the war in Iraq. “We’ve accomplished nearly everything we set out to do,” he said about Iraq. “Now, I don’t hear much talk about that, but the fact is, the violence level is down 90 percent. The number of casualties and Iraqis and Americans is significantly diminished. There’s been elections, a constitution. They’re about to have another presidential election here in the near future.” “We have succeeded in creating in the heart of the Middle East a democratically governed Iraq, and that is a big deal,” Mr. Cheney said. “And it is, in fact, what we set out to do.”

Cheney Dick
Terrorism
Obama Barack
Iraq War (2003- )
Torture


LeBron James Leads the Heat to Game 1 Victory Over Dallas

Abstract: MIAMI — Basketball’s brightest staged a rigged game last summer in slanting and stacking the deck heavily toward the Miami Heat in the ultimate quest for instant gratification. LeBron James , Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and South Beach celebrated their free-agent union last summer like a quick-hitch Las Vegas wedding, in blissful ignorance of the struggles to come. The celebration may have been premature during the regular season, but the Heat is doing everything during this postseason to legitimize the party. The Heat, gaining momentum as the postseason draws shorter, delivered a lethal opening salvo in the N.B.A. finals on Tuesday night with a 92-84 victory over the Dallas Mavericks in Game 1. The teams played below the pristine banner signifying Miami’s lone championship season five years ago, which also pitted the Heat against Dallas. Some of the primary participants, like Dirk Nowitzki — who sustained an injury to his nonshooting hand on Tuesday — and Wade remain. Most, like James and Bosh, are noticeably new and represent the N.B.A.’s power shift. Miami’s performance was neither poetic nor pretty in improving to 9-0 at home in the playoffs. For all of the All-Star résumés and nifty passing and athletic dunking, Miami’s roster is developing a personality that defensively gnaws an opponent raw, useless and ineffective before James and Wade sprint past on offense. “Well, it’s not as if we created two new players,” Erik Spoelstra, Miami’s coach, said. “That’s who they’ve been their entire careers. I think it just takes time for players to feel comfortable with each other and a new offensive system and playing with new guys and being in the situation over and over and over.” For Dallas, the outcome was worrisome, especially in light of Nowitzki’s injury. Nowitzki is enjoying a spectacular postseason and had a game-high 27 points on Tuesday. He said he sustained a torn tendon in his left middle finger when he attempted to strip the ball from Bosh with a little more than four minutes left in the game. He will play the rest of the series with a splint over the afflicted finger. “I thought I stripped him clean and then I kind of looked down and I couldn’t straighten my finger anymore,” Nowitzki said. “So I tore a tendon in there. I guess it will be all right. I have to wear a splint for the rest of the playoffs, for a couple of weeks. But it will be all right. It’s on my left hand, so I’ll be all right for Thursday.” “He’s right-handed,” James said of Nowitzki’s injury. “He’ll be all right.” After the injury, Nowitzki converted a jumper and two free throws, but as a one-man show he could not muster a victory for Dallas. The Mavericks can even the best-of-seven series in Thursday’s Game 2 before hosting the next three games in Dallas. On accident, Wade said he reviewed footage of the 2006 finals on Monday. “I see I had no conscience back then,” Wade said of shouldering the scoring load. Now? “Just confidence,” he said. “Guys gave me the ball and put me in a position to do it.” Wade, playing a herky-jerky postseason, forgot a forgettable first half and secured 15 of his 22 points in the second half. His 12-footer opened up a 7-point lead with 4:15 left in the game. Bosh followed with a pair of free throws and, after blocking a shot by Shawn Marion, Wade lined up and followed through on a 3-pointer that extended Miami’s lead to 9 points. James correctly read Dallas's defense and took what it allowed him in the first finals win of his career after being swept by the San Antonio Spurs when he played with Cleveland in 2007. James settled for 24 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists and 4 3-pointers, one in which he contorted, pivoted and leaned away from the rim as the third-quarter buzzer sounded. “Yeah, dare me to shoot, I think that’s pretty much gone,” James said about his newfound touch from long distance. James closed the game in the manner that James does, with a dunk and a free throw when he was fouled by Marion. The performance of Wade and James helped compensate for Bosh, who was only 1 for 9 from the field in the second half. “I think for me going into the fourth quarter, I know it’s winning time,” James said. “That’s when the game is won.” The loss marks the first time the Mavericks have trailed in a series throughout a spectacular postseason run. Dallas mustered little offense beyond Nowitzki and was suffocated by Miami’s defense. “They were more opportunistic tonight than we were,” Carlisle said. “That’s been one of the traits of our run. We’ve been very opportunistic. Tonight, we weren’t as much.” Dallas shot a playoff-low 37.3 percent. Marion played a well-rounded game. Jason Terry, who is the lone holdover from Dallas’s 2006 team other than Nowitzki, scored all 12 of his points in the first half. Miami successfully negated two of Dallas’s supposed strengths. Dallas compensates for defensive mismatches by showcasing a matchup zone defense. But the defense lessens priorities and assignments on rebounding, allowing Miami to find the cracks for 16 offensive rebounds, which helped lead to 15 second-chance points. Paced by James, Miami also outshot Dallas from beyond the arc, with 11 3-pointers in 24 shots to Dallas’s 9 in 22. The Mavericks widened the score with a burst that opened the third quarter. Marion and Nowitzki nailed jumpers and DeShawn Stevenson silenced the crowd with a 3-pointer that extended Dallas’s lead to 8 points, at the time, the largest lead for either team. Spoelstra quickly called a timeout. “The main thing that we were talking about was to just get a good shot at the basket and get another stop,” Bosh said. “That wasn’t our style. That wasn’t the way we want to play defense.” The lead evaporated through scores from Bosh, James and Wade. James’s 3-pointer with 1:09 left in the third quarter provided Miami with its first second-half lead. Before then, the game had featured 10 lead changes and 7 ties. Afterward — with the prodding of Miami’s stars — it did not flip-flop again. “D-Wade actually said that to me,” James said. “Congratulated me after the game on my first finals victory. I mean, it feels good because it’s the first game. And we played well as a team. We got a lot of work to do.”

Basketball
Dallas Mavericks
Miami Heat
Playoff Games
James LeBron
NBA Championship


Once-Popular Car Technologies at the End of the Road

Abstract: The history of in-car technology is littered with obsolete artifacts — including eight-track players and briefcase-size cellphones. What is next to be left behind? With technology inside the automobile becoming ever more sophisticated, Ronald Montoya of the auto research site Edmunds.com shared his predictions for which products are destined for the trash heap. NAVIGATION SYSTEMS GPS devices by Garmin and TomTom were all the rage seemingly just a few years ago. Now, most consumers are more likely to put their map-equipped smartphone in the cup holder, Mr. Montoya said. Google’s Android Autodashboard system means Google Maps will now be on a car’s main screen, making a separate GPS device unnecessary. Automakers’ efforts to build proprietary navigation systems will also be obsolete. Many tend to be clunky, and the maps they contain are often outdated. They will seem even more so when compared with the continually updated mapping and traffic reports from Android Auto or CarPlay. AUTOMAKER APP SYSTEMS In recent years, car companies have tried to capitalize on the app craze, with mixed results. That experimentation is likely to stop, Mr. Montoya said. Who needs a version of Pandora just for a Chevrolet or a Ford, when consumers will already have that app on their phone-powered screen? Instead, car companies are likely to work within the architecture of Google or Apple to offer vehicle-specific features. MUSIC PLAYERS Android Auto and CarPlay feature streaming music from their extensive libraries, and services like Pandora and iHeartRadio will offer apps on the platforms as well. So is it time to say goodbye to the MP3 music player, or even songs stored on your phone? Not so fast, Mr. Montoya said. “It costs you under data plans to stream music. So if you’re going to be streaming every single day and you’ve got an hour commute, that adds up fast,” he said. Of course, if data becomes cheap, that could change. CD PLAYERS These still come included in many new cars. Why? “They’re super cheap to produce and for car companies to install, so they’re still in a lot of vehicles even as consumers’ actual use of CDs is on a steep decline,” Mr. Montoya said. Most consumers buying a new car these days already want to see connectivity for their smartphone-based music, whether via Bluetooth or a cord. With Android Auto and CarPlay, the CD player’s days may finally be numbered. But it may not die out as quickly as some think. After all, until 2010, Lexus still offered a sedan with a cassette player.

Cars
GPS
Navigation
Audio Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Music
Compact Disc
Garmin
Mobile Apps