Kraft to Acquire Cadbury in Deal Worth $19 Billion

Abstract: After months of fiercely resisting any deal, Cadbury agreed on Tuesday to an improved takeover offer from Kraft Foods , worth about $19 billion. For Kraft, the deal offers a chance to expand its footprint in emerging markets and in higher-growth sectors like gum and candy. “It transforms the portfolio, accelerates long-term growth and delivers highly attractive returns,” Irene B. Rosenfeld, Kraft’s chairwoman and chief executive, said in a statement. Cadbury for its part will benefit from the supply chain of a larger company, said Jon Cox, a food and beverage analyst at Kepler Capital Management in Zurich. But the prospect of a takeover of Cadbury, the 186-year-old British company, especially by an American multinational like Kraft, sent shudders throughout Britain and prompted a wave of public protests. The Mail on Sunday, one of the biggest-selling British newspapers, ran a “Keep Cadbury British” campaign. “It’s sad to see another British company bought up by a multinational,” Mr. Cox said, “but that’s finance.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday that his government was “determined that the levels of investment that take place in Cadbury in the United Kingdom are maintained,” and that “at a time when people are worried about their jobs, that jobs in Cadbury can be secure.” During a conference call Tuesday, Kraft executives reiterated that the company would keep a strong presence in Britain and would be a “net importer” of jobs in the country. The move will also continue the consolidation that has dominated the food business over the last decade. While mergers involving food companies dipped somewhat last year — preliminary data from the Food Institute, a trade organization, showed 58 acquisitions in 2009, versus 130 in 2008 — analysts expect deal-making to pick up again as companies seek greater scale and presence in developing countries. “We’re in the middle of a little wave of deal activity,” Greg Pearlman, the head of the food and consumer group at BMO Capital Markets, said. “Will they all be as big and global and transforming as this? No. But I do think there’s some pent-up demand for strategic acquisitions.” That may present challenges for companies like Hershey that lack an international presence to pursue global competitors. Hershey, based in Pennsylvania, had been readying a potential bid for Cadbury, according to people briefed on the matter. Yet with Cadbury’s board recommending the new Kraft bid, a counteroffer from Hershey seems unlikely. The agreement between Kraft and Cadbury came together over the weekend, after weeks of sometimes blistering volleys. Cadbury in particular fought fiercely. Its chairman, Roger Carr, derided Kraft as showing “contempt” for the well-known brand and dismissed its hostile bidder as a low-growth conglomerate. On Tuesday, Mr. Carr softened his language, saying in a joint statement that the new offer “represents good value for Cadbury shareholders.” “For Cadbury shareholders, it’s the best possible deal, given they were dealt a bum hand, because there were no counterbidders,” Mr. Cox said. “The clear winner is Kraft.” Kraft’s original, unsolicited offer, made in September, was worth about $16.7 billion. The new offer is about a 5 percent premium over Cadbury’s closing share price of 807.5 pence on Monday and a 14 percent improvement over Kraft’s first offer in September. Under the terms, Kraft will pay 500 pence in cash and offer 0.1874 new Kraft shares for each share of Cadbury. That amounts to a payment of 840 pence ($13.80) for each Cadbury share. Additionally, Cadbury will pay out a special dividend of 10 pence a share. Tuesday was the last day Kraft could raise its offer under British takeover rules. Cadbury shareholders have until 1 p.m. London time on Feb. 2 to decide whether to accept it. While the terms of the offer are final, Kraft reserved the right to raise its bid if a rival offer were made.

Kraft Foods
Cadbury Plc
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Food


Day After President’s Speech, Some Doubts Linger Over Nation’s Recovery

Abstract: DENVER — As a web developer benefiting from an 8 percent pay raise, Brad McLaughlin is looking good economically. He and his girlfriend are spending more money on natural groceries, ski weekends in Colorado’s mountains and vacations to England and Austin, Tex. Not that he credits President Obama for any of it. “Democrats are big with taxes, taking more money away than putting it back,” Mr. McLaughlin, 31, said on a snowy Wednesday morning as he waited for the bus. Still, he said it was undeniable that the economy here was chugging along: “It’s definitely getting better.” Mr. Obama hailed last year as a “breakthrough” for the American economy in his State of the Union address, pointing to a surging stock market and millions of new jobs as indelible signs that the country had finally shed the shadows of years of false starts, uneven recovery and stagnation. And in interviews across the country Wednesday, everywhere from flower shops in Georgia to the streets of downtown Chicago and cafes near San Francisco, people acknowledged they were feeling the benefits of stronger sales, lower gas prices and healthier job markets. But unease lingered among those who said they were still earning less than before the recession and thought that Mr. Obama was overselling the recovery. And while they rallied to Mr. Obama’s call to help the middle class and create an economy “that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who made the effort,” they worried that many workers were never going to thrive in the modern era. Image “The middle class is carrying the burden right now. Hopefully by taxing the wealthier, we can open more programs to support people who need it,” said Joe Oncina, an information technician in wealthy Marin County, Calif. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times “There are really two economies now,” said Jeff Binder, the chief executive of Layer3 TV, a cable-television start-up that moved its headquarters to Denver’s bustling lower downtown neighborhood from Boston last year. “There are pockets in industry and geography that are booming. Oil and gas are booming; the city of Denver is booming; but there are other places that clearly are not.” His company has created about 60 jobs in the past year, but Mr. Binder said that vacancies often showed the structural problems in the economy. His business sometimes struggles to find qualified candidates for technologically demanding positions, but it is deluged with 700 applicants when it needs to hire an accountant. Donald Castillo, 52, said he was not experiencing the boom. He has survived on part-time work and odd jobs since losing his job as the manager of a Safeway grocery store two years ago. He said that he had installed Christmas décor in wealthy neighborhoods this winter, but that the money he made was not enough to rent an apartment in Denver’s competitive housing market. Despite his struggles and the stark inequality he sees every day, he said he believed Mr. Obama was the one who could help lift people like him out of poverty. “He keeps his mind on the average man,” Mr. Castillo said. Around the country, people said that as they drove through their neighborhoods and downtowns, they were seeing more signals of a spreading turnaround. New businesses are opening. More posters say “now hiring,” and fewer declare “foreclosure” or “going out of business.” But even the encouraging signs, like rising real estate values, had a double edge to some. The construction cranes in New York, Chicago and Denver represented jobs and growth, but the luxury condominiums they were building seemed like emblems of a recovery that was bypassing many families. Image “He said he’s going to veto everything he doesn’t want. It’s going to be his way,” said Joan Rhodes, who works in Covington, Ga. She said she was glad the Republicans were running Congress. Credit Kevin Liles for The New York Times “The middle class is carrying the burden right now,” said Joe Oncina, an information technician in wealthy Marin County, Calif., who spent Wednesday morning entering last year’s real estate sales into the county’s computer system. The median sales price was about $1 million. “Hopefully by taxing the wealthier, we can open more programs to support people who need it.” But people said they expected little out of a divided government that to them still seems paralyzed and partisan. Joan Rhodes, 61, who works at the Church Street Antique Market in Covington, Ga., said she was glad the Republicans were running Congress, and she criticized Mr. Obama for laying out an agenda that seemed more confrontational than conciliatory. “He said he’s going to veto everything he doesn’t want,” Ms. Rhodes said. “It’s going to be his way.” Others were exhausted with both parties. Mary Crowe, who was sitting on a park bench in Chicago, said she felt as if nothing was improving. “I think it’s still the same,” said Ms. Crowe, a mechanic who lives in Chicago and said she did not vote or follow politics. “It doesn’t matter who you put in there. Everything is going to go downhill anyway.” While Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have ticked higher recently as economic growth has expanded, people were also sharply divided on whether he deserved credit for the improving economy. Some said Mr. Obama’s policies had put the country back on the right footing, but others said that businesses and workers, not Washington leaders, were the ones who had done the heavy lifting. “It’s God and hard work and dedication,” said Shannon Keith, 44, who lost his job as a forklift operator in the Atlanta area around the time of Mr. Obama’s election in 2008. The day is seared into Mr. Keith’s memory: A man separated the workers into two groups, those who had been employed for more than a decade and those who had been there for less. Mr. Keith said he and everyone else with more than 10 years’ employment had been told to be gone by noon. Mr. Keith said he had been unemployed for nearly three years during the stuttering recovery and had moved in with his parents to avoid sleeping on the streets. But these days, his fortunes have rebounded, he said. He found work with a company in Atlanta and is trying to get a place of his own again. Robert Frizzell, 52, a Democrat who installs car stereos in Chelsea, Mass., a working-class city just north of Boston, said that his business had nearly doubled in the past year. While he spent the early days of the recovery doing mostly high-end work, such as installing stereos in boats, these days he is putting stereos into all kinds of cars — a sign that a wider spectrum of people have a little extra to spend. “You’ve got a lot of people now that are keeping their older cars and making them nice again, or trying to,” Mr. Frizzell said. “They have some fun money.” Still, Mr. Frizzell gave Mr. Obama little credit. The recovery has been painfully slow, he said. He still worries about the deficit, even though it has fallen from more than an annual $1 trillion to about $480 billion in 2014. Video During his State of the Union address, the president said the economy was growing and “it’s now up to us” to choose where we go from here. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “Right now, it’s a mess,” he said of the government. “I think it’s more so the people are more resilient; they make things happen.” Underlying many people’s anxieties was a worry that hard work no longer guaranteed them the ability to buy a nice house, send their children to college and retire comfortably. In Woburn, Mass., Michelle Hernandez, 27, an immigrant from El Salvador who is not eligible to vote, said she was hopeful that Mr. Obama’s plan to expand free community college might help her achieve the economic mobility that has eluded her during his time in office. “I think he’s tried to help us,” she said, “but the government is not just him.” She said she worked about 60 hours a week at a grocery store and a cafe. It is enough to pay her bills but not to save for her future or to pursue a career as a medical assistant. “I’ve worked at the grocery store for five years, and I’m trying to get full time, but it’s not available,” she said. “So you cannot get benefits like vacation days, sick days.” Back in Denver, it took Jason Decoste nearly eight months to find a job at the gourmet hot dog restaurant where he has now worked for two years. He has received one raise and now makes $8.85 an hour. He works seven days a week, and most of the money goes toward raising his young son. Mr. Decoste is sleeping on a friend’s borrowed couch in a suburb south of Denver, and said he felt as if he was barely treading water. “I don’t even have a place right now, that’s how messed up it is,” he said. He said that bad personal choices over the years had set him back, but that he also felt as if the recovery had passed him by: “It’s helping the rich stay rich, and helping us stay where we’re at.”

State of the Union,SOTU,State of the Union 2015


Uncertainties About the Role of Doubt in Religion

Abstract: “Belief in God isn’t quite the same thing in 1500 and today,” writes Charles Taylor in “A Secular Age” ( Harvard University Press, 2007), his formidable exploration of how the conditions of religious belief — and of unbelief, too — have changed for modern Westerners. Religious faith was once the air everyone, even the doubter, breathed. Today, religious faith, in its many forms, stands as but one possibility alongside a range of nonreligious outlooks that the honest believer cannot simply dismiss as deluded or depraved. Far more than in the past, Mr. Taylor writes, believers must live their faith “in a condition of doubt and uncertainty.” Religious thinkers, of course, have long argued that uncertainty and faith are not the polar opposites often supposed; that indifference, and not doubt, for example, is the greater adversary of faith; that absolute certitude about God often reflects a dangerous arrogance. But the idea that contemporary faith, at least in the economically developed West, is shadowed by uncertainty on a new and different scale begs for some empirical investigation. Is such a doubt-haunted belief merely the intermediate stage in that slow retreat of the “Sea of Faith” that Matthew Arnold lamented in “Dover Beach,” and that has left much of Western Europe with little more than a veneer of cultural or nostalgic religiosity? Call this the familiar transition hypothesis. Or is there a newly emergent faith that is deep and constant, marked by familiar forms of prayer and practice, but nonetheless alert to, perhaps even enlivened by, the whisper saying, “I am convinced I’m right but I could be wrong”? That would be a faith lived, to use a favorite phrase of Professor Taylor, “in a different register.” Call this the new steady-state hypothesis. At first glance, the latest findings from the United States Religious Landscape Study, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, promise a way of examining those alternatives. This survey of more than 35,000 Americans asked people not only whether they believed in “God or a universal spirit” (92 percent did), but also whether the believers were “absolutely certain, fairly certain, not too certain, or not at all certain.” While 71 percent replied “absolutely certain,” a sizable portion (17 percent) fell into the “fairly certain” category. What if one explored this latter group’s answers to other survey questions? How important, for example, was religion in their lives? How often did they pray or attend worship services? How convinced were they that there would be life after death? From the start, one could suppose that the fairly certain would prove less devout or observant on such measures than the absolutely certain. At least some of the fairly certain, it can be assumed, are people in transit, shifting toward disbelief and already distancing themselves from traditional religious life. Nonetheless, if it turned out that the answers of the fairly certain came even close to those of the absolutely certain, it would confirm the idea of a stable strata of deeply committed, actively practicing religious believers who have also integrated a significant degree of doubt and uncertainty into their faith. The Pew study itself did not make such comparisons between the absolutely certain and the fairly certain believers. But its huge sample of interviews meant that these subgroups were large enough to make statistically reliable comparisons. Gregory A. Smith, research fellow at the Pew Forum, was kind enough to fire up the computers and churn out the numbers. Unfortunately for anyone looking for a new model of strong faith with doubt, the fairly certain believers were not at all close to the absolutely certain ones on frequency of prayer and worship, the importance of religion in their lives, belief in life after death, and several other measures. In most cases the fairly certain believers were closer in attitude and observance to those saying they were not certain. For example, 71 percent of absolutely certain believers considered religion “very important” in their lives; only 22 percent of the fairly certain did. Strike 1 against the new steady-state hypothesis. But the Pew survey also asked those who believed in God whether their view of God was more like “a person with whom people can have a relationship” or “an impersonal force.” Obviously, religious practices like worship and prayer usually assume a God who has relationships with people. So what if one limited the comparisons between absolutely certain and fairly certain believers to ones who, in both cases, also described their view of God as “personal”? In this case, the gap between the two groups closes — but only modestly. Strike 2 against the steady-state hypothesis. Of course, there may be still other ways of slicing and dicing the data, or of looking at differences among particular religious groups. Strike 3 may not be inevitable. Nor can the transition hypothesis be declared the hands-down winner. Since 1988, the General Social Survey, a highly regarded opinion survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, has asked a parallel but somewhat different set of questions that explore confidence or uncertainty about the existence of God. Mr. Smith points out that from 1988 to 2006 the percentages of people giving each answer have remained relatively unchanged. That does not really bolster the steady-state hypothesis because it reveals nothing about the patterns of worship and prayer and valuing religion that correspond to these degrees of certainty or doubt. But those findings do challenge the transition hypothesis, which implies an increase over time in the number of doubters. So what exactly does it mean that many contemporary believers will be living their faith “in a condition of doubt and uncertainty”? As academics love to conclude, more research is needed. That, at least, is fairly certain.

Religion and Churches
Harvard University


After the Storm, Walking Amid the Ruins

Abstract: TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — There are things you can see all over town this week that you should not be able to see. You should not be able to see Coleman Coliseum if you are standing in the parking lot of University Mall. You should not be able to see in someone’s bathroom from the street, see their family photos on the living room wall or the doll hanging in someone’s bedroom amid the vast wasteland that used to be the neighborhood of Alberta City. Then there is what you cannot see, and that is what brought the men of the Tuscaloosa Fire Department to Alberta City on Friday morning, along with several volunteers and a white Labrador retriever named Jody. As of Thursday night, there was only one person officially unaccounted for in Tuscaloosa, where fierce tornadoes left dozens of people dead. But Alberta City was a poor part of town, many of its apartments populated by Hispanic men quietly following work around the South. No one fully knew who was here before, much less who was not here now. Jody is a “human remains detection” dog, said her handler, Randy Hobson of North Mississippi Search and Rescue. She has no interest, he said, in finding people who are still alive. As Jody and Mr. Hobson climbed up and down the piles, the other men watched in silence or poked around in the wreckage. It was quiet, but for the birds and the rustling made by a solitary man who was climbing over a mangled Nissan into the backdoor of his apartment at Chateau Deauville, until recently a two-story apartment complex. He climbed out with an armful of clothes. The firefighters pointed out the remains of the house where the three bodies were found the day before, the heap of planks where the man was seen by neighbors before the storm and never seen again. Wesley Hurst, a 22-year-old volunteer and Marine who is to begin a deployment to the Middle East next week, found a frightened dachshund amid the ruins. It did not want to be set down, even to drink water, so Mr. Hurst held on to it. Black cars rolled down the street, surveying the scene in advance of the president’s motorcade, which would come racing by shortly. Then Jody barked.


Video: Snowboarders Wait Out Storm Before Grand Descent

Abstract: “Higher Unplugged” looks at the making of the film “Higher,” which follows the snowboarder Jeremy Jones and the TGR crew as they ascend and ride peaks in Alaska, Wyoming, California and Nepal. Jones is a professional snowboarder who has been named big mountain rider of the year 10 times by Snowboarder magazine. For years, Jeremy Jones dreamed of filming a climb and descent of the Grand Teton near Jackson, Wyo. Challenges with weather and logistics, however, continually compromised his plans. Filming for “Higher” — the final installment of a trilogy of snowboard films Jones is creating with Teton Gravity Research — served as a catalyst for attempting a descent of the peak. For the mission, Jones partnered with the snowboarder and Jackson local Bryan Iguchi. The duo aimed to ride the peak’s Otter Body, a line Iguchi had studied from his window since moving to Jackson 18 years ago. As the team prepared for the Grand Teton, it closely watched a spring storm over Wyoming. While waiting for the weather to clear, Jones and Iguchi embraced the storm's snow — and hoped their objective would still be attainable, as the new snow also brought new dangers.


At Eastern Connecticut Ballet School, a Link to Balanchine’s ‘Nutcracker’

Abstract: In a sunlit dance studio on a recent Saturday, Gloria Govrin, draped in black clothes and wearing soft leather shoes that made her appear barefoot, gracefully demonstrated a dance sequence to a young ballerina. They were the steps that marked the entrance of Coffee, the slinky, Arabian dance character who appears in Act Two of “The Nutcracker.” “This bit should really look almost like Georgian folk dance,” Ms. Govrin said, smoothly pivoting in a tight circle, one arm elegantly extended, the other hovering veil-like across her face. Her pupil, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, 17, nodded attentively. Though Ms. Mandelburg had been rehearsing the role for months here at the Eastern Connecticut Ballet school in East Lyme, there was still fine-tuning to be done. Like thousands of other ballet students across the country, Ms. Mandelburg was in the final stages of preparing for her school’s annual performance of “The Nutcracker.” But as she knew, few other dancers would have the opportunity to train with someone like Ms. Govrin, who at 73 is perhaps more intimately familiar with this particular ballet — and certainly with the role of Coffee — than any other instructor in the state. In fact, the part was originally created for Ms. Govrin by George Balanchine — the New York City Ballet choreographer who first brought “ The Nutcracker” to the American stage from his native Russia. It was his lavish productions in the 1960s that made the ballet an indelible part of the canon and established Ms. Govrin as one of his most notable soloists. Coffee, a role whose sinuous movements were designed to suit Ms. Govrin’s statuesque frame (at 5 feet 10 inches, she was exceptionally tall for a ballerina), was just one of many that Balanchine devised specifically for her during their 15-year partnership. After joining his corps when she was 14, she spent entire professional dance career under his tutelage. Though Ms. Govrin has spent many years since then as a teacher and choreographer, most recently joining Eastern Connecticut Ballet as artistic director in 2009, the lessons she learned from her former mentor still inspire her. “I often tell the students that he sits on my shoulder,” she said of Balanchine, who died in 1983. “He is always here with me.” Especially, it seems, during “Nutcracker” season — when she and Lise Reardon, Eastern Connecticut Ballet’s executive director, have ample opportunity to channel the master’s wisdom as they prepare their own production. “Neither of us are willing to accept what’s less than wonderful,” Ms. Reardon said. On a day-to-day basis that means insisting their students push themselves to perfect their technique, but it also means pulling out all the stops when it comes to the school’s annual staging of “The Nutcracker.” Their productions, for example, almost always feature high-profile guest dancers, like Sara Mearns, a principal ballerina for the New York City Ballet who appears as this year’s Sugar Plum Fairy. Just as unusual is the fact that the shows have full orchestral accompaniment, from the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra. Perhaps even more important for their purposes, though, is the spirit of synergy that Ms. Govrin recalls imbued all of her shared efforts with Mr. Balanchine. “What was so special about working with him was the sense of collaboration,” Ms. Govrin said. “It wasn’t just that he had a vision and his dancers enacted it. We were deeply involved in his creative process.” Maintaining that openness to give-and-take is key when it comes to preparing any production of “The Nutcracker,” Ms. Reardon said. For starters, the ballet is often modified to reflect the community it’s staged in. (“I’m quite sure there’s a company in Arizona, or Texas, where the action is set in the desert,” she said, “maybe even with cowboys.”) Since Eastern Connecticut Ballet always performs its “Nutcracker” at the Garde Arts Center in New London, the version she and Ms. Govrin have created touches on the area’s maritime history. Their first-act Christmas tree, for instance, turns into a square-rigged sailing ship; the subsequent battle scene — traditionally between the Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and their respective squads of soldiers — takes place on the high seas, where sailors clash with mouse-headed pirates. Putting on a school production can also require adaptability when it comes to casting. “We’re lucky to have so many talented dancers,” Ms. Govrin said. “But some years, all of them end up being really tall. Other years, they’re all tiny. This year, we have only one boy in the cast, so we had to adjust the characters and the choreography accordingly.” (One example: Rather than a Mouse King, their mouse horde is led by a swashbuckling Pirate Queen.) The importance of that sort of creative fluidity is not lost on Eastern Connecticut Ballet’s students. “It means a lot to me to dance the Coffee role, because I know it was hers,” said Ms. Mandelburg (whose petite physique differs markedly from Ms. Govrin’s). “There are certain elements of her performance that I try to imitate. But there are also lots of ways that she’s really helped me personalize it for my own body. She’s helped me to make it mine.” The enthusiasm Ms. Govrin brings to the production has an impact on even the youngest ballet students — some of whom will grow up performing in “The Nutcracker,” beginning in small roles and then progressing each year to more prominent ones. “One of the first things I did when I began working here was make sure the doors to my main studio” — where she teaches her advanced classes — “were always open,” Ms. Govrin said. “And now every day, we have an audience of 3- and 4-year-olds watching us. It’s important to show the little ones what they can aspire to.” As Ms. Govrin and Ms. Mandelburg rehearsed the Coffee performance together, just such an audience gathered: a gaggle of toddler-age dancers in pink tights and leotards, their hair neatly coiled into buns, peering from the studio doorways. Their eyes were fixed on Ms. Mandelburg as she pirouetted, arched her back, and leapt through the air. But they also took in Ms. Govrin’s quiet, stately presence. Ms. Reardon, observing the observers, couldn’t help commenting. “They know she’s special, even if they’re not sure why,” she said. “In 20 years, that’s when they’ll look back and really realize how fortunate they’ve been to work with her.”

Dance
Gloria Govrin
Eastern Connecticut Ballet
George Balanchine
New London CT
The Nutcracker
Garde Arts Center


The Big Moment Arrives for Bloomberg’s Bike-Sharing Program

Abstract: He festooned New York City with hundreds of miles of bike lanes and dispatched chairs and picnic tables to Broadway, where cars once roamed. He helped finance plans to send the No. 7 train to the Far West Side, and carried the banner of congestion pricing, even if in vain. But for all of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s efforts to reimagine transportation in New York, critics and supporters seem to agree on the one that is most likely to define his 12 years at the city’s controls. And it starts on Monday . With the introduction of a European-style bike-share system, billed by city officials as the first new wide-scale public transportation option in more than half a century, Mr. Bloomberg’s longstanding bet on cycling has reached its climactic moment. The lofty ridership predictions presented by Mr. Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, will no longer be theoretical. Opponents’ admonitions of overstuffed streets and perilous pedaling will prove either prescient or exaggerated. “It is the free market, if you think about it,” Mr. Bloomberg said on Friday during his weekly radio show. “If people want to use them, they’ll use them. If people don’t, they don’t.” The program, which is to begin with 6,000 bikes stationed across parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, will face immediate scrutiny from residents, riders and elected officials whose love or hate for the endeavor seemed to intensify over the past year of delays. Image Racks of bikes at a share station near Madison Square Park in Manhattan. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times The holdup, wrought first by faulty software and then by flooding to equipment stored at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during Hurricane Sandy, has given the rollout a sharper political edge. The system, which was supposed to begin last summer, will now be introduced through the peak months of an election year. And the crop of candidates — many of whom have been lukewarm toward Mr. Bloomberg’s cycling policies in the past — will be watching closely. “If this is a fiasco — and to me, a fiasco is mostly that the bikes just don’t get used — then, yeah, it’s going to tarnish the legacy,” said Charles Komanoff, a transportation economist and longtime cycling advocate in the city. “More important, it’s going to make it easier for the next mayor to backtrack.” But if the program is an instant success, he added, “it’ll mean that almost anybody imaginable who is mayor is going to have to stick with whatever this mayor has already done.” For all the administration’s legwork — which included hundreds of meetings with community groups, elected officials, property owners and other stakeholders, and an online feature that received more than 10,000 suggestions for bike station locations — precise demand for bike share is near impossible to gauge. Though bike commuting has grown on Mr. Bloomberg’s watch, the most recent city figures showed that commuter cycling remained flat in 2012 during the typical riding season of April through October. In the same period, cycling had increased by 26 percent in 2009, 13 percent in 2010 and 8 percent in 2011, according to counts conducted at commuter points like the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge and the Queensboro Bridge. Some officials remain skeptical about the depth of citywide interest in cycling. “The projections for bike share, I can’t say I buy,” said Councilman James Vacca, the chairman of the Council’s Transportation Committee. “But we have to accept them as a given at this point because we have nothing else to go by.” Ms. Sadik-Khan dismissed the most recent in-season cycling figure as statistical noise amid years of consistent growth numbers. She also pointed to an increase in off-season cycling in recent months: From December through February, the Transportation Department said, commuter cycling increased by 23 percent over the previous year. And the bike share program has already sold more than 14,000 annual memberships, Ms. Sadik-Khan said. Whatever the appetite for bike share, Ms. Sadik-Khan has long argued that cycling infrastructure must be built in advance of demand as a way to encourage riding. In this way, the bike share program could be seen as an inevitable outgrowth, a plan that required years of investments before becoming feasible. “We didn’t just drop this bike share system in overnight,” she said. “We spent five years installing more than 350 miles of bike lanes.” Video New rental bicycle-share stands on streets across Manhattan and Brooklyn are drawing mixed reactions among New Yorkers, from “not in my backyard” to “yes, in my backyard” and all points in between. Credit Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Asked about some residents’ view that the bike share system amounted to the final chapter in the city’s tussle over bike use — the playoffs after a regular season that has lasted years — Ms. Sadik-Khan wondered if any more rounds could possibly remain. “If this is the playoffs, what’s the finals?” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re there.” While city officials have said that bike sharing is beloved in virtually every location at which it has been tried, some beginnings have been bumpy. The Vélib’ system in Paris, one of the largest programs in the world, saw a spate of rider deaths in its early years and suffered widespread theft and vandalism of equipment. John C. Liu, the city comptroller and a Democratic candidate for mayor, has called for a helmet requirement for the program, and accused the city of underestimating its financial exposure in bike crashes. The city said that helmet requirements were found to depress ridership in other cities. “I hope nobody gets hurt,” Mr. Liu said in an interview recently. “But this is thousands of bicycles on the streets of Manhattan, used by people who haven’t ridden bikes on the streets of Manhattan.” Elsewhere, bike share programs have had a long history of attaching themselves to the reputations of their municipal cheerleaders. London’s rides are called “Boris bikes,” after Mayor Boris Johnson, despite the fact that Mr. Johnson was not the mastermind of the plan, but merely the man in office when the bikes were introduced. “I hope people call them ‘Mike’s bikes’ or ‘Bloomberg’s bikes,’ ” said Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor for Mr. Bloomberg. “It would be a powerful affirmation of the legacy for him.” But as the program makes its debut, there remains one high-profile holdout, intrigued by the idea of bike share but unsure if it is for him: Mr. Bloomberg. He said during his radio appearance on Friday that his last meaningful contact with a bike was in 2002, when he bought one before a possible transit strike that never materialized. So would he ride on Monday? “I will ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh,’ ” he said. “Whether I’ll get on one, I don’t know.”

Biking
Mike Bloomberg
NYC
NYC Transportation Dept
Commuting
Janette Sadik-Khan


Patriots Have Options at Quarterback, None of Them Satisfying

Abstract: FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Bill Belichick has never been one to tip his hand on anything, especially his plans leading into a game. He was even more coy than usual in this short week as the New England Patriots (2-0) prepared to host the Houston Texans (2-0) on Thursday night in the aftermath of the injury to quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo’s throwing shoulder in last week’s win over Miami. With Tom Brady still two weeks shy of the end of his Deflategate suspension, the rookie Jacoby Brissett is the next healthy quarterback in line. Two factors complicate the possibility that Brissett will make his first start. First, Belichick has started a rookie quarterback only once — Eric Zeier, during Belichick’s final season as coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1995. Second, there is the very real question of whether Belichick feels comfortable throwing Brissett into his first N.F.L. start opposite a Houston defense that leads the league with nine sacks in two games. The Texans’ defense ranks in the top 10 in seven categories, and it has not allowed a touchdown in six consecutive quarters. The Houston defense could become downright scary once J. J. Watt, last season’s defensive player of the year, recovers his full form after July surgery to repair a herniated disk in his back. Watt, a defensive end, had one and a half sacks and a fumble recovery last week, and he said he was getting close to top form. “It’s just a continuous process of getting myself back and even better,” he said. “The goal is to be better than before. I don’t want to just be as good as I was before. I want to be better. It’s a process of making sure that I do everything I can to get there.” The presence of players like Watt could make Belichick turn to Garoppolo, who has not been completely ruled out of Thursday’s game after he returned to practice on a limited basis Tuesday. “Each week it seems like there is always some position that you have to take into consideration what your depth is there,” Belichick said. “Obviously, you take into consideration your opponent and how you want to try and play the game, what you want to try and do against them, and put it all together and do the best you can.” New England will match up against a Houston quarterback with some success against the Patriots on his résumé. Brock Osweiler was under center last November in Denver when the Broncos overcame a 14-0 deficit for a 30-24 overtime victory to give New England its first loss of 2015. Osweiler said Coach Bill O’Brien had told him that game went a long way toward the Texans’ wanting to bring Osweiler to Houston, and that he had certainly gained confidence from it. Image Bill Belichick on Sunday, when Jimmy Garoppolo was hurt. Credit Stew Milne/Associated Press “I definitely am looking at it as two different football games, but I definitely went back, I looked at last year’s game, I looked at my notes from last year, and I can definitely use that as a tool moving forward,” Osweiler said. One of Osweiler’s targets will be receiver Will Fuller, who has a chance to make N.F.L. history. The 21st overall pick in this year’s draft, Fuller needs one more 100-yard receiving game to become the first player to start his career with three such games in a row. The Pro Bowl receiver DeAndre Hopkins also finished with more than 100 yards receiving last week to give the Texans two 100-yard receivers in the same game for the first time since 2013. Fuller was drafted to take some pressure off Hopkins, and so far he has filled that role perfectly. Hopkins, however, is not quite ready to heap praise on the rookie. “He has a lot to improve on, that’s for sure,” Hopkins said. While Houston’s receiving corps is becoming stronger, the Patriots may be without tight end Rob Gronkowski, who began the week still limited by a hamstring injury that kept him sidelined for the first two games. After Tuesday’s practice, Gronkowski said that he felt “decent” and hoped to play. “Just trying to do everything I can right now to be as healthy as I can be,” he said. Linebacker Dont’a Hightower (knee), who sat out last week’s win, was also inching closer to getting back on the field with his return to practice this week.

Football
Patriots
Bill Belichick
Houston Texans


Public Employee Unions Face Rising Public Anger

Abstract: FLEMINGTON, N.J. — Ever since Marie Corfield’s confrontation with Gov. Chris Christie this fall over the state’s education cuts became a YouTube classic , she has received a stream of vituperative e-mails and Facebook postings. “People I don’t even know are calling me horrible names,” said Ms. Corfield, an art teacher who had pleaded the case of struggling teachers. “The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions.” Across the nation, a rising irritation with public employee unions is palpable, as a wounded economy has blown gaping holes in state, city and town budgets, and revealed that some public pension funds dangle perilously close to bankruptcy. In California , New York, Michigan and New Jersey , states where public unions wield much power and the culture historically tends to be pro-labor, even longtime liberal political leaders have demanded concessions — wage freezes, benefit cuts and tougher work rules. It is an angry conversation. Union chiefs, who sometimes persuaded members to take pension sweeteners in lieu of raises, are loath to surrender ground. Taxpayers are split between those who want cuts and those who hope that rising tax receipts might bring easier choices. And a growing cadre of political leaders and municipal finance experts argue that much of the edifice of municipal and state finance is jury-rigged and, without new revenue, perhaps unsustainable. Too many political leaders, they argue, acted too irresponsibly, failing to either raise taxes or cut spending. A brutal reckoning awaits, they say. These battles play out in many corners, but few are more passionate than in New Jersey, where politics tend toward the moderately liberal and nearly 20 percent of the work force is unionized (compared with less than 14 percent nationally). From tony horse-country towns to middle-class suburbs to hard-edged cities, property tax and unemployment rates are high, and budgets are pools of red ink. A new regime in state politics is venting frustration less at Goldman Sachs executives (Governor Christie vetoed a proposed “millionaire’s tax” this year) than at unions. Newark recently laid off police officers after they refused to accept cuts, and Camden has threatened to lay off half of its officers in January. Fred Siegel, a historian at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, has written of the “New Tammany Hall,” which he describes as the incestuous alliance between public officials and labor. “Public unions have had no natural adversary; they give politicians political support and get good contracts back,” Mr. Siegel said. “It’s uniquely dysfunctional.” Even if that is so, this battle comes woven with complications. Across the nation in the last two years, public workers have experienced furloughs and pay cuts. Local governments shed 212,000 jobs last year. A raft of recent studies found that public salaries, even with benefits included, are equivalent to or lag slightly behind those of private sector workers. The Manhattan Institute, which is not terribly sympathetic to unions, studied New Jersey and concluded that teachers earned wages roughly comparable to people in the private sector with a similar education. Benefits tend to be the sorest point. From Illinois to New Jersey, politicians have refused to pay into pension funds, creating deeper and deeper shortfalls. In California, pension costs now crowd out spending for parks, public schools and state universities; in Illinois, spiraling pension costs threaten the state with insolvency. And taxpayer resentment simmers. Trouble in New Jersey To venture into Washington Township in southern New Jersey is to walk the frayed line between taxpayer and public employees, and to hear anger and ambivalence. So many Philadelphians have flocked here over the years that locals call it “South Philly with grass.” These expatriates tend to be Democrats and union members, or sons and daughters of the same. But property taxes are rising fast, and voters favored Governor Christie, a Republican. Bill Rahl, a graying plug of a retiree, squints and holds his hand against his throat. “I’m up to here with taxes, I can’t breathe, O.K.?” he says. “I don’t know about asking anyone to give up a pension. Just don’t ask for no more.” Governor Christie faced a vast deficit when he took office last January, and much of the federal stimulus aid for schools was exhausted by June. So he cut deeply into state aid for education; Washington Township lost $900,000. That forced the town to rely principally on property taxes. (Few states lean as heavily on property taxes to finance education; New Jersey ranks 45th in state aid to education.) The town turned its construction office over to a private contractor and shed a few employees. Assemblyman Paul D. Moriarty, a liberal Democrat, served four years as mayor of Washington Township. As the bill for pension and health benefits for town employees soared, he struggled to explain this to constituents. “We really should not receive benefits any better than the people we serve,” he says. “It leads to a lot of resentment against public employees.” All of which sounds logical, except that, as Mr. Moriarty also acknowledges, such thinking also “leads to a race to the bottom.” That is, as businesses cut private sector benefits, pressure grows on government to cut pay and benefits for its employees. Robert Master, political director for the Communication Workers of America District 1, which represents 40,000 state workers, speaks to that difficulty. “The subtext of Christie’s message to a lot of people is that ‘you’re paying for benefits you’ll never have,’ ” he says. “Our challenge is how to defend middle-class health and retirement security, not just for our members but for all working families, when over the past 30 years retirement and health care in the private sector have been essentially demolished.” This said, some union officials privately say that the teachers’ union, in its battle against cuts to salaries and benefits, misread Mr. Christie and the public temperament. Better to endorse a wage freeze, they say, than to argue that teachers should be held harmless against the economic storm. In the past, union leaders, too, have proven adept at winning gains not just at the bargaining table. In 2000, union lobbyists persuaded legislators to cut five years off the retirement age for police and firefighters — a move criticized as a budget-buster by a state pension commission. The next year, the budget still was flush and union leaders persuaded the Republican dominated legislature to approve a 9 percent increase in pension benefits. (The legislators added a sweetener for their own pensions.) Those labor leaders, however, proved less successful in persuading their legislative allies to pay for such benefits. For much of the last two decades, New Jersey has shortchanged its pension contribution. Governor Christie talked about tough choices this past year — then skipped the state’s required $3.1 billion payment. Now New Jersey has a $53.9 billion unfunded pension liability. A recent Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll found a narrow plurality of respondents in the state in favor of ditching the pensions for a 401(k) -type program. Public pensions, however, run the gamut, from modest (the average local government pensioner makes less than $20,000 a year while teachers draw about $46,000) to the gilded variety for police and firefighters, some of whom collect six figures. And then there’s the political class, which has made an art form of pension collection. Some politicians draw multiple pensions as county legislators, called freeholders, and as prosecutors or union leaders. Back in Washington Township, people tend to talk of state government as a casino with fixed craps tables. A white-haired retired undercover police officer, whose wrap-around shades match his black Harley-Davidson jacket, pauses outside the Washington Township municipal building to consider the many targets. He did not want to give his name. “Christie has all the good intentions in the world but has he hit the right people?” he says. “I understand pulling in belts, but you talking about janitors and cops, or the free-loading freeholder?” Good Jobs, at What Cost? So how much is too much? On their face, New Jersey’s public salaries are not exorbitant. The state has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the country, and the average teacher makes $66,597, which even with benefits is on par with or slightly behind similarly educated private sector workers, according to Jeffrey H. Keefe, a Rutgers professor who studied the issue for the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute . Mr. Keefe, however, uncovered some intriguing class splits. Blue-collar public workers make more money than their private sector counterparts. For such jobs, public unions have established a higher wage floor. The sense that public workers enjoy certain advantages is not a mirage. Public employees pay into their pension funds, but health benefits often come at a fraction of the cost of most private sector packages. Government employment also tends to be more secure. When the economy crashed, federal stimulus dollars safeguarded many public jobs. The alternative, many economists point out, was to force towns and cities into extensive layoffs, even as unemployment hovered around 10 percent and millions of Americans sought help from public agencies. But it accentuated the perception that public workers, however tenuously, inhabited a protected class. That’s a tough sell in Washington Township. Ask Michael Tini, 54, who works as a card dealer in Atlantic City , about teacher salaries and benefits and he taps his head, not unsympathetically. “Look, I understand that teachers are the brains of the operation, O.K.? But my hours are cut, and my taxes are killing me.” He taps his head again. “They have got to take it in the ear, too.”

Labor Unions
Politics
Economy
Pensions and Retirement Plans
Chris Christie
New Jersey
Civil service


Closing Scene: Hugs and Tears in Rivera’s Last Home Game

Abstract: It was supposed to be a meaningless game, the first at Yankee Stadium in 20 years, but there was nothing meaningless about it for Mariano Rivera or the announced crowd of 48,675 that came to say goodbye to an icon. In another emblematic moment in the Yankees’ storied history, Rivera made an emotional farewell appearance at the Stadium on Thursday night, breaking down in tears on the mound in the embrace of Andy Pettitte, who had come to take Rivera out of the game. “I knew that was the last time,” Rivera said. “It was a totally different feeling. Something I’ve never felt before. I don’t know how I got those two guys out.” After pitching his final one and a third innings at Yankee Stadium in his 19th and final season, Rivera, baseball’s career saves leader, stood and watched as Pettitte and Derek Jeter, his longtime teammates, came to the mound as emissaries for Manager Joe Girardi. Before the ninth inning of what turned into a 4-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, Girardi went to Laz Diaz, the home-plate umpire, and asked for permission to let Pettitte and Jeter make the pitching change, and Diaz agreed. As he walked to the mound alongside Jeter, Pettitte tapped his right arm to signal for the replacement pitcher, Matt Daley, then took the ball from Rivera’s hand. Rivera wrapped his arms around Pettitte, who is also retiring after the season, and buried his face in his shoulder, sobbing. “I didn’t say anything at first, and I didn’t expect for him to be quite so emotional,” Pettitte said. “He broke down and gave me a bear hug, and I bear-hugged him back. I mean, he was really crying. He was weeping, and I could feel him crying on me.” With a gentle prod from Jeter, Rivera finally looked up, hugged Jeter and walked off the mound as the fans, the Yankees and the Rays stood and cheered. Image Derek Jeter, left, and Andy Pettitte took the ball from Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning of his final appearance at Yankee Stadium. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times “I’m glad Joe let us be a part of it,” Jeter said, “because we’ve been like brothers for 21 years.” After hugging all his teammates in the dugout, Rivera emerged for one last wave to the sold-out Stadium. But the tears did not end there. Girardi, whose contract runs out after the season, broke down in tears during a postgame news conference as he recalled his career with Rivera, which evolved from battery mate (Girardi was Rivera’s catcher from 1996 to 1999) to coach and finally to manager. “This is as good as it gets, and it’s probably as special a going-out for any player I’ve ever seen,” Girardi said, adding, “One thing about our fans, they understand what Mo has meant to this organization.” Rivera was not the only one to be saluted. After Daley recorded the final out of the ninth inning, the Rays waited to take the field as the fans chanted for Pettitte, who at first was reluctant to emerge from the dugout, having already had an emotional farewell when he pitched Sunday. But when he saw that the Rays would not take the field until he came out, he finally emerged and waved. “Sunday was incredible and great closure for me,” Pettitte said, “and this was a bonus. It’s kind of bittersweet about the playoff chances being done, but I don’t think it would have been able to go down like it did tonight if we were still right there and fighting for it.” Rivera’s final entry onto the Yankee Stadium field was dramatic. As the bullpen door swung open with one out in the eighth, a recording of the longtime announcer Bob Sheppard’s voice announced his entrance into the game. Rivera trotted across the outfield grass for the final time as the crowd saluted him with a thundering standing ovation while the familiar strains of his theme song, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” rang out. As Rivera warmed up, the entire Rays team stood at its dugout and clapped along with the fans, eliciting a tip of the cap from Rivera, who then got down to business. He calmly recorded the two final outs of the eighth and then the first two outs in the ninth — another perfect outing, if not a save — even as the Yankees lost. Last Call at Yankee Stadium 11 Photos View Slide Show › Image Barton Silverman/The New York Times After the eighth, Rivera retreated to the trainers’ room and as he applied heat to his arm to keep it warm, he started to have a flood of memories, flashbacks from his days in the minor leagues, through all five World Series championships he helped the Yankees win, his ascendancy as he became hailed as the game’s greatest closer, and finally to that very moment. “I was being bombarded with emotions and feelings,” Rivera said. Perhaps for the first time in his career, he wondered if he would be able to summon the composure to go out to the mound and pitch well. He did, and his final pitch at Yankee Stadium was a cut fastball to Yunel Escobar, who popped up to Robinson Cano. After the game, Rivera waited several moments in the dugout before walking to the mound, kicking up some dirt and scooping it up. It provided a small memento for a remarkable career. But Rivera may still have one more dramatic moment ahead in the next few days. It has long been a dream of his to play center field, the position he mans almost daily while shagging fly balls in the outfield during batting practice, and Girardi said he was amenable to putting Rivera there for an inning in Houston over the weekend. “It may be something good, if my body permits it, though,” Rivera said before the game. Girardi, who makes the final decision about when and where Rivera plays, even drew up a rough plan for how it might look. “In my mind, thinking that he’s going to want to pitch, it would be a situation where I might bring him in the eighth to play the outfield and close him out in the ninth if we have that opportunity,” Girardi said. That would be unusual. But it was also unusual that Thursday night’s game had no bearing on the Yankees’ season. For the first time since 1993, the Yankees were eliminated from the postseason before their final home game. Still, a huge crowd was on hand, and many of those in attendance came specifically to say goodbye to Rivera. Hand-painted signs and Panamanian flags dotted the stands, and fans in the bleachers peered down into the bullpen to get a glimpse of him. Rivera first appeared briefly in the bullpen in the top of the seventh inning, wearing a jacket and watching Dellin Betances warm up. As soon as Rivera shed his jacket, the fans began chanting his name and singing out, “We want Mo.” For one last time, they got him. “To be able to finish the way the Lord allowed me to finish, it was spectacular,” Rivera said. “Thank God for that.”

Baseball
Mariano Rivera
Andy Pettitte
Yankees
Tampa Bay Rays
Derek Jeter


Ford Executives and Kerkorian Expected to Talk Next Week

Abstract: DETROIT — The investor Kirk Kerkorian will meet with top executives at Ford next week as a way to show his support for management and its turnaround strategy, people with knowledge of the plans said Friday. Mr. Kerkorian, whose investment firm the Tracinda Corporation has built a 5.6 percent stake in the Ford Motor Company , is scheduled to meet in Los Angeles with the company’s executive chairman, William C. Ford Jr., and its chief executive, Alan R. Mulally . The meeting follows a tender offer that Tracinda completed on Friday to acquire 20 million shares of Ford, for $170 million, in addition to the 100 million shares that it has bought since April. In regulatory filings, Mr. Kerkorian has praised the strategic direction and prospects for Ford under the leadership of Mr. Mulally. The face-to-face meeting is probably meant to assure Mr. Mulally and Mr. Ford that the 91-year-old billionaire has no plans to try to wrest control of Detroit’s second-biggest automaker. The meeting will probably be conducted under delicate ground rules. With ownership of more than 5 percent of Ford, Tracinda is considered a major shareholder. So any discussion of Mr. Kerkorian’s investment plans would require immediate disclosure in regulatory filings. The Ford executives, for their part, would be unable to discuss strategic initiatives that have not been made public to other shareholders. Given previous efforts to influence management at General Motors and Chrysler, Mr. Kerkorian appears determined to be welcomed as a friendly investor at Ford. One analyst said Mr. Kerkorian and his top adviser, Jerome York, cannot afford to have their actions interpreted as hostile. “They are value investors who seek to influence the course of events,” said John Casesa, managing partner of the Casesa Shapiro Group in New York. “This is a long process to create value and providing support to management is a big part of that.” A spokeswoman for Tracinda, Winnie Lerner, declined to comment on the meeting. Ford also declined to confirm the meeting, but spokesman Mark Truby said Friday that the automaker would treat Tracinda as it would any large shareholder. “We are open to meeting with Tracinda as we would be with any large investor,” Mr. Truby said. “However, we would keep any discussion private.” The meeting comes as Ford faces setbacks in its turnaround plans after losing a combined $15.3 billion in 2006 and 2007. After reporting a surprising $100 million profit in the first quarter, Ford said last month that rising gasoline prices have crippled sales of its pickups and big sport utility vehicles and forced it to abandon its goal of full-year profitability by 2009. Instead, the automaker will slash production of its largest vehicles by up to 15 percent and increase its output of more fuel-efficient cars and crossovers. On Friday, Ford executives met with plant managers and union leaders in Detroit to warn of more cuts coming on the factory floor. At the meeting, Ford’s global manufacturing chief, Joe Hinrichs, did not share Ford’s plans to shift manufacturing resources from trucks to cars, but he said the company needs its workers to be aware of the “critical business environment” that Ford is facing. Ford is expected to announce next month which of its North American pickup and S.U.V. plants may be idled or downsized. The struggles in the marketplace have not deterred Mr. Kerkorian in his push to build a major stake in Ford. Tracinda began its $8.50-a-share tender offer on May 9 when Ford’s shares were trading at $8.20. But when Ford’s stock fell below $7, Tracinda declined to lower the price or withdraw its tender offer. The gesture was seen as a sign of Mr. Kerkorian’s confidence in Ford management, and his longer-term view of the company’s prospects. Tracinda said Friday that 826 million shares were tendered in the offer, of which Tracinda will acquire 20 million. Over all, Mr. Kerkorian will have spent $861 million to acquire his 5.6 percent stake. With Ford’s shares closing Friday at $6.27, the stake is worth $752 million. Mr. Kerkorian made his fortune in casinos and motion pictures, but has had mixed results in his forays in the auto industry. In 1995, he started an unsuccessful takeover attempt of Chrysler, but his influence on management led to the company’s merger in 1998 with the German automaker Daimler-Benz. In 2006, Mr. Kerkorian amassed a large stake in General Motors, but failed to persuade G.M.’s chairman Rick Wagoner to join an alliance with Nissan Motor of Japan and the French carmaker Renault. Mr. Kerkorian later sold his shares. The presence of Mr. Ford, a great-grandson of the company founder Henry Ford, in the discussion next week is important for Mr. Kerkorian. While he serves as executive chairman of the company, Mr. Ford also represents Ford family members who control 40 percent of shareholder votes through a special class of stock. Any effort by Mr. Kerkorian and Mr. York to suggest changes at Ford would most likely require the support of the family.

Ford Motor
Kirk Kerkorian
Cars
Tracinda
Mergers and Acquisitions
Alan R Mulally
William Ford


North Dakota Voters Reject Move to Ease Ban on Corporate Farming

Abstract: BISMARCK, N.D. — North Dakota voters on Tuesday rejected a move by the state to loosen its Depression-era rules prohibiting corporate farming. The North Dakota Farmers Union had led a campaign to overturn the legislature’s decision last year to exempt pork and dairy businesses from the ban on corporate farming. Supporters of the so-called ham-and-cheese law said it would revitalize dairy and swine farms after years of decline. Those who opposed the law criticized it is an invitation to large, out-of-state companies to set up operations in North Dakota.

State legislature
Agriculture
North Dakota


QTIP Trust Guides Bequests Beyond the Grave

Abstract: THERE is a QTIP that is not for people with delicate cleaning problems. It is for those with a very different problem — the delightful problem of expecting to leave substantial assets to heirs. In income-tax lingo, a QTIP is a qualified terminable interest property trust. Its purpose is twofold. One aim is to leave the bulk of an estate to someone other than a spouse, and it is often used to guarantee an inheritance to children of an earlier marriage. The second aim is to take full advantage of the unlimited marital deduction in estate tax law. The trust, in effect, gets to use the marital deduction. With a QTIP trust, “you know where the property is going after the death of the spouse” who dies first, Eric W. Hager, a trusts and estates lawyer at Davidson, Dawson & Clark in New York, explained. “There is almost always concern about kids of a first marriage.” The creator of the trust, in effect, gets to decide who gets what. Elena Villafane, a trusts and estates lawyer at Polin, Prisco & Villafane in Glen Cove, N.Y., said that wealthy people could satisfy both a second spouse and children from a previous marriage with a QTIP trust. Using what she admitted was a stereotypical example, she said, the trust could prevent a second wife from “running off with the assets” of a deceased husband. Under tax law, the surviving spouse must get all the income from the trust every year. Because the trust provides lifetime income for a hypothetical spouse, then eventually gives the assets to the children of the person who set up the trust, Ms. Villafane said, it allows an older, richer spouse to say, in effect, “I took care of you both.” While QTIP trusts are often used in second and third marriages — what Richard J. Shapiro, an estate planning and elder law lawyer at Blustein, Shapiro, Rich & Barone in Goshen, N.Y., jokingly called “a Donald Trump arrangement” — they can also be useful in an intact family. Leaving assets in a trust rather than outright to the surviving spouse provides “creditor and predator protection,” he said — conjuring up an image of an overbearing new spouse for a widow or widower. And by guiding financial decisions in an intact family, a trust can make firm inheritance arrangements and can be “a friendly hand from beyond the grave,” Mr. Shapiro said. Tax deferral is a consideration, “but the protective aspects of a marital trust” are also important, he said. The tax-deferral aspect arises because a QTIP trust defers estate taxes when the surviving spouse is not the ultimate beneficiary of the bulk of the other spouse’s assets, because the tax is not due until the surviving spouse dies, Mr. Hager and Mr. Shapiro said. Without that trust, the ultimate heirs would face estate taxes as soon as their benefactor died. Because a QTIP trust makes use of the estate tax marital deduction, it is not useful for people who are not married. The person who creates a QTIP trust does not put any assets in it while he or she is alive, and thus does not give up any control. A QTIP trust is usually part of a will, not a separate document, the lawyers who draft trusts said. The QTIP trust does not appear to provide any federal estate tax benefits to same-sex couples, because a federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, does not recognize same-sex marriages. But Ms. Villafane said same-sex couples could claim state estate tax benefits in New York, which does recognize same-sex marriages. The same is likely to hold true in other states that recognize such marriages. The federal estate tax picture for same-sex couples could also change. One challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act making its way through the courts involves estate tax. The survivor of a married lesbian couple was denied a marital estate tax exemption to which a surviving spouse is entitled. A federal district court in New York found the law unconstitutional, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard arguments on an appeal of that ruling last month. Its eventual decision could be appealed to the United States Supreme Court. (The court has been asked to hear another case challenging the law.) Mr. Shapiro said that for New York State residents, a QTIP trust could make sense when assets reached $1 million, because that is the state’s estate tax exemption. Some other states also have lower exemptions than the $5 million that federal law provides. Generally, he said, people who do not expect their assets to reach those levels would not benefit from having QTIP trusts, though they could still provide asset protection. Other kinds of trusts could also achieve that goal. And the federal exemption will drop to $1 million on Jan. 1 if Congress does not act, which is making some people with assets exceeding that amount nervous, Ms. Villafane said. That could lead some to set up QTIP trusts now — just in case.

Wills and Estates
Tax Credits Deductions and Exemptions
Taxation
Federal Taxes (US)
Inheritance and Estate Taxes
High Net Worth Individuals
Widows and Widowers


Canada’s Defense Chief Rejects Criticism of F-35 Jet

Abstract: OTTAWA — Canada ’s defense minister rejected suggestions on Friday that the F-35 fighter jet was unnecessarily sophisticated and costly for the country’s relatively small air force. After confirming that Canada will spend about 9 billion Canadian dollars, or $8.7 billion, to buy 65 F-35s from Lockheed Martin and to cover deployment costs, Peter MacKay said that the Conservative government would not compromise on military equipment. “This aircraft is the best that we can provide our men and women in uniform and this government is committed to giving them the very best,” Mr. MacKay told a news conference while standing in front of a full-size model of the fighter jet. The announcement of a multibillion-dollar commitment by the Canadian government should bolster a program that has been plagued with delays and substantial price increases. Even before the announcement, the purchase had become the source of political controversy. Aside from its cost, which may reach 16 billion Canadian dollars once maintenance and parts contracts are signed, opposition politicians are angry about the lack of a competitive tender process. On Thursday, the Liberal Party said that it would oppose the purchase. An alliance of opposition parties could stall or block the deal. “I’m not suggesting that this may not be the best fighter aircraft for the Canadian forces,” said Ujjal Dosanjh, a Liberal member of Parliament responsible for military issues. “But we don’t know that without going through a process.” “It’s nice to have the latest and the greatest,” said Jack Harris of the New Democratic Party. “But do we need that to protect our country? We’re not, as we were in the cold war, facing off against the Soviet military.” Canada is one of eight countries helping the United States build the fighter, which will be less detectable by radar than older planes and versatile enough to attack ground targets. The Canadian government has announced that it will phase out its recently updated fleet of CF-18 jets beginning in 2017. Kim M. Testa, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin, said that Canada would complete the procurement in 2014 and begin accepting delivery two years later. Other nations have also debated the necessity of an aircraft as costly and sophisticated as the F-35. Opposition leaders in Denmark and the Netherlands are questioning whether they can afford to buy the plane at a time when their economies are under pressure. Lockheed, however, needs to hold onto the foreign sales to lower the cost of the planes. The American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, recently revamped the F-35 program and removed the general in charge, after the Pentagon’s projected costs soared 64 percent to $382 billion for 2,457 planes. The eight allies have invested a total of $4 billion in developing the plane and could buy hundreds of the planes through specific orders, most of which remain to be negotiated. But Lockheed Martin’s chief executive, Robert J. Stevens, said in June that the company was cutting its costs and improving the efficiency of its production. Though recent Pentagon estimates have placed the cost of a single F-35 as high as $112 million, Mr. Stevens said Lockheed believed it could lower the cost, by 2014 or 2015, to be comparable to updated and fully loaded versions of older fighters, like Boeing’s F/A-18 and Lockheed’s own F-16. That would reduce the price of each F-35 to about $65 million. During the news conference, Mr. MacKay would not say how much Canada would pay for each jet. Although he did indicate that the 9 billion Canadian dollar figure includes other costs like training, improvements to airbases as well as simulators. A Canadian procurement official, who spoke on the condition he not be identified, said that the government was assuming that it would pay 90 million Canadian dollars for each F-35 although it anticipated that the final cost would be much lower. Tom Burbage, a top Lockheed manager for the program, said the company expected to sell the planes to Canada for $60 million to $65 million each, not accounting for maintenance, parts or inflation. One factor that may determine the political fate of the deal is Lockheed’s willingness to buy parts from Canadian suppliers. Unlike other major military contracts given to foreign companies by Canada, Lockheed is not required to spend any money in Canada. By agreeing to purchase the planes, however, Canadian aerospace companies, many of which are American owned, can now bid on supplying the global F-35 project. Ms. Testa said that Lockheed would buy about $10 billion of components and parts from Canadian aerospace companies as part of the deal. Canadian officials anticipate that the final amount will be higher. While Canada did not call for tenders, Boeing has been lobbying the Canadian government and opposition politicians to consider the F/A-18, an update of the aircraft that is the basis of the government’s current CF-18s. And a consortium of European manufacturers has been promoting the Eurofighter Typhoon. During the news conference, Rona Ambrose, the minister of public works, said that the government considered asking for bids at one point but rejected the idea after concluding that the F-35 was the only aircraft capable of meeting its needs. She also suggested that the process during the 1990s that ultimately led Lockheed to provide the United States with its next fighter jet was a surrogate for traditional tendering by Canada. Canada, like the other partner nations, had a role in that review. The Canadian military has been remarkably absent from the public debate. While it is believed that its leadership is not opposed to the government’s plan to buy new aircraft, there are indications that some have concerns about the F-35. Canada’s air force rarely flies combat missions, arguably making some of the F-35’s advanced features, like radar-evading stealth, seem like frills. Unlike the twin-engine CF-18, the F-35 has only one engine. Its failure could leave pilots exposed to the harsh Arctic environment as they await rescue. But military officials in a briefing on Friday said they were not seriously concerned about that issue and noted that CF-18s had crashed in the Arctic, if for other reasons.

Military Aircraft
Canada
Lockheed Martin


Kenya: Tusks of 58 Elephants Seized

Abstract: Authorities have seized the tusks of 58 elephants, a ton of ivory, after sniffer dogs led investigators to containers at the country’s main airport that were bound for Nigeria, officials said Friday. No arrests were made, the police said, and it was not immediately clear why the ivory was being transported to Nigeria; the most common destination for smuggled ivory is Asia. Patrick Omondi, an expert on elephants at the Kenya Wildlife Service, said ivory smuggling had increased since the 2007 temporary lifting of a ban by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. It allowed a one-time sale by countries that had stockpiles of ivory from elephants that had died naturally or problem elephants killed by wildlife officials.


Comedy Central to Host Comedy Festival on Twitter

Abstract: Next week, Comedy Central will host a five-day comedy festival that includes a lineup of legends like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner alongside popular young comics like Amy Schumer and the director Paul Feig. But there will be no smoky comedy clubs. No lone microphones and stools positioned on stage. No two-drink minimum. The festival will take place almost entirely on Twitter, with comedians posting video snippets of routines and round tables and posting jokes using the hashtag #ComedyFest. The partnership between Comedy Central, a cable cannel owned by Viacom, and Twitter represents the evolving relationship between television and social media. Twitter is often incorporated into programming with viewers using the site as a second screen while watching live television. But slowly, Twitter is becoming an outlet on which to watch video. In January, Twitter introduced Vine, a video-sharing service that lets users post six-second clips — brevity that matches Twitter’s model of 140-character messages. On Tuesday, as part of the festival, the comedian Steve Agee will host a “Vine Dining” party, telling stories in six-second videos. The cast of HBO’s “Veep” shares “vines” from the set, as does the cast of ABC’s hit “Scandal.” A&E puts 30-second videos of “Duck Dynasty” on Twitter and the entire third season of Fox’s “Raising Hope” had its debut on the site. “It’s not just hashtags appearing on your TV screen, but TV content appearing in your Twitter feed,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a social media analyst at eMarketer. For Comedy Central, the Twitter partnership is a small part of a larger strategy to become a branded entertainment company that does not rely just on nightly television viewing. In a changing media landscape, the channel’s series like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “South Park,” and their young, mostly male audiences, have led the shift to online video viewing. As early as next month, Comedy Central will introduce a free, ad-supported app, called CC: Stand-Up. Designed to look and feel like a cable channel devoted to stand-up, the app will offer videos of comedians performing routines. A recommendation algorithm (similar to the one used by Amazon) will allow users to discover new comedians. If you watched Jeff Ross, for example, a web of other comics would pop up based on routines with similar topics (like mass transit), style (like dark humor) or other relationships (both like marshmallows). “One of these days we will be ambivalent about where people watch Comedy Central,” said Steve Grimes, the channel’s senior vice president for programming and multiplatform strategy. At least for now Viacom makes the vast majority of its revenue from cable subscribers who watch television the old-fashioned way and the advertisers who pay to reach them there. The company must adapt to the changing ways viewers watch video, but they must also preserve profits. Last year, Nickelodeon’s ratings dropped, partly because shows like “Dora the Explorer” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” had been too readily available on streaming platforms like Netflix. Nickelodeon’s predicament has served as a cautionary tale for Comedy Central as it extends its programming onto other devices. Comedy Central’s total prime-time audience has fallen to a nightly average of 816,000 viewers in the current season to date, from 1.1 million in 2008, according to Nielsen. Of those viewers, 258,000 are men ages 18 to 34, a demographic that disproportionately uses social media while watching television. In a study conducted by Nielsen in September and titled “How Chatter Matters in TV Viewing,” 54 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they had started watching a TV show because of Facebook, and 21 percent credited Twitter. Fred Graver, head of TV at Twitter, said partnering with Comedy Central and others was not about turning the service into a television distribution platform, but developing deeper relationships with programmers that eventually lead to more people joining Twitter. The relationship, he said, can be mutually beneficial. “What we spend a lot of time talking to networks and show runners about is, What do you put onto Twitter that will get people to change the channel or alert them to another way of enjoying the show?” Mr. Graver said. For now, Comedy Central looks at the Twitter partnership as a marketing strategy. In the future, the channel could work with a sponsor to bring in ad revenue. “It’s the same way we’d market our comedy through a billboard a few years ago,” said Michele Ganeless, president of Comedy Central. Ms. Ganeless has overseen Comedy Central’s push into other expansions of the brand, including consumer products like DVDs, T-shirts and coffee mugs related to its shows and comedians. Comedians have been particularly ahead of the curve in embracing new ways to distribute stand-up acts that used to rely on cable television. Last year, Louis C.K. sold a “Live at the Beacon Theater” special directly through his Web site and made $1 million in under two weeks. That partly inspired Comedy Central to develop a Web site that lets comedians sell their stand-up specials directly to consumers (with the channel getting a cut). Customers can buy a stand-up special starting at $5 and stream it onto their television screens or mobile devices. It remains to be seen how all these add-ons will ultimately affect Comedy Central’s audience and, in turn, its revenue. “I don’t think anybody is moving forward in the TV business or the brand business without finding ways to develop a true dialogue with consumers,” said Doug Herzog, president of Viacom Entertainment Group, which includes Comedy Central, Spike and TV Land. “What we’re still discovering and what will take a while is what exactly does that mean and what exactly does it add up to and how do you quantify it?” On Monday, Twitter will live stream the only #ComedyFest event that will take place with an actual audience, at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles. The panel discussion will include Mr. Brooks, Mr. Reiner and Judd Apatow, who will be the host. Mr. Reiner and Mr. Apatow will try to persuade the technology-averse Mr. Brooks to join Twitter. He has previously resisted, telling friends that it could not possibly capture his “impish” quality. Mr. Reiner has more than 20,400 Twitter followers . During the Oscars this year, he posted, “ I was so excited to discover I was not in the in memoriam! ” In an interview, Mr. Reiner took a break from writing a book, “I Just Remembered,” (“because it’s about all the things I forgot to put in the first book”) to discuss social media and comedy. Of Mr. Brooks, his longtime friend and partner in “The 2,000 Year Old Man” comedy skit, Mr. Reiner said: “We’ll see if we can get the old man to talk” on Twitter.


Tracking of Jonathan Pollard, a Paroled Spy, Requires More Explanation, Judge Says

Abstract: The United States Parole Commission was ordered on Monday to provide a fuller explanation of its reasons for electronically tracking the movements of the convicted spy Jonathan L. Pollard, and for monitoring his computers at work and at home. The order, from Judge Katherine B. Forrest of Federal District Court in Manhattan, came in response to Mr. Pollard’s lawyers challenging the parole restrictions, which they say are onerous and unjustified. Mr. Pollard, 61, a former United States Navy intelligence analyst who became one of the most notorious spies of the Cold War, was paroled in November after serving 30 years of a life sentence for espionage. He has argued the restrictions — he must wear an ankle monitor, adhere to a 7 p.m. curfew, and his computer use is monitored — make it difficult for him to find a job and hamper him in fulfilling his Jewish religious observances on Fridays. Dressed in a sober suit, his long graying hair spilling out from a skullcap, Mr. Pollard said nothing during the hearing, as about a dozen of his supporters sat in the audience. Judge Forrest said a one-page explanation the commission had placed on the public record was insufficient to justify the restrictions on Mr. Pollard. Still, the judge said she would not second-guess the commission’s decision until she had received more information from its officials. She said one key question was whether Mr. Pollard still possessed classified information that might jeopardize national security. “There is a fundamental issue which the court believes informs its review,” Judge Forrest said. “And that is the question as to whether there is anything that Mr. Pollard can disclose that will endanger the public.” Case of Espionage: Five Questions About Jonathan Pollard Jonathan J. Pollard was released on Friday after receiving parole. He served 30 years of a life sentence for passing classified United States documents to Israel. Speaking softly, Mr. Pollard smiled and declined to comment as he left the court house with his wife, Esther Zeitz. Mr. Pollard is the only American ever sentenced to life in prison for spying for an ally. In 1984 and 1985, he passed suitcases full of classified documents to an Israeli handler in return for cash, jewels and foreign trips, court records show. Those documents included information on Arab and Soviet weaponry as well as satellite photos. He pleaded guilty to espionage charges in 1987, along with his first wife, Anne. Mr. Pollard’s lawyer, Eliot Lauer, suggested to the judge that the parole conditions had hampered his client’s return to civilian life. Mr. Pollard lives in New York City, where a financial services company has offered him a job as an analyst, his lawyers said in court papers. But the requirement that Mr. Pollard’s work computer be monitored had put his prospective job in doubt, turning one of the goals of parole on its head, Mr. Lauer said. The ankle monitor also presented technical problems for an observant Jew, since Mr. Pollard cannot charge the device or even change its batteries on a Friday, Mr. Lauer said. He quoted a rabbi’s opinion that replacing batteries violates the ban on creating electrical current on the Sabbath. But the central question during the hearing concerned whether Mr. Pollard still remembered important secrets that would justify curtailing his freedom. A prosecutor, Rebecca Tinio, pointed out that most of the information Mr. Pollard had sold to Israel in the 1980s remains classified as “top secret,” which means its release could gravely damage national security. Mr. Lauer said that Robert C. McFarlane, who was the national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, had said in an recent affidavit that any information Mr. Pollard once possessed, assuming he can even remember it, would be worthless today. “No one ever suggested Mr. Pollard had usable information that he retained in his head,” Mr. Lauer said. For three decades, Mr. Pollard was the center of a diplomatic struggle between Washington and Jerusalem, as successive Israeli prime ministers demanded his release, only to be rebuffed by successive American presidents. In Israel, he became a cause célèbre, and, for some, a hero. His supporters argued his life sentence was far harsher than those meted out for violent criminals or spies for hostile nations. Since his release, Mr. Pollard has said he wants to move to Israel, but he cannot leave the country for at least five years without permission under federal rules. The Obama administration has shown no intention of letting him go. His agreement with parole officials bars him from visiting the Israeli Embassy or traveling to international airports.

Jonathan J Pollard
Spying and Intelligence Agencies
Israel
US


An A.F.C. Wimbledon Movie Could Be Titled ‘Phoenix Rising’

Abstract: LONDON — Think the fairy tale of Leicester City could not be beaten this year? Just weeks after the end of a Premier League season where the Leicester Foxes outran the rich and powerful to win England’s top league for the first time in their 132-year history, there came another compelling underdog story. A.F.C. Wimbledon, which was founded only 14 years ago, won promotion to the third tier of English soccer on Monday. Suddenly, there is not one, but two potential Hollywood movies about little old England and its obsession with soccer. Among the 57,956 who watched Wimbledon beat Plymouth Argyle, 2-0, at Wembley Stadium on Monday to gain promotion was John Green , the American author whose book “The Fault in Our Stars” was turned into a low-budget movie estimated to have grossed more than $300 million worldwide . Green knows a great story when he sees one, and he grasps the difference between sports in the United States — where franchises relocate without a second thought when a better opportunity arises — and England, where that has been attempted only once in soccer. Armed with that knowledge, he is planning a film about A.F.C. Wimbledon and its incredible rise up the English soccer pyramid. Wimbledon is the story of a team that wouldn’t die. It was 14 years ago when the Football Association allowed the financially struggling Wimbledon F.C. to move 56 miles north from its base in west London and be reborn as the Milton Keynes Dons. On May 30, 2002, two days after the move was allowed, a group of die-hard Wimbledon supporters called on their community to form a new club to replace it, A.F.C. Wimbledon. A month later, some 230 would-be players for the new team turned up for public tryouts in a park next to Wimbledon Common. Out of that came a team that has ascended from the equivalent of Sunday league soccer to the third tier of the professional leagues — in all, six promotions in 13 seasons. After the original Dons left, their stadium, Plough Lane, was bulldozed to make room for apartment blocks. A.F.C. Wimbledon now shares a stadium with another club in Kingston upon Thames, west of Wimbledon, but its fans want their own stadium, to be built on a greyhound track close to the original. On Monday, A.F.C. Wimbledon was playing in Wembley Stadium. That was where Wimbledon F.C., with a squad known as “The Crazy Gang,” defeated Liverpool to win the F.A. Cup in 1988. Neal Ardley was a 16-year-old academy player for Wimbledon F.C. then, and he later played for them for 11 seasons. Now, he is A.F.C. Wimbledon’s manager, and on Monday he told Green that “you have to include us now” in his movie about the club. “To pull this off, to stand in front of 25,000 people who 14 years ago had their club ripped away from them, and to finish it off winning here — you can write anything you want; it doesn’t come any better,” he told reporters. Ardley is a workaholic manager driven by the spirit of Lazarus. “Chairmen come and go, stadiums get built, everything can change,” Ardley said at a news conference before the game. “What stays constant is fans. These fans were there in the 1960s and the 1970s, and they are still there now.” They have followed a fan-owned club that simply wants — and demands — the right to run against the rest. Wimbledon isn’t yet in Leicester’s league, at least when it comes to the quality it faces. The third tier League One is very far from the Premier League, whose games are televised worldwide and whose clubs are among the most valuable on earth. But it does play the same game as Leicester, with a similar daring attitude. A.F.C. Wimbledon’s goals on Monday were scored by players who between them have moved more than two dozen times in their careers as they searched for a permanent home for their talents. Lyle Taylor, 26, needed some “loving” — at least that’s what his teammates said — to turn his speed into something more than sporadic promise. He scored the first goal, after 78 minutes. Then, 10 minutes into stoppage time, Adebayo Akinfenwa, playing what he expected to be his last Wimbledon game, finished the scoring with a penalty kick. Big is an understatement when it comes to Akinfenwa. Akinfenwa, a 34-year-old Londoner who had to journey to Lithuania to get his first start as a pro soccer player, is a gym freak who is built like an ox. He is 5 feet 11, but definitely the widest soccer player around, as broad as the proverbial barn door, tipping the scales at about 220 pounds. When the chance for the penalty shot came up, Akinfenwa muscled the ball from another player and slammed the penalty shot out of the reach of Plymouth’s goalkeeper. “It was bad of me, but I’m bigger than the other guy,” Akinfenwa said later. “Hey, I’m technically unemployed in the morning, There ain’t no better way to sign off. That’s what all that work in the gymnasium is about.” You sense he is auditioning for a part in the movie. Next season, as it happens, A.F.C. Wimbledon will meet Milton Keynes Dons, the club that stole its identity, on level terms because the Dons have just been relegated to League One. The script writes itself.

Soccer
AFC Wimbledon Soccer Team
John Green
Adebayo Akinfenwa
Neal Ardley


Taking Aim at Title and Top Spot

Abstract: Serena Williams steamrolled Dinara Safina, smacking screaming winners past her and at her, and when she was done, Williams had even bent the swirling wind to her will. Nothing was going to stop Williams from reaching the final of the United States Open; not big sister Venus in the quarterfinals, and certainly not Safina in the semifinals. For Williams is playing her best tennis after five unsteady years. With a fiercely executed 6-3, 6-2 semifinal victory on Friday, Williams advanced to her first Open final since 2002, the last time she won an Open championship. Weather permitting Saturday night, Williams will meet Jelena Jankovic of Serbia, who advanced to her first Grand Slam final with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Elena Dementieva, who melted in a pile of nerves. Williams, who turns 27 in three weeks, wasted little time seizing her opportunity. “Yeah, I have amazing will,” Williams said matter-of-factly. “I love to win.” She is looking to capture her ninth career Grand Slam singles title where she collected her first major trophy in 1999, back when she was a 17-year-old swinging freely. A victory nine years later would give Williams the No. 1 ranking (she is No. 3 in the world, Jankovic is No. 2 and No. 1 Ana Ivanovic lost in the second round). Williams once held No. 1 for 57 straight weeks, but not since August 2003. “I’m here to stay,” Williams said. “No. 1 is not my goal. I know I’ll get that eventually if I continue to play the tournaments.” In a span of five years, a serious knee injury, the murder of her half-sister and other career interests (fashion and acting), sent her ranking tumbling to triple digits. It took a slow, frustrating two years to get back, after an unexpected Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in 2007, when she was ranked No. 81. “She’s working hard now, but it would have come quicker if she had worked harder before,” said her mother, Oracene Price. “But they have their other activities.” She was referring to Venus’s design company and Serena’s acting interests. Serena collected three titles this season, including a win in Miami over Jankovic. “I’m playing a lot more, having more consistent results, and just putting in the effort,” Williams said. “I think my results are finally showing.” She will play in her second straight Grand Slam final, and has found her hunger again after a bitter defeat to Venus in the Wimbledon final. “She thinks she’s supposed to win everything, that’s her will,” Price said. “She thinks everything’s hers.” Before the match, Serena solicited advice from Venus. As it turned out, Safina felt she beat herself. On a center court subject to 20-mile-an-hour wind gusts, the woman who best controlled her ground strokes, not to mention her mind-set, emerged victorious. Even though Williams lost her serve in the first game, she collected herself while Safina grew rattled. “I was behaving like a very spoiled girl on the court today,” Safina said, showing the resemblance to her brother, Marat Safin, the tempestuous 2000 Open champion. She admitted she needed to handle her emotions better. “She behaved like a champion,” Safina said of Williams. “She was there and she was fighting with me. I was fighting with everything around me.” There was little Safina could do to cut off Williams’s deep crosscourt winners. When she came to the net once, she paid for it. In the third game of the second set, Williams inadvertently blasted a running approach shot directly at Safina’s chest. Williams said she was mortified. “I wasn’t trying to hit it at you,” Williams said to Safina as they shook hands at the net. Pity the player who takes such a blow usually aimed for the white line. “I think she is the strongest player on the tour, together with her sister,” said Jankovic, who is 3-3 against Serena. “Nobody has the power that they have. “They’re great athletes. They move really well. They hit the ball so hard. So if you want to really win when they’re in form, you have to be on the top of your level and you have to go for every shot and have to run a lot.” Jankovic, a player who routinely finishes rallies splayed in a split, is all about perseverance. She can endure because, at 23, she is healthy again. “This is the first Grand Slam I don’t have any injuries,” Jankovic said, as she rattled off a laundry list, including a strained glut muscle, an inflamed arm, a mysterious three-month virus this spring that left her nose running, and a torn meniscus in one of her knees, from which she said she miraculously recovered. Now her mind is even stronger. “I really believe in myself,” Jankovic said. “I really want to do this, and I think it’s about time for me to make that step forward to break that barrier and go a long way. I want to win a Grand Slam, and this is why I came here.” That was different from her Russian opponent, Dementieva, who came in as the Olympic champion and left satisfied with that. She shrugged off how she lost a 4-2 lead in the first set, lost her traditionally weak serve five times and committed 42 unforced errors. “I’m not disappointed at all,” Dementieva said. “For me, the Olympics was my biggest goal.” Williams won a gold medal in doubles with Venus in Beijing. But she wants more now, on the same court where she has found her will and where she can prove that she found her way back.

Williams Serena
Safina Dinara
Tennis
United States Open (Tennis)