AT&T Adjusts ‘Rethink Possible’ Theme as Tech Evolves

Abstract: AT&T is rethinking “Rethink possible.” AT&T adopted “Rethink possible” as the theme of its advertising in a corporate image campaign that began in April 2010. The upbeat theme was intended to buff the AT&T brand, rather than sell specific products and services, and promote the company as an innovator in telecommunications for consumer and business customers. Two years later, the campaign is being refreshed with ads that are to begin appearing on Monday, some of which will help introduce the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone. The campaign includes commercials on television and online and a robust presence in social media like Facebook , Twitter and blogs. The new elements of the campaign will include the addition, in ads aimed at consumers, of the phrase “It’s what you do with what we do.” The phrase, which will appear along with “Rethink possible,” is meant to acknowledge significant shifts in the marketplace since 2010, particularly how much more consumers want to be in control of brand experiences. “We did a lot of insight research about how people live with technology,” said Esther Lee, senior vice president for brand marketing, advertising and sponsorship at AT&T in Dallas, which included “ethnographies, shop-alongs and spending time in people’s living rooms.” When the “Rethink possible” campaign was developed, most consumers “felt overwhelmed with technology,” Ms. Lee said, but only a short time later many have “found ways to integrate it in their lives” — and some even “talk about it with love.” “The real innovation that’s happening is what people are doing, and how people are dealing, with technology,” she added, and “the unique ways they use it to make their lives better.” That is the message that “It’s what you do with what we do” is intended to convey, Ms. Lee said, describing the phrase as “a step-up line, a bridge line” that will now lead to the “Rethink possible” theme. The decision to adjust “Rethink possible” is emblematic of the midcourse corrections that marketers will make in campaigns as circumstances change in the marketplace. Such adjustments acknowledge the need for different approaches, but avoid the expense and risks of a complete overhaul. For instance, in 2010, Nissan North America replaced its brand theme, “Shift,” with the theme “Innovation for all.” The word “Shift,” however, still continues to appear in ads. And in 2007, when the actor Gary Sinise was hired to narrate commercials for the Army, succeeding the actor Josh Charles, the theme of the campaign remained “Army strong.” The phrase “It’s what you do with what we do,” while new to AT&T’s ads, echoes vintage ad themes that include “We do it all for you,” for McDonald’s, and “We’d do it like you’d do it,” for Burger King. (There is also a U-do We-do Laundromat in Philadelphia.) Unlike the fast-food themes, which were focused on the “we” — that is, the advertiser — the AT&T ads are “all about you, the consumer, and how we’re proud to help you do what you can do,” said David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer at BBDO North America, part of the BBDO Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group. The Atlanta and New York offices of BBDO North America serve as the creative agency for AT&T. “It’s the difference between ‘We prepared a meal for you’ and ‘We’re your partner,’ ” Mr. Lubars said. There was no thought given to replacing “Rethink possible” because “it’s still an idea that resonates with people,” he added. “You don’t want to change it because it’s relevant.” By augmenting the theme with the new phrase, Mr. Lubars said, “we put a new suit on” the campaign and emphasized “how people’s lives are entwined with technology” and the benefits of “life on the network” (the AT&T network, natch). In two new commercials aimed at consumers, “It’s what you do with what we do” is superimposed on screen near the end of each spot. In one commercial, an aspiring young actress named Alex gets a part, which an announcer sardonically describes as “the coveted role of ‘Coffee patron No. 4.’ ” She subsequently seeks advice from family and friends on how she should deliver her one line, “Latte, please.” “Good thing AT&T gives you unlimited calling to any mobile,” the announcer says, “so you can call everyone.” In the other commercial, a young man named Colin seeks to woo a young woman named Megan by showing off his new Lumia 900, much as years ago a guy would try to impress a girl by driving past her in his new Mustang II or Camaro SS 396. “See, Megan, Colin has lots of friends,” an announcer says good-naturedly. There are also new commercials aimed at business customers. Spots for small businesses feature actual companies like Genco Services of McAllen, Tex., which rents heavy equipment. AT&T offers “a network of possibilities,” an announcer says in the Genco spot, “helping you do what you do even better.” Business-to-business ads feature fictional firms like insurers, tow-truck operators and car-repair shops. “It’s the AT&T network,” an announcer says, “doing more with data to help business do more for customers.” The budget for AT&T’s advertising is expected to be in line with what the company has spent in previous years. According to the AT&T 2011 annual report, the company spent $2.4 billion on advertising last year, $2.9 billion in 2010 and $2.8 billion in 2009. According to Kantar Media, AT&T was No. 2 in ad spending last year in the United States, behind only Procter & Gamble.

AT&T Inc
Advertising and Marketing
Telephones and Telecommunications
Cellular Telephones
Social Networking (Internet)
Online Advertising


In Germany, a New Day at the Races

Abstract: Horse racing in soccer-centric Germany rarely catches the eye of the public at large, but Andreas Wöhler, one of the most successful German trainers, has witnessed a shift recently. Wöhler is stabled at a yard in Gütersloh, about 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, from the closest racecourse, in Dortmund, but these days his neighbors are showing interest in one of his horses. “In the local area, we don’t have any racecourses around,” he said, “but when you go to bakeries now, they ask you about Novellist.” In Paris on Sunday, the 4-year-old Novellist will go off as one of the favorites in the 93rd running of the Prix l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, Europe’s premiere middle-distance prize. Until recently, that would have been an unlikely role for a German horse. But two years ago, Danedream, then a 3-year-old filly, captured the Arc at 20-to-1 odds in record time, making her only the second German-trained horse to win Europe’s richest race. The first was the 119-to-1 stunner Star Appeal in 1975. Hurricane Run, the 2005 winner, was bred in Germany but trained in France. Novellist, bred and owned by Christoph Berglar, is unbeaten in four starts this year. The son of the influential stallion Monsun, he emerged as a serious Arc challenger after shattering the course record in the prestigious King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot in July, a race Danedream won the previous year. Their triumphs have proved to be exceptional advertising for German breeding and racing. German racing is a story of disproportionate success. Based on the number of foals born annually — in 2011, 977 foals were born there — and races staged, it is one-fifth the size of English or French racing. But a strict emphasis on quality over quantity continues to attract praise from around the world. “Our horses just start progressing and get better from the middle age of 3 onwards, and especially when they’re 4,” said Wöhler, 51, a former champion amateur jockey. German horses are bred to like distance, he said, and as late bloomers they are rarely pushed early in their careers. The German classics are held at 2,400 meters, or a mile and a half, the same distance as the Arc, so breeders prioritize the stamina and toughness necessary to thrive there. As many countries have clamored for more speed in horses, Germany has stuck with what Wöhler calls an “old-fashioned way of breeding.” Barry Irwin, the president of Team Valor International in Kentucky, has purchased racehorses from Germany for two decades. In 2005, he paid €400,000, or $540,000, at Baden Baden for an already accomplished filly named Dalicia. He raced her in the United States and she later became the dam of Animal Kingdom, winner of the 2011 Kentucky Derby and 2013 Dubai World Cup. Irwin was originally struck by German offspring at the Tattersalls sale in Newmarket. “They had Roman noses and coarse heads,” he said. “They looked like draft horses. They weren’t refined. I didn’t think they could run.” But he soon realized they could, and he decided to breed coarse German mares to refined stallions from elsewhere. “They’re tough horses and they don’t run them into the ground over there,” he added. This exposure is about two decades old, said Andreas Jacobs, who owns Gestüt Fährhof, one of Germany’s leading stud farms. “The German breed was very isolated in the 50 years after the Second World War,” he said. “So there was not much out-cross over that time. It was very much German inbreeding: use the stallion of your friend next door and vice versa.” Beginning in the late 1980s, Jacobs’s grandfather, Walther Jacobs, who started the farm in 1960, began importing American brood mares. The Northern Dancer lineage they carried, which had already revolutionized U.S. and European breeding, unleashed a shock wave in Germany, as generations of old-fashioned hardiness was paired with fiery swiftness. German horses soon left their mark away from home. The Jacobs-bred Silvano, a Wöhler trainee, is one example. He won Grade or Group 1 races in Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States, and as a stallion he has made history as the first to shuttle between South Africa and Europe. Jacobs now has a global hoof print: Besides Germany, where he keeps two stallions and 60 brood mares and as many foals and yearlings, he owns larger farms in England and South Africa. As German pedigrees changed, however, the country’s strict standards did not. For at least 30 years, Jacobs said, German stallions have had to meet a certain rating on the racecourse and always without the aid of medication. Breeders are entitled to as much as 30 percent of future prize money for breeding to a stallion that did not race on medication. In 2004, Jacobs sent his outstanding Group 1 winner Sabiano to the United States so he could race on the anti-bleeder medication Lasix, where it is legal, and he won a Grade 1 race in California. At stud now in Germany, Sabiano only sees 10 brood mares annually since his offspring are not entitled to those premiums, a fraction of what his credentials merit otherwise. For major breeders like Irwin, the focus is on the female side. In 2009, Irwin sold Dalicia to Japanese breeders, whose interest is as heated as any. Teruya Yoshida, of the famed Shadai farm, purchased a majority stake in Danedream three days before her Arc triumph. She is now in foal to the undefeated superhorse Frankel. Domestically, however, German racing faces difficulties. The average prize money of €9,000 trails the prizes in England, France, Ireland and Italy. Betting turnover collapsed after a peak in the mid-1990s, as interest declined and wagering moved online and offshore. Officials are looking for a more sustainable funding model, and Jacobs wants to see the number of tracks halved, letting only the strongest survive. Three years ago, Jacobs saved Baden Baden, Germany’s most famous racecourse, from bankruptcy. He now owns 51 percent and a couple of his associates own the rest. But 15 percent of German horses are racing in France, Jacobs said, and many others are sold abroad or racing in the United States, Asia or Australia. It is a situation that offers both concern and pride, as spectators abroad increasingly get to see Germany’s best. “Like any sport, you need a hero,” Jacobs said. “Horses don’t race for 10 years, though. So it’s nice to have a second hero in Novellist after Danedream. Both horses help us get a greater presence.”


Baseball Pioneer’s Letters Pulled From Auction

Abstract: Harry Wright, a Hall of Fame manager and pioneer during professional baseball’s gestation period in the 19th century, kept his letters in scrapbooks along with pictures and ledgers from his distinguished career. These faded pieces of paper are fragile evidence of some of the earliest business practices in baseball. Hunt Auctions was scheduled to sell some of the items on July 14 at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game FanFest in St. Louis. But the letters have been temporarily pulled from the auction after drawing the attention of the F.B.I. because of the possibility that they were taken years ago from the New York Public Library . The letters were written to Wright, who was the manager, the general manager and a center fielder for the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, considered the first team of all paid players. A year before his death in 1895, Wright willed his archives to professional baseball’s two major leagues. The materials were donated to the library in 1921, and some of them vanished more than 20 years ago. The library lists as missing three scrapbooks of letters written to Wright during the 1870s, ’80s and ’90s. Of the 25 lots linked to Wright in the auction, at least 23 are from the same period as the missing scrapbooks. Only one other scrapbook remains at the library. David Hunt, the president of Hunt Auctions, temporarily suspended bidding on Thursday, although he said he had not yet found “one piece of evidence” proving to him that the items were inappropriate for sale. “It’s a nice, conservative approach for a few days,” Hunt said. The auction house, which was hired by Major League Baseball to coordinate the sales, estimates the letters could sell for a combined $35,000 to $55,000. The F.B.I. confirmed it was investigating the matter, but Hunt would not say if he had been contacted by law enforcement officials. Hunt also would not identify the man who consigned the items, saying only that the person revealed that the letters had come from a grandparent’s estate. Before suspending the sale, Hunt said he was confident the letters had been a recent discovery and that they were not linked to the library’s collection. He based that opinion on multiple conversations he had with the consignor. “Is it my sense that these are people that I might have some suspect of being involved in this hobby for many, many years and of removing things from that sort of institution?” Hunt asked. “No. Not whatsoever.” He added, “If there’s anything concrete or documented that shows me that this is property that should not be sold or, at a minimum, should be pulled until it’s fully documented, then that’s what will happen, period.” Matt Bourne, Major League Baseball’s vice president for business public relations, issued a statement saying that Hunt had informed baseball of the sales suspension. “We are eagerly awaiting further information on this matter,” he said. David Ferriero, the Andrew W. Mellon director of the New York Public Libraries, described the possibility that the letters may be from the missing inventory as “very disconcerting.” “We try our hardest to make sure we’re protecting the collection,” he said. No library staff members had inspected the letters as of last week, Ferriero said. The library did not immediately say if it had a list of what was in the missing scrapbooks. A bearded and meticulous man, Wright organized his letters and put them in the scrapbooks. He specified in his will that he wanted all of his “books and memoranda” donated to the two baseball leagues and their successors. Descriptions from the auction catalog explain how some of the letters are “affixed to a period scrapbook album page” or have “minimal glue residue” that is from “album page removal” or have “some minor paper residue from scrapbook removal.” Hunt explained that bidders had asked about the descriptions. He said items were commonly removed from pages and that the consignor’s letters were attached to thin pages. In some instances, Hunt said, letters were on the front and the back of a page, so his staff removed them to sell them separately. The four Wright scrapbooks were originally at the library as part of the Spalding Collection, named after Albert G. Spalding, a sporting goods entrepreneur and baseball manager and player whose wife donated his vast belongings from the game. The archives of Wright and of Henry Chadwick, another baseball pioneer, were included in the collection, which is in the main library building on Fifth Avenue. Spalding, who was among baseball’s leaders in the early 1900s, eventually inherited Wright’s mountain of materials, and several years later, Chadwick willed his materials to Spalding. Spalding died in 1915, and his wife later donated the entire collection to the library. The most gripping letters to Wright to be auctioned are from James Devlin, a player with the Louisville Grays who had been barred for life for conspiring with gamblers to fix games in 1877. In letters containing numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes, Devlin mentions his family’s dire situation in pleading with Wright to do what he could to reinstate him. Devlin repeatedly applied for reinstatement, but never played pro baseball again. The possibility that items from the Spalding Collection were stolen was publicized 30 years ago. In an article about theft at the library in Time magazine in 1979, David Aikman wrote about a stash of valuable baseball cards. “The baseball card thief was caught when a guard saw him slipping cards into a bubble gum box taped to his briefcase,” Aikman wrote. “He had $5,500 in cash as well as a cache of smiling infielders.” A photographic inventory conducted by the library in 1987 found that more than 100 pictures from the Spalding Collection were missing. Among them were more than 20 pictures of Harry Wright and his brother George. In recent years, Wright’s letters have sporadically appeared in other auctions and even for sale on eBay. Pam Guzzi, Wright’s great-great-granddaughter, said her family had few artifacts from Wright’s career. She said the family would be monitoring the situation. “It seems odd to me,” Guzzi said. “Why would someone have them if they weren’t related to him? Why would they be in their grandmother’s attic?”

Baseball
Archives and Records
Libraries and Librarians
Wright Harry
Auctions
New York Public Library
Baseball Hall of Fame
Major League Baseball


In Budget, Obama’s Unfettered Case for Spreading the Wealth

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama presented a budget on Monday that is more utopian vision than pragmatic blueprint. It proposes a politically improbable reshaping of the tax code and generous new social spending initiatives that would shift resources from the wealthy to the middle class. Absent from the plan is any pretense of trying to address the main drivers of the long-term debt — Social Security and Medicare — a quest that has long divided both parties and ultimately proved impossible. The document instead indicates that Mr. Obama, after years of being hemmed in on his fiscal priorities because of politics and balance sheets, feels newly free to outline an ambitious set of goals that will set the terms of a debate between Democrats and Republicans and shape the 2016 presidential election. “It’s a visionary document and basically says, ‘You’re with me or you’re not,’ and we can have big philosophical arguments about the role of government, and perhaps in 2016 we will,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former top economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The budget reflects the degree to which Mr. Obama emerged from last year’s midterm congressional election losses determined to dig in — rather than scale back — on his belief that the government should play a fundamental role in spreading economic prosperity throughout the country. Badly losing the midterm elections “has led them to get outside of a pretty narrow box they were trapped in, and they’re thinking far more broadly and creatively about ways in which policy can help reconnect economic growth and middle-class prosperity,” Mr. Bernstein said. “They’re framing a debate with bigger fish in mind than an annual budget. They’re thinking pretty energetically about what ought to be done, versus what can be done.” The result is that Republicans have dismissed Mr. Obama’s budget as dead on arrival, branding it as a tired retread of the job-killing, big-spending policies that he and his party have long favored. Obama’s Priorities, in Budget Form The president’s 2016 budget represents his policy aspirations as he begins negotiations with Republicans. “Today President Obama laid out a plan for more taxes, more spending, and more of the Washington gridlock that has failed middle-class families,” Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said on Monday. “It may be Groundhog Day, but the American people can’t afford a repeat of the same old top-down policies of the past.” But several potential contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination — including former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — have begun to respond to Mr. Obama’s emphasis on wage stagnation and income inequality by talking more publicly about the issue. At the heart of Mr. Obama’s budget is what the president calls “middle-class economics” — plans to help middle-income earners afford necessities such as education and child care and bolster their skills, and to pour federal money into building roads and bridges. To pay for such initiatives, including free community college and more generous subsidies for child care and tax credits for education, Mr. Obama has outlined a nearly $1 trillion raft of tax proposals that would hit the wealthy and large financial institutions over the next decade. There are some glimpses of potential common ground in the blueprint, including a proposal for the kind of corporate tax overhaul and infrastructure plan for which Republicans have previously expressed support. A six-year $478 billion plan to build and improve transit, roads and bridges across the country could open the bidding for negotiations on such an initiative. But Mr. Obama’s proposal for paying for it — a one-time requirement that companies pay a 14 percent tax on an estimated $2.1 trillion in profits parked overseas, and a future rate of 19 percent on such earnings — is unlikely to be embraced by Republicans. Mr. Obama’s plan also reflects the opening bid in what promises to be a spirited negotiation with Republicans over how to replace strict spending caps, known as sequestration, on domestic and military programs. The president is proposing to add $38 billion for the military and $37 billion for domestic programs under Congress’s discretion. Yet the budget confirms that for Mr. Obama, the era of searching for a “grand bargain” with Republicans on entitlements and spending — an exercise that alienated liberal Democrats who were loath to consider any measure to rein in Medicare and Social Security — is over. Entitlement programs would rise from 13.2 percent of the economy this year to 14.8 percent in 2025, while domestic and military spending would fall from 6.4 percent to 4.5 over a decade.


Super Bowl — Tom Dempsey, Former N.F.L. Kicker, Is Dealing With Dementia

Abstract: JEFFERSON, La. — “He liked to hit people,” Carlene Dempsey said flatly. “He didn’t care if he got his bell rung.” She was referring to her Falstaffian husband, Tom Dempsey, the former N.F.L. kicker born without toes on his right foot who in November 1970 — after a long night of drinking and debauchery in the French Quarter of New Orleans — set the league record for the longest field goal in a regular-season game. The 63-yard kick lifted the New Orleans Saints to a 19-17 victory over the Detroit Lions, and in the process helped transform Dempsey into a folk hero in the city hosting the Super Bowl on Sunday, the rare Saints player to hold a prominent N.F.L. record before the Sean Payton era. Now 66, Dempsey sat recently with his wife at the dining room table in the modest 1,500-square-foot home they share with their daughter, Ashley, and their grandson, Dylan, in this New Orleans suburb. It quickly became apparent that when reflecting upon his football career, Dempsey seemed to take more delight discussing the hits he had delivered than the kicks he had made. He wistfully recalled how, in high school and college, if his coaches wanted someone on the opposing team knocked out, they usually called on him to deliver a teeth-rattling hit. And his eyes twinkled with glee when he talked about how the coaches he played for over the course of his 10-year N.F.L. career with the Saints, the Eagles, the Rams, the Oilers and the Bills would sometimes call on him to be the wedge buster — football’s version of a kamikaze pilot — on kickoffs. “I would hit anybody,” Dempsey boasted, echoing the sentiment of Carlene, his wife of more than 40 years. “I didn’t care.” The cruel irony in this is that Dempsey’s love of hitting people on the football field may very well be responsible for the syndrome that is slowly depriving him of the hard-hitting memories he so delights in sharing. He is suffering from dementia. In a recent interview, Carlene was by Dempsey’s side to dutifully and lovingly act as fact-checker and blank filler. A couple of times, she prompted him to share a story she knew he would be keen to share. She also did not hesitate to step in and correct him when it appeared his memory was failing him. “I went to Encinitas High School,” he said at one point. That prompted Carlene to say, “No, honey, you went to San Dieguito High School in Encinitas, remember?” He replied, “Oh yeah, that’s right.” Image Tom Dempsey relished hitting opponents. Now 66, Dempsey, with his wife, Carlene, has dementia. Credit Sara Essex Bradley for The New York Times Dr. Daniel Amen, a brain disorder specialist who has done extensive studies on football players, made the initial diagnosis of Dempsey. He said he was astonished by the amount of damage he noticed in his brain after getting back the results of some scans. “I wondered, Why does this kicker’s brain look not so good?” Amen said in a phone interview. “Because I was thinking that kickers should have the best-looking brains. But he didn’t.” What Amen later learned is that bygone-era kickers like Dempsey, who was listed at 6 feet 2 inches and 255 pounds, did things on the field that are pretty much unheard-of today: they played other positions on offense and/or defense, as Dempsey did in high school and college, not to mention being vital components on special-teams units — unlike modern kickers, who usually get near a return man only if he manages to get past the 10 other guys on the coverage team, and that is only if the kickoff does not sail out of the end zone for a touchback. After being kicked off the football team at Palomar College for punching one of his coaches, Dempsey was brought into the N.F.L. by Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers in the hopes of turning him into a kicker/offensive lineman in the mold of Lou Groza. But for the first time in his football life, Dempsey was heavily outmatched physically by the famed monsters on the Packers’ defensive line. “I got beat up pretty bad every day in practice,” said Dempsey, who never played a game in a Packers uniform. It was then, he says, that he decided, after a stint playing for a semipro team in Massachusetts, that he wanted to focus exclusively on being a kicker. But again, that did not stop him from hitting people on the football field. Over the course of his career, the Dempseys say, Tom had three concussions that were diagnosed, but that several others likely went undiagnosed. They recalled one game in which Dempsey, after laying a jarring hit on someone after kicking off, was so disoriented that he ran to the wrong sideline and grabbed a seat on the opposing team’s bench. He had to be shown back to his place across the field by an equipment manager, and he later returned to the game. The record Dempsey set more than 42 years ago has since been equaled by three others (Jason Elam, Sebastian Janikowski and David Akers) but has stubbornly gone unsurpassed, a rather remarkable feat given the advanced, year-round training and conditioning programs modern N.F.L. players almost universally participate in. In stark contrast, Dempsey typically spent his off-seasons at home in Southern California working as a bricklayer and as wrestler on the local professional wrestling circuit. (“I was one of the good guys,” he said.) He claims to have even sneaked out of practice a time or two during the season to play golf with buddies. In his time off during the season and during the off-season, Dempsey, who was also born without the fingers on his right hand, drank a lot. He and Carlene were dating at the time of the 63-yard kick — “He courted me mainly at the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street,” she said — and she did not hear from him for days afterward. Image Tom Dempsey kicking an N.F.L.-record 63-yard field goal in 1970. The record has since been matched by three other kickers. Credit Associated Press “It was Thursday before he called me,” Carlene said. “I was busy,” Tom replied with a sly smile. He went on to explain that some New Orleans police officers had rewarded him with a couple of cases of cold Dixie beer in the locker room after the game, and it was all downhill from there. But Carlene forgave him, and the two married a few months later. After retiring from football, Tom and Carlene returned to New Orleans, where he worked in the oil field as a salesman until the late 1980s. He then took a job managing a car dealership for the current Saints owner, Tom Benson, in a seedy section of the city. After working for Benson for a couple of years, Dempsey took a sales job with another company and eventually retired in 2008. In retirement, he began to exhibit flashes of what Carlene called “irrational anger,” something she had never seen in him before. Then, in 2010, the couple traveled to Las Vegas for what Carlene termed “an old guys convention” — a gathering of retired N.F.L. players. It was there that they met Amen. “Dr. Amen was talking about guys like Mike Webster who have had brain trouble, and he’s listing all of these symptoms, and I looked at Tom and said, ‘This is you! This is you!,’ ” Carlene said. “He mentioned that he was doing a study on former players, and I told Tom, ‘Go sign up right now.’ And then after he examined Tom, he said, ‘I’m so glad you came in because this is an emergency.’ ” The emergency that Amen spoke of was visible holes, three of them, in the front part of Dempsey’s brain. Now, every Tuesday and Thursday, Dempsey drives to and from the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine for physical and occupational therapy. “This is not the kind of thing that we’re going to be able to fix,” said Dr. Gregory Stewart, the director of the Neurological Care Program at Tulane’s Institute of Sports Medicine. “What we can do is slow down the progression.” Additionally, Dempsey has lost a considerable amount of weight, which helps to increase the flow of blood to the brain, by getting out to walk the family dogs numerous times each day — despite problems with his fully formed left foot that cause him to hobble a bit — while also paying close attention to what he puts into his body. “I drink tea instead of beer now,” he said, jokingly. Despite his daunting diagnosis, Dempsey remains largely jovial and optimistic. The only time he displayed any overtly fearful concern for his future was when he talked about how some of the guys he played with who have suffered from brain disorders, some of them friends of his, have died in nursing homes. Needless to say, he dreads the possibility of ending up, he said, “in one of those places.” “That’s not going to happen,” Carlene reassured him, shaking her head sternly. “We’re not going to let that happen.”

Tom Dempsey
Dementia
New Orleans Saints
Football
Memory
Brain


How to Give Rural America Broadband? Look to the Early 1900s

Abstract: ZENA, Okla. — From the sofa in his living room, Clinton Creason can see the electric pole outside that his father staked 70 years ago to bring power to this remote area of hilly cattle pastures. Electricity came late here but transformed life on the farm. It provided bright light to study by and freed families from the tedium of washing clothes by hand and cutting wood for the cook stove. Last December, Mr. Creason saw a new addition to the utility pole erected by his father that may be just as transformational — a subsidiary of his local electric cooperative, Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative , hung a fiber optic cable on it. That enabled Mr. Creason and the 120 residents of Zena, Okla., to pump high-speed internet service into their homes for the first time. “The cooperative is doing it again, but now the light bulb is the internet,” said Mr. Creason, 82. Mr. Creason’s experience with the electric co-op puts him at the leading edge of a trend unfolding in hard-to-reach rural spots nationwide. For years, such communities have largely been left out of the digital revolution because they had only intermittent internet access, often through a patchwork of satellite, dial-up or wireless service. Telecom and cable companies shunned the areas because it was too expensive to bring equipment and service over long distances to so few people. Now high-speed internet is finally reaching these remote places, but not through the telecom and cable companies that have wired most of urban America. Instead, local power companies are more often the broadband suppliers — and to bring the service, they are borrowing techniques and infrastructure used to electrify the United States nearly a century ago. In some cases, rural municipalities are also using electrification laws from the early 1900s to obtain funds and regulatory permissions reserved for utilities, in order to offer broadband. Image Rural Electrification Administration workers erecting power lines in the 1930s. Credit National Archives and Records Administration “This is the new New Deal,” said Sheila Allgood, a manager of Bolt, the broadband subsidiary of the Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative, referring to government efforts under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that brought electricity and other infrastructure to rural America in the 1930s. “Now we’re doing what cable and telecom companies don’t want to do, just like we did for electricity when the big private power companies didn’t want to come here either.” Today, about 40 electric cooperatives in towns like Kit Carson, N.M., Millboro, Va., and Cassopolis, Mich., offer or are in the process of building networks to provide high-speed internet service, compared with just one in 2010, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance , a nonprofit focused on community broadband networks. In the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, dozens of tiny towns are also using century-old electrification laws to get state funding and permission to provide broadband as a utility. “Our electric cooperatives believe they have an obligation to economic development, so it was very natural for them to leverage the systems they have to also provide broadband,” said Martha A. Duggan, a senior principal for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association , a trade group in Washington. The parallels between bringing electricity and bringing broadband to rural areas run deep. In the 1930s, about 90 percent of urban residents in the United States had access to power, compared to just 10 percent in rural areas, according to the New Deal Network research group. At the time, President Roosevelt warned that the electricity divide excluded farm families from economic benefits provided by power. But private power companies said that it was too expensive to electrify rural areas and that even if they did, there was little profit to be made. So President Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration in 1936, a centerpiece of the New Deal, which led to the creation of thousands of small electric cooperatives using federal funds. The co-ops are typically customer-owned and run like regular businesses, with annual dividends returned to members. With high-speed internet, there are similar dynamics. Last year, the federal government declared that broadband should be treated like a utility, as essential as electricity or the phone. That spurred a new urgency to get fast internet service to remote areas, to help close the digital gap with cities. The Federal Communications Commission, which in 2014 began giving experimental broadband grants to alternative carriers like electric companies, recently proposed $2 billion in such grants over the next decade to new broadband providers such as power cooperatives. Image An abandoned gas station that the Creason family used to operate outside of Zena, Okla. Credit Nick Oxford for The New York Times “We can see that we are on the cusp of the kind of opportunity brought by electricity, railroads and the telegraph,” Tom Wheeler, chairman of the F.C.C., said in an interview. “But we have to do something about the availability of broadband in rural areas, where there is a digital divide.” The Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative is typical of the electric co-ops now bringing broadband to places like this swath of northern Oklahoma. Known as the Grand Lake o’ the Cherokees, the rural region was transformed by the New Deal, which funded the nearby Grand River dam. Soon after, residents created the electric cooperative and the economy took on new life. Since the 1980s, however, the rural economy has been slow and a decline in United States manufacturing has hit the area. BFGoodrich closed a factory in nearby Miami, Okla., in 1986. Another small town, Afton, Okla., is listed on a website of American ghost towns . In 2013, the Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative created its broadband subsidiary, Bolt, after local businesses and younger residents complained there was no future for them without modern infrastructure like high-speed internet. A year later, the co-op said it would provide fiber-based internet with speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second; the service began last year. Bolt’s efforts have gotten a federal boost. In June, it won $4.3 million from the F.C.C. to connect about 6,000 homes in four northeast Oklahoma counties to faster internet service than what’s available in most big cities. Bolt plans to bid on the proposed F.C.C. broadband funds that will be voted on later this year. To provide broadband, Bolt has relied heavily on Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative’s roots as a power supplier. Miles of the co-op’s utility poles now carry fiber cables, and Bolt’s data center is powered by the co-op’s electric substation. The electric and broadband cooperatives share customer service staff, repairmen and billing systems. Image Fiber optic cable running above a former gas station outside of Zena, Okla. Credit Nick Oxford for The New York Times Bolt’s head of engineering, Shane Burgess, who spent years on the electric side, has found himself negotiating with the same property owners, government officials and contractors over easements and rights of way for fiber optic cable that he did for electricity wiring. “The technology is a little different but how we get broadband to homes is actually very similar to electric,” he said. Since broadband service has started, signs of economic vitality have appeared in the region. Ferra Aerospace, an Austrian assembly company, opened a plant in Grove, Okla., this year and plans to hire about 100 workers by the end of 2016. Developers are building a 120-room hotel and conference center nearby on Monkey Island, a project approved only after Bolt announced its broadband service. “There is no way you can run a sophisticated business and back up the data we produce without these broadband speeds,” said Mike Tackett, Ferra’s plant manager in Grove. In Zena, Mr. Creason’s granddaughter recently created a website for her wrecking company and his son ordered a tractor part online, saving himself a daylong trip to the nearest repair shop. His daughter also plans to retire and start an online educational service. “They are as excited as we were when we first opened the refrigerator door and felt the cool air on our faces,” Mr. Creason said.

Rural area
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Optical fiber
FCC
Cooperative
Electric power
Oklahoma
New Deal


Barely Getting By and Facing a Cold Maine Winter

Abstract: MILBRIDGE, Me. — They have worked since their teens in backbreaking seasonal jobs, extracting resources from the sea and the forest. Their yards are filled with peeling boats and broken lobster traps. In sagging wood homes and aged trailers scattered across Washington County, many of Maine ’s poorest and oldest shiver too much in the winter, eat far more biscuits and beans than meat and cannot afford the weekly bingo game at the V.F.W. hall. In this long-depressed “down east” region, where the wild blueberry patches have turned a brilliant crimson, thousands of elderly residents live on crushingly meager incomes. This winter promises to be especially chilling, with fuel oil prices rising and fuel assistance expected to decline. But many assume that others are worse off than themselves and are too proud to ask for assistance, according to groups that run meal programs and provide aid for heating and weatherizing. “One of our biggest problems is convincing people to take help,” said Eleanor West, director of services for the Washington Hancock Community Agency, a federally chartered nonprofit group. “I tell them, ‘You worked hard all your life and paid taxes and are getting back a little of what you paid in.’” Over the last half century, Social Security, Medicare and private pensions have lifted most of the nation’s elderly. In 1960, one in three lived below the poverty line; now fewer than one in 10 do. But in Washington County, the poverty rate among those 65 and older is nearly one in five and many more live only a little above the federal subsistence standard in 2007 of $10,200 for a single person and $13,690 for two. For thousands on fixed incomes, fuel assistance may decline while Social Security checks are scarcely rising. Viola Brooks, 81, worked in fish and blueberry factories while her husband worked in textile and logging jobs. Now widowed, she gets $588 a month from Social Security, supplemented by $112 in food stamps and one-time fuel aid of more than $500 for the winter. But this year, that fuel aid will not fill a single tank. The average house cost $1,800 to heat last year, and minimal comfort this winter may require closer to $3,000; trailers will require somewhat less. Electricity and rent already take up most of Ms. Brooks’s income. “I’m broke every month, and the trailer needs storm windows,” she said. “I cook a lot of pea soup and baked beans and buy flour to make biscuits.” “Some day I’d like to go to a hairdresser,” Ms. Brooks said of a dream deferred. Still she says she enjoys her lovebirds and cats, and points out that “some people have it worse.” Jobs for the elderly, a growing trend nationwide, are virtually nonexistent in these hamlets. Many people survive with help from a range of programs including food stamps, Medicaid , disability and energy assistance; others suffer silently, long used to hardship and fiercely independent. In a pattern still common, older people here often held a series of seasonal jobs, usually without benefits. They worked on lobster boats and dug clams or bloodworms (to sell for bait) from spring to fall, raked wild blueberries in August, harvested potatoes and then made Christmas wreaths for mail-order companies to mid-December. Wives often worked in sardine canneries or in blueberry processing. “By their 50s, their bodies start breaking down,” said Tim King, director of the community agency at its headquarters in Milbridge, adding that high rates of smoking, obesity and diabetes also contributed to early aging. The aid programs define those as 60 and over as elderly. Because of their irregular careers and payments into the system, many people get Social Security benefits far below the national average of more than $1,000 a month. Velma L. Harmon, a 79-year-old widow, receives only $220 a month from Social Security and has a grand total of $85 to live on each month after she pays her subsidized rent and utilities at her apartment complex in Machias, one of a growing number of such federally aided facilities for the elderly. She is grateful for free lunches provided by the Eastern Agency on Aging, another government-financed group, but too proud to apply for food stamps that would give her a bit more spending money. “Trying to buy Christmas presents, that’s the hardest thing,” said Ms. Harmon, who has a mangled finger from her years of snipping sardine heads in a canning factory. The preoccupation right now is soaring fuel prices: cheaper natural gas is unavailable in this region, and wood heat is often impractical or insufficient. But because of limited federal money, average fuel assistance for the 46,000 low-income Maine families expected to apply will probably decline to $579 this year, from $688 last year, said Jo-Ann Choate of the Maine State Housing Agency. “Low-income people aren’t even going to be able to fill up a single tank of fuel oil,” Ms. Choate said. “They already wrap themselves up in blankets during the winter. This year they’ll be colder.” The disabled, and there are many, may have it hardest. Dolly Jordan of Milbridge has a history of two bad marriages, a bone-crushing auto accident and poor health, and looks and feels older than 61. With osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes and obesity, she spends most of the day in a wheelchair and uses a combination of a gripper, a broom and a cane to make her bed or hang her laundry. Come winter, she hangs a blanket over the front door of her little red wooden house, where she has lived alone the last 10 years and which sits on concrete blocks with no foundation. She turns the heat off at night to save fuel. Her disability payment is $623 a month, plus she gets just $10 from the state and $74 in food stamps. After paying the housing tax and her utility bills, she said, she must watch every remaining penny. A daughter drives her to the distant town of Ellsworth for cheaper shopping. Like many, she keeps a police scanner on as a diversion and, unable to afford cable, she watches the same videos over and over — her favorite is “On Golden Pond.” “I wish for bedtime to come,” she said. “The days are so long.” Easing down a ramp to her mailbox is a perilous 15-minute ordeal. Still, she said, “I wait for Fridays.” “That’s junk-mail day, and I read all the ads. That’s my best day.” She added, “There’s always older people out there who have it harder.” Frederick and Kathleen Call, in Harrington, are in their 60s and live in a 1970s trailer with buckling walls. They live on his disability check — he has had six heart attacks — and food stamps and fuel assistance. Like many others in the region, they buy all their clothes at a church-run thrift shop. They spend their days playing board games and rummy and watching squirrels on their porch. “We used to go to the food pantry for a free box,” Ms. Call said, “but I saw an old woman who looked like she really needed it. She was thin and cold. I gave her a blanket. We haven’t gone for free food for years.” Some people here seem to have sunny outlooks no matter what. In the fishing village of Jonesport, Elizabeth Emerson, 87, is hard of hearing and has a titanium knee but is spry and irrepressively cheerful. She lives in the tiny house her husband, a trucker, built in 1949, and has a view of the gravestone where her name is already etched next to his. Having a daughter nearby, and a total of 52 grand-, great-grand and great-great-grandchildren, whose pictures fill the walls and the refrigerator door, helps in ways practical and emotional. Ms. Emerson said she “thoroughly enjoyed” the 25 years she spent working as an aide in a nursing home, and she demonstrated the yodeling she used to perform on command for one patient. Each day she walks with her dog, Sabrina, down to the stony beach where her family once swam. “I saw moose tracks the other day,” she exulted. “Here is where I used to pick heather.” With her Social Security payment of $683 a month, she refuses to feel impoverished. “I was never a person to be extravagant,” Ms. Emerson said, adding, “I don’t play beano,” using the local term for bingo. Besides, she said, she can still afford an indulgence here and there. “My greatest vice,” she added, “is Hershey bars.”

Maine
Aged
Social Security (US)
Food Stamps
Nursing Homes
Welfare (US)


New York and Other Cities to Share Data on Tall Tower Cranes

Abstract: The Department of Buildings will share information about tower cranes with Chicago and Philadelphia in an effort to track equipment failures, manufacturers’ recalls, accidents and industry trends, officials said on Thursday. There is currently no national database to track tower cranes or their parts, and the Buildings Department said that officials in several places, including New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, Ontario and Dallas, had expressed interest in the new program. The giant machines, some as tall as 76 stories and some with booms that stretch over 220 feet, travel to where the business is, sometimes loaded on as many as 16 trucks, sometimes by train. Over the past year, at least 12 tower cranes have come to New York City from other jurisdictions, a department official said. Buildings Commissioner Robert D. LiMandri called the planned database “a major step toward establishing a standardized system of tracking tower cranes across the country.” The agreement is the latest in a series of measures instituted after two tower crane accidents in Manhattan left nine people dead last year, leading to the resignation of Mr. LiMandri’s predecessor and to several investigations that uncovered widespread corruption within the agency’s Cranes and Derricks Division. The accidents also drew attention to other problems. The Buildings Department has long been unable to track construction contractors by name, leaving inspectors, investigators and agency officials with no way to find the various job sites where a particular troubled or suspicious contractor or company was working. (The agency says that, as a result of new legislation, it will be able to do so by October.) The two cranes involved in those accidents were consistently used in the New York City area, although parts had been stored in New Jersey, according to an official briefed on the machines’ histories. The new system, according to a department spokesman, will capture the number of cranes that are active in a jurisdiction, the address where the crane is working, the crane’s owner, the make, model, year and serial number, the date it was erected on the site, the maximum height and the date it was dismantled. The database, which will be updated quarterly, also will include any information on accidents or any other incidents involving the machines and will be running by the end of June, said the spokesman, Tony Sclafani. Cole A. Wist, a Colorado lawyer and an expert in occupational safety and health law, said the database would hold “half the pieces of the puzzle,” noting that most crane accidents are caused by human error, the improper use of the machine, improper training or shoddy maintenance. “I think there are additional measures they could utilize to look at how the operators are using the cranes and what licensing processes and procedures are the crane operators going through,” he said. “What’s the preventive maintenance schedule for the cranes? How regularly are the cranes inspected? How regularly are critical components inspected or replaced?” The Chicago building commissioner, Richard J. Monocchio, said the plan was “a great example of municipal governments working together” to improve safety.

Derricks and Cranes
Accidents and Safety
New York City
Building (Construction)


Japan: Court Paves Way for Utility to Restart 2 More Nuclear Reactors

Abstract: A Japanese court on Thursday ruled that two nuclear reactors could be restarted after the operator said in an appeal that they were safe. The Fukui District Court in western Japan lifted an April injunction that was filed by a group of residents who said that an earthquake exceeding the reactors’ quake resistance could cause a disaster similar to the Fukushima crisis set off by a March 2011 quake and tsunami. The order paves the way for a resumption of the Takahama No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, operated by the Kansai Electric Power Company. The operator had already obtained the approval of the safety regulators, and local leaders expressed their support for restarting the reactors this month. Dozens of reactors in Japan were taken offline after the Fukushima disaster; two of Japan’s 43 reactors are currently back online. The utility plans to conduct the final safety checks before putting one of the Takahama reactors back online in late January.

Japan
Nuclear energy
Japan Earthquake Tsunami
Kansai Electric Power
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Energy industry


Swing of Yankees’ Cano Bears Resemblance to Federer’s

Abstract: Mick Kelleher, the Yankees ’ first-base coach, a devoted tennis fan and competitive tennis player, noticed it during the last homestand and mentioned it to Alex Rodriguez in the dugout: Robinson Cano , one of the most fluid and graceful players in baseball, bears a resemblance to Roger Federer , one of the most fluid and graceful players in tennis. Kelleher observed that they shared balletic footwork, soft hands and long, smooth swings. Really, the comparison should not be so surprising because they are among the most gifted athletes in their sports. One has won 17 Grand Slam tennis tournaments ; the other has hit nine grand slams, including two this season. But the similarity is most striking when their right shoulders are facing a ball. “It’s a beautiful analogy,” Rodriguez said. “Both swings have the grace and the power and the follow-through. They are each a thing of beauty.” Cano’s elegant swing is baseball’s version of Federer’s celebrated one-handed backhand. The setup, the stance, the initial downward movement of the right hand, the liquid sweep of the arm with the body upright. For the first three-quarters of their swings, the basic structure is there, especially when Federer has time to set his legs or when Cano reaches out to hit a ball. It is no far-fetched comparison. Federer may be the best tennis player who ever lived, and for the last two weeks Cano has been the best baseball player on the planet. He has carried the Yankees into the playoffs, and a series starting Sunday against the Baltimore Orioles, with one of the most remarkable streaks in a long time. Cano finished the season going 24 for 39 with seven doubles, a better ending stretch than the Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera and the Angels’ Mike Trout, the top most valuable player contenders, had combined. He also hit three home runs. The former tennis player Brad Gilbert, now a coach and an analyst for ESPN, is a baseball fan and a supporter of the surprising Oakland Athletics, who could face the Yankees in the A.L. Championship Series. “I know Cano’s swing,” Gilbert said. “It’s beautiful. It’s not something I’ve ever noticed before with regard to Roger, but I think it’s fair if you see a similarity. It’s not impossible to see that. Roger has a very relaxed swing with very little body or head movement, and Cano is very smooth, too. I’ll definitely look for it when their series starts.” A two-handed backhand would seem to bear more resemblance to a baseball swing, but not necessarily to Cano’s. Federer’s and Cano’s stances are more upright, and their hands tend to start higher. And they are fluid. Watch a hitting instructor gesture while making a point, and he will often sweep one arm backhanded, like a tennis player. Yankees pitcher Derek Lowe was a serious tournament tennis player while growing up in Michigan, and he liked the comparison between Federer’s famous backhand and Cano’s enviable swing. “Sexy, smooth, productive,” Lowe said. Kelleher played 11 seasons in the major leagues and took up tennis after retiring in 1982. He plays in a competitive men’s league during the off-season in California, and every year he attends the United States Open , always with the hope of seeing the great Federer. “These guys are two of the best at what they do,” Kelleher said. “They both have such fluid movement; when you see it like that at such a high level, it can take your breath away.” Cano’s relaxed style, his grace and his ease of motion are part of what makes him so good. But at times those qualities have been a source of trouble. He is not known as a player who grinds through an at-bat with his hair on fire the way Pete Rose did. He does not swing out of his shoes as Boston’s Dustin Pedroia does. Some read his casual style as a lack of hustle. Four years ago, even Yankees Manager Joe Girardi was among that group. When Cano did not run hard for a ball in the field, Girardi benched him. To reinforce the point, Girardi showed Cano video of a play in which he thought Cano was not running hard, and it seemed to sink in. Since then, the Yankees have been satisfied that Cano got the message. “It was taken care of then,” General Manager Brian Cashman said. “He saw what Joe was talking about, and he corrected it, and he’s been great. People don’t think of him as a grinder, but I think he’s a grinder. He works his tail off.” That, then, provides another comparison to the hard-working Federer. What sets Cano apart, Cashman said, is his uncanny hand-eye coordination, as well as the remarkable strength in his hands and wrists. “You ever shake hands with him?” Cashman said. “He has an incredible set of mitts on him. A lot of his power comes from that.” Cano finished the season with career highs in home runs (33) and runs scored (105). He also drove in 94 runs and batted over .300 (.313) for the fourth straight season. Defensively, he made some of the most memorable plays of the season, many of them while looking as if he did not even break a sweat. In the final three must-win games of the regular season, Cano dismantled the Red Sox, hitting .600 with five extra-base hits — what the Yankees hope will be a prelude to the postseason. His annihilation of the Red Sox’ pitching staff did not cause Boston to fire Bobby Valentine as manager, but it certainly did not help him. Before he was dismissed, Valentine was asked about the way Cano looks when he plays. “Nothing about him is short and choppy,” Valentine said. “Everything is smooth and fluid. His double play is big steps. That’s his movement. Julio Franco wasn’t as much a genius as Cano is, but he had the same kind of movements: slower, elongated movements. “What does he look like? To me he looks like one of the best players to ever play the game. That’s what he looks like.” For Rodriguez, Cano also has the look of one of the most graceful jump shooters in basketball or a champion golfer. “His style reminds me of Ray Allen’s jumper, just that smooth stroke,” Rodriguez said. “And then that bunt he laid down in Toronto the other day — he pops that out of his bag in Game 159 like Phil Mickelson pulling out a sand wedge on 17. If we had 25 Robbie Canos, we would win 142 games every year.” Rodriguez and Cano will settle for 11 more wins. With Cano serving it up, that would be game, set and match to the Yankees.

Cano Robinson
Federer Roger
New York Yankees
Kelleher Mick
Baseball


Texans Begin to Feel the Pain of One Injury Too Many

Abstract: JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Rick Smith, the general manager of the Houston Texans , stood with his back to the X-rays hanging in front of a bright, white light deep in his team’s locker room Sunday afternoon. Smith has certainly seen enough X-rays this season to know that they often reveal bad news and that sometimes the best thing to do is to look away and focus on something else. The Texans have done an exceptional job at that this season. For as long as they have existed, the Texans have waited in Peyton Manning’s shadow to play meaningful games late in December, to make the playoffs and to begin to create their own history. They drafted the defender Mario Williams five years ago specifically to counteract Manning. Houston has not made the postseason since it began play in 2002, but in recent years the Texans have sometimes seemed prepared to overtake the Indianapolis Colts, only to fade near the end as the Colts’ dominance continued. But this season was to be different, and not just because Manning has been felled by an injured neck. Smith has constructed the Texans’ most complete team, with a defense ranked second in points allowed and an offense ranked fifth in points scored. The running game was ranked second, as was the pass defense. The defense was one of the worst last season, so the Texans hired Wade Phillips to turn it around. They were woeful against the pass, so they made one of the biggest free-agent signings in cornerback Johnathan Joseph. On Sunday, they won their eighth game, defeating the Jacksonville Jaguars, 20-13 , and they are now the A.F.C.’s top seed . But they are 8-3 with nowhere to turn now except to another X-ray. Quarterback Matt Leinart , making his first start Sunday in place of the starter Matt Schaub, who is out for the season with a Lisfranc fracture in his right foot, injured his collarbone, likely ending his season, too. The injuries have piled up: Williams, their best defensive player, is out with a torn pectoral muscle; receiver Andre Johnson, their best offensive player, missed six games with a bad hamstring; and running back Arian Foster missed two games with a bad hamstring. Yet the Texans have still won five straight games. This one seemed a little too much for Coach Gary Kubiak to take. He walked into his postgame news conference unsmiling, his head down. And although he would not acknowledge the extent of Leinart’s injury — he said the team doctors did not think the X-rays were clear enough to make a determination — the expression on his face showed that the Texans might have finally sustained the injury that would throw them off kilter. “We found a way to win, that’s the most important thing,” Kubiak said. “I think they’ll find a way to fight through anything. We’ve done that through 11 weeks. We’ll have to do it through five more.” But that will only get the Texans to where all their seasons have ended before. The problem is what happens after that. The rookie quarterback T. J. Yates can probably save the Texans, at least for the short term. They have a two-game lead over the Tennessee Titans in the A.F.C. South, and three of their remaining five games are at home. They will have a home game and perhaps even a first-round bye in the playoffs, although the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens are just behind them. But the door to the Texans’ future that opened with Manning’s injury is closing with each injury of their own. The balance of the Texans’ offense will disappear because even though Yates possesses a strong arm, it is hard to imagine that a coaching staff that used an ultraconservative offense for Leinart in the first half will open the playbook for Yates. So the focus will shift to running the ball and playing defense, although what Jacksonville did should have put a chill into the Texans. The Jaguars were missing five defensive starters but held Houston to 88 rushing yards, even though in the second half the Texans were desperate to protect Yates, their only remaining quarterback, by running repeatedly. And the Jaguars, with the rookie quarterback Blaine Gabbert playing so poorly that he was benched late in the game, were in Houston territory trying for the tying touchdown late in the fourth quarter before the Texans’ defense finally held. It was a moment that the Texans badly needed, an affirmation that they may finally have enough parts, enough of a team, to withstand even their repeated bad fortune. “It’s something that’s happened to us over the years,” tight end Owen Daniels said. “We’ve matured in the past couple of years and we’ve learned from those experiences and learned it’s not all about one person. It’s about the team, and that’s why we’re where we’re at right now. It is tough. We have lost a lot of big-time playmakers for extended times this year.” Leinart was understandably morose as he stood as his locker, his left arm in a sling, and said it seemed likely that his season was over. Leinart, a former first-round draft pick by Arizona, had hoped to redeem his career by taking the Texans into the playoffs. But he had snapped his collarbone in Arizona, too, and when he landed heavily on it Sunday, he had one thought. “Not again,” he said.

Football
Sports Injuries
Houston Texans
Leinart Matt
Schaub Matt
Kubiak Gary


No Rabbit in a Hat, but Steve Cohen Has Magic Up His Sleeve

Abstract: THE Millionaires’ Magician does not like doing magic every waking moment. He goes to cocktail parties or dinners and everyone expects lamps to levitate and cards to materialize inside wine bottles. It gets excessive. But magic was the point. So all right, he would do something. When we first met, Steve Cohen had made my pen disappear and turn up behind his ear. Next time, I said, how about something better? He phoned. He told me to come to Riverside Park at 72nd Street just before sunset. “That’s when wishes come true.” He came in a tailored suit. He has red hair, balanced features, a mellow disposition. Around us, people walked dogs. On a small pad, Mr. Cohen drew a circle to represent a wishing well. He gave it to me and told me to write a wish inside the circle, tear off the paper and put it in my pocket. I wrote, “Travel the Appalachian Trail.” We walked toward the water. “Moses had the Red Sea,” he said. “I have the Hudson River.” When we got there, he dug out a quarter, scrawled his initials on it and asked me to write mine, along with a symbol. He told me to toss the coin in the river. Leveling his gaze, he had me fixate on my wish. He mentioned something to do with travel, a politician, Tennessee. Then he said, “Travel the Appalachian Trail.” He said my lucky coin could make the wish come true. Too bad, he reminded me, it lay at the bottom of the Hudson. He clenched his right hand into a fist. Water seeped from it. He opened his hand. There was the coin, wet. O.K., that was better. Steve Cohen does not have the marquee name of a David Copperfield , David Blaine or Penn & Teller . What he does have, at 39, is Chamber Magic , five shows a weekend at the plush suite in the Waldorf-Astoria where Crown Prince Sultan of Saudi Arabia stays when in town. The audience is capped at about 50 people, who pay $75 each ($100 for the front row). They are expected to dress well. And two or three private events a month, for which he gets $10,000 to $20,000. Mr. Cohen’s specialty is parlor magic, fusing close-up maneuvers and tricks with common objects for small audiences. He models himself after conjurers who entertained the aristocracy in European salons in the 1800s. He does not saw women or make elephants vanish. “He works in the style of a soiree at the home of some Vanderbilt or Rittenhouse, where you might expect an evening of light opera but have lucked into an expert magician,” Teller, the silent member of Penn & Teller, wrote in an e-mail message. The Millionaires’ Magician moniker came about eight years ago, when he was brainstorming with Mark Levy, a marketing strategist and amateur magician, about raising his visibility. He had always cultivated the upper crust, and, in a brief profile, Avenue magazine mentioned that he was sort of the millionaires’ magician. Be that, Mr. Levy said. Mr. Cohen worried it might limit who would hire him. Mr. Levy said, “You’ll get the right calls.” The shtick clicked. Mr. Cohen makes a point of dressing up (he owns no jeans). He favors props like diamonds over sponge balls. He has performed for Barry Diller, Goldman Sachs, the queen of Morocco, Prince Sultan (whose interest picked up immensely when Mr. Cohen transformed a $1 bill into a $100 bill). For good luck, he keeps in his wallet a souvenir of a trick: the crude drawing Warren Buffett did of his neighbor’s dog on the four of diamonds. Making money in the magic world can itself seem impossible: one client, a little tight, paid him in stock options, another in innumerable limousine rides. Yet Mr. Cohen, the son of schoolteachers from Westchester County, earns more than $1 million a year fooling people into believing something is happening that isn’t. THE Conjuring Arts Research Center , on West 30th Street, is one of those idiosyncratic New York institutions. In essence, it’s a house of secrets. Its library contains 12,000 titles on magic, some from the 15th century. When Mr. Cohen stopped by the other day, he was greeted by Bill Kalush , the director and a sleight-of-hand master. They made small talk about a Japanese magician who recently ate a horse on stage. Mr. Kalush mentioned it was a very old trick. Most are. Mr. Cohen had come to research a trick called Aerial Fishing. A hook is affixed to a string and tossed over the audience’s head. Reeled in, the line holds a goldfish. Dropped into a bowl of water, it swims about. “I have an idea where I’d catch three and then do a fourth barehanded,” he said. Normally Mr. Cohen avoids animals. “If you do magic with livestock,” he said, “you end up becoming a gamekeeper.” He has made a Jeep disappear. It was on a History Channel show about Jasper Maskelyne, a magician who helped Britain during World War II by rendering tanks invisible and making a city vanish and reappear miles away. Mr. Cohen demonstrated the technique. It was all in the lighting. “But I don’t do flashy, big magic,” he said. “My magic is more of a thinking man’s magic. Most of it happens in your head. If you want to see a Las Vegas show, go to Las Vegas.” Mr. Cohen’s heroes are two 19th-century magicians, Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin , who performed for high society in small theaters in Paris, and Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser , who did magic in Vienna salons for tiny audiences. Mr. Cohen once visited Hofzinser’s grave in Vienna. They look a little bit alike. It disturbs Mr. Cohen when tricks are exposed on the Internet or by the Masked Magician TV show, “Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed.” “A lot of young magicians will show how a trick is done and put it on YouTube,” he said. “It’s like a father telling his son that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.” Being a successful magician, he said, comes down to three things. “The first order of importance is you have to have a great personality so the audience likes you,” he said. “The second is presentation — what are you going to say. The third is technique. Most magicians don’t get this. They think everything is technique.” NAT ZUCKERMAN was a sign painter and an amateur magician. Standing at one side of the room, he asked his grandnephew to pick a card and slide it in his pocket without examining it. He yelled across the room to his wife, “Viola, what card did he take?” She named the five of hearts. His grandnephew checked his card. Five of hearts. The grandnephew was Steve Cohen. This was the first trick he learned. He was 6. When he was 10, he performed at a birthday party for a 4-year-old neighbor. It led to more. For four summers, starting when he was 12, he attended Tannen’s magic camp on Long Island. A fellow camper was David Blaine and his counselor was Johnny Ace Palmer , a skilled close-up magician. While in high school, Mr. Cohen got $20 an hour to walk around doing magic at a local restaurant. He went to Cornell University and majored in psychology, figuring things like persuasion and eye tracking could help an aspiring magician. He dated a classmate, Yumi Morishige, clinching her affections when he whipped away a cloth napkin and produced a dozen roses. They married and moved to Tokyo. She worked as a journalist. He became a legal translator, squeezing in magic shows on the side. After a few years, they returned to New York, where he continued translating and hustling magic gigs. He hung out at the bar of the Peninsula Hotel. He would nurse a soft drink and do tricks for the bartender. People would notice, say wow, and book him. He did a regular show at a friend’s apartment, until after three weeks the man’s wife tired of the furniture being rearranged. He moved it to the National Arts Club, where he met Holly Peppe, now his manager, who connected him with the Waldorf in 2001. The first few years, he had to beseech friends to attend. Ms. Peppe called her dry cleaner, her trainer, anyone. Then she introduced him to a Web site, TheaterMania.com , that enabled him to send e-mail to tens of thousands of people. In 2003, another site listing local activities, dailycandy.com , mentioned him. Shows have been sold out for the last six years. Once a month he does Miracles at Midnight, which is limited to 20 people who pay $250 each to see tricks culled from his private events: a borrowed watch turns up baked inside a loaf of bread. Why do magic? “I love giving people that reaction,” he said. “Wow, I can’t believe that!” HE had shopping to do. The owner of Tannen’s Magic shop on West 34th Street showed him a fake dove that looked real. “Nice,”Mr. Cohen said, but he doesn’t do birds anymore. There were raccoons, rabbits, skunks. He thumbed through a mentalism book, one of his specialties. “Mentalism is the last form of adult magic that people believe in,” he said. “They think it might possibly be real.” To maintain his image, he stays away from obvious props like black boxes with dragons stenciled on them in which objects vanish. He mentioned something said by Joseph Dunninger, the famed mentalist: “Every time you take out a prop, your price goes down.” He bought two tricks he liked, a book and some cards. Then he walked a block south to Fantasma , a newer magic shop. Occupying the store’s center is a display of original Houdini props. A dummy Houdini descends from the ceiling and extricates himself from a straitjacket. Next to the display is Rambo, the store’s pet rabbit. Mr. Cohen studied a row of trick drinking glasses. He vetoed the beer glass — better suited for the thousandaires’ magician — and took a Champagne flute. He hoped to do a trick making caviar and Champagne materialize, a good Millionaires’ Magician effect. Later, he picked up June, his 5-year-old daughter, from preschool . The other parents know him — the magician. His son, Alex, who is 10, can do some card tricks. June can do one trick. Someone secretly draws something on a sheet of paper and June, from across the room, produces a matching drawing. It took him a year to teach it to her. His wife used to be able to rip up a dollar and reassemble it, until she forgot the restoration part and moved away from magic. At preschool, he steered June and a dozen classmates to a hallway and did a few tricks. Card stuff, a glass of orange juice emerging from beneath a handkerchief, an orange turning up inside a girl’s hat. Giggles, bug-eyed looks. June wanted to do her trick. A school worker was drafted to covertly draw something simple a child would recognize. June came up blank once, twice. She was rusty. One more time. The worker drew a heart. June drew a heart. IT takes an hour and a half to set up the Chamber Magic show at the Waldorf, as long as the performance. There is what the audience sees — not much — and what Mr. Cohen conceals in the room, which is a lot. Upholstered chairs stood in four rows in the suite’s living room, its windows extravagantly draped. A small cloth-covered wooden table was up front. Mr. Cohen, in a morning coat, positioned himself behind the table. He began with cards and an absorbing coin trick. He wove in humor, personal ruminations, audience involvement. The show is 12 tricks, each consuming seven or eight minutes and anchoring in the mind. His signature is Think-a-Drink. It has existed in some form for over a century. The version Mr. Cohen does was popularized in the 1930s by Charles “Think-a-Drink” Hoffman, who performed it in vaudeville houses. Favorite drinks were scribbled on slips of paper by the audience, and Mr. Cohen poured four of them from a tea kettle: grapefruit juice, red wine, a martini, a margarita. He asked the wine person to pick a year. He chose 1720. “This is a free drink, sir,” Mr. Cohen said. A volunteer poured a final drink that matched the choice on a slip of paper that had been tucked into his pocket: chocolate milk. Over time, Mr. Cohen has poured more than 100 drinks from his kettle, without missing. Once someone, presumably with stomach issues, chose Pepto-Bismol. “I can’t pour medicine,” Mr. Cohen said. Magic continued happening. Cards rose from a deck, three rings borrowed from fingers in the audience became linked. Mr. Cohen segued into some benumbing mind-reading (your daughter’s name is Sara, you met John Kennedy, your lucky number is 56). Then the triumphal climax, an astonishing card trick where shuffled cards from two decks aligned in order. After the final show, some other magicians came by and they retreated to the lobby bar for drinks and a session. Soon, they were showing each other card manipulations. “You seen this one?” “Let me show you this.” A match book turned into a crumpled card; the backs of queens changed colors. Dialogue grew esoteric. “Was that stolen from the back or the middle?” “The middle.” “That clip shift is unbelievable.” David Kaye, a children’s magician who performs as Silly Billy , said: “We are a little eccentric. I brought a girlfriend to a magic convention, and she said all we do is sit around and talk about nothing.” Then Silly Billy showed a trick, cards with slices of cake on them, the slices mysteriously changing size, a card left with no cake at all. “Very nice,” Mr. Cohen said. “That’s cool.” The night lengthened. It was almost 2 in the morning. The magicians kept talking. Kept doing tricks.

Cohen Steve
Magic and Magicians
High Net Worth Individuals
New York City


The Looting of America’s Coffers

Abstract: Sixteen years ago, two economists published a research paper with a delightfully simple title: “Looting.” The economists were George Akerlof, who would later win a Nobel Prize , and Paul Romer, the renowned expert on economic growth. In the paper, they argued that several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government. The investors had borrowed huge amounts of money, made big profits when times were good and then left the government holding the bag for their eventual (and predictable) losses. In a word, the investors looted. Someone trying to make an honest profit, Professors Akerlof and Romer said, would have operated in a completely different manner. The investors displayed a “total disregard for even the most basic principles of lending,” failing to verify standard information about their borrowers or, in some cases, even to ask for that information. The investors “acted as if future losses were somebody else’s problem,” the economists wrote . “They were right.” On Tuesday morning in Washington , Ben Bernanke , the Federal Reserve chairman, gave a speech that read like a sad coda to the “Looting” paper. Because the government is unwilling to let big, interconnected financial firms fail — and because people at those firms knew it — they engaged in what Mr. Bernanke called “excessive risk-taking.” To prevent such problems in the future, he called for tougher regulation. Now, it would have been nice if the Fed had shown some of this regulatory zeal before the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression . But that day has passed. So people are rightly starting to think about building a new, less vulnerable financial system. And “Looting” provides a really useful framework. The paper’s message is that the promise of government bailouts isn’t merely one aspect of the problem. It is the core problem. Promised bailouts mean that anyone lending money to Wall Street — ranging from small-time savers like you and me to the Chinese government — doesn’t have to worry about losing that money. The United States Treasury (which, in the end, is also you and me) will cover the losses. In fact, it has to cover the losses, to prevent a cascade of worldwide losses and panic that would make today’s crisis look tame. But the knowledge among lenders that their money will ultimately be returned, no matter what, clearly brings a terrible downside. It keeps the lenders from asking tough questions about how their money is being used. Looters — savings and loans and Texas developers in the 1980s; the American International Group , Citigroup , Fannie Mae and the rest in this decade — can then act as if their future losses are indeed somebody else’s problem. Do you remember the mea culpa that Alan Greenspan , Mr. Bernanke’s predecessor, delivered on Capitol Hill last fall? He said that he was “in a state of shocked disbelief” that “the self-interest” of Wall Street bankers hadn’t prevented this mess. He shouldn’t have been. The looting theory explains why his laissez-faire theory didn’t hold up. The bankers were acting in their self-interest, after all.  The term that’s used to describe this general problem, of course, is moral hazard . When people are protected from the consequences of risky behavior, they behave in a pretty risky fashion. Bankers can make long-shot investments , knowing that they will keep the profits if they succeed, while the taxpayers will cover the losses. This form of moral hazard — when profits are privatized and losses are socialized — certainly played a role in creating the current mess. But when I spoke with Mr. Romer on Tuesday, he was careful to make a distinction between classic moral hazard and looting. It’s an important distinction. With moral hazard, bankers are making real wagers. If those wagers pay off, the government has no role in the transaction. With looting, the government’s involvement is crucial to the whole enterprise. Think about the so-called liars’ loans from recent years: like those Texas real estate loans from the 1980s, they never had a chance of paying off. Sure, they would deliver big profits for a while, so long as the bubble kept inflating. But when they inevitably imploded, the losses would overwhelm the gains. As Gretchen Morgenson has reported , Merrill Lynch ’s losses from the last two years wiped out its profits from the previous decade. What happened? Banks borrowed money from lenders around the world. The bankers then kept a big chunk of that money for themselves, calling it “management fees” or “performance bonuses.” Once the investments were exposed as hopeless, the lenders — ordinary savers, foreign countries, other banks , you name it — were repaid with government bailouts. In effect, the bankers had siphoned off this bailout money in advance, years before the government had spent it. I understand this chain of events sounds a bit like a conspiracy. And in some cases, it surely was. Some A.I.G. employees, to take one example, had to have understood what their credit derivative division in London was doing. But more innocent optimism probably played a role, too. The human mind has a tremendous ability to rationalize, and the possibility of making millions of dollars invites some hard-core rationalization. Either way, the bottom line is the same: given an incentive to loot, Wall Street did so. “If you think of the financial system as a whole,” Mr. Romer said, “it actually has an incentive to trigger the rare occasions in which tens or hundreds of billions of dollars come flowing out of the Treasury.” Unfortunately, we can’t very well stop the flow of that money now. The bankers have already walked away with their profits (though many more of them deserve a subpoena to a Congressional hearing room). Allowing A.I.G. to collapse, out of spite, could cause a financial shock bigger than the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers . Modern economies can’t function without credit, which means the financial system needs to be bailed out. But the future also requires the kind of overhaul that Mr. Bernanke has begun to sketch out. Firms will have to be monitored much more seriously than they were during the Greenspan era. They can’t be allowed to shop around for the regulatory agency that least understands what they’re doing. The biggest Wall Street paydays should be held in escrow until it’s clear they weren’t based on fictional profits. Above all, as Mr. Romer says, the federal government needs the power and the will to take over a firm as soon as its potential losses exceed its assets. Anything short of that is an invitation to loot. Mr. Bernanke actually took a step in this direction on Tuesday. He said the government “needs improved tools to allow the orderly resolution of a systemically important nonbank financial firm.” In layman’s terms, he was asking for a clearer legal path to nationalization. At a time like this, when trust in financial markets is so scant, it may be hard to imagine that looting will ever be a problem again. But it will be. If we don’t get rid of the incentive to loot, the only question is what form the next round of looting will take. Mr. Akerlof and Mr. Romer finished writing their paper in the early 1990s, when the economy was still suffering a hangover from the excesses of the 1980s. But Mr. Akerlof told Mr. Romer — a skeptical Mr. Romer, as he acknowledged with a laugh on Tuesday — that the next candidate for looting already seemed to be taking shape. It was an obscure little market called credit derivatives .

Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis


In Hamptons, Ethnicity, Class and Suicide Lead School to Reach Out

Abstract: EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — As he walked the East Hampton High School campus on the last day of classes last week, Adam S. Fine seemed to be one satisfied principal. Graduating seniors were moving on to colleges including Brown and Cornell Universities; class-cutting was down; and Newsweek had ranked the school among the 2,000 best public schools in the nation, all to be expected in a ZIP code synonymous with success. But, asked to reflect on the year that was, he sighed and moved his hand up and down, suggesting a roller coaster. “Resiliency,” he said. “That’s my theme word for graduation.” This has been a year like none other for East Hampton High, which faced an uncomfortable ethnic integration problem that had been festering in the background for years but was thrust to the foreground by a tragedy at the opening of the school year. A 16-year-old junior from Ecuador, David Hernandez, hanged himself just a few days after homecoming in September; it was the second student suicide in three years. Two months later, a student who was about to transfer to the school committed suicide. Three suicides in three years in a school community of about 900 students is far above the regional average. And all of the students who killed themselves were Hispanic. The suicides, taken together, brought to the surface a division between the relatively small and economically comfortable group of Anglo-Saxons for whom the school was founded and newer, poorer Hispanic residents, whose numbers have been rising rapidly. And they made the school district address the problem directly. The divide, administrators found, was adding to a sense of alienation among some of the more vulnerable immigrant students, many of whom had moved to East Hampton years after their parents had arrived, having to readjust to their mothers and fathers at the same time as they entered a new school, with a new language, in a place that is rarefied even by the standards of the average American student. “What I said as the building leader and person responsible for everything was, ‘Something’s going on here,’ ” Mr. Fine said in a recent interview. “ ‘We need to take a real hard look.’ ” The principal, the grieving mother of one of the suicide victims, a local newspaper and a recent graduate of the school who had herself experienced this sense of alienation — and has now returned to help others — all played significant roles in efforts to gain some control of the situation. It is a prime example of how this town of more than 21,000 residents — some of them famous, some of them from families who have been here for generations, and some of them just here in the summer — has sought to deal with huge demographic changes that have come with being a beacon of American attainment. Image Ana Núñez, left, the community liaison, with Teresita Solis, who is from Costa Rica and has a son at East Hampton High School. Credit Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times The Hispanic portion of East Hampton Township’s population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to census figures, to 26.4 percent from 14.8 percent; it was 5 percent in 1990. Hispanics made up 41 percent of the East Hampton Union Free School District’s student population in 2012, up from 21.7 percent 10 years earlier and 5 percent 10 years before that, according to State Education Department figures. The district has tried to keep up, with a robust program in English as a second language, three Spanish-speaking social workers and, in the high school, two Spanish-speaking secretaries. Some lessons have been learned by trial and error. For instance, the English-as-a-second language classrooms were once together in a cluster, which one parent of a former student said had been called “Little Mexico” by some; now the classrooms are throughout the building. “It’s a dramatic demographic change,” said Richard J. Burns, superintendent of the East Hampton school district. “It takes a while; getting your arms around it is difficult.” But in the months since the most recent suicides, the very life of the school has been altered in ways large and small, in a concerted effort to bring about change more quickly. And much it had to do with the hiring of someone uniquely qualified to bridge the gap between the school and the parents of its Hispanic students — Ana Núñez, 23, who had endured the travails of being an Ecuadorean student at East Hampton High but who had overcome them, won a scholarship to Columbia University and graduated with a degree in economics and political science. She was hired by the district a few weeks after David Hernandez’s suicide, which had made it clear that the district needed a liaison who could directly address the rifts between the Spanish-speaking community and the English-speaking school district. David, 16, had moved to East Hampton from Ecuador three years earlier, to live with his mother, who had left Ecuador for America when he was a toddler. And while it is almost impossible to divine with any certainty the motives in suicides, David was questioning his sexuality, family friends and officials with knowledge of his case said. There were allegations of bullying from fellow Hispanic students, and evidence of previous attempts to kill himself. His mother, Carmita Barros, gathered with fellow Hispanic parents after the suicide and complained to the local newspaper, The East Hampton Star, that his case had been ignored because he was Hispanic; the school vigorously denied the charge. But the parents also complained that as a group they felt distanced from the school in general. If that was news to the school district, it was not news to Ms. Núñez, who had been in town around the time of the suicides, staying with her mother — who works at a hotel in Napeague, the narrow stretch of beach between Amagansett and Montauk — as she considered her next move, possibly law school. She had shared her own family’s experience during a visit that fall with a former teacher, Patricia Hope, who was on the school board and had reached out for Ms. Núñez’s reaction. Image Adriana Gonzalez, who is from Mexico, said her son had told her that school meetings were unimportant and not worth attending. Credit Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times Ms. Núñez described an “issue that was deeper and broader than I had ever given thought to,” Ms. Hope said. She introduced Ms. Núñez to district officials, who hired her as their community liaison in December. At the first meeting she called with Hispanic parents, only 18 people showed up. She extracted a promise from them that they would help her build attendance for another one a month later. At that meeting, in February, about 250 people showed up. As the dialogue began, the school began learning of problems it had not known existed. Many parents, for example, could not understand the report cards their children brought home because the school used a grading system different from the ones used in their home countries. “In Ecuador, they grade your work from 1 to 20, with 20 being the highest,” Ms. Núñez said. “So, here, if a kid’s doing 60, it seems like, ‘60? That sounds great!’ No, it sounds like you’re failing.” In one case, the mother of a Hispanic student knew that her daughter was on the high honor roll, “but she never really knew what that meant,” said Robert Tymann, the assistant superintendent, who has worked closely with Ms. Núñez. When the mother was told what it meant, he said, “she started crying.” It also came as news to the school that it was sending cultural miscues. South American parents were frequently pulling their children out of school in the winter for visits to their home countries. Frustrated teachers would send homework with them, but, Ms. Núñez said, that left the impression with parents that the absences were permissible. Schools in Ecuador, she said, would never be so lax. A committee was formed to address absenteeism. One mother from Mexico, Adriana Gonzalez, who has a ninth grader in the school, said her son dissuaded her from attending school meetings, telling her they were not important. And when she did go, she said in Spanish, “I didn’t understand anything.” After being drawn in by Ms. Núñez, she said, she has begun showing up at more meetings, and “loosened my tongue.” She has begun complaining that the school should institute drug testing, something many of the American parents abhor as an invasion of privacy. Until now, she said, “who would ask a Latino parent her opinion, or cared?” She joked, “Now they want to listen, but maybe later they’re going to say ‘Stop it.’ ”

East Hampton High School East Hampton NY


Zulkifli Was Not Killed in Filipino Airstrike, Malaysian Official Says

Abstract: MANILA — A major terrorist linked to Al Qaeda who the Philippine military maintains was killed last month probably escaped alive, a senior Malaysian police official said. “We believe he is still alive but he is badly injured,” Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, the head of a special Malaysian task force on counterterrorism, said in a telephone interview on Monday evening. “He is still on our ‘most wanted’ list.” Last month, Philippine military officials announced that an airstrike early on the morning of Feb. 2 on Jolo Island had killed Zulkifli bin Hir , a senior leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, along with several other senior militants. The F.B.I. lists Mr. Zulkifli, a Malaysian who also uses the name Marwan, among its most wanted terrorists , identifying him as a member of Jemaah Islamiyah’s central command. The United States has offered a $5 million reward for his capture or killing. Mr. Ayob Khan said that the Malaysian police had obtained and delivered to the Manila authorities DNA samples from the family of Mr. Zulkifli that could be used to verify his death. However, Mr. Ayob Khan said, “The Philippine National Police cannot confirm to us if Marwan was killed during the attack.” “They have yet to recover the body,” he said. “Only when they find the body, or a part of the body, can they confirm.” A Philippine armed forces spokesman, Col. Arnulfo Burgos, said that results of DNA tests by the Philippine National Police were pending but that he was confident that Mr. Zulkifli had been killed in the raid, as well as Abdullah Ali, another prominent Jemaah Islamiyah figure, and Umbra Jumdail, a leader of the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf who goes by the name Dr. Abu. In a text message, Colonel Burgos said that, while it was true that Mr. Zulkifli’s body had not been recovered yet, “there were human tissues and samples collected by” police investigators from the scene of the airstrike for DNA testing. Referring to the Abu Sayyaf Group and Jemaah Islamiyah, he added: “We maintain that Dr. Abu, the A.S.G. leader, and the two J.I. personalities, including Marwan, were killed in the airstrike. This is based on our reliable sources on the ground whom we cannot divulge because of operational security.” Mr. Ayob Khan said that Philippine intelligence officers told the Malaysian police that Mr. Zulkifli’s body might have been taken from the scene and buried by members of the Abu Sayyaf group, which were sheltering him at the time of the airstrike. But Mr. Ayob Khan said the Malaysian police believed that Mr. Zulkifli was taken from the scene alive and was now hiding not far away. Much of the area where the airstrike took place is controlled by the Abu Sayyaf, so the Philippine police and military are limited in their ability to conduct searches. “It’s almost impossible for them to hunt him down because he is in the Jolo area,” he said. Mr. Ayob Khan declined to discuss details of the intelligence that led the Philippine military to believe that Marwan had been killed. “I cannot reveal anything on that,” he said. “From what we have heard, they strongly believe that Marwan was there when they carried out the bombing. This is from their sources. They strongly believe this.” Mr. Zulkifli, who was trained as an engineer in the United States, has been accused of providing training in making bombs for terrorist organizations in Southeast Asia. Mr. Ali, a Singaporean also known as Muawiyah, was also wanted by the American government, which posted a $50,000 reward for his capture or death.

Terrorism
Murders and Attempted Murders
Zulkifli bin Hir
Malaysia
Philippines
Federal Bureau of Investigation