Athletes’ Lives Still Touched by Chernobyl’s Poisoned Past

Abstract: PRIPYAT, Ukraine — Nature has done its ruthless work. The main soccer stadium is now a football forest. Birches and poplars have crowded the field, pushed through the asphalt running track, blocked an entrance to the grandstand. Moss grows in clumps on concrete steps and sprouts in rotted wooden seats. Less than two miles away, Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986. The 50,000 workers and their families who lived here were evacuated by bus, never to return. Pripyat’s apartment blocks became an urban wilderness . The soccer goal posts at School No. 1 are hidden in a thicket of trees, down a leafy path with fresh animal tracks. “The final match of Euro 2012 will be played here to see who is the strongest,” Maxim Orel, a tour guide for Chernobylinterinform, a department of Ukraine’s Ministry of Emergency, said last week with gallows humor at the abandoned central stadium. “The winners will be mutants.” The actual final of the European Championships will be played two hours south, in Kiev, on July 1. During the tournament, Chernobyl is attracting fans of dark tourism, who wear their jerseys and scarves and wary eagerness. And the spew of radiation is being blamed a quarter century later for poisoning a soccer star from Bulgaria. Directly or indirectly, as with millions of others, the disaster has touched the lives of several internationally known athletes, including the Ukrainian soccer star Andriy Shevchenko; the Ukrainian brothers who share the title of world heavyweight boxing champion, Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko; and the former Soviet Olympic gymnastics champion Olga Korbut. “Right after the Soviet Union, people didn’t know if Ukraine was a city or a country,” said Wladimir Klitschko, whose father was a military responder to the disaster. “The easiest way to explain was to say, ‘We are the children of Chernobyl.’ We lost our father. Chernobyl is part of my life. Unfortunately, it is part of a lot of lives.” Visitors pay about $200 to tour the Chernobyl exclusion zone, where the health risk for short visits is considered minimal. They travel along Pripyat’s rutted, overgrown Lenin Boulevard. They stop in the plaza outside the Polissia Hotel, where they might spot a snake coiled in the grass, frogs sunning on rocks in a pond, an abandoned toy duck on wheels. Elsewhere, if they are vigilant, they might see a fox, a deer, a rabbit, a wild boar. The primary sounds are wind and birds and absence. Gnats swarm in invisible clouds. The town’s indoor swimming pool is dry, its floor seeming to lick at the dust and debris like a giant tile tongue. A nearby basketball court has wooden backboards but no rims. Some of the floorboards have been pulled up, revealing the ribs of the gym, as if it has gone hungry in neglect. In another gym, the walls have peeled into moldy continental shapes, maps of the dispossessed. At School No. 3, a pair of sneakers lay in a hallway near a pair of tiny ballet slippers and the faint outline of a hopscotch game. Officially, visitors are no longer allowed inside the crumbling school, where library books carpet one hallway and a physics lesson remains on the blackboard. But tourists are welcome to an extreme Kodak moment, a chance to photograph the concrete and steel sarcophagus covering Reactor No. 4 from a distance of three football fields. Two hundred tons of melted nuclear fuel and debris are sheltered there in a wrinkled shape that resembles an elephant’s foot. The contamination will persist for hundreds of years. A new, arch-shaped confinement structure is being built. Tourists are told that they probably encountered more radiation on the flight to Ukraine than at Chernobyl. Guides carry radiation detectors the size of walkie-talkies. On a recent day, when the device began beeping near the stricken reactor, indicating elevated radiation levels, Orel, the guide, said, “Don’t worry, that is only something to scare the tourists.” Still, visitors must stop at two checkpoints upon departure and press into full-body Geiger counters, waiting for a reassuring click before they can climb back into their minivans. Ryan Nolan, 31, a city planner wearing the green jersey of Ireland’s soccer team, came to see the amusement park that was supposed to open in Pripyat five days after the nuclear disaster. It is now a forbidden play land of rusted bumper cars, a carousel and a Ferris wheel. The cars of the Ferris wheel are the same yellow as signs that warn of radiation. “Eerie,” Nolan said. “You’re waiting for zombies to come out of the woods.” Stiliyan Petrov, 32, was nowhere near when Reactor No. 4 exploded. He was a boy of 6 in Bulgaria, more than 600 miles to the south. He became a soccer star, the captain of Aston Villa in England’s Premier League. In March, Petrov received a diagnosis of acute leukemia. The Bulgarian national team doctor said he believed the illness resulted from exposure to the radiation of Chernobyl and a failure at the time by the country’s Communist leadership to inform citizens of the danger. “It was in the late spring, the population was eating fresh radioactive vegetables and other foods,” Mihael Iliev, the Bulgarian team doctor who treated Petrov for 14 years, told The Sun of London in April . “Many people who were kids back then suffered cancer because of this. We called them the Chernobyl kids . Most were born in the same region as Stiliyan.” The health consequences of Chernobyl are not so tidy and exact as the score of a soccer match. Most of the nuclear fallout descended over Ukraine, and neighboring Belarus and Russia, scientists said. Estimates of potential deaths from the nuclear accident vary widely, from 4,000 to hundreds of thousands. Precise investigation became difficult with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Thyroid cancer is the most prevalent disease among victims. Studies have not indicated with any consistency an increase in leukemia in the affected areas, said Scott Davis, chairman of the department of epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. He has studied Chernobyl for more than 20 years and has made more than 80 trips to the region. “There is no way to tell on an individual basis whether cancer is radiation-induced or not,” said Davis, who is affiliated with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which has treated Chernobyl victims. Wladimir Klitschko was 10 in the spring of 1986, living at a military airport in Kiev, the son of a colonel in the Soviet Air Force. He remembered participating in drills in school in case the United States launched a nuclear attack: hide in the shadows; run underground. Then he noticed men wearing protective suits and vehicles being sprayed with chemicals. “Obviously, something pretty terrible had happened,” Klitschko said. “I knew it wasn’t the Americans this time.” His father, also named Wladimir, warned his sons not to go outside. Klitschko said he and his classmates were evacuated near the Black Sea for four months, carrying only the clothes that he wore. His father, he said, flew by helicopter to Chernobyl in the days after the disaster as emergency workers desperately tried to contain the radiation leak and clean up the radioactive catastrophe. Liquidators, these workers were called. “From the beginning, the government tried to cover up the truth and play down the situation,” the elder Klitschko said in a documentary , released in 2011, about his sons’ careers. “We were given the impression that it wasn’t all that serious. Those who were able to leave Kiev took the opportunity to do so, but if you are a soldier you have to fulfill your duties.” Last July, the senior Klitschko died of cancer. “It was a chain of everything, leukemia, lymphoma, stomach cancer,” his son Wladimir said. “It went to the bones. Basically it ate everything. The doctors said it was Chernobyl.” His father was not bitter, Klitschko said: “He was happy that he lived longer than his buddies.” A month before the disaster, Andriy Shevchenko, then 9, joined a youth soccer team at the powerful Dynamo Kiev club and entered a sports school. After that school year ended, he and his classmates were evacuated near the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine. He, too, was the son of a military man, a mechanic in a Soviet tank regiment. “We kind of knew what happened,” said Shevchenko, who is now 35. “But we were not told right away. It was kept secret.” That seemed evident a month after the catastrophe, as the Soviet Union traveled to Mexico City to play in the 1986 World Cup. Valeri Lobanovsky, a famed Ukrainian coach who then headed the Soviet team, grew impatient with reporters who asked about Chernobyl, suggesting misinformation had been spread in the West. “I think that our government has already given out all facts to reporters about what really happened, after the campaign spread by the international press,” Lobanovsky said, according to an account by United Press International. After that inadvertent summer near the sea, Shevchenko returned to Kiev. He left the sports school and the arc of his soccer career seemed to flatten. His father preferred that his son pursue a career in the military. But Shevchenko’s youth coach went to his house and persuaded Shevchenko’s father to let his son continue with Dynamo Kiev. Shevchenko became a star at the club and, later, at A.C. Milan in Italy, where he was named Europe’s top player in 2004. He is also the Ukrainian national team’s leading career scorer with 48 goals. “It is difficult to make plans when you are 9,” Shevchenko said. “But I’m glad the coach came to my house. Chernobyl did play some role in my career.” By 1986, Olga Korbut was 14 years removed from her mesmerizing performance at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where she won three gold medals and put a teenage smile on the grim stereotype of Communism. In 1991, she moved from her native Belarus to the United States. In part, she sought financial opportunity. But she also expressed concern about potential health risks for her son, then 12, resulting from Chernobyl. As much as 70 percent of the total radioactive fallout descended on one-fourth of Belarus, according to the United Nations. “I’m very afraid to eat, afraid to live,” Korbut, who is now 57, said in an interview at the time. She established a foundation and partnership with the Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. She said she spent her own money and carried thyroid medication to Belarus but eventually grew discouraged because officials there seemed disinterested. The country has been ruled since 1994 by an authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko. “The medicine needed to be in a refrigerator, but they didn’t find one, “ Korbut, who now lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., said recently. “They didn’t care. Lukashenko said, ‘We can handle it by ourselves.’ It was very upsetting.” Though she and her son have sometimes struggled in the United States , Korbut said that, in a strange way, the embrace by Americans meant that Chernobyl had changed her life for the better. “It’s very embarrassing to say,” she said. Still, Korbut added, she remained angry that officials in Belarus did not immediately inform citizens about Chernobyl. She did not learn about the disaster for a week. “They only talked under the pillow,” Korbut said. “People needed to know the truth so they could protect each other.” Even now, 26 years later, Korbut said that her three sisters in Belarus refuse to talk about Chernobyl. Perhaps they are afraid of Lukashenko, she said. But they are also poor, she said, and might have more basic concerns. The infamous nuclear plant is just south of the border with Belarus, but Korbut has never visited this time machine of a place. “I have no desire to go there,” she said.

Soccer
Chernobyl (Ukraine)
Nuclear Energy
UEFA European Football Championship
Ukraine
Shevchenko Andriy
Klitschko Wladimir
Klitschko Vitali
Korbut Olga


Stephen J. Ledogar, 80, Architect of Three Weapons Treaties

Abstract: Stephen J. Ledogar, a United States ambassador who played a major role in the drafting of three central international arms control treaties, died May 3 in Edgewater, N.J. He was 80 and lived in Guttenberg, N.J. The cause was bladder cancer, said his daughter, Lucy Ledogar van Beever. Mr. Ledogar was a Foreign Service officer for 38 years and ambassador to the three arms control negotiations during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. He was an architect of agreements that limited conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons . In a letter to Mr. Ledogar upon his retirement in 1997, President Bill Clinton wrote, “Your central role in all three represents a remarkable feat that is not likely to be matched.” Mr. Ledogar had extensive experience in military issues as deputy chief of mission to NATO when President Ronald Reagan promoted him to ambassador in 1987 and designated him chief representative to negotiations for the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe . The treaty established limits on major categories of conventional military equipment in Europe. Considered a major step in reducing cold war tensions, it was signed on Nov. 19, 1990, by 22 states that were then members of NATO or the Warsaw Pact. In 1993, Mr. Ledogar was the chief American negotiator when the Chemical Weapons Convention , which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and calls for their destruction, was signed. As of last year, 188 nations had ratified the treaty. While working on the chemical weapons ban, Mr. Ledogar was also head of the American delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. In that capacity he became one of the primary drafters of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty . Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 10, 1996, it called for the prohibition of all nuclear explosions in all environments, for both military and civilian purposes. So far, 151 nations have ratified the treaty, and 31 others — including the United States — have signed but not ratified it. Stephen Joseph Ledogar was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 14, 1929, one of four children of Edward and Margaret Ledogar. Besides his daughter, he is survived by his wife, the former Marcia Hubert; a son, Charles; a sister, Anne Leyden; two brothers, Edward and Robert; and three grandchildren. Mr. Ledogar enrolled at Fordham University in 1949 under a Naval Reserve Officers Training program. But two years later he went on active duty as a Navy pilot. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Fordham in 1954, then received a law degree there in 1958. He joined the Foreign Service in 1959. After postings in Canada and Italy, the State Department, in 1965, sent him to Vietnam, where he administered pacification programs. From 1969 to 1972 he was press spokesman for the American delegation at the Paris peace talks. The resulting accord, signed on Jan. 27, 1973, ended direct United States military involvement in the Vietnam War. Three years after helping draft the nuclear test ban treaty, Mr. Ledogar went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1999 to urge its ratification. Saying he was “a strong believer in nuclear deterrence,” he asked, “What if the United States chooses not to ratify this treaty? “I am not given to hyperbole,” he continued, “but I believe it is not an exaggeration to say that there will be jubilation among our foes and despair among our friends. Iran, Iraq, North Korea and other states that harbor nuclear aspirations surely will feel the constraints loosening. Our allies and friends will feel deserted and betrayed. The global nuclear nonproliferation regime will be endangered.” Three months ago, President Obama said he would revive efforts to have the Senate ratify the treaty.

Arms Control and Limitation and Disarmament

Diplomatic Service Embassies and Consulates


France’s Hope for 2018 Ryder Cup: If We Host It, They Will Come

Abstract: CHASKA, Minn. — The 41st Ryder Cup was remarkable in scope and in outcome, with the American team ending a three-match losing streak against Europe on Sunday in front of large and occasionally over-the-top home crowds at Hazeltine National Golf Club here. The next edition, in 2018, will be even more unusual. That is because it will be La Ryder Cup: staged in France in the Paris suburb of St.-Quentin-en-Yvelines. One hopes the American team will generate more goodwill on this excursion to Le Golf National than the American star Bubba Watson did on his visit in 2011. Watson, at the French Open there, complained about on-course security and cultural disorientation, then struggled — truly struggled — to come up with some of the names of the Paris landmarks he had just visited, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre (He did correctly name the Eiffel Tower after initially referring to it as “that big tower”). All this before Watson missed the cut and suggested that he might not return. Watson later apologized, explaining that his pronunciation needed work and that he was “a golfer, not a history major.” The episode has not cooled the French Ryder Cup organizers’ desire to attract as many American visitors as possible in 2018 and beyond, preferably clubs in hand, which would require quite a shift in mind-set. “When the Americans travel to Paris, they come for the art de vivre, the museums, the food and the shopping,” said Pascal Grizot, president of the French Ryder Cup organizing committee, in an interview at Hazeltine last week. “But you can ask them. Nobody is coming with their clubs. They don’t know they can play golf around Paris.” This will be the first Ryder Cup in France and only the second in continental Europe. The first was in 1997 at the Real Club Valderrama in Sotogrande, Spain. A biennial match-play event, the Ryder Cup has since grown into a behemoth, as the 70 sponsor pavilions and 250,000 spectators at Hazeltine made clear. Though golf is a minor sport in France, the surprise is that the organizers for 2018 expect to attract even more fans than flocked to Hazeltine. “We are looking at 60,000 to 65,000 per day,” Grizot said. That is quite a number for a course that attracted only about 60,000 spectators for the four rounds of this year’s French Open. But this will be the first Ryder Cup to be contested near a major European capital, and Le Golf National was designed as a stadium course, one that regularly draws rave reviews from European players, who like its layout and watery challenges. Fans are expected to travel from all over Europe, above all Britain, to attend the matches. It remains to be seen (and heard) how crowds that big will treat the Americans after some of the heckling that was directed at the European stars, including Rory McIlroy and Danny Willett, at Hazeltine. “First and foremost, we wouldn’t encourage any sort of retaliation,” McIlroy said on Sunday. “That’s just not who we are. That’s not what we do.” Darren Clarke, the European captain, and some of his players thanked the American team for trying to police its supporters’ behavior. Both Clarke and McIlroy emphasized that a vast majority of the American fans had been respectful. “When you are teeing off at 7:35 in the morning and you’re seeing people on the first tee with a beer in their hand and matches aren’t finishing until 4:30, 5 in the afternoon — I know I would be done at that point,” McIlroy said. “I don’t know what I would be saying.” He added: “A couple of people out there crossed the line. But we’ll take it on the chin, and we’ll definitely not encourage anything like that to happen in France next time around.” The French wanted the Ryder Cup for a number of reasons but above all to build the game’s popularity and to alter the longstanding view of the sport in France as elitist. “We want to change the image of golf in our country,” Grizot said. The Ryder Cup in France is part of a two-stage push onto the continent by the European Tour, which awarded the 2022 Ryder Cup to the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club just outside Rome. The game in Europe is running into many of the same demographic obstacles that it is confronting in other parts of the developed world. Paul Armitage, the general manager of Le Golf National, said that the French Golf Federation had about 420,000 members and that France had about 800,000 golfers in all. “We have good senior participation, and we can get the kids into golf, but we’re struggling to keep them between 25 and 40 years old,” Armitage said. “It’s the same tendencies everywhere.” The French Golf Federation helped fund its Ryder Cup bid in 2011 by getting its members to agree to a slight increase in their annual membership fee over a number of years. “The first-ever crowdfunded sporting event in France to our knowledge,” Armitage said. As part of the bid, the French committed to building 100 compact urban golf courses, most privately funded and most of nine holes or fewer. “At the time we thought this project was maybe utopian, but today we have 89 open, and we have more than 75 other projects,” Grizot said. “So we will have our number of 100 for the 2018 Ryder Cup, and more important we will have more after the Ryder Cup. And this will help develop the game. “With the urban courses you can solve two problems. First, it’s less expensive because it’s compact, and you also spend less time on the course because it’s compact.” Grizot said that 90 percent of French golfers knew that the Ryder Cup would be played in France in 2018, but he acknowledged that the event was still largely unknown to the country’s general public. France has had Ryder Cup players in the past: Jean Van de Velde — he of the watery and infamous 18th-hole implosion at Carnoustie during the 1999 British Open — played in the Cup later that year. Thomas Levet played in 2004, and Victor Dubuisson in 2014. But even though French players are a strong presence on the European Tour, no Frenchman was on the European team at Hazeltine. “I was captain of the national team for seven years,” Grizot said. “So I can tell you I am very concerned by this.” French golf now has two years to make sure a Frenchman gets to play at home in 2018; two years to make sure that La Ryder Cup is a success.


India Bans Organization Run by Controversial Televangelist Preacher

Abstract: NEW DELHI — The Indian government has banned a nongovernmental organization run by a popular televangelist preacher, Zakir Naik, after accusations that he promoted terrorism through his speeches. The decision to ban the organization, the Islamic Research Foundation , was made at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, said K. S. Dhatwalia, a spokesman for the Ministry of Home Affairs. The foundation, based in Mumbai, will be banned for five years under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, a law governing groups and individuals who act counter to the integrity of India. Mr. Dhatwalia said that the foundation had violated “certain provisions” of the act. He declined to specify what those provisions were but said that they had been conveyed to the organization. The authorities have expressed alarm about Dr. Naik’s message and the reach of his influence. Dr. Naik, who was trained as a medical doctor and who addresses his followers in Western-style suits, has a television channel, Peace TV , that is popular with Muslims globally. In his speeches, Dr. Naik has harshly criticized the United States, saying that the Sept. 11 attacks may have been an “inside job” by President George W. Bush. Dr. Naik has also refused to renounce Osama bin Laden as a terrorist. “I am hesitant to accept him as a terrorist or a saint,” Dr. Naik said in a 2009 interview . He also characterized Islam as “the most misunderstood religion in the world.” Dr. Naik is often evasive when questioned over his more inflammatory statements, including one that supported suicide attacks. In a news conference in Mumbai in July, in which he appeared by videoconference from Saudi Arabia, he said that suicide attacks in which innocent people were killed were un-Islamic, but that the use of the tactic was justified in war. The authorities in India, with its long history of tension between Hindus and Muslims, have monitored Dr. Naik’s activities, including his speeches and charitable work with the Islamic Research Foundation, which seeks to spread “the proper presentation, understanding and appreciation of Islam,” according to its website. That scrutiny escalated after a Bangladeshi newspaper reported that one of the attackers in the July assault on a bakery in Dhaka that left 22 people dead had quoted Dr. Naik’s teachings in a Facebook post. Peace TV has been banned in Bangladesh, and Indian satellite channels have refused to carry it, but Dr. Naik’s sermons still have a large audience in India and abroad. At the July news conference in Mumbai, he denied supporting terrorist activities and said that he did not encourage the Dhaka attacks. In past years, the Indian police have registered cases against Dr. Naik over objectionable speeches he has made, the local news media reported. At the conference in July, however, Dr. Naik said, “Never ever in my full life have I been called for investigation.” Dr. Naik said that one of his videotaped speeches that was used as the basis for one of the cases filed in India was “doctored,” and “because of the clip, many of the Hindus were hurt and I said that I apologize for hurting their feelings.” The Islamic Research Foundation was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.


Trump and U.N. Leader Discuss ‘Cooperation’

Abstract: Having signaled a tough attitude and tightened purse strings toward the United Nations, President-elect Donald J. Trump spoke by phone on Wednesday with the organization’s newly installed secretary general , António Guterres, who has hinted at his own plans for budget restraint. A United Nations spokesman, Farhan Haq, said at a regular daily briefing that Mr. Guterres had initiated the conversation. “This was an introductory call,” Mr. Haq said, adding that “it went quite well.” He said the two men had discussed “a number of avenues for participation and cooperation,” but he did not elaborate on them. A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Sean Spicer, also did not specify what had been discussed except to say in a statement that the incoming administration would demand “some reform and change” to ensure that the organization used American tax dollars effectively. Mr. Trump has criticized the United Nations in statements and Twitter posts, describing it as an organization that causes problems rather than resolving them. He has threatened to renounce the Paris agreement on tackling climate change that was a signature achievement of Mr. Guterres’s predecessor, Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Trump also denounced the Security Council’s Dec. 23 resolution condemning Israeli settlements and criticized the Obama administration’s decision not to veto that measure. “As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th,” he wrote in a Twitter message , referring to his administration’s first day in office. Three days later, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that the United Nations was “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. “So sad!” Mr. Guterres, formerly the top official of the United Nations refugee agency and a onetime prime minister of Portugal, took over as secretary general after Mr. Ban’s term ended on Dec. 31. Like all secretaries general, he is mindful that the United States is the largest donor to the budgets of the United Nations and its peacekeeping operations, which together total about $13 billion. Although Mr. Guterres has not specified what he might do differently in the budget, Mr. Haq hinted on Wednesday that the new secretary general was looking for ways to economize, announcing the creation of a committee that will look into “reorganization for greater efficiency.” On Tuesday, Mr. Guterres’s first full day on the job, he diplomatically pushed back on Mr. Trump’s criticisms of the organization. Asked by reporters if he was concerned about the president-elect’s statements, Mr. Guterres said: “No. I’m concerned with all the terrible problems we face in the world.” The new Security Council president for the month of January, Ambassador Olof Skoog of Sweden, was more pointed in his reaction when asked on Tuesday about Mr. Trump’s descriptions of the United Nations. “Do we have fun in the U.N.?” Mr. Skoog said. “Yeah, but we also work very hard.”

Donald Trump
Antonio Guterres
UNFCCC
Barack Obama
Israel


A Rising Tide of Gentrification Rocks Dutch Houseboats

Abstract: AMSTERDAM, Aug. 8 — On a recent Saturday during the confusion of this watery city’s annual Gay Pride Parade along the majestic Princes Canal, a beach umbrella was knocked into the water from the foredeck of Jackie Wijnakker’s houseboat, so she dove into the water to fetch it, unsuccessfully. It was only the second time in 17 years that she had jumped into the canal, and she cannot recall what she was trying to retrieve the first time. At any rate, she said with a laugh, “I’m too old to be diving into canals.” She told the tale as a testament to how clean the water is, despite its murky, khaki color. “The canals are flushed regularly,” said Ron Van Heukelom, a neighbor who lives on dry land and has never ventured into the canal. The flushing is necessary because, while most of Amsterdam’s 2,800 houseboats have running water, electricity and gas heat, few are connected to sewerage systems and continue to spill their waste into the canals. The houseboats’ lack of toilet training is their dirty little secret, one that sits uncomfortably with a new generation of wealthier, more demanding owners who are leading a gentrification of the houseboat scene. In the process, they are displacing the less affluent boat people, many of whom are relics of the 1960s and 1970s era of flower power now struggling to pay the upkeep on their boats. “The water is cleaner than it looks,” said Monique J. M. Jacobs, an official of the city agency responsible for water and the boats. The canals, she explained, are flushed by opening and closing locks about twice a week, and in summer more often. “Small fish are coming back, and also birds that feed off the fish,” she said. “In the old days it was awful. It stank in summer.” The city wants to go further. It plans to install sewage pipes along the canals for the boats to hook into. This poses a threat to boat people like Ms. Wijnakker, who will have to pay about $28,000 to link up to the new system. The threat is not imminent; boat owners will have until 2017 to hook up. Houseboats were traditionally the refuge of people without the means to live on dry land. After World War II, working-class families took to the water when housing on land was unavailable, and old canal barges were cheap, as the Dutch renewed their fleet. “It’s difficult to find a good house on land,” said Pom Dupré, who has lived for 20 years on a 65-foot boat, the Nova Cura, along the canal. “And of course, this is a fine neighborhood,” she added, glancing at the stately 17th-century homes along the canal, many of them law offices or professional services. There are drawbacks, she admits. Every four years the boat has to be hauled to a dry dock to have its hull checked for canal-worthiness. The family must find a place to stay, or live on the boat in the wharf; water pipes, which are exposed to the air between boat and canal wall, often freeze in the winter. To make ends meet, or simply to enjoy onboard company, some boat owners have transformed their boats into bed-and-breakfasts. Ms. Wijnakker began taking in guests three years ago and now does a busy trade in summer. Two years ago, Luc Couvée, 51, a graphic artist, and his wife, Laura Tollenaar, bought a canal freighter on the canal, then added two showers and two bedrooms to take in paying guests. “I’m a very boat-minded person,” Mr. Couvée said. “And it’s cheaper than an apartment, though not by much.” The couple paid about $420,000 for the boat, which they renamed Vreiheid, or freedom. An apartment in the neighborhood would have cost about $700,000. They have solved the sewage problem, installing the necessary plumbing and a cesspool that can be emptied regularly. When the city’s plumbing is in place, they will be ready. The popularity of houseboats reflects a general awakening in Amsterdam to the beauty of water. “Up to the 1970s and ’80s, Amsterdam’s water was forgotten,” said Maarten Kloos, an architect who runs Arcam, an independent foundation that promotes architecture. “Now, not only houseboats, floating has gained currency.” Indeed, the architecture of some new apartment buildings near the center of Amsterdam suggests huge houseboats. “Talking about water is now the topic,” Mr. Kloos said. “People used to say, ‘With the beauty of our 17th-century canals, why can’t we get rid of those boats?’ ” he said. “Now, like all of Amsterdam, the boats are more and more bourgeois.” Mr. Kloos might have been thinking of a squat, sleek houseboat on the River Amstel that suggests Mies van der Rohe more than Peter Stuyvesant. Five years ago, Steven Westerop, a personnel executive, left his home in Leiden, a short train ride from Amsterdam, to buy a dilapidated boat on the Amstel from an elderly German who came to Holland during the flower power days. With an architect’s help, Mr. Westerop, 46, designed and built a split-level home on a hull that was essentially a reinforced concrete shoebox. “There are many kinds of boats I didn’t like,” he said. “I wanted people to say, ‘O.K.!’ Maybe even a little over the top.” “It’s now a yuppie market,” he said. “You need a good job, otherwise you can’t afford it.” The old boat people, like his German, are selling, he said, and all of the houseboats on both sides of his have changed owners in the past five years. “Sometimes, though, I still feel like a Gypsy,” he went on. “But I have a big mortgage.”

Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Canals
Housing
Architecture
Boats and Boating


With an Assist, Minority Press Sends Reporters to Democratic Convention

Abstract: Denver A DAY before the start of the Democratic National Convention , on an airplane somewhere over the Midwest, The New Yorker’s esteemed political essayist Hendrik Hertzberg was spotted eating a sandwich. About 10 rows behind him sat a group of reporters from lesser-known New York-based publications: The Irish Echo, The Haitian Times, Sing Tao Daily, The Weekly Bangla Patrika, a Polish-language newspaper called Nowy Dziennik and an Arabic-English paper called Aramica. “Our outlets never send people for events like this,” said Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, the reporter for Nowy Dziennik, as the plane soared above farmland, shopping malls, bowling alleys, used-car lots, megachurches and other fixtures of American life. “We always cover it through other agencies or media because we don’t have resources to, like, pay for a flight ticket.” In New York, some 300 papers in more than 70 languages make up what is commonly known as the ethnic press, and over 50 such publications are members of the New York Community Media Alliance, a nonprofit group whose small, overworked staff had arranged the journey to the convention. “They are like an umbrella organization that is, like, fighting for us when we are just too small players for the big shots,” Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska said. During the convention, she and her traveling companions would be staying together in two modest houses in a remote part of Denver, where they would be joined by a bureau chief for The Indian Express and a Pakistani-American journalist who owns a gas station in Florida. Some of the reporters would sleep on the floor. None of them had received the coveted “floor passes” that allow journalists to interview delegates on the floor of the convention hall. Such adversity is nothing new for these journalists. “Last time, when the convention was in New York — the Republican convention — some of us were denied credentials,” Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska said. She added that the Independent Press Association, a precursor to the New York Community Media Alliance, had intervened on their behalf. “They started bombarding the people giving credentials, and eventually we got credentials.” Standing with his hands on the back of Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska’s seat was Abu Taher, the executive editor of The Weekly Bangla Patrika, a Bengali paper headquartered in a one-room office above an auto-body shop in Long Island City, Queens. “The reason we came to cover this convention,” he said, “is to get the idea of what is the roles of the people who have immigrant background and the ethnic people, and how they can get involved, how they become the delegates, and how they are feeling.” Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska added: “Part of our mission is to encourage people to be part of political process because a lot of people are completely lost. People from countries like mine, who could remember communists — sometimes they are really reluctant to even participate in politics.” Lotus Chau, a veteran reporter for the Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily, looked up from her BlackBerry. “We are in the front lines, so we observe by our eyes,” she said. “The wires or A.P. or all the media agency take care of the mainstream, but they don’t understand minority.” Ms. Kern-Jedrychowska smiled. “The role of the ethnic press is growing,” she said. “Both candidates are trying to appeal to minorities. “America,” she added, “is kind of changing.”  To a great extent, the story of ethnic newspapers in America is the story of New York’s ethnic enclaves, which in the early 1900s gave rise to publications such as The Jewish Daily Forward, The Amsterdam News and La Prensa. In more recent years, as growing numbers of immigrant communities have sprung up outside big cities on the East and West Coasts, a number of New York’s ethnic newspapers have expanded their distribution networks to reach readers in places like Michigan and Ohio. During the same period, owing in part to the nation’s immigration boom, the number of ethnic publications in America has increased, as have the circulations of many individual newspapers. At least 18 newspapers serve New York’s Pakistanis alone, and more than a dozen newspapers are printed in Bengali. To appreciate the significance of these numbers, consider the recent woes of the mainstream press: The nation’s daily newspapers have reported an accelerating decline in readership over the past two decades. MS. KERN-JEDRYCHOWSKA and her colleagues arrived in Denver with agendas that in general bore little resemblance to those of their mainstream counterparts. For example, Darlie Gervais, an employee of the Brooklyn-based Haitian Times, was determined to spend the better part of a day reporting on Kwame Raoul, a second-generation Haitian-American state senator from Chicago. About 11 a.m. on the first day of the convention, Ms. Gervais, whose duties include reporting, editing, taking pictures and selling ads, sat in the lobby of the Denver Marriott waiting for Mr. Raoul to show for their appointment. She checked her cellphone: It was 15 minutes past their scheduled meeting time. “Maybe he had some other meeting with his fellow Democrats,” she said gloomily. Another 15 minutes passed. Ms. Gervais checked her phone again. She then put it back in her purse, and for the umpteenth time that morning she tested her tape recorder. To most of America, Mr. Raoul is scarcely known despite the fact that in 2004 he succeeded Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate. But to readers of The Haitian Times, he is a star and an inspiration, an example of what a son of Haitian parents might achieve. Much of his fame in the Haitian community is derived from The Haitian Times; before the convention, the paper published a profile and two other articles on him. Ms. Gervais checked her phone once more. “Maybe if it was The New York Times,” she said, “he would be downstairs more quicker.” All told, Ms. Gervais waited for more than an hour before Mr. Raoul finally emerged from the elevator, a gleaming campaign pin shaped like Illinois on his lapel. After apologizing to Ms. Gervais for his tardiness, he suggested that they find a quiet place to talk. Ms. Gervais had something else in mind: She wanted to follow him while he went about his business so that she could explain to her readers what being a delegate entails. “That’s going to be hard,” Mr. Raoul said. “I don’t know if you can get into the places where I’m going.” WHILE Ms. Gervais tried to persuade Mr. Raoul, Abu Taher, the 40-year-old executive editor of The Weekly Bangla Patrika, was in a different hotel, enjoying a lunch of halal chicken. That morning he had received a phone call from the Bangladeshi president of Local 1407 — the New York City union for accountants, statisticians and actuaries. “He told me there is a Muslim caucus meeting,” said Mr. Taher, who has the endearing habit of touching the arms and knees of anyone who spends time in his presence. “I think, I don’t know what is a caucus. Maybe I will learn something and what it is about.” It was the first time in history that a Muslim caucus convened at a national convention, and among its goals was convincing Muslim-Americans that Mr. Obama deserved their votes. To spread this message, the delegates needed all the help they could get from publications with Muslim readerships — publications like The Bangla Patrika. But first, staff members of those publications had to find the delegates, and for Mr. Taher, that had not been so easy. Although most of the week’s caucus meetings took place in Denver’s convention center, the Muslim delegates gathered in a hotel basement so deep underground that cellphones were useless. Given that some Muslims have criticized Mr. Obama, who is a Christian, for engaging in what they see as an effort to disassociate himself from their faith, the meeting’s obscure location was heavy with significance for some participants. Mr. Taher had roamed the hotel grounds until he spotted a woman in a headscarf who led him into the bowels of the Sheraton. For the next few hours, he sat beside a political leader from Bangladesh and listened to a cavalcade of Muslim speakers, who reassured the audience that the Democratic Party valued its Muslim supporters. Later, as Mr. Taher left the hotel, he spoke of “the beauty of American politics,” a theme he planned to highlight in his article on the event. LIKE many members of the ethnic press, Mr. Taher believes that a good community newspaper is one that encourages its readers to embrace American life. In consequence, and by Mr. Taher’s own acknowledgment, his publication tends to reflect the sort of sunny outlook a mainstream paper might dismiss as boosterism. But Mr. Taher is not incapable of delivering bad news. He spent eight years at a newspaper in Bangladesh, and he says that he was subjected to intimidation more than once because he reported facts that seemed to cast the government in an unfavorable light. In Bangladesh, he said, his goal was “to print everything which fit to print.” Here, he said, his aims are very different. “We have to create the hope,” he said. “Our future generation, they are growing up here. They have to have the hope in this country.” A few hours after the Muslim caucus meeting, Mr. Taher strolled into the media gallery of the Pepsi Center, an arena where the first major speeches of the convention were getting under way. It would be hours before Michelle Obama addressed the crowd, and the prized front-row desks were still empty. Affixed to many of them were signs marked with the words “New York Times.” Mr. Taher made his way toward the front of a balcony, passing desks with labels marked “Washington Times,” “Dallas Morning News,” “Providence Journal” and “Riverside Press-Enterprise.” There weren’t any desks reserved for The Weekly Bengla Patrika, but that didn’t matter. Mr. Taher sat down at an unoccupied table labeled with a single word: “Hearst.” It was almost midnight when he returned to the rented house that he was sharing with Ms. Gervais, Ms. Chau and a reporter from Pakistan. Ms. Gervais sat at the kitchen table, writing a triumphant memo to her boss, Garry Pierre-Pierre, who founded The Haitian Times after leaving The New York Times in the late 1990s. Mr. Raoul, she wrote, had allowed her to shadow him. Mr. Taher opened his laptop and typed a summary of what he had seen. Afterward, he translated some of the words that appeared in Bengali on the screen. When Senator Edward Kennedy spoke, he said, “it was very emotional scene and many people teared.” He did not mention that he was among those who had wept. LOTUS CHAU, 47, is the chief reporter for the New York office of Sing Tao Daily, a Hong Kong-based newspaper with many overseas branches. When she was 3, her father died of cancer, and her family moved from mainland China to Hong Kong, where her mother worked as a school janitor. “If my father didn’t die, I don’t move to Hong Kong,” Ms. Chau said a few days before the trip. “If I don’t move to Hong Kong, I don’t go to good school. If I don’t go to good school, I don’t go to university. If I don’t go to university, I don’t work for newspaper. “You see?” she said, cracking a smile. “I don’t complain.” Ms. Chau is barely five feet tall. She has a pronounced underbite, which seems to suit her personality; it is as though years of stubborn reporting have molded her features into an expression of fierce determination. Her favorite phrases include “Dig harder!” and “Empty talk!” Her consuming ambition is to be the best reporter in Chinatown, and it has occurred to her that if she knew English as well as she knows Chinese, she might put a mainstream reporter out of work. “I don’t wear sexy dress, I’m not pretty, I’m short, my English no good,” she says. “But I work hard.” Last Sunday evening, Ms. Chau walked at an astonishingly brisk clip into the ballroom of a Denver hotel where a party of New York delegates had assembled. Like many reporters for ethnic newspapers, she doubles as a photographer, and a camera bag hung from a strap around her neck. Ms. Chau streaked past tables laden with plates of corned beef (the menu had apparently been designed to make the guests forget that they had ever left New York) and planted herself in front of Ellen Young, an assemblywoman from Flushing, Queens, and an old acquaintance of Ms. Chau’s from the Chinatown political scene. Ms. Young, temporarily condemned to silence by a mouthful of deli meat, listened helplessly as Ms. Chau unleashed a torrent of demands, among them “Can I sleep on your floor?” Ms. Chau, who lives in fear of being scooped, explained that she wanted to be as close as possible to the action. As she pressed her case, a slow, tired voice resonated from the loudspeakers. “Sheldon Silver!” Ms. Chau exclaimed. Mr. Silver, a New York assemblyman whose district includes part of Chinatown, is running for re-election. Ms. Chau had seen him deliver a campaign speech in Chinatown a week earlier, and she had not been impressed. “Empty talk,” she had said after watching him promise an older Chinese audience more social-service programs. “Ten years ago he wouldn’t do this, but all these old people, they become citizens.” Now, halfway across America, Mr. Silver was once again engaging in political oratory. Ms. Chau disappeared into a mass of reporters and photographers from The New York Post, The Daily News and The New York Times. When she reappeared a moment later, she was standing directly in front of the stage, camera in hand. All the other photographers were in back of her. She snapped picture after picture, first of Mr. Silver, and then of the next speaker, Gov. David Paterson of New York. As soon as the governor left the stage, a score of reporters surged after him. Ms. Chau stood off to the side with her camera, studying the images she had recorded. She didn’t look happy.  Shortly afterward, the crowd that had been surrounding the governor fell away; it seemed that Mr. Silver was leading the governor back to the stage. The press corps looked on as the two politicians climbed onto the stage and turned to face the ballroom. Standing below them was Lotus Chau. She snapped a picture. While the governor had been answering questions, she had told Mr. Silver that she wasn’t satisfied with the pictures she had taken. “Whatever Lotus wants, Lotus gets,” Mr. Silver later explained. “She’s the best.”

Presidential Election of 2008
Newspapers
Minorities (US)
Democratic Party
Conventions National (US)
New York Community Media Alliance


Trial Opens in Collapse of Dewey & LeBoeuf Firm

Abstract: Three former executives of the law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf, who are accused of using accounting gimmicks to defraud its lenders, sought to deflect the blame for the once-prominent firm’s collapse during the start of their trial on Tuesday. In an opening argument in Manhattan Supreme Court, a defense lawyer for Steven Davis, the firm’s former chairman, said “greedy” lawyers who abandoned the firm and took big clients with them brought about Dewey’s bankruptcy filing in May 2012 by weakening the firm’s already precarious financial situation. The lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz, said Mr. Davis was unaware of any wrongdoing in the firm’s accounting department. If anything improper did take place, as prosecutors contend, then those activities were carried out, Mr. Abramowitz said, by a group of “panicky people” working largely on their own. Mr. Abramowitz cast his client — a leading force behind the 2007 merger of Dewey Ballantine and LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, which created a behemoth of a firm with 1,300 lawyers — as something of a victim who was betrayed by his fellow partners. “Disloyal partners took clients with them, and they rendered the firm unable to survive,” Mr. Abramowitz said. “They picked up their marbles and ran.” Austin Campriello, the lawyer for Stephen DiCarmine, the firm’s former executive director, sounded a similar note in his opening statement to the jury of eight women and four men. Mr. Campriello said merger negotiations with another law firm that might have saved Dewey from bankruptcy were “torpedoed” when someone leaked word to the news media that Manhattan prosecutors were investigating the firm’s finances. “Steve was the victim of an ill-conceived quest to blame someone for the collapse of a law firm that he didn’t cause,” Mr. Campriello said. A year ago, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, charged Mr. Davis, Mr. DiCarmine and Joel Sanders, the firm’s former chief financial officer, with dozens of counts of larceny, fraud and falsifying business records. The lengthy indictment, which included excerpts from emails sent by the three men, all of whom are lawyers, painted a picture of a well-orchestrated campaign to mask Dewey’s failing finances from banks and insurers that either lent the firm money or invested in a $150 million bond offering. 4 Accused in Law Firm Fraud Several former leaders of the once-high-flying law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf apparently violated a cardinal rule that lawyers always tell their clients: Don’t put anything incriminating into an email. A fourth defendant, Zachary Warren, who worked as a client relations manager and is now also a lawyer, is scheduled to be tried after the trial of Mr. Davis, Mr. DiCarmine and Mr. Sanders. Mr. Vance’s office has sought to bolster its pending cases with the guilty pleas it secured more than a year ago from seven other employees at Dewey, many of whom once worked in the firm’s accounting department. The former employees, most of whom are not likely to serve any time in prison, are expected to testify during the trial along with dozens of other witnesses. The case against the three former Dewey executives is the most prominent financial crimes case brought by Mr. Vance’s office, and also promises to be the most complex. The trial is expected to last six months and will delve into arcane accounting treatments and year-end adjustments that prosecutors contend made Dewey appear to be generating more revenue than it actually was. Mr. Vance was in the courtroom for a portion of the 90-minute opening statement by Steve Pilnyak, an assistant Manhattan district attorney, who used graphics and charts to help map out the prosecution’s case for the jury. The graphics appeared on a large screen behind Mr. Pilnyak, who faced the jury and methodically explained all of the accounting maneuvers that prosecutors say the firm used over four years to burnish its financial situation. Mr. Pilnyak said the maneuvers, which included reclassifying loans as fees from clients, backdating checks and counting partner capital contributions as revenue, were carried out by lower-level employees at the direction of the three former executives. He added that “the evidence will show that these defendants directed employees of Dewey” to carry out false adjustments worth tens of millions of dollars. At several points during his opening statement, Mr. Pilnyak told the jury that the year-end adjustment carried out by Dewey’s accounting department were “false, false and false.” He said the former executives were determined to improve the look of Dewey’s finances in order to encourage insurers and others to invest in a $150 million debt offering in 2010 and to avoid activating covenants in its bank loans that would have forced the firm to pay more money. Mr. Pilnyak said the accounting gimmicks did not stop until 2012, when the defendants “were simply unable to fend off reality” and “years of accounting fraud directed by the three defendants proved too much.” Mr. Abramowitz, the lawyer for Mr. Davis, countered that all of the adjustments pointed out by prosecutors added up to just a few million dollars for a firm that at its peak generated $1 billion in gross revenue. Given the expected length of the trial, Justice Robert M. Stolz, who is presiding, has already announced the jurors will have Fridays off in addition to the weeks around the Fourth of July and Labor Day holidays. The judge has already shown some concern for the jurors and their focus on the case. At one point during Mr. Pilnyak’s opening statement, Justice Stolz briefly stopped the proceedings so the jurors and people in the audience could take a small break. “This is a good time for everyone to stand up and stretch,” the judge said.

Dewey & LeBoeuf
Stephen DiCarmine
Steve H Davis
Joel Sanders
Fraud
Accounting
Accountants
Lawyers
Zachary Warren


In a Land Still Missing Its Ball Club

Abstract: Bridgewater A baseball diamond is hard to resist in spring, and as opening day approached in the minor-league ballpark that was lumbering awake here, Steve Kalafer — who owns the team, and didn’t have to worry about anyone stopping him — did what all fans long to do. He stepped out of the stands and onto the lush grass. “It’s like a fresh birth,” he said, sweeping his arms to take in Commerce Bank Park, where his Somerset Patriots are about to start their 10th season. “Who wouldn’t want this?” Baseball will soon be back here and in the other ballparks that have made New Jersey a minor-league mecca over the last decade: Trenton, Lakewood, Sussex County, Newark, Montclair, Camden, Atlantic City. Everywhere, that is, except in the swamp that has swallowed up so many other grand schemes: the Meadowlands. “It’s a very empty feeling,” Mr. Kalafer said about the prospect of another season without the Bergen Cliff Hawks, the phantom team that is still awaiting a phantom ballpark that was supposed to be part of the sprawling Xanadu complex now rising between Giants Stadium and the turnpike. The Cliff Hawks exist now mainly as a logo (a raptor clutching a baseball in its talons); a mascot suit (a hawk named Homer); a post office box in Flemington (home to Mr. Kalafer’s primary business, a group of 14 auto dealerships); some architectural renderings of a stadium that nobody wants to pay for; the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Xanadu’s developers; and the fond hope of a wide array of public officials and baseball fans who expect Xanadu to be something more than a giant shopping mall. After Xanadu’s long and troubled gestation, its actual construction has proved jarring to turnpike drivers who wonder why a container ship with a 1973 color scheme seems to have docked beside the Exit 18W tolls. The Snow Dome, with the indoor ski slope, is taking shape . The giant Ferris wheel with the Pepsi logo will soon follow. But it’s spring again, so what about baseball? “Now we see it going up, and everyone is asking, ‘Where’s the ballpark?’ ” said Dennis McNerney, the Bergen County executive. “And the Yankees opened up and people are screaming about the prices there, so a minor-league stadium is becoming more and more attractive.” When developers were pitching their plans back in 2002 to the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the landlord in the Meadowlands, one of them — the original developer behind Xanadu — brought along some players dressed in Cliff Hawks uniforms. “Not only did it include minor-league baseball, but it was specific to the Bergen Cliff Hawks,” Joseph Forgione, a sports authority commissioner, said about the original Xanadu proposal. He vows that “over my dead body” will the land set aside for the ballpark ever be used for anything else. But proposals are neither blueprints nor budgets, and as the Xanadu project floundered, and passed from the original developer to another, nobody could agree on who would pay the $20 million or so it would cost to build the ballpark. Would the state kick in? What was Xanadu’s share? How much should come from Mr. Kalafer? Mr. Kalafer thought he had what he called an “agreement in principle” with the developers, and in 2006, with no ballpark on the horizon, he sued them. “This has been an intentional deception,” he said. Baseball, his lawsuit argued, was just bait, a way to convince the authority that Xanadu was not just a mall. “The residents of New Jersey bought something different than what they were sold.” A Superior Court judge in Bergen County dismissed the suit in January. Mr. Kalafer, Judge Jonathan N. Harris wrote, is “an entrepreneur who thought that he could introduce minor-league baseball to Bergen County based upon a handshake”; the defendants are “real estate developers who imagined that they could build and operate a world-class retail and entertainment lifestyle center in Bergen County on a constrained budget”; and what happened when they met left “both sides’ dreams in disarray.” Mr. Kalafer is appealing the decision. Xanadu is scheduled to open in November, but no work has started at the ballpark site. “We always wanted baseball, we still want baseball, we’re going to have baseball,” said Lloyd Kaplan, a spokesman for Xanadu. But the question of who will pay for the ballpark remains unresolved. “We look forward to selecting an operator by the end of the year capable of operating a first-class franchise and moving forward with the development of the stadium.” The Cliff Hawks, Mr. Kaplan said, remain a possibility, but Mr. Kalafer has not had any meetings with Xanadu. “I get so angry when they say, ‘Well, we’re talking to teams,’” said Mr. Forgione. “What do you mean you’re talking to teams? You already have an anchor tenant in Kalafer. He has one of the most successful teams in New Jersey. What else are you looking for?” Mr. Kalafer has also produced nine movies — mostly documentaries, three of which were nominated for Academy Awards — and he plans another one about Xanadu: “It’s New Jersey,” is the working title, and the synopsis describes it as “a case study in public and political manipulation.” He brought a cameraman into the depositions for his lawsuits, and also to a recent tour of Xanadu by state officials and reporters. Homer, the Cliff Hawks’ mascot, might make a guest appearance. “It’s being dry-cleaned,” he said about the costume, as he made the rounds of a ballpark that does exist as more than a drawing, and that averaged 5,200 fans a game last season. A new scoreboard was coming to the Patriots’ home (“the same as in Yankee Stadium,” he said) and the last of the gray winter shadows would soon be power washed away. “It will be perfect by opening day,” he said, meaning here, at least.

Meadowlands Xanadu (NJ)
Baseball
Stadiums and Arenas
Meadowlands (NJ)


South Carolina Bills Would Allow Death Penalty for Sex Offenders

Abstract: The House passed a pair of bills that would allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty for some repeat child molesters. One bill was approved earlier by the Senate and now goes to the governor's office, but the second must go back to the Senate for reconsideration.


A Review of Nico Kitchen + Bar, in Newark

Abstract: There are several kinds of dining experiences to be had at the flashy Nico Kitchen + Bar , tucked into the eastern end of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in downtown Newark. You might choose an evening when there’s a performance next door and the place is humming with fans who can pass directly into the theater at showtime. Or you might opt for a quieter night, when the enormous main dining room feels as cavernous and calm as a cathedral. In that case a better choice might be one of the handsome brown banquettes in the bar area, which can be bustling at happy hour but intimate a bit later on. Or maybe lunch, when there are “lots of suits” from the nearby office buildings and government offices, as Nico’s guiding force, Ryan DePersio, put it in a telephone interview after several recent visits. Mr. DePersio, who grew up in an Italian-American family in Nutley, has drawn a zealous following with his brand of sturdy, unfussy Italian cooking at Fascino in Montclair, which he and his family opened in 2003, and Bar Cara in nearby Bloomfield, which followed seven years later. He’s performing on a far grander stage at Nico, which opened a year and a half ago. The restaurant is operated by Culinaire, a Dallas-based company that specializes in restaurants in cultural centers. Mr. DePersio, 35, is the consulting chef (he named the place after his 7-year-old son, Nicholas); the chef de cuisine, Adam Rose, formerly at Bin 14 in Hoboken, is at the stove on a regular basis. Image Macaroni with English peas, bresaola and goat cheese. Credit Alex di Suvero for The New York Times The décor is elegant and vaguely industrial, with soaring ceilings and a dark red, gold and coffee color scheme that echoes that of its neighbor. The dining room accommodates up to 185, with room for 50 more in the bar area, presenting a sizable challenge for the kitchen. Judging from our visits, the kitchen is meeting it remarkably well. Part of the reason is the polished Italian-focused cooking, which features both Mr. DePersio’s signature favorites, like his mascarpone polenta fries, pizzas and sublime ricotta gnocchi, and an array of ambitious but well-priced fish and meat dishes. But the efficient kitchen also ensures consistency on busy show nights by offering just two smaller menus then: a $42 three-course prix fixe in the dining room and an à la carte option in the bar area. From the main menu, the pan-roasted black cod with a crust of scallions and mascarpone was light and flavorful in its broth of riesling and tomatoes. The same was true of the roasted scallops, cooked through perfectly and offset by the crunch of the accompanying garlic-imbued red quinoa. And you really shouldn’t miss those feathery gnocchi, tossed in a spicy sausage Bolognese sauce with fresh parmigiana. Image A strawberry shortcake with mint crystals. Credit Alex di Suvero for The New York Times On the à la carte menu, the braised short ribs (also available on the main menu) were tender, tasty and deftly paired with a mild salsa verde. Eating alone at the bar, I was drawn into conversation with a vivacious couple who insisted I try their macaroni with English peas, bresaola and goat cheese; I, in turn, doled out some of my crab-stuffed zucchini flowers. I got the better of the exchange: the fresh peas added a sweet and snappy contrast to the creamy pasta, while the zucchini flowers in a Romesco sauce were a bit oily and underseasoned. Desserts, the work of Binicio Salas Chimbo, are rich, varied and often include specials. The best we tried were the chocolate-filled beignets with a salted caramel and pretzel gelato, and a French-tasting strawberry shortcake with mint crystals. A packed midweek evening recently offered an unusual Venn diagram of Nico’s diners when there are simultaneous shows at NJPAC and the Prudential Center, a few blocks down Mulberry Street. Each started at 7 p.m. The well-heeled, older patrons going to see the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli at the Pru arrived earlier and overlapped for the last hour or so with the more diverse crowd flocking to see Willie Nelson next door. As quiet couples at the bar were gradually supplanted by more gregarious multigenerational groups, the place was abuzz with good vibes, and I had to wonder: Does Willie Nelson have the friendliest fans in the world?

Restaurant
Newark NJ
Ryan DePersio
Nico Kitchen + Bar Newark NJ


Georgia Governor Rejects Bill Shielding Critics of Gay Marriage

Abstract: ATLANTA — In a striking defeat to religious conservatives, Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia said Monday that he would veto a bill intended to protect critics of same-sex marriage . “In light of our history, I find it somewhat ironic that some in the religious community today feel that it is necessary for government to confer upon them certain rights and protections,” Mr. Deal said at the State Capitol, where he had faced intense pressure from the bill’s supporters and critics. “If indeed our religious liberty is conferred upon us by God, and not by man-made government, perhaps we should simply heed the hands-off admonition of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Mr. Deal, a Republican in his second term, announced his decision less than two weeks after the General Assembly easily approved House Bill 757 , which its supporters named the Free Exercise Protection Act. The vote tallies from March 16, when the House of Representatives and the Senate considered the bill over a stretch of just hours, suggest that Mr. Deal’s veto will probably stand, but Republicans said that they were discussing the possibility of a special session to challenge the governor’s decision. Shortly before Mr. Deal spoke, the outcome of last week’s special legislative session in North Carolina moved into federal court. There, a coalition of individuals and civil liberties groups filed a challenge to a measure that overturned local protections for gay and transgender people. Critics of the law, which bars transgender people from using public bathrooms that do not match the sexes stated on their birth certificates, said the measure violated the Constitution and federal anti-discrimination laws. That lawsuit might stretch for many months, and companies have already warned that the North Carolina law may endanger the state’s prospects for new or recurring business. With his veto here in Georgia, Mr. Deal most likely sidestepped the type of economic backlash that Indiana faced last year after its governor signed a so-called religious liberty measure. (After a national outcry, Indiana officials rewrote the law.) A number of businesses and sports organizations, including Coca-Cola and the National Football League, had warned Mr. Deal, explicitly or implicitly, that a decision to support the bill could jeopardize economic opportunities in Georgia. The Georgia bill was intended to offer protections to faith-based groups if they, absent certain conditions, refused to provide “social, educational or charitable services that violate” their religious beliefs. The measure also would have allowed such groups, without legal repercussions, to avoid hiring anyone whose religious beliefs conflicted with those of the organizations. Gay rights groups argued that the bill would have cloaked discrimination as a form of religious liberty. Mr. Deal’s decision left the bill’s supporters, most of them Republicans, dismayed. “We control all the constitutional offices, we control the legislature, and today, the governor has turned his back on millions and millions of people who have very real concerns about what their religious freedom looks like in the wake of a very fluid legal environment,” said State Senator Josh McKoon, a Republican. Proponents of the bill, some of whom had urged supporters to lobby Mr. Deal, argued that the measure would not have allowed discrimination, and they said that it would have offered necessary reassurance to people frustrated or even frightened by the United States Supreme Court opinion last summer that recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. “The message that’s been sent by this veto is essentially that it’s open season on people of faith in Georgia,” Mr. McKoon said. Critics, who had organized their own campaign, said they were elated at what they believed was a landmark legislative victory that sent a message to lawmakers in the Deep South. “Today, Governor Deal heard the voices of Georgians, civil rights organizations, as well as the many leaders in the entertainment industry and private sector who condemned this attack on the fundamental rights of L.G.B.T. people, and he has set an example for other elected officials to follow,” Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, said in a statement. Some of the most influential names in Georgia business also welcomed Mr. Deal’s decision. The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce said Mr. Deal’s “thoughtful deliberation and consideration on this issue has led to an outcome that preserves Georgia’s positive business climate, encourages job growth and sustains our quality of life, and is truly in the best interest of all Georgians.” Critics of the North Carolina bill relied on many of the same themes, even as they turned to the courts. In a lawsuit, filed in a Federal District Court, opponents of the North Carolina law said it “violates the most basic guarantees of equal treatment and the U.S. Constitution.” Graham Wilson, a spokesman for Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina, said in a statement on Monday that “the governor respects the right of any legal challenge; however, he does not respect the continued distortion of the facts by the groups challenging this law and by many members of the state and national media.” Mr. Wilson said the governor, a Republican, would “counter a coordinated national effort to mislead the public” and defend “a common sense resolution to local government overreach.” The bills that moved through the legislatures in Georgia and North Carolina this month reflect the continuing unease about gay rights among many people in the South, where religious values have an outsize influence on public policy. There were also displays of the tensions between residents of the largest cities in those states, in places like Atlanta and Charlotte, and the millions of people who live in more rural communities. In Georgia, the bill that Mr. Deal will veto emerged after weeks of negotiations and warnings, and its swift passage set into motion sweeping campaigns to pressure the governor, who must also reach a decision about a proposal concerning firearms on college campuses. Message logs, obtained through an open records request, showed that Mr. Deal’s office had received thousands of comments about the two measures. Even if lawmakers do not return to Atlanta for a special session, the clash about religious liberty is already poised to re-emerge and might shadow Mr. Deal until his term ends in 2019. Standing outside Mr. Deal’s office on Monday morning, Dave Baker, the executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition of Georgia, which supported the legislation, said, “We’re going to continue to press to make sure that we have the same protections in our state law that citizens in other states have.” But the governor, at least on Monday, said he had little reason to approve the proposal that conservatives like Mr. Baker championed. “I do not think,” Mr. Deal said, “that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia, of which I and my family have been a part of for all of our lives.”

Georgia
Nathan Deal
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Freedom of religion
Separation of church and state
Legislation


Rugged Seabed Seen in New Maps Further Complicates Search for Malaysia Airlines Jet

Abstract: SYDNEY, Australia — As searchers began a deep-sea hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on Monday, three-dimensional maps — the first produced of the remote region off the western Australian coast where the missing plane is thought to have run out of fuel — pointed to the huge scale of the task ahead. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said in a statement on Monday that one of the vessels involved, GO Phoenix, had arrived within the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean and was likely to stay 12 days before needing to refuel. Two other ships — the Fugro Discovery and the Fugro Equator — will also join the search, which is concentrated along a long, thin arc that is thought to have been the plane’s flight path on March 8 before it disappeared. Newly produced maps show that the area’s waters, beneath which are volcanoes, crevasses, plateaus and ridges, may be more than three and a half miles deep in places. “It is rugged underwater terrain, a long way down,” said Alec Duncan, a senior lecturer at the Center for Marine Science and Technology at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. “It makes the next phase of the search much harder.” The airliner had been traveling on an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board but inexplicably turned off course and headed south. No debris has been found. Transmissions from Flight 370, known as electronic handshakes, and an unsuccessful satellite phone call between Malaysia Airlines ground staff and the jet have allowed the Australian authorities leading the search to chart a narrow trajectory that the plane probably traveled. “The complexities surrounding the search cannot be understated,” the Transport Safety Bureau said in a recent search update. “It involves vast areas of the Indian Ocean with only limited known data and aircraft flight information.” But officials have said they remain cautiously optimistic that they will find the jet. They hope the next phase of the search, using side-scan sonar, synthetic aperture sonar, multibeam echo sounders and video cameras, will detect the plane’s wreckage on the seafloor. The first phase of the search, an air and water-surface search that involved hundreds of surveillance flights covering about 1.7 million square miles, lasted 52 days. Searchers then used towed and autonomous listening devices in the hope of detecting “pings” from the plane’s data recorders. But no signals were detected, and no wreckage found. Bathymetric surveys of the area’s ocean floor use a rainbow of colors to depict how the seabed rises from a golden-hued plateau on the northern edge of the Broken Ridge — an underwater volcanic plateau — and then drops into a ravine that could be more than four miles deep. The new phase of the search involves towing sonar equipment that can detect wreckage miles underwater, but that search will be slow given the terrain. Some of the sonar operates best when towed around 650 feet from the seafloor. “And it may be towed on cable six miles long out the back of a vessel,” Dr. Duncan said. “You can’t be flying blind using that sort of equipment. That’s where the detailed maps come in.” Dr. Duncan said an enormous amount of effort had gone into refining “what is essentially scant data in the plane’s last flying hours.” “There are uncertainties associated with that,” he said. “They are searching the area of highest probability. And if it is there, they will find it.”

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Plane Crashes and Missing Planes
Australia
Oceans and Seas
Indian Ocean


Steady Progress or More of Same? Politicians React

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A modest improvement in the unemployment rate and a marginal increase in job creation were greeted by Democrats as signs of slow but steady progress and disparaged by Republicans as another month of sluggish economic underperformance. The jobless rate, now 8.1 percent , has been drifting in a narrow range between 8.1 and 8.3 percent all year, and it is a nip-and-tuck question whether it will edge below the 8 percent mark in the two months before the election. “This is more of the same for middle-class families who are suffering through the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression,” said Mitt Romney in a statement along the same lines as several others issued by top Republicans. In an interview on Fox News, he questioned whether President Obama “knows what he is doing,” and said that if the economy had performed as the White House projected in the administration’s early days, with unemployment dropping to 5.4 percent by now, nine million more people would have jobs. House Speaker John A. Boehner said, “This report underscores President Obama’s failed promises to get our economy moving again.” He noted that unemployment has exceeded 8 percent for 43 months. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican whip, sounded the same theme in a quick message on Twitter : “I’m unwilling to accept @BarackObama ’s new normal of 8% unemployment.” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that “while our recovery is still moving too slowly for many Americans, job growth would likely have been even stronger if Republicans had not blocked Democratic efforts to hire more teachers, firefighters and police officers.” (Employment in government was little changed in the month, falling by 7,000.) If the unemployment rate appears to be locked in to a familiar pattern, so are the predictable political reactions of the two parties’ leaders. Even though the data shows a bit of improvement, it remains hard for the Democrats to make much out of a formula that includes fewer than 100,000 new jobs and a shrinking of the work force, along with downward revisions of previous monthly data. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, pointed out that August was the 30th consecutive month of growth in private-sector jobs and asserted that “our nation is headed in the right direction.” Congressional leaders of both parties accused their opponents of obstructionism and said that the picture would look better if only the other side would adopt their competing jobs legislation. And both sides said it was important to remove the uncertainty over the future course of taxes and spending, which may be dampening employment. But the two parties’ legislative packages have little in common and neither side’s favored approach has a chance of passage before the Nov. 6 election determines where the balance of power will lie next year “While encouraging, today’s report also shows that we have more work to do,” Mr. Hoyer said. “We should be taking action to encourage American businesses to expand and hire for well-paying jobs that won’t be shipped overseas.” The White House, in a statement by Mr. Obama’s economic adviser, Alan B. Krueger, said the president “continues to support the elements of the American Jobs Act that have not yet passed, including further investment in infrastructure to rebuild our nation’s ports, roads and highways, and assistance to state and local governments to prevent layoffs and to enable them to rehire hundreds of thousands of teachers and first responders.” Republicans seemed eager to use the new numbers to pop any balloons left over from the Democratic convention that just ended in Charlotte, N.C. “President Obama made a spirited pitch for the failed status quo this week, but the fact is: we can do better,” Mr. Boehner said. It is time to “let go of the failed ‘stimulus'-style policies of the past,” he said. Mocking a slogan heard frequently at the Democratic convention, Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said: “Marching forward is fine if you are headed in the right direction. Clearly, this economy is not.” As Mr. Romney put it: “If last night was the party, today is the hangover.”

Unemployment
United States Economy
Presidential Election of 2012


Report Details Iran’s Progress at Fordow Nuclear Site

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Iran has installed three-quarters of the nuclear centrifuges it needs to complete a site deep underground for the production of nuclear fuel, international inspectors reported Thursday, a finding that led the White House to warn that “the window that is open now to resolve this diplomatically will not remain open indefinitely.” The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency , the last to be issued before the American presidential election, lays out in detail how Iran over the summer has doubled the number of centrifuges installed deep under a mountain near Qum. Iran has also, the report said, cleansed another site where the agency has said it suspects that the country has conducted explosive experiments that could be relevant to the production of a nuclear weapon. Based on satellite photographs, the agency said the cleanup had been so extensive that it would “significantly hamper” the ability of inspectors to understand what kind of work had taken place there. The report confirmed that a recent boast by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , that the country had added nearly 1,000 centrifuges to the underground site was accurate. But it left open the question of what, exactly, Ayatollah Khamenei and other Iranian leaders intended to do with those machines, and whether, by racing ahead with construction, they were seeking negotiating advantage or trying to gain the ability to build a bomb before sanctions, sabotage or military action could stop them. The report offers arguments for both sides in the debate over whether a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites is necessary to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon. The Israelis in favor of military action, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak , the most outspoken proponent of moving quickly against the Iranian program, will point to evidence that Iran has now installed more than 2,100 of the roughly 2,800 centrifuges destined for the underground site, called Fordow. More than 1,000 have been installed in the past three months, since the last report by the agency. For Mr. Barak, that is evidence that the “zone of immunity ” he has warned about — the point at which Iran will be able to produce nuclear fuel from a site invulnerable to attack — will be reached in a matter of weeks. But American officials urging caution will find plenty in the report to bolster their view as well. Only a third of the centrifuges at Fordow are operating, the inspectors reported, leaving open the question of whether Iran had run into technical difficulties or had made a political decision not to tempt its adversaries by rushing ahead in moving production of fuel to its best-protected facility. The centrifuges being installed at Fordow, American officials noted, are of the old and unreliable model that Iran obtained from Pakistan , and they do not include any newer, more efficient models that the Iranians have claimed, for years, that they would move to. And while the agency’s statistics show that Iran has, since February, nearly doubled its stockpile of fuel enriched to 20 percent purity — a level that experts say could be converted to bomb grade in months — it still does not possess enough of that fuel to produce a complete nuclear weapon. Some of the 20 percent fuel is in a form that is extremely difficult to use in a bomb, and most of the stockpile is composed of a fuel enriched at a lower level that would take considerably longer to process for weapons use. Iran has declared, publicly and to the agency, that it is producing its fuel enriched at 20 percent solely for a reactor that is used to produce medical isotopes for cancer treatments. A European diplomat pointed out on Thursday that Iran now had enough of the fuel to keep that reactor running for many years, though the country has declared that it will continue producing the fuel at a faster pace. Iran has continued to allow inspectors inside the Fordow plant, to verify that it is not producing bomb-grade material. “They have been very strategic about it,” one senior American official said hours before the report was made public. “They are creating a tremendous production capability, but they are not yet using it. That gives them leverage, but they think it also stops short of creating the pretext for an attack.” The figures show that the number of installed centrifuges at the Fordow bunker has more than doubled since the last quarterly report, to 2,140 machines from 1,064. Of those, the inspectors reported, 696 are now enriching uranium to the 20 percent level. The report says that Iran has produced 417 pounds of uranium enriched to 20 percent. That is not enough for a single nuclear weapon, but for the first time, the figure exceeds the quantity needed to make fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor. Iran has long pointed to that reactor as the rationale for its 20 percent enrichment. In discussing another site, called Parchin, the report said satellite images showed that the Iranians had undertaken “significant ground scraping and landscaping,” as well as the construction of new dirt roads. “That’s strong language,” the diplomat said. “That’s as close as the agency is going to get in saying that the Iranians are cleaning up suspicious activity.”

Iran
Israel
Nuclear weapon
International relations
International Atomic Energy Agency


New Twist Keeps Dickey’s Career Afloat

Abstract: PEORIA, Ariz. — By all rights, R. A. Dickey should be working a day job somewhere, cursing twisted fate. Or he should be coaching at some Tennessee high school, telling kids what he once was and lamenting what might have been. Instead, Dickey slipped on his Seattle Mariners uniform Monday, stepped on a bullpen pitcher’s mound and made his pitching arm do something it should not be able to do — throw a baseball. In an age when more and more pitchers have ugly scars crawling up their elbows, where surgeons’ scalpels have replaced their ulnar collateral ligaments in what is known as Tommy John surgery, Dickey does not need to worry about strains or painful pops. He does not have an ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. None. Dickey either was born without one, or the tissue simply disintegrated when he was a teenager. A dozen years after discovery of his situation cost him a virtual million-dollar payday, when he was told to give up his dreams of becoming a major league pitcher, Dickey today is one of the most intriguing players in any spring training camp. He did not just prove skeptics wrong by building a career that has included brief stays in the big leagues. Now 33, Dickey has reinvented himself as a knuckleballer, one promising enough that he could prove quite valuable in 2008 and beyond. “For him to be able to throw at all is pretty phenomenal in itself,” said Rick Griffin, the Mariners’ head athletic trainer. “But he’s doing it in the major leagues. People in sports amaze you physically, but this is something you’d never suspect. It’s like a running back in the N.F.L. having no anterior cruciate ligament in his knee. It’s amazing.” Dickey, a huskily bearded father of three, said: “Doctors look at me and say I shouldn’t be able to turn a doorknob without feeling pain, and I shouldn’t be able to turn the key and start my car without feeling pain. But I’m still here. I feel I have a whole career ahead of me.” Dickey’s knuckleball danced through the Pacific Coast League last year, when as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers’ Class AAA farm team in Nashville he went 13-6 with a 3.72 earned run average. (He went 9-2 with a 2.51 E.R.A. in his final 15 starts as the pitch started to become particularly effective.) The Minnesota Twins signed him in November, but he was soon snapped up by the Mariners in the Rule 5 draft, meaning Seattle must keep him on its 25-man roster all season or offer him back to Minnesota. Bill Bavasi, the Mariners’ general manager, said that one of Dickey’s primary attributes is — of all things — his durability. “He can throw four innings in relief tonight and spot start tomorrow,” Bavasi said. “He can save your butt by eating a lot of innings.” After pitching professionally for 12 years without any elbow discomfort to speak of, the man who was told the joint would never hold up can pitch almost every day if needed. “It’s a real blessing now,” Dickey said. “I’m real resilient, simply because I don’t have to worry about that ligament being sore, or tearing it. There’s nothing to tear.” Dickey’s route to this point was as tortuous as his knuckleball. It started with a picture that told a thousand words — at about $800 apiece. A hard-throwing all-American pitcher at the University of Tennessee in 1996, Dickey became a first-round draft pick of the Texas Rangers and a starter for the United States Olympic team, along with Kris Benson, Billy Koch, Seth Greisinger and Braden Looper. Baseball America pictured the five of them standing side by side on the cover of its Olympic preview issue. Dickey was ready to accept the Rangers’ $810,000 bonus offer when a team physician picked up the magazine and noticed Dickey’s right arm hanging somewhat awkwardly at his side. The doctor recommended that the team examine him further, leading to the bizarre discovery that Dickey not only had an elbow issue, he had no ulnar collateral ligament, the primary tissue that stabilizes the joint. The Rangers pulled their offer and wound up offering him $75,000, more out of guilt than confidence in his future. “Imagine winning the lottery and then losing the ticket,” said Dickey, who signed with the Rangers because he assumed no team would give him a chance again. He reported to the minor leagues knowing that precious little was keeping his elbow together, that each day pitching could be his last. “Every day I had to decide whether I was going to be bitter, if I was going to be that guy — woe is me, you know?” Dickey said. “I had to choose every day to be the other guy.” Dickey moved up the minor league ladder steadily, never experiencing arm issues, and reached the major leagues in 2001. He relieved and spot started for the Rangers for most of 2003 and 2004, posting E.R.A.’s over 5.00 and standing out mostly for his strange and unclassifiable forkball, known as “the thing.” Dickey never acknowledged that the pitch was actually a hard knuckleball. “I didn’t want to be seen as desperate,” he said Monday. By 2005, Dickey realized that the only way to keep his career alive was to succumb to the knuckleball and try to perfect it. The Rangers coach Charlie Hough, a former knuckleballer, helped him alter his homemade grip into one more conventional, and Dickey finally got the hang of it after signing with the Brewers for last season. Dickey did not get called up to Milwaukee, but now is only weeks from possibly beginning his second major league career, two more than he was ever supposed to have. “The majority of knuckleballers have most of their success from ages 32 to 40, and win most of their games,” said Dickey, who studied the history of pitchers like Hoyt Wilhelm, Wilbur Wood and Phil Niekro while making his transition. “I think there’s something to that. There’s the maturity that comes with throwing that pitch. To surrender to being a new person and a new pitcher is tough. You kind of feel like the leper of the colony, a circus act.” Dickey’s knuckleball travels at a zippy 77 miles an hour, about 10 m.p.h. faster than the one thrown by the Boston Red Sox’ Tim Wakefield, the majors’ prototype knuckleballer for the past 15 years. As Dickey threw it during his bullpen session Monday, he did so not far from J. J. Putz, the Mariners’ gas-heaving closer, who later marveled that his new teammate could throw at all. “I’m starting to wonder if we really need that ligament,” Putz said with a laugh. “We should all just get ours cut out. Our arms would never get sore.” Sure enough, Putz spoke with several pounds of ice strapped onto his shoulder and elbow, and an electronic gizmo monitoring its effects. A few lockers away, Dickey buttoned his shirt unencumbered, eager and ready to pitch again.


Merkel’s Rival, Peer Steinbrück, Strikes Early

Abstract: BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel ’s main challenger in next year’s general election accused her on Thursday of driving a wedge between Germany and its European partners through duplicitous handling of the euro zone crisis in their first public exchange since Peer Steinbrück was nominated last month by the opposition Social Democratic Party. In a combative address to the lower house of Parliament, Mr. Steinbrück asserted that Ms. Merkel had allowed members of her center-right coalition to publicly bully Greece and that she had failed to convince Germans about the benefits of euro membership. The speech by Mr. Steinbrück, who was finance minister in Ms. Merkel’s government from 2005 to 2009, directly followed an address by the chancellor focused on the European Union summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday. Analysts and many Germans viewed the exchange as a harbinger of the topics and the tone that will dominate the campaign in the months before parliamentary elections in autumn of 2013. In her speech, Ms. Merkel defended her government’s plan for Europe with a renewed vigor, calling for solidarity with Greece and repeating her pledge to keep it in the euro zone. She also set herself on a course for confrontation with the French president, François Hollande, by calling for granting stronger central powers to the European Commission on budgetary issues. “We are of the opinion, and I speak for the whole German government on this, that we could go a step further by giving Europe real rights of intervention in national budgets,” Ms. Merkel said. Her current finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, this week called for granting the right to a top E.U. official to veto member states’ budgets if they violated deficit rules. In his speech, Mr. Steinbrück asserted that Ms. Merkel’s decision to close ranks with Athens had come two years too late, and only after months of allowing a damaging discourse from within her own ranks over Greece’s future. “It was a grave mistake that you allowed your coalition to launch a bullying campaign against Greece’s membership in the euro zone,” Mr. Steinbrück said. He was referring to comments over the summer by several lawmakers in the chancellor’s coalition who openly discussed a Greek exit from the euro zone. “You didn’t intervene, you didn’t speak out for Europe and you vacillated,” Mr. Steinbrück said, insisting that none of her predecessors “would have allowed a European neighbor to be abused for domestic political purposes” in such a fashion. “Rarely has Germany been as isolated as it is today” as a result of such policies, said Mr. Steinbrück, who is viewed as a forceful and gifted speaker and earned a reputation as a man of action from his tenure in Ms. Merkel’s first cabinet. That image appeared to resonate with Germans who followed the speeches, carried live on television and over the Internet, according to a brief survey conducted after the exchange in which 65 percent said Mr. Steinbrück appeared more combative than the chancellor. Ms. Merkel, however, was given higher marks for her leadership qualities by 77 percent of those queried by the polling agency Forsa, compared with 53 percent for Mr. Steinbrück.

Germany
Merkel Angela
Steinbruck Peer
Politics and Government
Elections
European Union
Euro (Currency)
Greece
Social Democratic Party (Germany)