Tigers Make Use of Downtime Before World Series

Abstract: DETROIT — The Detroit Tigers ’ World Series tuneup felt more like a sleepy March afternoon in the Grapefruit League than anything closely resembling postseason baseball. There were nearly as many minor leaguers as major leaguers at Comerica Park on Sunday and no umpires to arbitrate a seven-inning intrasquad scrimmage held in front of empty grandstands. A Tigers team made up mostly of major leaguers defeated another Tigers team that consisted mostly of minor leaguers, 3-1, although little attention was paid to the scoreboard, which was never turned on. The Tigers, faced with five days between their American League Championship Series triumph over the Yankees and the start of the World Series on Wednesday, sought something to keep them fresh as they awaited the winner of the National League Championship Series between St. Louis and San Francisco. The sense of urgency was buttressed by memories of 2006, when the Tigers were idle for six days after their A.L.C.S. sweep of Oakland and then delivered a flat performance in a five-game World Series loss to St. Louis. “We’re not dumb,” Tigers Manager Jim Leyland said before the scrimmage. “We do learn from the past.” He added, “We’re not going to sit around staring at each other.” The 2006 Series was a qualified disaster for the Tigers. They won 95 games during the regular season and faced the Cardinals, who won just 83. But the Tigers emerged from the long layoff ice-cold, hitting just .199 during the series. Their defense was even worse, committing eight errors. Leyland, who also managed that team, called the performance rusty. He also said the weather leading to the series played a factor, forcing the Tigers to attempt workouts at the Lions’ neighboring football stadium. “A lot of people thought we just became fat cats in 2006 and said, We’re in the World Series, what’s the difference if we win?” Leyland said. “That’s not what we did at all. We had plans to have batting practice out on the field, but I can remember going over to Ford Field in a golf cart and getting rained on like crazy. We just couldn’t do anything.” The minor leaguers were flown to Detroit from the Florida Instructional League for a workout Saturday and for Sunday’s full scrimmage to help keep Leyland’s team in game shape. “They had the week off in ’06, and obviously they thought that hurt them a little bit,” catcher Gerald Laird, who was not on that team, said. “I like the fact they brought guys in for us to keep us sharp and keep us going. Hopefully, we can go into the World Series and the speed of the game feels the same.” The Tigers got an extra boost as Sunday morning dawned sunny and bright here, providing ideal conditions and averting a situation Leyland said he had considered: flying the team to Florida for a similar scrimmage. A handful of fans gathered on Adams Street beyond center field to watch the action, while inside the park, foul balls thudded and ricocheted off empty seats. Leyland worked several of his relievers, including Joaquin Benoit and Jose Valverde, against major league hitters. Valverde, Detroit’s closer during the regular season, has struggled in the postseason. He pitched the first inning Sunday and allowed a run, but in an effort to treat it like a real game, he did use his famous knee slaps as he jogged in from the bullpen. Alex Avila and Don Kelly had home runs. “They’re doing this businesslike,” Leyland said of his players. “They understand the purpose.” Another important lesson taken to heart from 2006 appears to be fielding practice for Tigers pitchers. The pitching staff committed five errors during the World Series that year, and at one point during Sunday’s game a Tigers coach went to the plate, halted action and simulated bunting situations. Leyland noted that pitchers had extra fielding practice during Saturday’s workout. Despite the strangeness of the scene at Comerica Park and the lengths the Tigers have taken to avoid any repeats of 2006, Leyland was in high spirits. The Tigers, after all, are on their way to the World Series. Asked if he would have preferred only a day or two off between series, like his opponent, Leyland smiled and said that after sweeping the Yankees, he would have been happy to wait three weeks for the World Series.

Baseball
World Series
Detroit Tigers
Playoff Games


Some Challenge ‘Green’ Credentials of SDG&E’s Sunrise Powerlink

Abstract: EL CENTRO, Calif. — The sun is so strong here that people often talk about the temperature being “in the teens,” meaning 113 or above. The wind is so powerful that west of town, signs on an Interstate display the number of miles remaining in which drivers will face dangerous winds, like signs that give the distance to the next city. And to the north, near the end of the San Andreas fault, water underground, hot enough to make steam, flows up through cracks nearly to the surface. Together, those resources constitute “the most productive renewable energy fields in the world,” as Michael R. Niggli, the chairman of San Diego Gas & Electric , the region’s biggest utility, bullishly puts it. “Where else in the world in the same area do you have wind, spectacular solar and geothermal ?” he said. This cluster of resources , a little over 100 miles east of San Diego, would seem to be a boon, given that California requires utilities to meet quotas for shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Mr. Niggli’s company, for example, is lagging, and it is avidly pursuing agreements with solar plants. But the problem, sometimes insurmountable, is how to get the energy to consumers. In what may be a dress rehearsal for skirmishes across the country over renewable energy and transmission, San Diego Gas & Electric has spent seven years and $100 million trying to start work on a 117-mile high-voltage line to reach the resources of El Centro. The $1.9 billion line would run from the depths of the Imperial Valley over a range of mountains and back down to the southern end of the urban sprawl that runs from Los Angeles through San Diego to the Mexican border. It would double the capacity for transmitting electricity from the valley to the coast, to 2,000 megawatts. Although the line won approval from the United States Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management and the State of California after the utility submitted an 11,000-page environmental impact statement, neighbors and wilderness advocates have filed lawsuits challenging those decisions. Opponents argue that the transmission line is not mainly about renewable energy. It could also carry electricity from a plant in northern Mexico that burns natural gas brought in by tanker to a port in Baja California, they say, with attendant fossil fuel emissions. Both the tanker terminal and the power plant were built by San Diego Gas & Electric’s parent, Sempra Energy. “They’re using wind as a cover,” said Donna Tisdale, an environmental advocate in Boulevard, Calif., in the mountains between the Imperial Valley and San Diego, who filed a suit to block the transmission line. Ms. Tisdale and other opponents also argue that a combination of power lines and wind farms set amid the area’s live oaks, buckwheat sage and sahara mustard would ruin a fragile wilderness. Test towers that measure wind speed have been sprouting in her area in advance of wholesale wind farm construction. “Our whole area will be transformed into an industrial energy park,” she said. She and others say the utility has given insufficient consideration to simpler ideas like covering rooftops in San Diego with solar cells. A federal judge in San Diego recently dismissed her legal challenge, ruling that she did not have standing; her lawyer says he will refile. The idea of giving expedited treatment to transmission lines for renewable energy even though some will carry electricity powered by fossil fuels has surfaced in many places around the country. But experts point out that in a power grid, hardly any lines carry only “green” electrons. “Electrons don’t have colors,” said Yakout Mansour, the president and chief executive of the California Independent System Operator , which runs the grid in most of the state. “If you don’t have it, it can’t accommodate renewables,” he said of the proposed transmission line. “If you have it, it will carry everything.” San Diego Gas & Electric has tried a variety of means to gain public support, like buying a $38 million helicopter to place transmission towers in roadless areas rather than carve out truck routes, and allowing San Diego County firefighters to use it to drop water on wildfires. While power lines are named for the obscure substations they run between, this transmission line bears the more market-friendly moniker Sunrise Powerlink. One factor working in favor of the transmission line is that it promotes California’s renewable energy goals, among the most ambitious in the nation, and lies entirely within state lines. By contrast, some proposed lines elsewhere would move renewable energy across multiple state lines and do not serve the goals of every state they would cross. San Diego Gas & Electric has already begun upgrading a substation and assembling some materials but has not yet started building the transmission line. Meanwhile, the federal government recently approved the lease of 6,360 acres here for a 709-megawatt solar farm to be constructed by Stirling Energy Systems that would feed power into the system. (All told, the Imperial Valley has an estimated 16,000 megawatts of renewable energy potential, many more times than the amount that could be carried by any contemplated power lines.) Beyond supplying renewable energy, Mr. Mansour said, the Sunrise Powerlink line would improve reliability in the San Diego region and would allow cheaper power from east of the city to displace more expensive local generation, saving money for customers. Yet others point out that the transmission project carries very little risk for the utility because the federal government commonly approves a rate of return of about 10 percent on transmission to encourage such construction. “Once it’s built, it’s money in the bank; it doesn’t matter what happens to it,” said Bill Powers, an engineer based in San Diego who works as a consultant for opponents of the line. “It’s the best return you can get for a dollar spent.” Complicating the routing of the transmission line is constrained space right around the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a site that the utility thinks would be politically unacceptable to cross. Its southern edge is about two miles from the Mexican border. One line already squeezes through the narrow corridor between the end of the park and the border; this would be the second; there is probably not room for a third. Yet building new transmission lines is challenging anywhere, and a lot of construction will be needed if the nation is to harness significant amounts of renewable energy. Recent government studies suggest that supplying 20 percent of American electricity with wind would require 12,000 to 22,000 miles of new transmission lines, aside from new lines that ordinary growth will require. But the United States has been adding only about 1,000 miles a year of new high-voltage transmission. (In many cases utilities have relied on new gas pipelines, for which permits are often easier to secure, and burned the gas in areas where the electricity is needed.) The potential for exploiting renewable energy remains huge nationally, said Michael W. Howard, president and chief executive of the Electric Power Research Institute , a nonprofit utility consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif. “But you’ve got to get it from somewhere,” he said. “If you’re going to have renewables, you’d better love transmission.”

San Diego Gas & Electric Company
Alternative and Renewable Energy
Sunrise Powerlink
Solar Energy
Wind Power
San Diego (Calif)


U.S. Productivity Rose 2.5 Percent in the 2nd Quarter

Abstract: Productivity at nonfarm businesses rebounded strongly in the second quarter, giving the Federal Reserve room to keep interest rates low for a while. The Labor Department said on Friday that productivity increased at a 2.5 percent annual rate after contracting at a revised 4.5 percent pace in the first quarter. The first quarter’s drop was the sharpest since the fourth quarter of 1981. The rebound kept in check labor-related production costs that had surged at the start of the year as an unusually cold winter depressed output. Unit labor costs, the price of labor for any given unit of production, rose at a 0.6 percent rate, braking sharply from an upwardly revised 11.8 percent pace in the first quarter. “The key message here is that labor costs remain subdued and unlikely to represent a source of rising production costs and or inflationary pressures any time soon,” said Anthony Karydakis, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak in New York. The Fed is keeping a close eye on wage growth as it ponders when to raise benchmark interest rates, which it has kept near zero since December 2008. Investors do not expect a rate increase until around the middle of next year. With productivity stepping up, there is more room for workers to win wage increases without pressuring inflation or profits. Compared with the second quarter of last year, unit labor costs were up just 1.9 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent inflation target. Even so, pay is accelerating. The report showed compensation per hour increased at a 3.1 percent rate in the second quarter, and was up by the same amount from a year earlier. In comparison, hourly compensation advanced only 1.1 percent last year. Other gauges, such as the government’s measure of personal income and its employment cost index — one of the favorite measures of Janet L. Yellen, the Fed chairwoman — have also pointed to some firming of wage pressures. “Today’s report doesn’t say that labor costs are a problem yet, but it hints at some improvement in pay,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa. “Fed members, at least the inflation hawks, will likely look at the report as supporting their view that it is time to change direction.” The second-quarter rebound reflected a sharp step up in gross domestic product in the second quarter. The government said last week that the economy grew at a 4.0 percent rate after shrinking at a 2.1 percent pace in the first quarter. The second-quarter growth estimate, however, is likely to be trimmed when the figures are revised later this month, with a report on Friday from the Commerce Department showing only a moderate gain in wholesale inventories in May and June. Economists said slow wholesale restocking could lower the second-quarter G.D.P. estimate by as much as three-tenths of a percentage point, although data earlier this week showing a smaller trade gap should help offset that a bit.


Detroit Auto-Parts Suppliers Branch Out to Other Industries

Abstract: DETROIT CRUISE the blighted streets that shoot off in either direction from 8 Mile Road, and the scars of the automotive crisis abound. “For sale” signs adorn the front of long-shuttered metal, paint and tool-and-die shops. And at factories still in business, the small number of cars in the parking lots testify that the shops are working below capacity. But pull into the bustling headquarters of W Industries , a compound of imposing black structures at 8 Mile and Hoover Street, and you’ll encounter a more hopeful vision of Detroit’s future. Once an exclusive supplier to the auto industry, this machine tool and parts company is rolling in new business. In one section of the cavernous shop floor, machinists use powerful lasers to slice thick steel plates. They’re making parts for Humvees and Stryker combat vehicles destined for Afghanistan and Iraq. Elsewhere, they are assembling a 60,000-pound apparatus for testing the Orion space module by simulating the violent vibrations of liftoff. Other workers are finishing a steel mold that will be used to make 70-foot-long roof sections of Airbus A350 passenger jets. Dozens of Michigan manufacturers like W Industries are discovering there is indeed life beyond the auto industry. Over the last two years, multinationals and start-ups alike have been coming to the state to build, buy or design a hodgepodge of products, whether aircraft parts, solar cells, or batteries for electric cars . In September, for instance, NTR , a solar energy company from Ireland, awarded contracts to two Detroit-area auto suppliers, including the race-car engine developer McLaren Performance Technologies , to make components for thousands of SunCatcher solar dishes. “It should be no surprise we went to Detroit,” says Jim Barry, NTR’s chief executive. “The standard of manufacturing in the automotive industry is extraordinarily high, and that is the only place you can find such a concentration of skills.” Of course, nobody expects Michigan to regain anytime soon all of the estimated 216,000 auto-related jobs lost in the past decade. Most of the new projects create 50 to 100 jobs at a time, while auto plant closures have shed tens of thousands. “You could bring a whole new industry in here, and it may replace one auto plant,” says David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. THE economic impact of the new industries is also hard to gauge: Michigan has few statistics on revenue from industries like clean technology and aerospace. Much of the new work, moreover, is limited to machining and developing prototypes. Mass production will most likely head elsewhere to save costs or to be closer to end customers. In short, the full payoff of the investments outside the auto industry is unlikely to be felt for several more years. “What we really are talking about is R&D, pilot projects and early-stage production,” says Peter Adriaens, a University of Michigan entrepreneurship professor tracking the trend. “There is virtually nothing we can do to keep large-scale production here.” Still, Mr. Cole and Mr. Adriaens say, the opportunities for auto suppliers are huge and could leave the state with a healthier, more diverse industrial base. For example, virtually all of the $50 million in engineering projects at the Detroit campus of Ricardo Inc., a British engineering services firm, are for products like remotely piloted military aircraft, construction equipment and lithium -ion batteries. And Global Wind Systems, a developer of wind farms that is based in the Detroit suburb of Novi, says it is working with 18 local suppliers to design next-generation turbines to be assembled nearby in 2012. General Electric, meanwhile, is investing $100 million in a 1,000-worker research and manufacturing facility for wind turbines outside Detroit, and Aernnova, a Spanish company that is a supplier to Boeing, Airbus and Bombardier, is planning an engineering center in Ann Arbor that will eventually employ 600. New plants to make lithium-ion batteries are in the pipeline from A123, Johnson Controls and LG Chemical. “There is a lot of business out there that is really suited to Detroit’s automotive skills,” says Edward Walker, the chief executive of W Industries, a privately held company. Among all the projects, the biggest is in Wixom, Mich., just northwest of Detroit. There, a mothballed Ford plant that had turned out millions of Thunderbirds, Town Cars and GTs is getting a $1.5 billion facelift. Two investors — Xtreme Power of Austin, Tex., and Clairvoyant Energy of Santa Barbara, Calif. — plan to hire 4,000 workers by late 2011 to make solar panels and battery systems for utilities. “As the alternative-energy space builds out, we expect these plants will create a lot of opportunities for Michigan suppliers,” says Greg Main, the chief executive of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation , the state’s investment promotion agency. Mr. Main estimates that at least 100 auto suppliers already have secured contracts in other industries and that at least 250 have bid for work. Federal and state tax credits, loan guarantees and grants certainly help stimulate investment. But the main allure of the Detroit area is its ability to quickly turn designs into workable products that can be economically mass-produced. The region remains the country’s premier precision manufacturing base, with 2,500 auto suppliers and tens of thousands of highly skilled, underemployed mechanical engineers, machinists and factory managers. “We have the best manufacturing resources on the planet here in Michigan,” says Chris Long, the founder and chief executive of Global Wind Systems. “We just need to get aligned.” IN 1981, W Industries was founded by Robert Walker, Edward’s father, to make wooden crates used to ship car windshields and windows. It eventually expanded into a wide range of machine tools and metal parts for car frames and bodies. The younger Mr. Walker, a 42-year-old with a fondness for wearing black, started working on the shop floor as a teenager and took the helm in 1993. To give the company a distinctive look, he adopted a bold red “W” logo and had all the buildings redone in red and black. The only way W Industries could grow, Mr. Walker soon concluded, was to diversify. He started with military contracts. By law, most of the work must be done on American soil. And by manufacturing within Detroit’s city limits, W Industries benefits from federal policies requiring that a certain portion of military contracts be given to companies in depressed areas. Another lure is abundant and cheap industrial space. Mr. Walker says he spent around $20 a square foot to buy and upgrade factories from bankrupt auto suppliers, about one-fifth of the cost of new buildings. Since landing its first military contract in 2004, the company has secured jobs to make hundreds of heavy steel parts for the frames, bodies and gun mounts of vehicles like the Stryker and the mine-resistant Cougar, both made by General Dynamics. Demand for such vehicles surged as the military sought to replace Humvees, which proved vulnerable to roadside bombs. Such work “requires a different mind-set and an entirely different way of operating your business,” Mr. Walker says. Rather than cranking out high volumes of parts for years, jobs come in small batches and are highly customized. Each month, for example, W Industries builds a dozen 25,000-pound frames for rough-terrain military vehicles that the Kalmar Corporation, based in San Antonio, builds for the Army. To win such business, W Industries has spent $50 million on modern machinery since 2006. The mold for the Airbus sections, which it is building for Spirit AeroSystems of Kansas, is being made with one of the world’s largest computer-controlled machine tools. It moves along a 200-foot-long rail shaving steel to create a super-polished surface. Spirit selected W Industries largely because it offered “an attractive combination of fabrication and expertise,” says Ken Evans, a Spirit spokesman. W Industries also got the Orion simulator project in part because it was one of the few companies in the United States with the right equipment. The Orion space program aims to send human explorers to the moon by 2020 and then to Mars and beyond. But NASA hasn’t built a space capsule since the Apollo program ended in 1975. Five years ago, W Industries had $15 million in annual sales. This year, it expects at least $150 million, two-thirds of it from military and aerospace contractors. It has bought three old factories in the area and is looking for more, and it plans to double its work force to 500 by 2011. Dowding Industries , a family-owned company in Eaton Rapids, is also wagering its future on diversification. It was founded in 1965 as a tool-and-die shop for Oldsmobile and later expanded into metal auto parts. The company branched out into tractor and rail car parts in the 1990s, as the Big Three pinched costs to compete with overseas rivals and “started getting real brutal” on suppliers, says Jeff Metts, Dowding’s president. He said that after Dowding had invested in new machine tools and perfected a part, the work was often shifted to China six months later. “There seemed to be a real effort to remove our profit,” Mr. Metts recalls. In 2006, he attended a wind-power trade show in Los Angeles. “We were really shocked at how big this industry was becoming,” he says. That year, Dowding won a $5 million contract from Clipper Turbine Works of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Other wind customers followed. After the recent recession, in which it laid off 130 of its 280 workers, Dowding made a bigger bet on wind, forming a venture with MAG Industrial Automation Systems in Sterling Heights to develop tools for turbine components. MAG also makes machines used to fabricate carbon-composite airframes for planes like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner . In October, the venture will introduce a system that Mr. Metts says can make better-performing wind turbine hubs in one-fifth the time of current methods. The next goal is a machine for carbon-composite blades that, he says, will be 30 percent lighter than fiberglass blades and last 20 years or longer. Mr. Metts says Dowding has commitments from several turbine makers, and he sees opportunities to use similar machines and technologies for bridges, expressways and ships — for which production methods and materials haven’t changed much in decades. “This will be as big as the shift from metal to plastics,” Mr. Metts says. The need to turn prototypes into real products is what lured NTR to the Detroit area. The company, based in Dublin, is installing the first 60 of its SunCatcher dishes, which cost $50,000 to $60,000 each, in Phoenix. If all of its solar-plant deals with California and Texas utilities are completed, it expects to sell 65,000 of them over the next two years. In 2008, NTR’s manufacturing arm, Stirling Energy Systems, hired Tower Automotive in Novi to develop modules with mirrors that will reflect the sun’s energy. It also enlisted McLaren in Livonia to help design and build the motorized units that will convert concentrated sunlight into electricity. Founded in 1969 by Bruce McLaren, the New Zealand-born auto racer, and bought in 2003 by Linamar of Canada, the firm is best known for developing turbocharged engines for race cars. Five years ago, all of McLaren’s business was with carmakers. Now, nearly a third is in developing motorized devices for the solar and wind industries. McLaren’s engineering team redesigned the SunCatcher engine and each of its 100 parts to make them more efficient, less expensive and easier to mass-produce. “We put everything on a wall,” recalls Phil Guys, McLaren’s president. “We got 500 suggestions from engineers.” McLaren has shipped its first batch of power-conversion units to Stirling and is developing new prototypes. A BIG question is whether the new work will sustain Detroit’s manufacturing ecosystem if auto assembly keeps migrating elsewhere. As suppliers close, more managers and engineers could move away. To illustrate how difficult that talent would be to replace, Bud Kimmel, vice president for business development at W Industries, points out Jason Sobieck. A 30-year-old machining whiz sporting a green tattoo, gray T-shirt and jeans, Mr. Sobieck manages the Spirit and Orion projects. “Jason is like an artist,” Mr. Kimmel says. “We built our whole program around him.” Mr. Sobieck began work at 17 at a small Detroit welding shop. He then worked for tooling companies, where he learned to program automated systems and manage projects. “These skills really aren’t taught in school,” Mr. Sobieck says, dragging on a cigarette. “This is a trade you learn on the shop floor.” That’s one reason that W Industries wants to snap up as many good machinists and engineers as it can afford. “If we don’t re-engage the automotive workers soon in major programs,” Mr. Kimmel says, “this set of skills will be lost.”

National Aeronautics and Space Administration


Syrian Conflict Takes New Turn for the Worse

Abstract: WASHINGTON — With evidence that powerful new weapons are flowing to both the Syrian government and opposition fighters, the bloody uprising in Syria has thrust the Obama administration into an increasingly difficult position as the conflict shows signs of mutating into a full-fledged civil war. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Tuesday that the United States believed that Russia was shipping attack helicopters to Syria that President Bashar al-Assad could use to escalate his government’s deadly crackdown on civilians and the militias battling his rule. Her comments reflected rising frustration with Russia, which has continued to supply weapons to its major Middle Eastern ally despite an international outcry over the government’s brutal crackdown. “We have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to Syria,” Mrs. Clinton said at an appearance with President Shimon Peres of Israel . “They have, from time to time, said that we shouldn’t worry; everything they’re shipping is unrelated to their actions internally. That’s patently untrue.” Russia insists that it provides Damascus only with weapons that can be used in self-defense. As fighting intensified across Syria, there were reports that government forces were using helicopters to fire on a rebel-held enclave in the northwestern part of the country. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain , reported that more than 60 people had been killed in the fighting, one-third of them government soldiers, while the United Nations released a report saying that Syrians as young as 8 had been deployed by government soldiers and pro-government militia members as human shields. The fierce government assaults from the air are partly a response to improved tactics and weaponry among the opposition forces, which have recently received more powerful antitank missiles from Turkey , with the financial support of Saudi Arabia and Qatar , according to members of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, and other activists. The United States, these activists said, was consulted about these weapons transfers. Officials in Washington said the United States did not take part in arms shipments to the rebels, though they recognized that Syria’s neighbors would do so, and that it was important to ensure that weapons did not end up in the hands of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. The increased ferocity of the attacks and the more lethal weapons on both sides threatened to overwhelm diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. Kofi Annan , the special envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League , continued to pressure Damascus to halt the violence and to respect a cease-fire. But Mrs. Clinton said that if Mr. Assad did not stop the violence by mid-July, the United Nations would have little choice but to end its observer mission in the country. Mrs. Clinton, State Department officials said, continues to push for a “managed transition,” under which Mr. Assad would step aside. Russia’s role is viewed as critical, however, and Mrs. Clinton’s claims about helicopter shipments are certain to increase tensions with Moscow less than a week before President Obama is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin at a summit meeting in Mexico . Administration officials declined to give details about the helicopters, saying the information was classified. But Pentagon sources suggested that Mrs. Clinton, in her remarks at a Brookings Institution event, was referring to a Russian-made attack helicopter that Syria already owns but has not yet deployed to crack down on opposition forces. While these helicopters, known as Mi-24s, are flown by Syrian pilots, Russia supplies spare parts and provides maintenance for them. A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, said the precise status of the helicopters was not as important as the violence being directed against opponents of the Syrian government. “The focus really needs to be more on what the Assad regime is doing to its own people than the cabinets and the closets to which they turn to pull stuff out.” Captain Kirby said. “It’s really about what they’re doing with what they’ve got in their hand.” The use of helicopters is contributing to a growing sense that, as Hervé Ladsous, the head of United Nations peacekeeping operations, put it, the fighting could be characterized as a civil war. “The government of Syria lost some large chunks of territories and several cities to the opposition and wants to retake control of these areas,” Mr. Ladsous said at the United Nations. “So now we have confirmed reports not only of the use of tanks and artillery, but also attack helicopters.” Opposition leaders are wary of the term civil war because it suggests that the conflict is somehow an even match. “Civil war will not come suddenly in one day or two or five, but you have to look how things are gradually changing on the ground,” said Samir Nachar, a member of the executive committee of the Syrian National Council. “Can you say to people, ‘Don’t defend yourselves?’ It is impossible.” Council members on Tuesday were also wary of reading too much into Mrs. Clinton’s claim, suggesting that it was an open secret for months that the Russians were supplying weapons to Syria. There have been repeated reports of Russian armament ships docking in Syria, although Moscow has always denied that they were carrying the arms used to suppress the protests. Speaking in Istanbul , council members also described efforts to supply the opposition with arms, specifically antitank weaponry delivered by Turkish Army vehicles to the Syrian border, where it was then transferred to smugglers who took it into Syria. Turkey has repeatedly denied that it is giving anything other than humanitarian aid to the opposition, mostly at refugee camps near the border. It has recently made those camps harder to visit: permission was not granted to two reporters in the vicinity for five days last week. Turkey did not act alone, but with financial support from Qatar and Saudi Arabia and after consultation with the United States, said these officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s diplomatic delicacy. The more powerful weapons have been delivered as far south as the suburbs of Damascus, but not into Damascus itself, they said. The presence of the antitank missiles seems to have made government forces hesitant to move their tanks around urban centers, according to sources in the Syrian National Council. But they have done nothing to stem the violence. On Tuesday, a team of United Nations cease-fire monitors retreated before reaching Al Heffa in the northwest, when hostile crowds struck their vehicles with stones and metal rods, said a spokeswoman, Sausan Ghosheh. “The shelling has been continuous,” said Houran al-Hafawi, a member of the local coordination committee of Al Heffa. “The Syrian Army is throwing missiles and rockets from helicopter and rocket launchers from the eastern and western entrances.” For the Pentagon, the debate over Russia’s rearming of Syria took an odd twist on Tuesday when Senator John Cornyn , a Texas Republican, complained that the United States military was buying attack helicopters for Afghan security forces from the same Russian weapons company supplying the Assad government. George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, defended the purchases of the Mi-17 helicopters from the Russian company, Rosoboronexport, as important to helping Afghanistan create a credible self-defense force, and said the issue was separate from the concern over arms shipments to Syria that were used by the government to kill civilians. “It’s about equipping the Afghan air force with what they need to ensure that they have the capabilities from an air standpoint to defend themselves,” Mr. Little said.

Arab Spring
Free Syrian Army
UN
Bashar al-Assad
Syria
Russia
Arms Trade


Russell Westbrook Is Left Out of Starting Lineup for N.B.A. All-Star Game

Abstract: Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder is averaging a triple-double and is the prohibitive favorite to be named the N.B.A.’s most valuable player, but he will not be starting in the All-Star Game. And he can blame the league’s fans for that. The news shocked many around the N.B.A. when it was announced Thursday, with Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors and James Harden of the Houston Rockets beating out Westbrook for the starting guard spots on the Western Conference squad that will take the court Feb. 19 in New Orleans. In a new voting system in which the fans, the players and the news media all got a portion of the vote, Westbrook’s dominant season helped him finish first among the players and the news media, but third in the tiebreaking fan vote, more than 200,000 votes behind both Curry and Harden. The reaction among players and some fans was swift, with many expressing disbelief that Westbrook’s season was not enough to secure a starting spot. “Dude averaging a triple double and not starting in the all star game is wild,” Chandler Parsons, a forward for the Memphis Grizzlies, wrote on Twitter . The announcement came as part of a rough 24-hour period for Westbrook, who was the All-Star M.V.P. in each of the last two seasons. He caught flak for a particularly egregious traveling violation in a loss against the Warriors , in which he also had 10 turnovers and was leveled in a violent collision with Zaza Pachulia. That he earned his 21st triple-double of the season hardly seemed to matter, and for him to lose an All-Star starting spot to Curry, the two-time defending M.V.P. who is having a season well below the standard he set last year, had to sting. Curry’s numbers would certainly be deserving of an All-Star starting spot in most seasons, as he is averaging 24.6 points and 6.1 assists a game as the point guard of the team with the N.B.A.’s best record. But Westbrook, since the abrupt departure of Kevin Durant to Golden State, has been a man on a mission. His team may not have the firepower of the Warriors, but Westbrook has had no problem going it alone, averaging a league-leading 30.6 points a game while also averaging 10.6 rebounds and 10.4 assists. Those numbers have him on pace to join Oscar Robertson of the 1961-62 Cincinnati Royals as the only players to average a triple-double for an entire season. Thus far, Westbrook’s effort has willed the thin Thunder roster to a 25-19 record and the No. 7 spot in the West. While Westbrook has significant leads over Curry in traditional game averages and most advanced statistics, the most telling number may be usage percentage, which is an estimate of the percentage of a team’s plays that an individual is part of while he is on the court. Westbrook’s 41.9 percent not only leads all current players by more than 5 percentage points, but it would also break Kobe Bryant’s N.B.A. record of 38.74 percent set in the 2005-6 season. But in the end, Curry, thanks to his popularity, his past success and his team’s stellar record, will start, and Westbrook, despite his myriad accolades and accomplishments, will be forced to come off the bench. For better or worse, that reflects what the fans wanted.

Basketball
All-star game
Russell Westbrook
Stephen Curry
James Harden
Kyrie Irving
LeBron James


How a Priest Made the Case for Mother Teresa’s Sainthood

Abstract: Mother Teresa will be formally canonized on Sept. 4 by Pope Francis in Rome. Widely known as “the Saint of Calcutta,” she founded religious orders of women and men that serve the poor in more than 130 countries. Even for a woman who is an icon of modern saintliness, the Roman Catholic Church requires that someone must gather evidence of miracles and present a case that she is worthy to be admitted to the pantheon of saints. That someone is the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, a Canadian priest and member of the Missionaries of Charity Fathers , a religious order founded by Mother Teresa . Soon after she died in 1997 at age 87, he was made the postulator — the main promoter of her case for sainthood. Father Brian, who divides his time between Rome and a Missionaries of Charity house in Tijuana, Mexico, is also the editor of a new book, “A Call to Mercy: Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve,” drawn from Mother Teresa’s teachings and testimony about her life. He was interviewed in August before leaving for Rome to prepare for the canonization ceremonies. This interview has been edited and condensed. How did you meet Mother Teresa? My sister — we’re only two of us — joined the Missionaries of Charity Sisters in 1976, and a year later my parents and I came from Winnipeg to see her in Rome. During a Mass with the first group of contemplative brothers, Mother Teresa pinned a cross on a priest and six laymen. The male branches of the M.C.’s wear a cross over the heart, and the sisters wear a cross on the shoulder, which serves the purpose of holding the sari together. After the Mass, as we were saying goodbye, Mother Teresa said to me, “Oh, I would like to pin a cross on you, too.” I was only 21, and this was Mother Teresa talking, and I was just so shocked, I didn’t say anything. The next morning after Mass, in the convent of San Gregorio, I was brave enough to go up to Mother and ask her, what did she mean. She invited me to join the brothers. So I did. There are usually two miracles required to establish sainthood — one for beatification and another for canonization. How do you go about finding the two miracles? It’s more like waiting and hoping for people to report something. The first one, the miracle for the beatification, was Monica Besra in Bengal, in India. Monica had a tumefaction, like a tumor, in her abdomen, and it was 16 or 17 centimeters — roughly the size of a woman six months pregnant. Her family had tried different things, and nothing was working. They took her to the sisters, who took her to the doctor, who sent her home on the 31st of August of 1998. Pretty much, she was dying. On Sept. 5, the first anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death, the sister superior took a medal of Mary that had been touched directly to the body of Mother Teresa at the time of the funeral, placed it on Monica’s stomach and made a very simple prayer: “Mother, today’s your day. You love the poor. Do something for Monica.” That was about 5 p.m. on Saturday. At 1 a.m. when Monica got up in the middle of the night to go to the washroom, she discovered that her stomach was flat. Sunday morning, the sisters saw her up and sweeping with a broom, and they said, whoa, what is up with Monica? But what proof is there that this was really a miracle, and that there was no medical or scientific explanation? They’re quite strict on these things. In Brazil, a postulator I knew on another sainthood cause received the news that the miracle case he had put forth was rejected, so it’s not automatic. In the India case for Mother Teresa, there were 11 doctors consulted, and only one was Catholic. The rest were Hindu. You don’t ask the doctors whether they think it’s a miracle. You only ask them, “Can you explain this medically?” Image A mosaic of Mother Teresa hanging in the courtyard in the residence, with Father Brian at right. The residence has been turned into something of a museum in her honor. Credit Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times Why were there 10 years between the first miracle and the second miracle? There were other cases, but when we had the documentation, I would ask the doctors I knew at Scripps [Scripps Clinic Torrey Pines in La Jolla, Calif.] or in Tijuana, and usually the doctor would say, “It could happen naturally.” I had another case, everything looked like it was checking out fine, except the mother-in-law wrote me a letter and said the whole year she was praying to Padre Pio. And that was the end of that. Whose miracle was that, Mother Teresa or Padre Pio? The second miracle finally happened in Brazil , and this time it was a man, Marcilio. He had a bacterial infection in the brain which had caused multiple abscesses … and he developed hydrocephaly. His wife started praying a novena, nine days of prayer, to Mother Teresa, and she asked her family members to do the same. On Dec. 9, at 2 in the morning, Marcilio had excruciating pain in the head, and went into a coma. He was just near death. The doctor finally gets him in the operating room, hoping to drain the water, but couldn’t do it the way he had planned, so he left the operating room at about 6:10 p.m. to find a doctor who could do it another way. When he returned to the operating room — unsuccessful in his attempt — he discovers that Marcilio is awake, in no pain, and he says, “What am I doing here?” Two brain scans were taken, one on Dec. 9 and one on Dec. 13, and all the different surgeons look at the two scans, and they say you can’t go from here to there. The doctor even told Marcilio’s brother that he had 30 patients with hydrocephaly like this and 29 died. Only Marcilio survived. Mother Teresa has her critics . They have accused her of running facilities that offered substandard care, and of cozying up to dictators like Enver Hoxha in Albania and Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti. Did the sainthood process examine these allegations? Oh, yes. In fact, Christopher Hitchens was called as a witness, in Washington. When we were preparing the actual case, myself and the people helping watched his movie “Hell’s Angel” and read his book “Missionary Position.” We have to take them seriously. But some of it is just mistaken information. Mother never took any money from Duvalier. And in the movie, Hitchens presented Mother going to the tomb of Enver Hoxha, the dictator. What was she doing there? The facts are that she had asked to see the tomb of her mother and sister, and government escorts took her without telling her to Hoxha’s tomb. Then she says, now can I go to the tomb of my mother and sister? The Albanian translator, who also gave her testimony, said, “We in Albania know that any foreign visitor was taken to the tomb of Enver Hoxha.” That was part of the protocol. In India, there is some resentment that Mother Teresa made Calcutta synonymous with poverty. It’s not like Mother tried to focus on the poverty of Calcutta. That’s just where she started. Interesting that after India, the country that has the next largest number of houses run by the Missionaries of Charity is the U.S. She kept saying that the greatest poverty in the world today is to be unloved, unwanted and uncared for, and that’s a harder and more difficult poverty to reach. Mother Teresa’s private letters and writings, which were published in a book that you edited in 2007 on the 10th anniversary of her death, revealed that she suffered for decades from an excruciating anxiety that God had abandoned her. Is that kind of spiritual suffering a prerequisite for sainthood, or an obstacle? In the Positio — that’s the Latin for the written case examining how Mother Teresa lived her Christian life — we had a special chapter on the darkness because it was a very distinctive feature. We had to examine it in light of the mystical tradition. It wasn’t surprising that she had it because other saints have had it. What was really more surprising is that it was so long, almost 50 years. To live like that is heroic. An immature person would have been crushed by such an experience. She was suffering that loneliness, that sense of being unloved, unwanted in her relationship with Jesus, but in solidarity with and identified with others who were in some way living that sense of loneliness and being unloved. It must be satisfying for you to see her declared a saint. It’s been 17 years, since 1999. That will be nice to be standing there on Sunday morning. The canonization rite itself is before Mass begins. The prefect in charge of the Congregation for Saints does the official requesting, and I’m standing next to him. Thankfully, I don’t have to open my mouth.

Mother Teresa
Brian Kolodiejchuk
Beatification
Missionary
Prayer
Missionaries of Charity
Catholic Church


Sri Lankan Troops Seize Base, Pushing Rebels Into Corner

Abstract: COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan forces captured the strategic Elephant Pass base from the Tamil Tiger rebels on Friday, ousting them from their last stronghold on the Jaffna Peninsula and boxing them into a shrinking pocket of land in the northeast. The capture of the base gives the government nearly full control of the northern peninsula, the rebels’ cultural capital, for the first time since 2000. It also puts the country’s major north-south highway completely under its control for the first time in 23 years. The rebels are now confined to a small area of jungle around their last remaining stronghold, Mullaittivu. In a nationally televised address, President Mahinda Rajapaksa praised the victory. “Our soldiers by this evening have been able to totally liberate Elephant Pass” from the rebels, he said. There was no comment from the rebels, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The government, which seized the rebels’ administrative capital, Kilinochchi, last week, has promised to crush the rebel group and end Sri Lanka’s 25-year-old civil war. But in a reminder of the rebels’ ability to cause destruction even as they suffer conventional defeats, the rebels detonated a roadside bomb in the country’s east on Friday that killed three air force troops and four civilians, said a military spokesman, Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara. The attack outside the eastern city of Trincomalee signaled a return to guerrilla tactics. The government captured the east from the rebels in 2007, but attacks in the area have increased in recent months. On Friday, government forces marching from the north and south broke into Elephant Pass and fought heavy battles with the rebels, the military said. The base is on the isthmus connecting the northern Jaffna Peninsula with the rest of the island in the Indian Ocean. Analysts said the guerrillas appeared to have withdrawn their artillery and heavy weaponry from the area and were sacrificing their bases on the peninsula to consolidate forces near Mullaittivu, where they will probably make a stand. The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization by governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. The conflict has killed more than 70,000 people.

Sri Lanka
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare
Sinhalese (Ethnic Group)
Civilian Casualties


A Diplomatic Triumph in Cuba Comes With a Challenge in North Korea

Abstract: WASHINGTON — For more than five decades, the United States has found itself in periodic confrontation with two Communist nations that have survived on a diet of anti-Americanism, and defied the overwhelming odds that they would have collapsed years ago. Now, in the same week, Cuba and North Korea have veered in entirely different directions, posing opposite challenges for the Obama administration. Cuba is now the newest experiment in integration, and North Korea a case study in how to contain an old adversary brandishing an entirely new weapon. The Cuba question boils down to this: Now that President Obama has abandoned a policy of isolation that has failed for 53 years, what are the prospects of changing the nation the way the United States has tried to change China and Vietnam — the two former adversaries the president cited Wednesday as examples of successful engagement? In both cases, the idea is to lure such adversaries into adhering to Western-designed rules for dealing with the world, in return for the economic benefits of economic integration. In each case, it is still a work in progress. North Korea, in contrast, has escalated its confrontation with the United States, but in a far more innovative way than building nuclear weapons or firing off missiles. Instead, it has turned to a new tool — easily deniable cyberattacks — and so provoked the White House that a spokesman said on Thursday that the United States was looking for a “proportional response.” But deterring cyberattacks from an isolated nation like North Korea is notoriously difficult — and in that battle, Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, not only won the first round, but still holds a few cards. “What’s happening here is that Cuba has made a strategic decision that it can normalize relations and engage in integration without threatening their regime survival,” said Robert S. Litwak, a scholar at the Wilson Center for International Scholars and author of “Outlier States: American Strategies to Change, Contain or Engage Regimes.” “North Korea has made the other calculus, that it can’t survive integration,” he said, “and its new survival strategy is to attack the hyperconnected world of which it is not a part.” Mr. Litwak got his book title from Mr. Obama, who used the word “outlier” in an interview in 2010 to describe his effort to lure nations like Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea and Syria back into the fold. Once, they were called “rogue states”; Mr. Obama chose his words carefully to suggest they could be reformed. So far the president is batting 2 for 6: Myanmar came around four years ago, and Cuba this week. Libya and Syria descended into civil war. And no country is watching the outcome of the Cuba-North Korea-United States triangle more than the Iranians, who are engaged in the same internal debate over the merits of integrating with the West versus defying it. The differences between Cuba and North Korea are vast. While they both emerged as proxy states in the Cold War, Cuba’s nuclear ambitions ended with the missile crisis in 1962. While it remains a subject of heated political debate in the United States about its human rights record, it has not posed a credible threat to America in decades. Its rhetoric about American imperialism had lost its fire, fading like an aging poster of Fidel Castro, nursing a cigar in the bloom of revolutionary youth. “This is a regime that has been molting,” said Julia E. Sweig, the director of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. More than a year ago Raul Castro’s government allowed Cubans to travel freely, a factor that administration officials say influenced Mr. Obama’s decision. “They have made a calculation that rather than try to control the movements of their own people, that Cubans can be part of the global economy and come back and have homes and businesses inside and outside of Cuba,” Ms. Sweig said. That is one reason that the technological elements of Mr. Obama’s initiative on Wednesday are so important: They are designed to wire the island, making a country that has long viewed itself as a Western society an integral part of it. This is not a risk-free strategy for either Mr. Obama or the Cuban government. If Cuba’s human rights performance follows China’s path, Mr. Obama will be charged with failed engagement — though there is no evidence that isolation worked at influencing the Cuban government’s behavior. On the other hand, if the opening of full relations results in something more akin to Libya-like chaos — an extremely unlikely possibility — Raul Castro will have destroyed the family enterprise. North Korea is at the other end of the spectrum. Its people cannot travel. There is no international Internet access, save for the elite. And the government is paranoid about plots to unseat it, a neuralgia that “The Interview,” Sony’s crude comedy about an assassination of Mr. Kim, set off. If Cuba had its nuclear moment decades ago, North Korea is in the midst of its own. It has the fuel to make six to 12 weapons. But they are useless as a tool to jab at the West. That is where cyberweapons come in — their use is deniable, and the severity of the attacks can be adjusted up and down. Until now, no cyberattack on the United States has provoked a national response. When banks or retailers have been hit by denial-of-service attacks — which overwhelm a computer system but do not permanently disable it — companies have been left to fend for themselves. But Sony was different. A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, explained the reasons this attack was briefed to the president on almost a daily basis over the past week. “The first is that it’s actual, destructive malware, being used against the U. S. subsidiary of a Japanese company — that is, a company on American soil,” the official said. “And the second is the manner in which the stolen data is being used — to influence the actions of that company and prevent a movie from being shown.” But it is unclear what pain Mr. Obama can inflict in return to create some semblance of deterrence. North Korea is under so many sanctions already that adding more seems futile. Return cyberattacks are possible, but, since the North is such an unwired society, the targets are few — and the opportunities for retaliation against the United States are vast. And so Mr. Obama finds himself facing the same problem that every president since Harry S. Truman has faced in North Korea: A recalcitrant leader who has concluded that engagement with richer nations amounts to a suicide pact for the Kim family dynasty.

Cuba
North Korea
US Foreign Policy
Cyberwarfare
US
Kim Jong-un
Embargoes Sanctions


Iran’s President Moves Ahead on Uranium Processing

Abstract: CAIRO — Iran ’s president ordered his atomic scientists on Sunday to begin enriching their stockpile of uranium in order to power a medical reactor, a move that accelerated Iran’s brinkmanship over its nuclear program by moving the country closer to producing weapons-grade fuel. The order by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , was the latest in a series of contradictory signals from Iran about its intentions regarding the country’s uranium stockpile, one of the most contentious issues between Tehran and the West, which suspects the country is seeking to build a nuclear weapon. It came a few days after Mr. Ahmadinejad appeared to revive hope that Iran might accept a Western deal to swap much of its uranium for medical-reactor fuel that cannot be weaponized, a deal the Iranians had rejected. Despite Mr. Ahmadinejad’s latest proclamation, during a speech in Tehran, it is far from clear that Iran has the capability to enrich fuel to the level he ordered. But Mr. Ahmadinejad clearly sought to increase the pressure on the West to reopen negotiations, on terms more favorable to Tehran, on providing fuel for the medical reactor. United States officials, who said they were not surprised by the announcement, said they believed that it would help President Obama win more stringent sanctions against Iran, and particularly against the Revolutionary Guards, who run the nuclear program and have protected Mr. Ahmadinejad and other leaders by moving to crush Iran’s domestic opposition movement. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, reacting to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s announcement, said during a visit to Rome that sanctions could still work “if the international community will stand together and bring pressure to bear on the Iranian government.” Iran has threatened the move that Mr. Ahmadinejad ordered many times since the collapse of the uranium exchange deal that would have provided fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor, which produces isotopes used for medical purposes. The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency had proposed the swap because it would deprive Iran of stockpiles that it could convert into bomb fuel, while providing Tehran with fuel rods that would be very difficult to use in a weapon. But as soon as Iranian negotiators brought that deal back to Tehran in October, they met a wall of opposition from the military, from hard-liners, and ultimately from opposition leaders. “We have to agree, that deal is dead,” said Valerie Lincy, senior associate at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. There is every reason to believe that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s order on Sunday may represent nuclear gamesmanship. To enrich its current stockpile of uranium to roughly 20 percent purity — what is needed for the Tehran reactor, which the United States provided to the country before the Islamic Revolution — would require retooling the configuration of the nation’s centrifuges. It comes at a moment when Western intelligence agencies say that Iran has run into technical difficulties at its nuclear plants. It is unclear if those troubles have been caused by Iran’s own technical failings, outside sabotage or some other reason. But in recent months, United States intelligence officials have told Congress and close allies, in classified briefings, that covert efforts to interfere with Iran’s capability are extremely active. Even if Iran could produce the 20 percent enriched uranium, it would then have to manufacture it into specialized fuel rods for the reactor. That technology is most advanced in France and Argentina. Creating the capability in Iran could take years. The announcement by Mr. Ahmadinejad comes at a time of intense diplomatic maneuvering over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program . The United States has been working hard to persuade other nations to accept new and punishing sanctions, while Iran is trying to thwart those efforts. Iran has largely succeeded with China, which receives about 15 percent of its oil from Iran. Until now, Iran has never enriched significant quantities of fuel beyond the level needed in ordinary nuclear reactors, part of its argument that its program is for peaceful purposes. But any effort to produce 20 percent enriched uranium would put the country in a position to produce highly enriched uranium — at the 90 percent level used for weapons — in a comparatively short time, nuclear experts say. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s announcement that Iran would produce medical-reactor fuel itself came at a laser technology conference in Tehran, where he told Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the atomic energy agency, who was seated in the audience, to move ahead. “Mr. Salehi, you start enriching up to 20 percent, and we are still open to negotiations on the issue,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, according to Iranian news accounts. He added: “The path to cooperation is open, if they come and agree to exchange without preconditions, we will exchange.” Mr. Ahmadinejad’s declaration came after a dizzying week of statements by Iranian officials that seemed to indicate considerable disagreements within the country’s leadership — or, at a minimum, an absence of message control. Mr. Ahmadinejad himself talked of reopening negotiations with the West. At a security conference in Munich , the country’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said he was optimistic that a deal was near after a conversation with the new chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Almost immediately, one of Iran’s most powerful lawmakers and a former nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, charged that the West was engaged in “political deception” to cheat Iran out of its fuel. Then came Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statement. Senior administration officials in Washington said they did not know what to make of the mixed messages, other than that they indicated continued political infighting in Tehran.

Iran
Nuclear Energy
Ahmadinejad Mahmoud
Uranium


Q & A with Stuart Elliott

Abstract: Q: (Reader) When and how does one decide that the pitch person is too attractive for the product? I refer to the Mercury woman, the cute, girl-next-door brunette with the nice figure and perky, uh, delivery. Lately, she who has been in slacks now appears in a red summer strapless frock, revealing most excellent shoulders and legs. Unfortunately, the commercial shows only a few seconds of her close-up followed by close-ups of the cars, which are not nearly so cute. Really, the kid does a great job. Her readings are excellent and she projects just enough sophistication and intelligence to be credible. But in the mind of this TV viewer, she steals the show. A: (Stuart Elliott) A pithy reply, dear reader: She cannot be too attractive if you can remember the brand name. Q: (Reader) This is in reference to the question from your newsletter a couple weeks back about AT&T using a beach in Hawaii for a commercial that is set in Spain -- or, “I’m not a Spanish beach but I play one on TV.” In your answer, you offered some instances of gaffes like a Republican candidate for Senate in Colorado (mis)appropriating Mount McKinley as a Colorado peak. Here is another example, which was reported just days before your newsletter came out: Birmingham, England, promoted its recycling efforts by using a photo of Birmingham, Ala. A: (Stuart Elliott) Thanks, dear reader, for the citation. Another reader wrote to mention the same blunder, including a link to a news report by Reuters describing how the leaders of the government of Birmingham, England, apologized for publishing thousands of leaflets that included the skyline of the Alabama city rather than the familiar landmarks of their own city. They did, however, decide against recalling the leaflets, which would have been considerably more mortifying since the subject was recycling.

Slogans and Mottoes
Trademarks and Trade Names
AT&T Corp


Butler Defeats UTEP in N.C.A.A.’s First Round

Abstract: SAN JOSE, Calif. — Faced with a helter-skelter pace and case of the tournament jitters, the Butler Bulldogs took a deep breath and channeled their inner Jimmy Chitwood. The team that plays in the old barn of “Hoosiers” fame, Hinkle Fieldhouse, went back to its roots and turned to its jump shot. When the fifth-seeded Bulldogs were finished, they had shot down Texas-El Paso, 77-59, in a West Region first-round game. Shelvin Mack hit seven 3-pointers, scoring 25 points, and Butler hit 10 3-pointers in the second half, turning a 6-point halftime deficit into a rout. “I hate to be the master of the obvious,” said Butler Coach Brad Stevens. “But when you hit” that many “3’s in a half, you’re going to be happy where you’re headed.” The Bulldogs (29-4) will play 12th-seeded Murray State in a second-round game. After Murray State’s thrilling upset of Vanderbilt, it looked as if another stunner was on tap. UTEP’s pressure defense and its big man in the middle, Derrick Caracter, looked to be more than Butler could handle. The Miners led at the half, 33-27, thanks to 6 steals by their defense and 12 points and 6 rebounds from the 6-foot-9, 275-pound Caracter. But at halftime, Butler committed to moving the ball better on offense and helping defend Caracter. Although he finished with 20 points and 9 rebounds, UTEP scored only 4 points in the opening 9 minutes 44 seconds of the second half. By that time, Butler led, 49-39. But Shawn Vanzant and Mack hit back-to-back 3-pointers and the Bulldogs were rolling. “We did a lot better job of getting down there and frustrating him,” said Butler forward Matt Howard. “I wasn’t going to stop him by myself. When you’re rolling like that, it has to get frustrating for the other team.”

NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
Butler University
University of Texas at El Paso
Basketball
College Athletics
Caracter Derrick


No Joy in Football? N.F.L. Celebration Penalties Rise Sharply

Abstract: When Andrew Hawkins of the Browns caught a touchdown pass against the Patriots in Week 5, his reaction was unexpected. He came to a stop, then stiffly placed the ball on the turf and robotically walked away . The mechanical performance, Hawkins later acknowledged, was in response to the N.F.L.’s growing crackdown on what it considers to be excessive celebrations. The clampdown has annoyed many fans, who have trotted out the old criticism of the N.F.L. as the “No Fun League.” And it has raised charges of inconsistent enforcement. “Everything you do gets fined nowadays, right?” Hawkins told Cleveland.com . “Me seeing the tape of what not to do — and I get it, rules are rules — but I thought it would be funny to do that and troll the whole situation, so that’s what I did.” Cody Kessler ➡ Andrew Hawkins 🙌🙌🙌 https://t.co/dBJ4p6IpYU — Cleveland Browns (@Browns) October 9, 2016 Celebration penalties are up sharply this season. The league says it has not changed its rules but has made excessive celebration a “point of emphasis,” essentially asking officials to pay extra attention to enforcing the existing rules. And that has meant that the flags, and fines, are flying. Antonio Brown of the Steelers was penalized and fined in Week 1 for twerking after a touchdown and again in Week 4 for a pelvic thrust . (Brown’s moves were more appreciated earlier this year when he finished in the top five on “Dancing With the Stars.”) Josh Norman of the Redskins drew a penalty and a fine for miming shooting a bow and arrow , though Tom Brady, on his return from a suspension, eluded punishment for a similar arms-in-the-air gesture . And the old standbys are still being enforced rigidly: Vernon Davis of the Redskins was flagged for shooting the ball through the uprights like a jump shot after a touchdown Sunday, and Odell Beckham Jr. was penalized for taking off his helmet on the field late in the Giants’ game Sunday. Image Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown was penalized for a pelvic thrust in Week 4, above, and for twerking in Week 1. Credit Don Wright/Associated Press ESPN reported after Week 4 that taunting calls were up 220 percent, and unsportsmanlike penalties were up 56 percent. Dean Blandino, the N.F.L.’s senior vice president for officiating, responded to some of the criticism with an explanatory video for the news media and teams this month. “The rule hasn’t changed in terms of what is and what isn’t taunting,” he said, insisting that “we’re not trying to legislate emotion out of the game.” He said that “anything that mimics a violent act” and “anything that mimics weaponry” would be an automatic penalty. This explains why Norman’s bow and arrow was penalized whereas Brady’s move, which was interpreted as a tribute to Usain Bolt’s celebratory lightning-bolt gesture, was fine. Lightning bolts have not been regularly used as weapons since Zeus. “I have my reasons as to why I shoot it, too, you know?” Norman said last week on 106.7 The Fan, a radio station that serves the Washington metropolitan area. “And I think everybody has a justified reason, and our reason is not to hurt nobody or to demonstrate that we’re trying to shoot something.” Brandin Cooks of the Saints has eluded penalties for his own bow-and-arrow gesture. “The reason for why I’m doing it and what’s behind why I’m doing it doesn’t have anything to do with violence,” he told The Times-Picayune . He has said it is a reference to the archery skills of Abraham’s son Ishmael in the Book of Genesis. Whether dancing draws a foul depends on the nature of the dance. “When it’s sexually suggestive, that’s a penalty,” Blandino said. A celebration in general crosses the line “if it’s choreographed, if it’s excessive, if it’s prolonged.” The N.F.L. video shows Victor Cruz of the Giants dancing after a touchdown against the Cowboys. “The salsa dance is fine,” Blandino said. “But then when his teammate comes and takes the Polaroid picture, that’s a choreographed demonstration.” Blandino said he thought letting colorful celebrations slide could lead to a slippery slope. “Believe me, if we let this go it will continue to build and players will continue to try to outdo each other,” he said. ”It leads to altercations.” Still, Blandino hastened to point out that many gestures and celebrations were acceptable. The N.F.L. rule book says that “players are prohibited from engaging in any celebrations or demonstrations while on the ground.” But Blandino said, “ Prayer is not a foul.” Image Penalties for taunting and unsportsmanlike conduct are way up this year. Credit Patrick Smith/Getty Images He also assured viewers, “Hugs are always legal.” Rule 12, Section 3, Article 1 of the rule book specifies a two-tier system for celebration penalties. Some actions are expressly forbidden, including “throat slash; machine-gun salute; sexually suggestive gestures; prolonged gyrations; or stomping on a team logo.” Another list forbids activities only if they are directed at an opponent: “Sack dances; home run swing; Incredible Hulk; spiking the ball; spinning the ball; throwing or shoving the ball; pointing; pointing the ball; verbal taunting; military salute; standing over an opponent (prolonged and with provocation); or dancing.” Carlos Hyde of the 49ers was assessed a taunting penalty after flexing at some Cardinals players . If his flexing had occurred a few feet away, it probably would have been legal. The N.F.L. sees itself as setting a good example. “There are many, many kids out there that are N.F.L. fans, who are playing football and they see our athletes and they mimic what they do,” Blandino said. Blandino said he did not expect the torrent of penalties to continue. “Fouls go up initially, and then as the players start to regulate their behavior and they understand where the bar is, we start to see the foul numbers go down,” he said. Despite trying to stamp out the more flamboyant celebrations, the N.F.L. has not been especially hesitant to promote them on social media. A video celebrating the “ top 10 celebrations ” on NFL.com includes several that might seem likely to draw a flag, including Rams players gathering around a spinning ball and Chad Johnson performing “Riverdance.” But the league may have shown its preferences with the choice for the No. 1 celebration ever: Barry Sanders scoring a touchdown and then not celebrating. The N.F.L.’s list includes an appearance by the acknowledged master of the celebration, Terrell Owens, who last played in 2010. Owens pulled a marker from his sock and autographed the ball after a score. He grabbed and shook a cheerleader’s pompom, dumped a container of popcorn on himself and slammed a ball on the opposing Cowboys logo at midfield. That last one led to his being decked by Cowboys safety George Teague. The Golden Age of N.F.L. celebrations is also remembered for Ickey Woods’s dance, the Ickey Shuffle , in the late 1980s; Deion Sanders’s regularly starting celebrations before he even reached the end zone in the mid-1990s; and Johnson’s performing a variety of stunts, notably donning a jacket inaccurately proclaiming him a future Hall of Famer in 2007. In the current N.F.L. climate, shows like these are likely to be rare, and costly. Get used to seeing celebrations more like Sanders’s and less like Owens’s in the weeks ahead.

Football
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015
Chad Johnson
Terrell Owens
Odell Beckham Jr.
Victor Cruz
Carlos Hyde


On the Road to Samarra, Glimpses of Iraq’s New Fractured Reality

Abstract: SAMARRA, Iraq — About 20 miles beyond the northern gates of Baghdad, on the way to the embattled city of Samarra, site of one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines, the road empties out as if some invisible barrier has been passed. From this point on boundaries are constantly shifting, with the Iraqi government’s control extending only a little beyond the side of the road, and sometimes not even there. The 75-mile drive from Baghdad to Samarra plunges the traveler into Iraq’s precarious new reality. It is a world of Shiite militias, where many of the men carrying arms on behalf of the government have only the most tenuous ties to the Iraqi security forces. And it is a world where Sunni militants, who advanced to within 50 miles of Baghdad in their initial burst last month before their drive stalled , often are no more than a mile or so away. Travelers must read signs that would be invisible to a newcomer: Flags and uniforms signal safety or danger. “You are entering a hot zone,” said a gunman at a checkpoint near the town of Balad, about 25 miles south of Samarra. He was wearing cargo pants, a T-shirt, a federal police hat and an ammunition vest. There was no way to tell whom he worked for, but a yellow flag with green printing waved from a pickup truck parked nearby. It was the flag of Kataib Hezbollah, a militia trained and funded by Iran. The Shiite militias mark their presence with flags. At Dujail, to the north of Baghdad, there is the flag of Asaib al-Haq : a white background with a green sketch of Iraq, with a Kalashnikov lying across it and framed by two swords. Asaib al-Haq prides itself as perhaps the toughest of the Iranian-backed militias. Like Kataib, its fighters are battle hardened, having fought for President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria, and are better prepared than most others for this war. Farther north, on the outskirts of Samarra, flies the flag of a new militia formed by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, bearing a dove and his likeness. The revered Askariya Shrine in Samarra holds the tombs of two Shiite imams, and Shiites have sworn that they will protect it. The Sunni militants’ goal is to destroy or damage it, as they did in 2006 , touching off vicious sectarian bloodletting that lasted into 2008. Back then, the Shiites, after suffering more than two years of suicide bombings, turned on Sunnis. Western security forces say the Sunni extremist group leading the current assault, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, hopes that will happen again and draw the larger Sunni community to their cause. “This area is extremely vital,” said Lt. Gen. Sabah al-Fatlawi, who heads the Samarra Special Force Command, which is leading the fight there and includes hundreds if not thousands of Shiite volunteers and militiamen. Although the Sunni militants have been driven back to the city’s outskirts, on June 5 they were less than a mile and a half from the shrine , and they continue to lob mortar shells at it in hopes of damaging its magnificent golden dome. A barrage last week exploded just 50 feet from the shrine’s entrance. A pickup passes, packed with young men in beige fatigues. If they are armed, the guns are not visible, and their innocent-looking faces suggest they are volunteers. They look terribly vulnerable in the open truck; in a different year, they would be young men on an outing to enjoy the shade of the vast palm groves that line either side of the road. Image The Askariya Shrine in Samarra is still undergoing repairs after it was destroyed by Sunni militants in 2006, an attack that set off vicious sectarian bloodletting. Officials fear Sunni extremists advancing now want to repeat that effect. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times The ISIS offensive, and the call to arms by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani , Iraq’s chief Shiite cleric, brought a surge of volunteers for the Iraqi Army and the Shiite militias. Volunteers from this area were being trained at a camp deep inside Balad, where electricity is scarce and black or green flags — two of the colors often favored by Shiites — hang from gates and windows. The mood in the camp is edgy. Despite the soul-sapping heat, the volunteers have lined up in formation. Almost all of the 200 to 300 men have scrounged up something military-looking to wear for the training. “Everyone brings his own uniform,” said Colonel Mustafa, the Iraqi Army commander in charge of the camp and of Balad, who declined to give his last name. He said 2,049 volunteers had registered there so far. “We provide the weapons, the ammunition and equipment,” he said. Colonel Mustafa did not appear to have an easy job. His charges are a motley assortment of men of different ages and physical abilities, some so out of shape that even running away from harm might be too much for them. Many were older, earnest and enthusiastic, but probably incapable of defending anything. One man stepped forward, the bones showing through his lean face, saluted and said, “I was born in 1943,” making him 70 or 71. “I am here to defend the country.” There were many young men, too, fit and eager looking. Sooner or later there would have to be a winnowing process. Video Background on ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Credit Credit Reuters With Colonel Mustafa was Sheikh Mehdi al-Asadi, a new sort of cleric — one who wears military fatigues with his turban. Sheikh Asadi rarely let Colonel Mustafa complete a sentence. He had come at the behest of the marja, Iraq’s Shiite religious leadership, leaving the school where he taught in Baghdad, and was eager to declaim the commitment of the volunteers. “We are ready to die to protect the country,” he said. Colonel Mustafa described a touch-and-go environment. “There are daily attacks by mortars,” he said, adding that there was a gunfight “three or four days ago and we lost two people and there were 20 wounded.” But, he added, “we are backed by the government and the Iraqi Army.” Sheikh Asadi interrupted him: “But most important, we are backed by the marja — otherwise all those people would not be there,” he said, nodding toward the volunteers. Barely 300 feet out of Balad, the signs of recent fighting are everywhere. In places the grass is burned black and the charred carcasses of trucks lie upended as if they had been swept up and dropped by a fiery tornado. Checkpoints are perched uncertainly on the median, little more than small turrets with a gun position at the top, their walls pockmarked by bullets. In this area, known as Ishaki, the flags belong to Kataib Hezbollah. The few stores near the road are empty; most have the glass blown out of their windows. There are no regular forces here. A Rogue State Along Two Rivers The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. It is left to the militiamen to fend off ISIS. Most of them are young, nervous and unsmiling. They do not like strangers coming through. None wear regular uniforms or protective gear, but they all wear green headbands that say “Ya Hussein,” a reference to the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, a Shiite martyr who died defending the faith. A few appear to be highly trained; a lean, muscular man carries a sniper rifle with an ease that suggests he knows how to use it. When the car stops at the checkpoints, it is completely silent on the road except for the wind in the tall grasses and the palm trees. The wary looks of the gunmen and the lack of any other signs of life leave a sinister feeling, as if everyone is waiting, watching, fearing that something, someone is still out there. A few miles on, the mood eases, there are a few shops, some melons in the sun, their proprietor having gone inside. At a traffic circle, about 20 white cars and pickup trucks fly the white flags of Mr. Sadr’s new militia, Saraya al-Salam, or the Peace Brigades. Despite the Shiite shrine in its midst, Samarra is a mainly Sunni town, so the arrival of thousands of Shiite militias has been regarded with suspicion. The town itself feels almost deserted, and the pilgrims who used to fill its streets stopped coming more than two months ago. Indeed, about 50 percent of the residents have fled, said Adnan, 45, a professor at Samarra University, who is Sunni and asked not to be identified because he is fearful that the militants might learn what he said. Image Shiite volunteers training at a camp in Balad, about 25 miles from Samarra, under the aegis of the Iraqi security forces. Various Shiite militias, some funded and trained by Iran, have set up checkpoints along the road from Baghdad to Samarra. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times The militias have been ordered not to eat the food or buy up the fuel in the markets because there are serious shortages and the commanders do not want to take anything from residents who are in desperate need, Adnan said. “I have not dealt with Shiite militias before, and according to what I had heard about them, they were monsters — I did not think they could respect anyone,” he said. But going through daily checkpoints, he said that he found them polite and that they were not bothering him. As part of the effort not to burden residents, the Sadr militia members have been sent to the outskirts of the town, where the mostly Sunni residents are less likely to encounter them, said Hakim al-Zamili, the leader of Mr. Sadr’s militia. Now, there are only the volunteers who have come to protect the shrine. In the midday heat, all but a couple are sprawled in the entry hall in a deep sleep. One of the few not sleeping is Sabah Sadiq, 55, who has been working periodically on the shrine’s reconstruction but had returned home to Nasiriya in the south. When he heard Ayatollah Sistani’s call on June 13 to defend the country, he rushed back. A gentle man, who explained each of the four tombs in the shrine’s inner sanctum to a visitor, he kept searching for words to convey his feeling and that of many of the volunteers. “Now we are ready to be killed,” he said, “These are our imams, and this is one of the holiest places in the whole of Iraq.” They were like members of his own family, he said of the imams buried there. “It is one of our biggest priorities,” he said. “It is more important than ourselves.”

Iraq
Samarra
Shiite
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Moktada Al- Sadr
Ali Al- Sistani
Kataib Hezbollah
Asaib Ahl al-Haq


At Onsen Sushi, Eye-Popping Food - Review

Abstract: ONSEN SUSHI may look like other Japanese storefront restaurants, but the four-month-old Oakdale newcomer is far from ordinary. Though the décor is spare and cool, the welcome is warm. From behind the sushi bar, Jason Chen shouts a cheery hello to patrons as they arrive and banters with them throughout the meal, asking how they like his creations. Mr. Chen, the restaurant’s co-owner as well as the sushi chef, was formerly head chef at Nisen in Commack. The other co-owner, Eric Wu, helps run the sushi bar and is also in charge of the kitchen. They outdo themselves, turning out eye-popping food. One evening our table consisted of a sushi lover, a diner who was neutral about sushi and one who usually doesn’t like Japanese food. We all agreed that Onsen was the best Japanese restaurant we had ever visited. Appetizers were the stars of the meal. The best were the airy shrimp gyoza with paper-thin wrappers. Other warm treats from the kitchen were rock shrimp tempura glazed with a spicy aioli and perched on seaweed salad ; miso-marinated black cod on an arrangement of crisp green beans; and oyster yaki. The last consisted of four plump, crisply fried oysters returned to their shells and set on a garlic-butter sauce. Two cold openers that scored were beef tataki, lightly grilled slices of rare steak (served cold) drizzled with a honey mustard balsamic sauce, and an outstanding seaweed salad bolstered by threads of crunchy cucumber. As good as these starters were, it was the sushi bar appetizers that turned our heads. This is where the sushi chef cuts loose. A dish called the Kenny special (named for a friend of Mr. Chen’s) wowed us: tuna wrapping chopped shrimp, kani (crab stick) and avocado, with an onion dressing on the plate. Don’t miss the eggplant sandwich: deep-fried eggplant slices layered with lobster salad, spicy tuna, salmon and an eel-and-wasabi sauce. How about a tuna tortilla whose crisp base is covered with tuna, guacamole, olive and jalapeño slices and a spicy aioli? A special one night, tuna four ways, hit all the right notes. It featured Asian soup spoons holding cubes of tuna, each with a different topping: guacamole, beer sauce, soy-onion sauce and a spicy orange-hued sauce. Another creative winner was the pizza sandwich: bite-size triangles of a sesame-seed-and-soybean paper containing spicy tuna, avocado, crab, lobster salad and an eel-and-wasabi sauce. All of the dishes were beautifully decorated with orchids, bamboo sticks, baby ginger and banana leaves. Main courses were a bit more subdued. The sushi deluxe, consisting of nine pieces and a tuna roll, was sparkling fresh. The 2010 roll (named for the year the restaurant opened) was a tasty combination of tuna, salmon, yellowtail, fluke, crab, fried onion and seaweed. We also liked the super white roll, consisting of pieces of white tuna and a few crunchy tempura flakes wrapped in more white tuna and drizzled with a wasabi sauce. For those who don’t like raw fish, the tiger roll of spicy lobster and crunchy tempura flakes topped with shrimp and avocado and mango sauces is a fine choice. We batted .500 with two cooked entrees. Fat udon noodles sautéed with sea scallops, shrimp, crab stick and crunchy vegetables were a hit, but the filet mignon teriyaki had no flavor. Its many vegetables couldn’t save it. Two sweets that we tried were appealing. The crunchy tempura banana was especially good when we paired it with vanilla ice cream . Tempura cheesecake, ultracreamy inside, also pleased those with a sweet tooth. Purists were happy with the fresh oranges that appeared at the end of the meal one night when we didn’t order dessert. Onsen will delight sushi lovers, and may even convert those who were previously not fond of it. • Onsen Sushi 597 Montauk Highway Oakdale (631) 567-1688 DON’T MISS THE SPACE Small storefront with carpeting and a blue glow from recessed lighting. Complete wheelchair access. THE CROWD Small groups and families. Servers are sweet and well informed. THE BAR Limited selection of beer and wines: Asian beer, $5; five wines by the glass, $6; and six cold sakes, $6 to $26. THE BILL Lunch entrees (including soup and salad ), $8 to $13. Dinner entrees, $11 to $24. Prices are very reasonable for food of this caliber. American Express, MasterCard and Visa are accepted. WHAT WE LIKED Seaweed salad, gyoza, oyster yaki, miso-marinated black cod, rock shrimp tempura, beef tataki, eggplant sandwich, the Kenny special, tuna tortilla, pizza sandwich, tuna four ways, tiger roll, super white roll, 2010 roll, sushi deluxe, udon noodles with mixed seafood, tempura banana, tempura cheesecake. IF YOU GO Open Monday to Thursday, noon to 3 p.m. and 4:30 to 10 p.m.; Friday, noon to 3 p.m. and 4:30 to 11 p.m.; Saturday, 12:30 to 3 p.m. and 4:30 to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 2 to 10 p.m. Abundant parking. Reservations are essential on weekends. RATINGS Don’t Miss, Worth It, O.K., Don’t Bother.

Cooking and Cookbooks
Restaurants
Long Island (NY)


At Formula One Races, Bauer Focuses on Rules

Abstract: Jo Bauer, an automotive engineer, is the technical delegate at Formula One races for F.I.A., the world governing body of the series. His job is to check all the cars at races to ensure that they are within the technical and safety regulations, with the help of a team of F.I.A. and local assistants, and to report any irregularity or suspicion of cheating to the race stewards. Bauer, 52, studied at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen, Germany, as well as at FEV Motorentechnik, a German automotive engineering company. In 1992, he joined Germany’s national sporting authority, the Oberste Nationale Sportkommission, as head of its technical department. This gave him a seat on the F.I.A. technical commission, where he became the technical delegate for the International Touring Car series in 1995. He took over the same job in Formula One in 1997. He spoke with Brad Spurgeon of the International Herald Tribune: Q. What does your job entail? A. I coordinate the work of the scrutineers at every race. The organizer has to provide 30 scrutineers to help us do our job and within the F.I.A. technical department we are nine people: four software engineers — with three traveling to every race — three technical engineers, one responsible for tires, one responsible for engines, the other for gearboxes. Then we have a chemical laboratory where we do the fuel analysis onsite, and so we have a chemist as well. I coordinate between these people, and also do the reports to the stewards. We start on the Thursday with initial scrutineering — and that doesn’t mean anything checked for the legality of the cars, but just that all of the cars have all of the required safety devices onboard. Starting by the simple things like the seatbelt, fire extinguisher, but also incorporating the wheel tethers, which protect the crowd, the marshals and ourselves, being hit by a wheel and upright assembly coming off the car in an accident. We consider every car presented for initial scrutineering to be legal, to be in conformity with the technical regulations. But to guarantee this, we will then during the weekend do random checks for legality. The only thing we check all the time is the weight, because the weight is the easiest thing to alter and to gain the most advantage out of with the least amount of money or effort to spend — just ballast or fluids. We also check one of the six cars that drops out after the first qualifying session, and then one after the second session. After the final session we do all of the top 10 cars. Q. Is a certain type of character required to do this job? A. You need to be a person who knows how to cheat, too. I am always thinking the worst of the people, and also thinking about how they could do it. You need to have a character to always think about how could they do something to gain an advantage. And not just me, but all of my colleagues, we all have to be like that. But we are always losing the game, I would say, just by numbers. We are nine, and how many engineers are there at every single team? It is nine against hundreds. They employ people just to read the regulations and find the loopholes. They don’t care about the spirit of the regulations. We are working with the regulations, we develop them. So we know what is intended by the wording. But when it goes wrong, then you get lawyers involved, and they just go word by word as it is written and get the meaning, with the dictionary, and they base their cases on these facts. So it is sometimes very interesting what interpretations you get from the teams. Image Jo Bauer's job is to check all cars at Formula One races to ensure that they are within the technical and safety regulations. Credit David Ebener/European Pressphoto Agency Q. You found a team with an illegal double fuel tank in 2005. A. That was the biggest cheating thing that I have found so far in my career. And it took us quite a while to be convinced they were doing it. You don’t just shoot into the darkness and hope to hit something. When you do something that important, it must be bulletproof. You cannot just come up and say something without being sure, or you could look stupid and nobody would take you seriously anymore. And secondly, there is a lot of money involved. So we had to be certain that it was wrong, and that we could prove it, and the relevant team at that time got penalized. But as you know, there are big manufacturers involved, there’s a lot of money behind it. And so you are swimming in a pool of sharks. So when we do something, we need to be certain we don’t fall down. Q. You were also doing the job in Malaysia in 1999, when an oversized bargeboard on the Ferrari car was found after the race. How was that? A. To summarize this, I learned that 10 = 5 + 5. That is my summary about this bargeboard business. That was my third year in Formula One and that was my first close encounter with lawyers who split every single word in the regulation. That bargeboard was out by 10 millimeters, and we confiscated the bargeboard. And then the lawyers were splitting every single word. There was “across the surface,” and “across” always meant “up and down” but not “left and right” nor “fore and after.” And then they said: “And across the surface there is a 5 mm tolerance,” so that’s how they came up with “across” means not only “up and down,” as intended by the regulations, but “left and right” and “fore and after.” So that’s why I am saying the summary of the Malaysia bargeboard thing is 10 is 5 + 5. Q. Are you passionate about racing? A. It is a passion, but I never did it actively, I couldn’t afford it. I always watched the Formula One races before, but never thought I would be in the paddock one day. I finished university and then went straight into the technical department of the German federation, and then became a member in the technical homologations commission of the F.I.A. Q. Have you encountered situations where you have thought something was wrong, but couldn’t prove it, and then maybe there was nothing? A. When you find something minor that is wrong — an obvious thing — which is not really giving a big advantage, then you tell them to fix it when you see it. But with somebody’s car being underweight, you report it to the stewards. That is why our car measuring and weighing platform, that the teams call the bridge of doom, is open to the teams all day and night so that they can check their cars, and to compare their scales to our scales. So they can’t say our scales are making their cars underweight. It starts on the Thursday evening at 9 o’clock, and they can push their cars on it. There is always a little bit of difference because the scale is manually set up. But the bridge of doom is what counts. So they have the chance to compare their own, and there is no excuse for them to say, “Oh, the scales are wrong.” Q. One of my colleagues asked me to ask you what cheating you had found but didn’t tell us about. A. All the cheating I have found I have reported and is well-known. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing my job right.