Shilique Calhoun Finds a Good Fit in Michigan State’s Pass Rush

Abstract: When Ted Gill arrived at Middletown High School North in New Jersey, he could not find his prize recruit. He looked everywhere. Gill, who was the defensive line coach at Michigan State at the time, was expecting Shilique Calhoun to be the next elite pass-rusher to join the cornfed tankers in the trenches of the Big Ten. Calhoun should have been easy to spot, and Gill finally found him, warming up as a wide receiver. Tall and slim, Calhoun reminded Gill of another prospect he saw while coaching in North Carolina more than a decade earlier: Julius Peppers. “Same type mold, same type athlete, same type ability,” Gill said. But Peppers weighed 280 pounds when he arrived at North Carolina in 1999; as a high school senior, Calhoun had only about 215 pounds spread over his 6-foot-5 frame. In the first five games of his junior season, he played safety. So versatile was his athleticism that, on a recruiting visit, his father, John, pulled Gill aside and asked him what position he thought suited Calhoun best. “He said, ‘Coach, I think he’s going to be something one day,’ ” Gill said. “ ‘I just don’t know if it’s going to be offense or defense.’ ” Five years later, Calhoun has indeed become something: one of the nation’s top pass rushers for No. 7 Michigan State, which visits No. 12 Michigan on Saturday afternoon in one of the most anticipated matchups in their rivalry of more than a century. Image Calhoun, who played at Middletown High School North, returned to New Jersey to play for the first time when Michigan State traveled to Rutgers last Saturday. Credit Mel Evans/Associated Press Calhoun will be lining up against a vulnerable Wolverines offensive line, and N.F.L. scouts will be watching, but that is nothing new. Calhoun was projected to be a first-round draft pick last year, before opting to return for his final season. He cited a desire to improve his understanding of the position. He has not been playing it for long. When Calhoun arrived in East Lansing, Mich., the coaching staff jostled over whether to use him on offense or defense. He wanted to play both. Coach Mark Dantonio made the final determination, envisioning Calhoun as an archetypal “flash” end for his 4-3 system — a third-down rusher who could also drop back into zone coverage and defend the pass. There was one problem: Calhoun was woefully skinny and did not yet know the intricacies of the position, typically a recipe for disaster in the Big Ten. In practices, he kept attempting to bust through the middle of the line, only to wind up on his backside. Gill had to steer him outside. That Calhoun was playing for a program like Michigan State was not entirely a surprise. But he always figured it would be in basketball. As a boy, raised in Lakewood, N.J., Calhoun followed in the footsteps of his cousin Qa’rraan Calhoun , who wound up playing basketball for St. John’s and the University of Houston. Shilique Calhoun saw himself the same way. He never played anything else. His football coach at Middletown North, Joe Trezza, took to staking out his eighth grade basketball games to try to persuade him to go out for a second sport. “When I heard that he was coming up, I’d go down and watch him play basketball and get in his ear, like, ‘Why don’t you come play?’ ” Trezza said. “He’d smile and wouldn’t say yes or no. It wasn’t something he really was looking to do.” 2015 Heisman Trophy Watch A look at the top players in contention for college football’s highest honor. Trezza eventually convinced Calhoun to try football for a week. At 6-2, Calhoun towered over every other freshman. But he knew next to nothing about how to play the game. “He was a blank canvas,” Trezza said. “We had to teach him everything. It was like starting from scratch.” The process took several years. Calhoun showed up for football every fall, played a variety of positions — wideout, tight end, safety and, eventually, defensive end — then returned to his regularly scheduled basketball career. He barely touched weights. He was not a student of football. Not yet. When a Big Ten coach on a recruiting visit asked him what other programs in the conference had shown interest, Calhoun gave him a blank stare. “I started laughing,” Trezza said. “He doesn’t know Big Ten teams. He didn’t know anything about football.” But football teams wanted to know about him. As a three-star prospect, according to most scouting websites, Calhoun managed to fly under the radar nationally. But colleges in the Northeast, including Boston College, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Rutgers, showed strong interest before Pat Narduzzi, then the Spartans’ defensive coordinator, spotted Calhoun as a high school junior. “First thing that pops out at you is character,” Narduzzi said. “Just a fun-loving kid that you love to coach.” Dantonio said Calhoun had the height and “size potential” to make him worth the risk. “We’ve recruited a lot of guys here that are around 200 pounds — that power-forward type of player that eventually grows to 255 or 260,” Dantonio said. “And that’s the case with him.” Working with Gill and Narduzzi, Calhoun learned his position, built his confidence and, most important, gained weight (he is now listed at 260 pounds). Last Saturday, he returned to New Jersey to play for the first time when Michigan State traveled to Rutgers. “Mainly I was trying to focus on the game,” Calhoun said of the large contingent of family and friends that turned out. “I tried not to get too caught up in my family’s presence. I just tried to focus on winning the game and saving the day.” Indeed, Calhoun’s astounding athleticism came to the rescue. After recording a sack in the first quarter, he was quiet. But with Rutgers trailing by 7 points and facing a third-and-10 from Michigan State’s 40 with 21 seconds remaining, Calhoun burned past right tackle J. J. Denman and chased quarterback Chris Laviano out of the pocket, where he was sacked by Malik McDowell. This time, Calhoun was easy to spot.

College football
Shilique Calhoun
Michigan State


Values on Rise for Rare Collectibles

Abstract: In the fall of 2005, Charles Hack, a New Yorker who has made a fortune in real estate and spent a lot of it on old master paintings and Renaissance sculpture, noticed a newspaper advertisement for an auction of a rare stamp. The 24-cent airmail stamp issued in 1918, popularly known to collectors as the Inverted Jenny, became famous — and valuable — because of an error: the airplane in the center of the design, a Curtiss JN-4, is printed upside-down. Only 100 of the misprints are known to exist. Mr. Hack attended that auction and bought the stamp for $297,000, including commission. Last Wednesday, Mr. Hack attended another stamp auction, at Siegel Auction Galleries in New York City, and went home with a second Inverted Jenny after bidding $850,000. The final price, with the commission, came to $977,500, a record for an American stamp sold at auction and a confirmation of a trend that is transforming the world of high-end collectibles. His second Inverted Jenny cost more because it is one of the finest, but auction prices for many rare and high-quality collectibles, including coins and memorabilia, have gone up significantly in recent months. Just in the past week, a collection of American pattern coins — rare samples made to show off proposed designs, like tests for the first United States pennies in 1792 — was traded for $30 million between an anonymous buyer and seller. The deal, brokered by Legend Numismatics of Lincroft, N.J., doubled the previous record for a coin collection. And a rare and pristine poster for the 1935 movie “Bride of Frankenstein,” starring Boris Karloff, was sold Wednesday by Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas for $334,600, which included commission. The seller of the poster had bought it from a theater owner in the 1960s for 50 cents, said Greg Rohan, president and co-owner of Heritage. Mr. Hack, 60, collected stamps in his youth, but decided to pursue fine art as he began making money in residential and commercial real estate around the country. Among his specialties are Belgian symbolist painters like Fernand Khnopff, whose works are rare and not widely collected. Now, he has returned to philately with a dedication comparable to his passion for art. “Stamps have a parallel quality to fine art — this thing gives a satisfaction, it’s a great piece of Americana,” Mr. Hack said last week. Sonny Hagendorf, a dealer in rare stamps who has guided Mr. Hack in his collecting over the last two years, said there were a number of reasons why stamp prices were rising: the weak dollar, low interest rates, the fact that stamps are “undervalued vis-a-vis coins and paper money” and other collectibles. But he said a major influence on the robust market for rare stamps were baby boomers in their 50s and 60s who are “getting to the point where they can buy the things they want.” Mr. Hack is a prime example of that. “Boomers like myself reach 60, have incredible wealth, and are thinking about places to put it,” he said. “In fine art, even mediocre pieces by well-known artists bring a million dollars.” The Inverted Jenny, he said, is “an American icon that is really undervalued.” Mr. Rohan, of Heritage, said prices of other collectibles like vintage science fiction books had been rising for the same reason. “Sci-fi especially has been coming on stronger, as people in technology fields reach their 40s. They read these as kids,” and want to capture the nostalgia, he said. Mr. Rohan was also bidding on the Inverted Jenny on Wednesday on behalf of a Heritage client, but lost out to Mr. Hack. He said this client, like many of those who buy regularly from Heritage, collected in several areas: coins, paper money, movie posters, art and sculpture. “These are passionate collectors — they remember as a child these things were trophies.” Mr. Hagendorf has seen prices on rare stamps rise before. He said he bought the very same stamp that was sold on Wednesday in 1980 for $160,000, then a record, on behalf of a pension fund. The stamp has changed hands several times since then. “Back then it was speculative,” he said, with buyers trying to hedge against inflation. Nowadays, buyers tend to be real collectors, with the “slightly irrational desire to own the item.” “Lately we’re seeing auctions with multiple collectors and many under-bidders up to a very high level,” Mr. Hagendorf said. “This is a vibrant market with a long way to go, but it’s not just driven by its going up.”

Collectors and Collections
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Stamps (Postal)
Art


Suicide Bomber Kills 3 in Afghanistan

Abstract: MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber driving a truck made his way to the heart of a provincial capital in Afghanistan on Friday and exploded his bomb, leveling many government and security buildings, badly damaging a prison and leaving the governor without an office. The bomber struck in Maidan Shahr, in Wardak Province, killing two police officers and a young woman and wounding 90 others, including police officers and civilians, officials said. Though the province has long been sharply contested, this was the first such attack on Maidan Shahr, about an hour’s drive from the nation’s capital, Kabul, residents said. Wardak’s governor, Abdul Majid Khogyani, was keeping track of the casualties on a piece of paper as he met with police officers and elders in the courtyard of the main government compound. It was so badly damaged that none of the rooms in the buildings were usable. “If I had been here, I and my family would have been killed,” said Mr. Khogyani, gesturing to a guesthouse where he had been living. It was among the most heavily damaged of the structures still standing. In a statement e-mailed to reporters, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for the execution of Taliban prisoners this week by the Afghan government. However, Mr. Khogyani said he believed that his recent efforts to reconcile a number of Wardak’s villages with the government had angered the Taliban, who rely on rural support. He received warnings from security officials on Wednesday, the same day as the executions, that an explosives-laden truck had entered the city, suggesting that the attack had been planned well before the decision to hang the Taliban prisoners . The bomb was so powerful that not only were windows blown out for blocks, but window and door frames close to the blast were also warped and askew, some wrenched from their fittings so that passers-by could see piles of furniture, glass and chunks of the walls inside the houses. The buildings closest to the blast were reduced to rubble. The bomb left a crater at least 20 feet across and 10 feet deep. In the aftermath, the streets were filled with the sound of scraping glass as shopkeepers and security guards swept out broken windowpanes, leaving small piles on the streets. “There’s never been anything like this in our city,” said Naquibullah, who has a small grocery and dry goods store and, like many Afghans, uses only one name. “The rural areas and Saydabad are not safe, but the city has always been fine.” Among the buildings demolished were the local government records office, where Afghans get their national identification card, known as the tazkera; the local office of the National Directorate of Security; a midwife’s center; and a women’s hostel. The prison was so badly damaged that Amir Mohammad Jamshidi, the head of prisons at the Interior Ministry, said the government would have to transfer all 146 prisoners to Pul-i-Charkhi, the main prison in neighboring Kabul Province. “Today’s suicide attack injured 20 prisoners and 15 police officers,” Mr. Jamshidi said. “Three prisoners who tried to flee during the chaos were arrested by security forces.” Close to sundown, several residents with bandages on their foreheads or arms wandered back to the scene, looking incredulously at the damage. One of the medics, who had patched up dozens right after the blast, was back at the site helping American soldiers who had arrived to gather information. “It was just horrific,” said the medic, who would not give his name. “I treated 45 people today. It’s a disaster; people lost so much.”

Afghanistan
Wardak (Afghanistan)
Taliban
Afghanistan War (2001- )
Terrorism


Doomed Jet Carrying Brazilian Team Reportedly Ran Out of Fuel

Abstract: The pilot of a plane that crashed late Monday while flying members of a Brazilian soccer team to a competition in Colombia pleaded to make an immediate landing because the aircraft was out of fuel, according to a recording leaked to Colombian news outlets on Wednesday. The audio, first posted by W Radio of Colombia, offers a grim narration of the final moments of the doomed flight, which carried 77 people, including the members of the Chapecoense soccer team from Chapecó, Brazil. And it added a new twist to the investigation of what might have caused the crash, originally thought to be electrical failure. “We ask for permission to approach, we have a fuel problem,” cried a voice that the radio station identified as the pilot. He later says that the plane had a “fuel emergency.” During the 12-minute recording, the pilot also says that the plane had experienced “total electrical failure” and repeatedly requests flight vectors, indications from the air traffic controller, on how to land. The controller tries to help but mentions other obstacles like another plane flying close by and fuel on the runway left from yet another aircraft. “Nine thousand feet,” yells the pilot. “Vectors! Vectors!” Shortly afterward, the plane crashed. A spokesman from Colombia’s aviation agency said it could not confirm the authenticity of the recording. But he added that the agency was investigating whether the plane, which was operated by a Bolivian charter company called LaMia, did run out of fuel. According to specifications from the plane’s manufacturer, BAE Systems, the Avro RJ85 jet has a range of about 1,600 nautical miles, close to the distance of the flight from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to Medellín, Colombia. Jetliners, however, rarely travel in straight lines to their destination, but rather along more indirect routes determined by their flight plan. W Radio offered no details as to who provided the recording. Similar recordings, also said to be from the cockpit, were played on other Colombian radio stations on Wednesday. Aviation experts also say it was unsafe to fly a plane without at least 30 minutes of fuel reserves, among other precautions. Video A deadly plane crash came just as fans across Brazil had been reveling in Chapecoense’s performance, helping to unite much of the country behind the team’s sudden emergence as a regional contender. Credit Credit Nelson Almeida/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The theory that the plane crashed without fuel was supported by rescue workers on the ground on Tuesday, who were surprised to see that there had been no explosion. The main damage to the plane appeared to be from the impact, which caused the fuselage, engines and tail to be torn apart, they said. The American National Transportation Safety Board said that it would assist in the investigation. The flight marked a tragic end to the rise of Chapecoense, which had come up the ranks from a scrappy industrial city in Brazil to become one of the country’s hottest teams. The team was on its way for what would have been its biggest test yet, the finals of the Copa Sudamericana, one of South America’s most important tournaments. At least 21 journalists were reported to be on the flight, too, including reporters from Fox Latin America and the Globo television network of Brazil. Six survivors were pulled from the wreckage, including three players, two crew members and a journalist. There was no immediate response to an email to LaMia. The company’s website had been taken down, and its telephone had been disconnected on Wednesday. Dr. Ana González, the medical director at Clínica Somer, the hospital outside Medellín where three of the survivors were being treated, said two of them, both members of the crew, were in stable condition. Alan Ruschel, a defender for Chapecoense, was in critical condition, she added. Mr. Ruschel spent time before the flight posting selfies on social media networks with his teammates. “Alan is the patient with the most serious injuries,” Dr. González said. “It is too soon to tell if he will be able to walk again, but we hope that in the future he will.”

Plane Crash
Pilots
Soccer
Chapecoense de Brasil
LaMia
Brazil
Medellin Colombia
Audio Recordings
Downloads and Streaming


3M Says, ‘Go Ahead, Make Something of It’

Abstract: An upbeat new campaign is celebrating the creative possibilities of a product that for decades had been promoted for prosaic purposes. The campaign, now under way, is for Post-it notes, sold by the 3M Company. The campaign, which includes television commercials, ads online, the brand’s Web site and social media, portrays Post-its as much more than sticky pieces of paper that are good for scribbling reminders. The campaign, with a budget estimated at $10 million, presents Post-its as a vehicle for self-expression by depicting the unusual and unexpected ways that consumers use them. That is different from the typical top-down tack in campaigns when marketers offer consumers new ideas for using products, most often seen in food ads that are centered on recipes. The change in tactics by the Post-it brand is underlined by the theme of the campaign, “Go ahead,” which cheerfully encourages consumers to come up with their own nontraditional uses for Post-its. The campaign is being created by Grey New York, part of the Grey division of the Grey Group, which is owned by WPP. The campaign is based on — and recreates — examples of Post-it creativity around the world. They include how passers-by blanketed a window of an empty store in Cambridge , Mass., with Post-its that replied to the question “Who inspires you?”; the so-called “Post-it wars” waged by office workers in buildings in cities like Paris and Seattle, who covered facing windows with thousands of Post-it notes to duplicate the look of pixilated images; and the initiatives by teachers who use Post-it products to enliven their classroom lessons. The Post-it campaign is the most recent in a series of efforts by marketers to take advantage of a trend known as customization, which is particularly reshaping pitches aimed at millennial consumers in their 20s and 30s. Customization refers to the penchant among younger consumers to be expressive and personalize mass-market goods — having it their way, to paraphrase the old Burger King slogan — as they seek to have a say in the story a brand is telling them. Another example in the field of office products is a campaign by Draftfcb , part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, for the Sharpie brand of markers sold by Newell Rubbermaid, which carries the themes “Uncap what’s inside” and “Start with Sharpie.” The home page of the Sharpie Web site asks, “What are you starting?” and prompts visitors to “join the Sharpie community” and “show how creative you can be with Sharpie.” The Post-it campaign begins as 3M reports strong results in its most recent fiscal quarter for sales of Post-its and other products sold by a business segment the company refers to as consumer and office, which includes office supplies and stationery. The Post-it campaign is “a component of our overall revitalization strategy with the business and the brand,” says Jesse Singh, vice president for the stationery and office supplies division of 3M in Minnesota. “If you think about the product, it’s iconic, it’s been in the market over 30 years,” he adds, and until recently the strategy to sell it was by “taking a functional view of the brand.” “As we did research on our customer base,” Mr. Singh says, the crucial finding is that people “had a much more emotional relationship with the product” than 3M executives had expected. “They’re using it to communicate, using it to collaborate, using it to organize themselves,” he adds. That led to a rethinking of how to market Post-it, Mr. Singh says, shifting from a “product-out” perspective to one that is “really consumer-in.” “We were inspired,” he adds, by the “quirky and inspired uses of our product.” That is brought to life in the initial two TV commercials in the campaign. One, which runs 60 seconds , is composed of vignettes. The spot begins with a man sticking a Post-it, which reads “Morning, beautiful,” and includes a pointing arrow, onto the mirror on the bathroom medicine chest as a woman brushes her teeth. “Go ahead, keep the honeymoon going,” a narrator says. The scene shifts to what appears to be a college campus as young people affix Post-it notes to a wall outside a building that is near a sign reading, “What inspires you?” As that vignette, clearly based on the Cambridge store window, appears on screen, the narrator says, “Share on a real wall.” Other vignettes include people adding Post-its to a wall covered with them, which is divided into categories like “App name” and “Features”; a woman sticking Post-its bearing tasks onto windows; a young man covering a wall with artwork created with Post-its of multiple colors; a young woman with a notebook filled with drawings of bridges and Post-its, who is posed between two bridges; and students with a teacher in a classroom. As those vignettes appear on screen, the narrator makes comments that include “Turn up the genius,” “Outsmart the unknown together” “Rewrite the rules for getting it done” and “Keep inspiration at your fingertips.” He concludes by declaring: “Go ahead. Post-it brand.” Image A new campaign for 3M's Post-it notes focuses on unexpected ways to use them. (When the word “brand” is included like that with a brand name, it is usually a sign that the brand’s owner is worried that the brand’s ubiquity may encourage consumers to use the name to describe everyone in the category, even private-label products and generics. Saying “brand” — something done in ads for products like Xerox, Q-Tips, Kleenex and 3M’s own Scotch tape — is to discourage such references.) The commercial ends with a hand removing Post-its from a pad, one by one, revealing phrases like “Go ahead connect,” “Go ahead inspire,” “Go ahead explore” and “Go ahead.” The second commercial that has been introduced, that runs 30 seconds, has a timely tack. “It’s a new year,” a female narrator says, “a new chance to be the person you’ve always wanted to be.” On screen, there are vignettes like a woman exercising on a treadmill that bears a Post-it that reads, “Reunion June 15”; an office with an oversize Post-it on a wall, reading, “New year new goals”; and a woman looking into a mirror bearing a Post-it that reads, “Just be you.” The narrator says: “It’s not about being perfect. Just a little smarter, a little healthier, maybe a little happier.” The second spot ends with the entreaty “Go ahead, start fresh” and a suggestion to look at additional usage ideas on the Post-it Web site. “Post-it has always been a fast, friendly, easy way to get things done,” says Jeff Odiorne, executive creative director at Grey New York, and consumers “understand you can find Post-its pretty much everywhere.” The intent of the campaign is broader, he adds, to convey that “Post-it helps you unlock” possibilities and “open a human way to connect.” The campaign represents “the first time we’re including all these forms of creativity under one banner,” Mr. Odiorne says, reflecting how “consumers have taken it upon themselves to figure out how to use the brand” in unconventional ways. “It’s a brand that consumers love so much, they’ve made it what it is today,” he adds. “The real things that real people do or have done, we want to put those on stage.” There are plans for at least three more commercials this year, Mr. Odiorne says, which are likely to run during the back-to-school shopping season. One spot will feature “moms and kids,” he adds, and the other will be “an ode to teachers and how they inspire us, and how Post-its help them.” The third commercial, meant for college students, will be “in the genre of ‘Go ahead, dream big,’” Mr. Odiorne says, “focused on the optimism of the millennials.” As the campaign proceeds, Mr. Singh says, 3M intends to revamp the experience that consumers have online with Post-it products. “If you look at the way we have operated in the digital space, we have been a very traditional player,” he adds. Zeus Jones , an agency in Minneapolis, is “working with us on our online creative, our digital strategy, our social engagement,” Mr. Singh says. “They’re developing a plan that we’re in the process of implementing.” The reworking will mean significant changes to how the Post-it brand interacts with consumers in social media like Facebook and Twitter . (Mr. Singh and Mr. Odiorne liken a message written on a Post-it to a tweet on Twitter.) Also in the works are an “expansion of our product offerings,” Mr. Singh says, to complement newer items like the Post-it Big Pad. “And we’re expanding the visual design language” of the brand, he adds, to go beyond the familiar colors for Post-its like yellow and appeal more to demographic groups that include “moms and teenagers.” According to the Kantar Media division of WPP, 3M spent $1.63 million to advertise Post-it products during the first nine months of last year, compared with $3.1 million for the similar period of 2011. The total spent for the entire year of 2011 was $3.13 million, Kantar Media reported, much less than the $8.84 million spent in 2010 and a bit more than the $2.81 million in 2009. If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that runs Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times print edition and on nytimes.com. And read coverage anytime of advertising, marketing, television, print, movies and new media on the Media Decoder blog at mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com.

advertising,marketing
Public relations
3M


Death Penalty Sought in Basciano Trial

Abstract: As the death penalty phase began on Tuesday in the trial of a convicted murderer and former mob boss, even the prosecutor acknowledged that capital punishment was not appropriate in most cases. But in the case of this man, Vincent Basciano, it was appropriate, the prosecutor, Jack Dennehy, told a jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Condemning a man to death is not something taken lightly in New York; it has been more than 50 years since a federal defendant was executed in the state, and nearly as long since a state case led to an execution. But Mr. Basciano led a “cold-blooded and remorseless life,” Mr. Dennehy said. Prison walls, he added, would be no obstacle to further misdeeds. Mr. Basciano, who was known in Mafia circles as Vinny Gorgeous, relished determining whether others lived or died, the prosecutor said. Last week, the jury convicted Mr. Basciano, who is already serving a life sentence for murder and racketeering, of plotting to murder a fellow mobster, Randolph Pizzolo. If the jury decides against execution, Mr. Basciano will receive an additional sentence of life in a federal prison without possibility of parole. “Randoph Pizzolo didn’t deserve to be executed, he didn’t deserve a bullet in the brain, he didn’t deserve to be left in the gutter,” Mr. Dennehy said, adding that the killing came as a result of Mr. Basciano’s “rage and desire to be a hoodlum” and his “murderous rise to power.” A few moments later, one of Mr. Basciano’s lawyers, Richard Jasper, argued that his client’s life should be spared in part because several mobsters were also culpable in the death of Mr. Pizzolo but were not facing the death penalty. And he suggested that the victim was far from blameless. “Randolph Pizzolo,” Mr. Jasper said, “willingly participated in dangerous and illegal activities, a circumstance that contributed to his death.” Mr. Basciano’s conviction last week was achieved with the help of a former leader of the Bonanno family, Joseph C. Massino , who testified for the government. Mr. Massino, who is serving two consecutive life sentences for eight murders, was the first official boss of a New York crime family to cooperate with federal authorities. One of the first witnesses to testify on behalf of the government was Dominick Cicale, a former high-ranking member of the Bonanno family and a former associate of Mr. Basciano. Mr. Cicale testified that Mr. Basciano had spoken with him many times over the years about desires to kill others: the Mafia figure Salvatore Vitale, because he might become a government informant; Dominick Martino, because he fought with a senior mobster; Mr. Cicale’s fiancée, Lynette Ayuso, because she might have told Mr. Basciano’s wife about an affair he was having. Mr. Cicale testified that Mr. Basciano even discussed the idea of bursting into a restaurant to kill a federal prosecutor, Greg Andres, who, he believed, had been rude to Mr. Massino. Those murders were never carried out, Mr. Cicale said. But he testified that he had helped Mr. Basciano kill Mr. Pizzolo. A prosecutor, Nicole M. Argentieri, asked why Mr. Pizzolo had been killed. “Because Vincent Basciano couldn’t tolerate Randolph Pizzolo any more,” Mr. Cicale replied. Later, a defense lawyer, George R. Goltzer, asked Mr. Cicale if he, too, was facing the death penalty for that murder. “I decided to become a government informant,” Mr. Cicale said. “So, no, they took the death penalty away.” The last time a federal defendant was executed in New York State was in 1954, when Gerhard A. Puff, who had been convicted of murdering an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was put to death. Last year, an appeals court reversed a death penalty verdict in the case of Ronell Wilson , who was convicted of executing a police officer on Staten Island in 2003.

Basciano Vincent
Capital Punishment
Organized Crime
Bonanno Crime Family
Brooklyn (NYC)


For Struggling Tribe, Dark Side to a Windfall

Abstract: KLAMATH, Calif. — You do not have to drive far into the town of Klamath to see the poverty and the potential of the Yurok Indians, the largest tribe in California and one of the poorest. Just off Highway 101, past an understocked grocery and an overstocked bar, sits a row of ragged mobile homes behind a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. Beat-up cars sit along the gravel drives, as does the occasional bored teenager. There are also signs of change. A handsome tribal headquarters and a crisp new gas station anchor the reservation. And slot machines are on their way, 99 of them approved by the state, expected to be housed in a new building near tribal headquarters. But in many ways, the Yurok people have already hit the jackpot. This spring, the Department of the Interior paid the tribe $92.6 million in logging proceeds, a figure roughly six times the tribe’s annual budget. Yet even the silver cloud, it seems, has a dark lining. The money, which had been held in trust by the government for nearly two decades, has sharply divided the Yurok people, pushing them into two passionate camps: those who prefer long-term community projects and social programs and those who want the money handed up now. It is a dispute that has echoed through meetings and conversations for months, and one that has upset elders who watched the tribe battle all manner of enemies — settlers and neighbors, white men and fellow Indians — only to find themselves fighting one another. “We’re a culture people, we’re a fishing people and a ceremony people,” said Raymond Mattz, 64, a member of the tribal council. “But it’s a rough time for us because everybody is so poor, and the money is making everybody a little goofy.” On one side of the issue are leaders like Maria Tripp, the tribal chairwoman, who favors programs to address the myriad problems the tribe has struggled with over the years, including high unemployment, flagging fishing, drugs and alcohol, and the dwindling of lands, traditions and hope. “We’re not going to get another $92 million dropped in our lap,” Ms. Tripp said. “This is an opportunity for us.” On the other, some here feel that the money could — and should — be used to alleviate the day-to-day problems for hundreds of the tribe’s 5,000 members. “We’ve got tribal members right now who have been waiting all their life,” said Willard Carlson Jr., 57, a tribe member. “And the thing about it is, it’s not the tribal government’s money. It’s the people’s money.” The settlement was a result of a 1988 act of Congress that established the Yurok reservation. The law provided payment for the pre-1988 sale of logs on their land, some 63,000 acres about 325 miles north of San Francisco that snake along the fog-shrouded, and once salmon-rich, Klamath River. To gain the timber payment, the Yurok leadership only recently agreed not to sue the government in regards to the 1988 law, said Douglas Wheeler, a lawyer with Hogan & Hartson in Washington who is representing the tribe. The issue of how to spend the money is up for a vote this fall, and the tribal council is required to put forth a plan. But at a tribal meeting in early August, several speakers were already expressing impatience about the pace of progress. At the annual salmon festival on Aug. 19, the tribe’s biggest event of the year, one parade float included a large sign reading: “Lump sum for all tribal members — 100 percent of settlement, 100 percent of interest!” Various per capita proposals being floated include adults-only allotments, as well as payments for all members, plans that could result in payments of roughly $15,000 to $20,000. That sort of opinion infuriates tribe members like Tom Willson, who works at the town fishery and said the settlement should be “seed money, to buy some of our lands back, to run programs, to ensure that the Yurok people go on forever.” “If we squander that money, we’ll be in bad shape in a couple of years,” Mr. Willson said. “We’ll be nowhere.” It was not always this way. Tribal lore holds that the Yurok were once one of the most prosperous tribes in the West. Their lands were — and still are — spectacular: lush green mountains reflected in the placid waters of the Klamath, which flows into the Pacific through a narrow sand channel. Legend has it that the passage is guarded by Oregos, an outcropping of rock resembling a mother with a child on her back, and that the Klamath beyond her was once so full of salmon a person could walk across the river on the backs of the fish. And sure enough, for many generations, the fish and the redwoods provided jobs and prosperity, members say. But while Yurok fisherman still use traditional nets to catch salmon — which can bring more than $3 a pound at market — commercial fishing has largely faded, they say. The main culprit, in their opinion, is four upstream dams, structures the tribe wants removed, especially after a 2002 fish kill in which tens of thousands of adult salmon and steelhead trout died after low water levels caused disease to spread. Some members of the tribe have sued the dams’ owners. Logging has also suffered over the years, even as the tribe has been victim to other sorts of bad luck and policy. A 1964 flood devastated Klamath, as did a period of relocations after World War II. The tribe was not officially organized until 1992; it split from the neighboring Hoopa tribe as part of the 1988 act. “Day to day, there are no jobs here,” Ms. Tripp said. “Fishing is bad. We have a lot of methamphetamine on the reservation. There are a lot of elders who wait year after year for help with housing, for help with a lot of programs. So there’s that feeling that they’ve waited long enough.” Of the tribe’s 5,000 or so members, only about 1,500 live on the reservation, Ms. Tripp said, including those in remote upstream villages. About one-third of the tribe on the reservation lives off the electric grid, using gasoline generators, kerosene lamps and candles to fight the night. Cultural differences between those on and those off the reservation have also been aggravated by the $92 million, as have tensions between older, more traditional members and more independent-minded youth. Iska George, 20, a student who goes to college in Eureka, 65 miles away, said he wanted his share of the settlement to pay for tuition and living expenses. Mr. George said he could see spending 15 percent of the money on educational scholarships, but argued that the bulk should go to tribe members. “So I can get out of here and have a life,” he said, “and not be stuck on the reservation like everybody else is.” Others want a compromise, with some money for programs and a per-capita payment. “I think I’d give out nine pieces of pie,” said Paul Van Menchelen, 47, a former drinker who pulled his life together and now sells salmon jerky by the side of Highway 101. He would divide the money, he said, into “$10 million each for elders, alcoholics, business owners. And I’d save some for that rainy day.” Ms. Tripp said she would support a little money for both sides. Right now, however, the Yurok heart seems conflicted. In July, the tribe held a brush dance, traditionally used to help heal a child, in this case a young member with asthma. Mr. Mattz, the councilman who was the plaintiff in a 1973 Supreme Court case that won for the tribe the right to fish in the Klamath, said attendance was larger than he had seen at a ceremony for a long time. “It seemed like people needed that dance so bad, and I haven’t felt that in years,” he said. “I think it’s because of this money and people fighting. I think they needed the ceremony to get their thoughts on the river and the culture. It was a good feeling.”

Indians American
California
Tribes and Tribalism
Economic Conditions and Trends


A.M.D. Says Pricing Battle May Affect Its Revenue Goal

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO, March 5 — Advanced Micro Devices said Monday that it was unlikely the company would meet its target of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion in revenue for the first quarter, providing evidence that the price war with Intel was continuing to take its toll. “This has turned out to be a challenging quarter for us,” Hector Ruiz, A.M.D.’s chief executive, told investors at a technology conference sponsored by Morgan Stanley. Mr. Ruiz, while acknowledging the pricing environment was “very competitive,” said the company had underestimated demand for its microprocessors from its newest customers — personal computer makers — while failing to meet the needs of its longtime reseller partners, who were left high and dry. “We didn’t do as good a job as we should have,” Mr. Ruiz said. In the last few quarters, A.M.D. began selling chips directly to Dell, which last year announced it would buy chips from A.M.D. as well as its longtime supplier, Intel. “We need to fix the challenge that we created in the fourth and first quarter with our channel partners, and get our distribution systems back on track,” Mr. Ruiz said. “I think going into second quarter that we can regain the position we had before.” Shares of A.M.D. fell 23 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $13.95, its lowest in 52 weeks. Intel’s shares declined 11 cents, to $19.11. Mr. Ruiz told investors that he expected the pricing battles to continue, but that A.M.D.’s competitiveness would improve with the arrival of A.M.D.’s new chip architecture this summer. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial before A.M.D.’s warning were expecting the company to lose 25 cents a share on revenue of $1.66 billion for the first quarter, on average. A.M.D. and Intel have been locked in a fierce price war for the last year. Intel had stepped up its campaign to win back market share it lost to A.M.D. while it retooled its product strategy and A.M.D. cut prices on desktop processors last month by as much as 35 percent. During the fourth quarter, according to the market researcher Mercury Research, A.M.D. reached its highest market share ever, with 25.3 percent of the microprocessor market, leaving Intel with slightly less than three-quarters of the market. While the price war has affected the gross margins at both companies, the moves have had a more drastic impact on A.M.D. this last year. For the fourth quarter, the chip maker posted gross margins of 36.1 percent, far below the 46.4 percent in the previous year’s fourth quarter and 51 percent in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2006, A.M.D. had a loss of $574 million, or $1.08 a share, in contrast with a profit of $96 million, or 21 cents a share, a year earlier. The company attributed the decline in part to charges stemming from the company’s $5.6 billion acquisition of ATI Technologies last year. A.M.D.’s revenue for the quarter was $1.77 billion, a decline from $1.84 billion a year earlier. Meanwhile, Intel’s chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, told the same investor conference that competition in the chip business was continuing to put pressure on pricing, but he did not update the company’s forecast of revenue from $8.9 billion to $9.3 billion. Mr. Otellini said Intel would continue to focus on maintaining its large share of the computer chip market, which has ranged from 72 percent to around 86 percent in the last 10 years. “Staying in that range is our modus operandi,” Mr. Otellini said. “In order to generate the scale at which we operate our business, having a very significant market share is critical.” Intel Says Some Documents Lost SAN JOSE, Calif., March 5 (AP) — The Intel Corporation, the chip maker, said on Monday that it might have lost some internal e-mail messages that it was supposed to turn over as possible evidence in the landmark antitrust lawsuit filed by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. A.M.D. said Intel’s revelation demonstrates “a combination of gross communication failures, an ill-conceived plan of document retention and lackluster oversight by outside counsel” that has allowed evidence from executives and other workers to be destroyed. The lawsuit, filed in June 2005, claims that Intel forced major customers into exclusive deals and offered secret rebates to undercut A.M.D. in the market for microprocessors. Intel said it notified A.M.D. last month that it had discovered that some documents had been lost.

Company Reports
Advanced Micro Devices Inc
Computer Chips
Intel Corp


Connecticut Bank Sued in Madoff Investment Scheme

Abstract: The holders of more than two dozen retirement accounts have sued the Westport National Bank in Connecticut over its role in handling their investments in Bernard L. Madoff ’s long-running Ponzi scheme . The lawsuit , filed on Wednesday in Connecticut Superior Court in Stamford, seeks to recover $60 million that the retirement plans lost when the Madoff fraud collapsed in December, as well as millions of dollars in fees that the bank charged customers who maintained the accounts. The focus of the lawsuit is the custodian agreement that the bank required each account holder to sign before it accepted any money to be invested with Mr. Madoff. The agreement, a copy of which was filed as an exhibit in the case, states that the customer “has not relied on the bank in choosing” the Madoff firm. But it also indicates that the bank would take custody of whatever investments Mr. Madoff made on the customers’ behalf. For example, the agreement specifically requires the bank to adequately document the customers’ ownership of investments made with the Madoff firm “and held by the bank as custodian.” In fact, there was nothing for the bank to hold since Mr. Madoff never bought any securities for his investors, according to the bankruptcy trustee liquidating the Madoff estate. Instead, he used most of the cash he received from investors to cover dividends and redemptions paid to other investors. The bank did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But when its customers first complained publicly in January about its role in their Madoff accounts, it released a statement saying it had acted “in a ministerial capacity only” and had not invested any of its money with Mr. Madoff. David S. Golub of Silver Golub & Teitell in Stamford, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the bank would have quickly discovered that Mr. Madoff was operating a fraud if it had been carrying out its custodial obligations. “That was the protection the account holders had against fraud — you can’t run a Ponzi scheme if you have to deliver the securities you’re supposed to purchase,” Mr. Golub said. “The bank simply disregarded its obligation.” Moreover, he said, the bank charged fees for the custodial accounts “as if it were actually holding Madoff’s investments.” The plaintiffs in the lawsuit — individual retirement accounts and the pension plans for several small businesses and medical offices — have asked the court to designate their case as a class action on behalf of others who invested in the Madoff scheme through custodian accounts at the bank.

Westport National Bank
Suits and Litigation
Madoff Bernard L
Retirement
Connecticut


A Question of Forgiving

Abstract: This past week, Eliot Spitzer, having announced that he was seeking the office of city comptroller, spoke with countless members of the news media to say the same thing: that his sexual indiscretions showed a regrettable lack of judgment; that “hubris is terminal” (a phrase he appears to have used for nearly a decade, only now registering its personal relevance); that as comptroller, he would do more than ensure that “the paper clips are counted”; and that he is ready now to ask for “forgiveness” in order to serve as a city functionary. It is unclear what “forgiveness” really has to do with supporting him; forgiveness is for intimates. Anyone voting for Mr. Spitzer would need simply to arrive at the conclusion that the skills he would provide as a fund manager and watchdog outweigh the recklessness he displayed in handling his erotic urges. But at least some portion of the electorate seems to have processed Mr. Spitzer’s transgressions personally. “Sorry Spitzer, I’m Not Ready to Forgive You,” was the headline of a column on Time.com by Ruth Davis Konigsberg, who wrote that she had “loved Eliot Spitzer,” that friends became prosecutors because of him and that now those friends “may never look at public service the same way again.” The column coincided with an interview on “Morning Joe” in which Mika Brzezinski faced Mr. Spitzer looking as disappointed in him as if he were a close friend who had neglected to visit after gallbladder surgery. One significant way that his candidacy seems different from Anthony D. Weiner’s in the aftermath of his own scandal is that the former congressman was never inspiring enough to leave many people feeling so betrayed. I suspect that some women feel cheated by Mr. Spitzer for playing so egregiously against type: the well-to-do, progressive Ivy League lawyer with the perfect LSAT scores — the “Lean In” reader’s ideal eHarmony matchup — isn’t supposed to conduct himself like a bond trader three weeks out of the Sigma Chi house. It seems worth examining the forgiveness meme in historical context. In 1960, Norman Mailer, then 37 and a future mayoral candidate, was arrested for and pleaded guilty to stabbing his wife Adele in the back and abdomen at a party at the couple’s Upper West Side apartment. The attack left Mrs. Mailer in critical condition at University Hospital on Second Avenue, where she told doctors that she had injured herself falling on glass. (As it happened, Mailer had been arrested the previous week on a charge of disorderly conduct after a dispute over a bill, for $7.60, at Birdland.) Nine years later, Mailer ran for mayor, winning 5 percent of the vote. Most remarkably, he did so with the support of Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem, a key campaign adviser who offered her house for early strategy sessions . It’s hard to imagine that prominent feminists weren’t disgusted by Mailer’s history of domestic violence, but it’s doubtful they thought about it in terms of something that they should or shouldn’t forgive. Clearly, they were able to compartmentalize, putting aside serious personal failings for the sake of a shared vision of urban revitalization. Image The novelist Norman Mailer campaigned for New York City mayor in 1969, several years after pleading guilty to stabbing his wife. Credit Michael Evans/The New York Times There are plenty of negative things to be said about Eliot Spitzer, but it can’t be said that he does not have a vision of what the world ought to look like, and what it ought to look like is a world in which Wall Street wields considerably less influence. The city’s longest-serving comptroller in the 20th century, Harrison J. Goldin, a successful public servant who helped shepherd the city out of its financial crisis in the 1970s and ’80s, bears certain marked similarities to the former governor. Impressively intelligent — Mr. Goldin was a top-ranked student at the Bronx High School of Science and went on to Princeton and law school at Yale — he stood for things, had a reputation for unchecked arrogance and ambition and used the role of the comptroller’s office as expansively as Mr. Spitzer plans to. Mr. Goldin used the power of the city’s pension funds to push American companies to divest of interests in apartheid South Africa. This spurred other cities to follow suit. He hired outside accountants who revealed the city’s fiscal troubles to begin with. When he reviewed the efficiency of city agencies, he sought to improve those that were inefficient. Having noted that high-performing schools had high parental involvement, for instance, he promoted the notion of more parental participation. The idea that food, left over in restaurants, ought to be distributed to the poor was one that grew out of his office. When I called Mr. Goldin last week and asked him what characteristics a good comptroller must possess, he kept returning to the matter of “social conscience.” The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, Mr. Spitzer’s opponent, is a very good candidate hardly devoid of a conscience. But in some sense, Mr. Spitzer’s flawed history is precisely his advantage, insomuch as it has left the media addicted to everything he says and thinks. Arguably, a vote for Mr. Spitzer is a vote for the elevated profile of a certain set of beliefs embraced with not nearly enough enthusiasm in the Democratic Party, particularly at the local level, where politicians all too often comport themselves as the financial industry’s handmaidens. Beyond Senator Elizabeth Warren, it’s hard to think of another major political figure who has taken on class warfare as passionately as Mr. Spitzer, a rich person, who for whatever reason seems to harbor a certain fierce antipathy toward lots of other rich people. It’s not as if anyone looks at Christine C. Quinn and says, “Thank goodness; at long last a crusader against the banks.”

Eliot L Spitzer
NYC
Politics
Comptroller race


Georgia: Governor Lifts Block Against Syrian Refugees

Abstract: Gov. Nathan Deal rescinded an executive order trying to stop resettlement of Syrian refugees on Monday, five days after Attorney General Sam Olens said Mr. Deal did not have that authority. The Republican governor’s one-sentence order cited the opinion by Mr. Olens. Mr. Deal directed agencies on Nov. 16 to "halt any involvement" in the acceptance of Syrian refugees until federal authorities changed the vetting process.

Nathan Deal
Sam Olens
Georgia
Refugees,Internally Displaced People
Syria


SXSW Addresses Online Harassment of Women in Gaming

Abstract: AUSTIN, Tex. — Brianna Wu, a prominent video game developer, is no stranger to threats against her life. In a panel at the South by Southwest conference here on Saturday, she held up a picture of an Internet troll in a skeleton mask. This person, whose identity remains anonymous, sent Ms. Wu a message claiming he wanted to end her life by putting a drill to her forehead. “The abuse that I’ve undergone has been extreme,” she said, adding that her husband and dog had both been threatened as well. The experiences of Ms. Wu, who works for the gaming studio Giant Spacekat, are not an anomaly. Other women in the gaming community have faced similar online harassment, which, they say, goes far beyond name calling and has moved into the realm of violent threats and rampant misogyny. Much of it has centered on the games industry and is associated with a grass-roots movement called “#GamerGate,” a term used by a group of people who are fighting against what they say are unfair portrayals of video game enthusiasts as anti-feminists and misogynists. But, paradoxically, people associated with the movement have systematically targeted and attacked women online, including women like Ms. Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist cultural critic who focuses often on video games and game culture. Even events attempting to discuss and curtail the harassment of women online and in the gaming community are targets. In October, planners of the South by Southwest conference canceled two events — “SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community” and “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games” — citing threats of “on-site violence” related to the panels. After an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the greater online community, conference planners returned with a plan for a daylong meeting at South by Southwest, one dedicated to addressing online harassment and featuring prominent members of the gaming community and employees at the tech companies that are caught in the middle of the online fighting. At the summit’s 15 panel discussions in the Hyatt Regency Austin downtown, security guards checked attendants’ bags on the way into each room. A half-dozen police officers milled about in the hours before the events started, scanning the crowds for any potential problems. Each session was attended by a police officer who sat at the back of the ballroom surveying the crowd and looking for unattended bags. The sessions, though, were sparsely attended , in some cases with roughly 80 percent of the seats empty. As part of a panel discussion called “Is a Safer, Saner and Civil Internet Possible?” Ms. Wu said she has had over 200 death threats in the past few years. She criticized some of the technology companies that acted as meeting hubs for GamerGate supporters — particularly YouTube and Reddit, the online message board — for not doing enough to take down offensive content when it was posted. Reddit does not require users to register real names or any other identifying information to use the site. It is a regular congregation spot for GamerGate activists. “I can’t say this clearly enough: Reddit is failing women in every marginalized community spectacularly,” Ms. Wu said. Given the scale of these services, policing harassment is a mind-bogglingly large task. Some 1.6 billion people regularly use Facebook, while YouTube users upload about 400 hours of video every minute. Reddit, which has raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, sees hundreds of millions of regular monthly users and relies primarily on its users to police themselves. What is difficult for the companies is toeing the line between free speech — a value that many companies in Silicon Valley strongly support — and harassment, which can make the users of these networks feel unwelcome, unsafe or worse. Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, says Facebook tries to distinguish between generalized vitriol and vitriol that is directed at a specific person. “If someone says, ‘This country is terrible,’ that’s O.K.,” she said. “If somebody says, ‘The people of this nationality are evil,’ that we will remove.” But beyond general harassment, a recurring theme across all the sessions — told through chilling anecdotes and statistics — was the extent to which online hatred is disproportionately directed toward women. And, indeed, women made up many of the attendees and panelists. They included video game developers, executives at companies like Google and Facebook as well as politicians like Representative Katherine Clark, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Wendy Davis, the former Texas state senator who ran as the Democratic candidate for governor in 2014. Representative Clark said she was proposing legislation that would increase training for law enforcement officials on investigating and prosecuting online harassment of women. The day’s event ended without incident, but the issues were far from settled. While tech companies have tried much harder to tackle issues of online harassment than in the past — driven largely by the awareness of the GamerGate movement — they all still have a long way to go, Ms. Wu said. “There is this very wide discrepancy between what tech companies say they do and what the outcome is,” she said.

Cyberharassment,Online harassment
Women and Girls
Computer and Video Games
South by Southwest,SXSW


A Review of Nissos in Syosset

Abstract: A recent visit to Nissos , a Greek restaurant that opened in Syosset in June, emphasized why I wait at least a month to review a new place. Friends who were there earlier this summer described the service as comical; now adjectives like attentive, concerned, smooth and speedy apply. Nissos, which means “island” in Greek, lives up to its name. It’s easy to imagine a whitewashed island with golden sand surrounded by a sparkling blue sea while dining there. The restaurant is airy and bright with royal blue wooden tables, white chairs, pale blue walls and a brilliant blue raftered ceiling. Across the back wall is a banquette covered in pale cloth; the same material is used on the seat cushions and draped over the ceiling’s rafters. This free-standing building, on Berry Hill Road in the heart of Syosset, has been home to more restaurants in the last few years than I can count. Cuisines have ranged from Chinese to Belgian to American. I know I’ve been here for at least six incarnations, but this latest one certainly is appealing. Image It offers grilled seafood dishes like a whole branzino. Credit Kathy Kmonicek for The New York Times Nissos is owned by Gus Skoufis and Antoni Farozes, who is also the chef. Grilled fish seems to be his specialty, judging by my favorite dishes and an eye-catching display of seafood on ice in the dining room. The most expensive of the fish selections, the grilled whole black sea bass, was a treat: lightly charred, moist and flavorful. Diners may choose to have it on the bone or filleted. We were also impressed by the whole branzino and the grilled tuna steak special. The fish are listed on the menu with their prices, not sold by the pound, which is the practice in some Mediterranean restaurants and can result in sticker shock when the bill arrives. Among the meats, we gave high marks to the grilled lamb chops, five juicy beauties served with Greek fries (thin rounds, called Spanish potatoes at Iberian restaurants). Each menu entree comes with a choice of Greek fries, lemon potatoes, rice or xorta (sautéed dandelion greens, which are appealing but in need of a squeeze of lemon). One evening I ordered the grilled jumbo shrimp, listed on the menu for $25. They were firm and tasty, but I thought I was going to get the huge heads-on creatures I’d spied in the ice display. My mistake. The waiter offered to switch the order, but the dish that featured them was about $10 more. A special entree featuring a stuffed pepper and a stuffed tomato (with rice and meat) was under-seasoned and boring. As I said: Stick to the seafood. Image It also offers an octopus appetizer, tossed with a confetti of colorful peppers and capers in fruity olive oil. Credit Kathy Kmonicek for The New York Times One dish not to miss, for example, is the grilled octopus appetizer. Its presentation didn’t include the sometimes off-putting plate of tentacles, but instead had approachable rounds of tender meat, tossed with a confetti of colorful peppers and capers in fruity olive oil. I was disappointed by the tiganita (crispy zucchini and eggplant chips). It’s my favorite Greek dish, but this version had an acrid, burnt taste. The salads at Nissos put vegetables back in good standing. The traditional Greek salad (the one without lettuce, but instead with deep red tomato chunks, cucumbers, onions, olives, green peppers and feta cheese, as served in Greece) and the feathery green salad of chopped romaine, scallions, dill and feta in a just-right vinaigrette were fresh successes. All the spreads, including the tzatziki, which arrived with triangles of warm pita at the start of the meal, the skordalia (cold mashed potatoes heady with garlic), the creamy taramosalata (assertive caviar spread) and the smoky, smooth eggplant dip, were crowd-pleasers. The meal ends with a choice of two complimentary and delicious house-made desserts: baklava or galactoboureko (a layering of creamy custard and phyllo pastry). A meal at Nissos can be reminiscent of the Greek islands. But Syosset is a lot closer.

Restaurant
Syosset NY
Nissos
Gus Skoufis
Antoni Farozes


Things to Do on Long Island, April 12 to 18, 2015

Abstract: A guide to cultural and recreational events on Long Island. Items for the calendar should be sent at least three weeks in advance to lical@nytimes.com. Film HUNTINGTON Cinema Arts Center “Fay Grim,” directed by Hal Hartley. April 13 at 7:30 p.m. $12. “Ned Rifle,” directed by Hal Hartley. Through April 14. $10 to $15. National Theatre Live: Broadcast From London’s West End: “The Hard Problem,” by Tom Stoppard. April 16 through 23. $20 and $25. Cinema for Kids! “Mary Poppins.” April 19 at noon. $7 and $12. Rock Legends Live! Rare concert footage From Shelley Archives: James Taylor — 1969-1980s. April 21 at 7:30 p.m. $10 and $15. Spirituality Through Film/International Earth Day: “Planetary,” documentary directed by Guy Reid. April 22 at 7:30 p.m. $7 and $12. Cinema Arts Center, 423 Park Avenue. cinemaartscentre.org; 800-838-3006. ROSLYN HARBOR Nassau County Museum of Art “Drawn From Nature,” a 57-minute film about the naturalist John James Audubon. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. and noon. Through July 12. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1 Museum Drive. 516-484-9337; nassaumuseum.org. SAG HARBOR Bay Street Theater Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival presents a tribute to the filmmaker Albert Maysles. April 19 at 2:30 p.m. $15. Bay Street Theater, Main and Bay Streets. 631-725-9500; baystreet.org. For Children COLD SPRING HARBOR Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery and Aquarium Hatchery Earth Day Celebrations. Make an “Animal Passport” to learn about frogs. April 18 and 19. Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery and Aquarium, 1660 Route 25A. 516-692-6768; cshfha.org. GARDEN CITY Long Island Children’s Museum April is National Poetry Month. Create an acrostic poem for April. April 14 through 17, 2:30 to 4 p.m. Free with museum admission, $11 and $12. “Music and Movement.” Pick up a musical instrument and add your voice to our singalong session. April 15, 11:30 a.m. to noon. $3 with museum admission, $11 and $12. “Traveling Exhibit: Healthyville.” Health lessons through activities. Through May 3. Free with museum admission, $11 and $12. Long Island Children’s Museum, 11 Davis Avenue. 516-224-5800; licm.org. NORTHPORT John W. Engeman Theater at Northport “Cinderella,” musical. Through May 10. $15. John W. Engeman Theater at Northport, 250 Main Street. engemantheater.com; 631-261-2900. ROSLYN HARBOR Nassau County Museum of Art “Art in Action! A Celebration of Earth Day,” with animals from the Science Museum of Long Island. Guided by the artist Karine Falleni, families will observe animals and create art using yoga and art materials. April 19, 1 to 4 p.m. Free. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1 Museum Drive. 516-484-9337; nassaumuseum.org. Music and Dance BAY SHORE Y.M.C.A. Boulton Center for the Performing Arts Barnaby Bye, rock. April 18 at 8 p.m. $40 and $45. Martha Davis & the Motels, rock. April 25 at 8 p.m. $40. Y.M.C.A. Boulton Center for the Performing Arts, 37 West Main Street. boultoncenter.org; 631-969-1101. BROOKVILLE Tilles Center for the Performing Arts “Barber of Seville,” performed by the Dicapo Opera Theater. April 17 at 8 p.m. $43 to $83. Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, 720 Northern Boulevard. 516-299-3100; tillescenter.org. EAST HAMPTON Guild Hall The Hampton Ballet Theater School. April 17 through 19. $20 and $30. Guild Hall, 158 Main Street. 855-222-2849; hamptonballettheatreschool.com. GARDEN CITY Adelphi University Performing Arts Center Waldorf Choral Society Spring Concert, including Mozart’s “Regina Coeli K. 276” and “Gloria” by Randol Bass. April 18 at 8 p.m. $18 and $20. Adelphi University Performing Arts Center, 1 South Avenue. 516-877-4000; aupac.adelphi.edu. HEMPSTEAD Monroe Lecture Center Theater, Hofstra University The Bronx Opera Company presents “Opera-in-Concert — The Marriage of Figaro,” with Michael Spierman as narrator. April 15 at 8 p.m. $10 and $12. American Chamber Ensemble presents Spanish Masterworks Concert. April 19 at 3 p.m. $15 and $20. americanchamberensemble.com. Hofstra Jazz Ensemble, traditional and contemporary arrangements for big band and vocal jazz quartet. April 19 at 7 p.m. $5 and $6. hofstra.edu/music. Monroe Lecture Center Theater, Hofstra University, South Campus, California Avenue. 516-463-6644; hofstra.edu. HUNTINGTON Cinema Arts Center PUBLIQuartet, including works by Claude Debussy and Charlie Parker. April 24 at 7:30 p.m. $20 and $25. Cinema Arts Center, 423 Park Avenue. 800-838-3006; cinemaartscentre.org. HUNTINGTON Huntington High School The Huntington Choral Society. April 25 at 8 p.m. $20, students free. Huntington High School, 188 Oakwood Road. 631-421-7464; huntingtonchoralsociety.org. HUNTINGTON The Paramount Testament with Exodus and Shattered Sun, rock. April 19 at 8 p.m. $29.50 to $44.50. Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt, acoustic. April 22 at 8 p.m. $45 to $85. Voyage, a Journey tribute band. April 24 at 8 p.m. $15 to $35. The Paramount, 370 New York Avenue. 631-673-7300; paramountny.com. JERICHO Jericho Jewish Center Rick Recht, rock. April 26 at 7 p.m. $18 and $45. Jericho Jewish Center, 430 North Broadway. 516-938-2540; ticketriver.com/event/15033. LAWRENCE Peninsula Public Library A tribute to Frank Sinatra with Harvey Granat, accompanied by David Lahm, pianist. April 16 at 1 p.m. Free. Rhonda Denet and the Silver Fox Trio, with Dave McDowell on saxophone. April 26 at 2:30 p.m. Free; tickets are required. Peninsula Public Library, 280 Central Avenue. nassaulibrary.org/peninsula; 516-239-3262. NORTHPORT Houghton Hall Theater at Trinity Episcopal Church Kaufman and Hart’s “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” 50th production by the Minstrel Players of Northport for their 15th anniversary. April 25 through May 3. $15 and $20. Houghton Hall Theater at Trinity Episcopal Church, 30 Main Street. minstrelplayers.org; 631-732-2926. NORTHPORT John W. Engeman Theater at Northport “A Chorus Line,” musical by Marvin Hamlisch. Through May 10. $69. John W. Engeman Theater at Northport, 250 Main Street. 631-261-2900; engemantheater.com. NORTHPORT Northport VA Medical Center Building Auditorium Island Symphony presents a concert for veterans and their families, performing Saint-Saens’ Bacchanal from “Samson and Delilah,” Faure’s Pelleas and Melisande Suite and Franck’s Symphony in D Minor. Open to the public. April 19 at 2 p.m. Free. Northport VA Medical Center Building Auditorium, 79 Middleville Road. 631-261-4400; northport.va.gov. PATCHOGUE Patchogue Theater for the Performing Arts “Patti LuPone: Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda.” April 18 at 8 p.m. $45. Patchogue Theater for the Performing Arts, 71 East Main Street. patchoguetheatre.com; 631-207-1313. PORT WASHINGTON Landmark on Main Street Rhiannon Giddens, folk, jazz, gospel and blues. April 17 at 8 p.m. $42 to $52. Fatoumata Diawara, a Malian musician. April 18 at 8 p.m. $32 to $42. Pasek and Paul & Friends. The “Dogfight” authors reunite with the cast members Derek Klena, Jenn Damiano, Lindsay Mendez and Ben Platt in concert. April 25 at 8 p.m. $37 to $47. Landmark on Main Street, 232 Main Street. 516-767-6444; landmarkonmainstreet.org. SHOREHAM North Shore Public Library “Chamber Music at its Best — Spain, Hungary and Germany,” Robyn Quinnett, Maria Martinez and Guy Slapak. April 24 at 7 p.m. Free. North Shore Public Library, 250 Route 25A. 631-929-4488; northshorepubliclibrary.org. SOUTHAMPTON Southampton Cultural Center Rising Stars Piano Series presents Tomer Gewirtzman. April 18 at 7 p.m. $15. Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane. southamptonculturalcenter.org; 631-287-4377. Image QUOGUE “Ditch Diva”(2014) is in “Nicole Franz: Pieces of Long Island,” at the Quogue Library Art Gallery, 90 Quogue Street, through April 28. 631-653-4224; quoguelibrary.org . Credit Nicole Franz STONY BROOK University Cafe, Stony Brook University Men at Words, folk. April 26 at 7 p.m. $25 and $30. University Cafe, Stony Brook University, 100 Nicolls Road. universitycafe.org; 631-632-1093. Outdoors OYSTER BAY Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center “Meet Our Raptors,” animal-themed strategy games. April 18, 1 to 2 p.m. $6 and $10. Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center, 134 Cove Road. 516-922-3200; ny.audubon.org/CentersEdu_TRoosevelt.html. WESTHAMPTON BEACH Cupsogue Beach County Park Cresli Seal Walk at Cupsogue Beach. Two-hour walk to learn about, observe and photograph seals in the wild. Through April 26. $3 and $5; reservation required. Cupsogue Beach County Park, Dune Road. cresli.org/cresli/reservations/seal_walk_reservations.html; 631-244-3352. Spoken Word BOHEMIA Connetquot Public Library Paula Rizzo discusses her book “Listful Thinking: Using Lists to Be More Productive, Successful and Less Stressed.” April 16, 7 to 8:30 p.m. Free. Connetquot Public Library, 760 Ocean Avenue. 631-567-5079; connetquotlibrary.org. HUNTINGTON Library at Seminary of the Immaculate Conception Annabelle Moseley, 2014 Long Island Poet of the Year, reading and book signing. April 19 at 2 p.m. Free. Library at Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, 440 West Neck Road. 631-423-0483, ext. 141; icseminary.edu/library. LAWRENCE Rock Hall Museum “Women and the Revolutionary War,” Dr. Natalie Naylor, speaker. April 19 at 1:30 p.m. Free. Rock Hall Museum, 199 Broadway. 516-239-1157; friendsofrockhall.org. LEVITTOWN Levittown Public Library Mario Susko, Nassau County poet laureate and Maria Victoria Hughes, author of “Things You Wanted to Say,” will read from their poetry collections. April 13 at 1 p.m. Free. Levittown Public Library, 1 Bluegrass Lane. liwg.com; 516-731-5728. OYSTER BAY Oyster Bay Historical Society “Long Island and the Civil War,” talk and book signing with Bill Bleyer and Harrison Hunt. April 20 at 7 p.m. Free. Oyster Bay Historical Society, 20 Summit Street. 516-922-5032; oysterbayhistorical.org. PLAINVIEW At Young Israel of Plainview Dr. Jud Newborn will lecture about Jewish resistance to commemorate Yom HaShoah and the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto revolt. April 19 at 6:45 p.m. $10 suggested donation. At Young Israel of Plainview, 132 Southern Parkway. 516-433-4811; yiplainview.com. ROSLYN HARBOR Nassau County Museum of Art “Brown Bag Lecture.” Museum docent Riva Ettus will speak about the works on view in “Out of the Vault: 25 Years of Collecting.” April 16 at 1 p.m. Free with museum admission. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1 Museum Drive. 516-484-9337; nassaumuseum.org. SHOREHAM North Shore Public Library “The Celebration of Poetry.” Bring one to three of your own poems or those of a poet you admire. April 19 at 2 p.m. Free. North Shore Public Library, 250 Route 25A. northshorepubliclibrary.org; 631-929-4488. Theater GARDEN CITY Adelphi University Performing Arts Center “Hopper: A New Musical,” book by Anton Dudley, music and lyrics by Jonatha Brooke. Through April 12. $20. Adelphi University Performing Arts Center, 1 South Avenue. aupac.adelphi.edu; 516-877-4000. NORTHPORT Bare Bones Theater Company “The _____ With the Hat,” comedy by Stephen Adly Guirgis. April 16 through May 3. $25. Bare Bones Theater Company, 57 Main Street. barebonestheater.com; 631-606-0026. NORTHPORT St. Paul’s United Methodist Church The Sixth Annual Northport One-Act Play Festival. April 18 and 19. St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 270 Main Street. northportplays.com; 631-223-8053. BELLPORT Boys and Girls Club Auditorium “Born Yesterday” by Garson Kanin, performed by the Playcrafters Theater Company. April 24 through May 3. $16 to $20. Boys and Girls Club Auditorium, 471 Atlantic Avenue. bellport-playcrafters.com; 631-748-7863. LEVITTOWN Levittown Public Library “Visiting Mr. Green,” comedy by the Ivy Lane Players. April 16 through 26. Free. Levittown Public Library, 1 Bluegrass Lane. 516-731-5728; liwg.com. LINDENHURST Studio Theater “Souvenir,” by Stephen Temperley. Through April 26. $25. Studio Theater, 141 South Wellwood Avenue. studiotheatreli.com; 631-226-8400. OAKDALE CM Performing Arts Center “Jesus Christ Superstar,” music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. Through April 26. $20 to $29. CM Performing Arts Center, 931 Montauk Highway. 631-218-2810; cmpac.com. WANTAGH East Line Productions “The Butler Did It,” mystery by Tim Kelly. April 24 through May 3. $15 and $20. East Line Productions, 2123 Wantagh Avenue. 516-749-5047; eastlineproductions.com. Museums and Galleries HEMPSTEAD Hofstra University Museum “From Portraits to Tweets: Imagery, Technology and the U.S. Presidency.” Emily Lowe Gallery. Through May 8. Free. Daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. South Campus, Hofstra University. 516-463-5672; hofstra.edu/museum. HUNTINGTON Heckscher Museum of Art “Ferdinand Richardt’s Niagara: A Study in Landscape Painting.” Through April 12. “Power, Politics and War: Selections From the Permanent Collection,” continuing. $4 to $8; children under 10, free. “Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at the Heckscher Museum.” Through April 19. “Before Selfies: Portraiture Through the Ages,” various approaches to conveying a sitter’s likeness. April 25 through Aug. 9. “Poised Poses: Portraits From the August Heckscher Collection,” works from the museum’s core collection, donated by August Heckscher in 1920. April 25 through Aug. 2. $4 to $8; children under 10, free. Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Heckscher Museum of Art, 2 Prime Avenue. heckscher.org; 631-351-3250. OYSTER BAY Oyster Bay Historical Society “Ancient Art Form: Contemporary Adaptations in Glass,” works by members of the Long Island Craft Guild’s Glass Media Group. April 12 through June 7. Free. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. Oyster Bay Historical Society, 20 Summit Street. oysterbayhistorical.org; 516-922-5032. ROCKVILLE CENTRE Frank and Gertrude Kaiser Art Gallery, Molloy College Molloy College Art Faculty Small Works Exhibition. Through April 29. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Frank and Gertrude Kaiser Art Gallery, Molloy College, 1000 Hempstead Avenue. 516-323-3196. molloy.edu/artgallery. ROSLYN HARBOR Nassau County Museum of Art “Vernacular Visions,” work by four Long Island artists. Through July 12. “Out of the Vault: 25 Years of Collecting,” works from the permanent collection. Through July 12. $4 to $10; children under 5 and members, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Nassau County Museum of Art, 1 Museum Drive. 516-484-9337; nassaumuseum.org. STONY BROOK Charles B. Wang Center “Love and Blessings: The Art of Baby Carriers.” Traditions and the culture of baby carriers in Taiwan and southwestern China. Through July 5. “The Everyday Joys of Japan: Paintings by Jiro Osuga.” Through July 5. “Pearl of the Snowlands: Tibetan Buddhist Printing From the Derge Parkhang,” prints. Through July 5. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or by appointment. Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University. 631-632-6320; sunysb.edu/sb/wang. WATER MILL Parrish Art Museum “Parrish Perspectives,” works by Robert Dash, Jules Feiffer and Joe Zucker. Through April 26. $5 to $10; children under 18, free. Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway. 631-283-2118; parrishart.org.


Fiat May Seek Deal With G.M. Europe Unit

Abstract: Italy’s Fiat could seek a merger of its auto group with General Motors ’ Europe unit, then spin off the combined company as a publicly traded entity, Fiat said on Sunday. Fiat’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, who already formed a partnership with Chrysler , will meet German government ministers on Monday to discuss a bid for the German carmaker Opel, part of G.M. Europe. Fiat’s board met on Sunday to review the Chrysler deal and back Mr. Marchionne in weighing a potential merger of Fiat’s auto group, including “the Chrysler interest,” with G.M. Europe into a new company, Fiat said in a statement. “As part of this process, the group would evaluate several corporate structures, including the potential spinoff of Fiat Group Automobiles and the subsequent listing of a new company which combines those activities with those of General Motors Europe,” it said. A combined company would have yearly revenue of about 80 billion euros ($106.3 billion), Fiat said. The statement did not mention Opel, which makes up 80 percent of G.M. Europe’s revenue. Under a G.M. restructuring plan, Opel, including British affiliate Vauxhall, would be spun off. Fiat is looking at acquiring Opel after it struck a last-minute deal to buy an initial 20 percent of Chrysler on Thursday, just ahead of the deadline set by the Obama administration to cement a partnership. The German economic minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, said on Sunday that Fiat, and any investor, had to present a solid long-term strategy to keep Opel plants open to obtain German government support. “We will not enter into any financial adventure with taxpayer money,” Mr. Guttenberg said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Mr. Marchionne will be in Berlin to meet Mr. Guttenberg and the foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the chancellor candidate for the Social Democrats in September’s election. Mr. Steinmeier has led government efforts to keep Opel alive. Aside from Fiat, the Austrian-Canadian car-parts maker Magna International has also expressed interest in Opel. Mr. Guttenberg said Tuesday that Magna had presented the rough outlines of a rival offer to acquire Opel. Mr. Marchionne has said Fiat needed a partner to reach output of 5.5 million to 6 million units a year, the scale he believes is necessary to survive the car industry crisis. Opel has four plants in Germany and employs about 25,000 workers there. Thousands more jobs at suppliers are at stake.

Automobiles
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Fiat SpA
General Motors Corp
Chrysler LLC


Manhattan Jail Guard Gets 7-Year Sentence for Raping Inmate

Abstract: A federal jail guard was sentenced on Wednesday to seven years in prison after an inmate gave testimony about how he raped her inside a Manhattan jail. “It wasn’t consensual sex,” the unidentified woman told the guard, Rudell Mullings, as she read from a statement in federal court in Brooklyn. “It was rape.” Mr. Mullings pleaded guilty last year to a charge of sexually abusing a prisoner, which carries a term of up to three years in prison under sentencing guidelines. The inmate, who was sentenced to 30 years for a homicide, told Judge Edward Korman of Federal District Court that Mr. Mullings had harassed her for several weeks before accosting her on Feb. 14, 2015, in a hallway where she was waxing the floor. On Wednesday, Mr. Mullings’s lawyer asked for six months of jail time and six months of house arrest. But Judge Korman — after criticizing prosecutors for not making Mr. Mullings plead guilty to more serious charges — called the guidelines “ludicrous,” given the circumstances. A harsher sentence was needed, he said, to send a message “that this conduct is totally unacceptable and deserves severe punishment.”

Prison
Rape
Prison Guards,Corrections Officers
Manhattan


Charter Grade School Documents Its Success

Abstract: JERSEY CITY HARLEY CABRERA felt trapped in her kindergarten class at parochial school, sitting behind a small desk day after day to memorize letters and numbers and to practice handwriting. Edward Holland, a shy and soft-spoken boy, wanted to leave behind a public elementary school where loud and rowdy classmates hung out in the hallways. Diego Scerbo cried whenever he had to put on his parochial school uniform of blazer, tie, button-down shirt and black dress shoes. More than a decade ago, all three students found a haven at one of New Jersey ’s first charter schools, the Learning Community, which was started in 1997 by parents who met in a play group. Drawn by the promise of a better education, Harley, Edward and Diego and their families signed up for a new school that promised to offer a radically different approach to classroom teaching: no grades, no textbooks and hands-on learning through art projects, field trips and community involvement. “The first day, the teacher opened the door and asked if he liked art,” recalled Angela Scerbo, 55, a house cleaner, who brought her son after seeing a flier posted at the local library. Diego, now 17, will attend Drew University in Madison this fall. “He did a lot of art classes here,” Ms. Scerbo said. “At home, he would paint on the walls. He liked everything, and he was free to learn anything he wanted.” The Learning Community grew alongside its students, expanding to 324 children in kindergarten through eighth grade. In a city with a long history of troubled public schools, it gained credibility with above-average standardized test scores and a track record of acceptances to selective nearby high schools. Today, the school has a waiting list of 420 and admits new students by lottery — leading anxious parents to ask one another, “Did you pull a golden ticket?” But until now, little has been known about how Learning Community students performed academically once they moved on to high school, and whether their early experience at a charter school made a difference. So this summer, Susan Grierson, the principal of the Learning Community, and her staff decided to find out. They set out to track down their very first students, a group of 25 who finished eighth grade in 2004 and were expected to graduate from high school last spring. Combing through old school records and phone directories, they found 23. What they learned, they said, both surprised and encouraged them. Twenty of the students did indeed graduate high school on time, but three did not. Of those three, one girl dropped out and was expecting a baby this month. One boy was held back a year, and another boy is now enrolled in night school because he fell two classes short of graduation requirements. The college-bound students reported earning a wide range of SAT scores, from 1,800 (out of a possible 2,400) for a girl on a full scholarship to Drew to 780 for a boy with a learning disability. According to the College Board, the average score for college-bound seniors in 2007 was 1,511 ( 502 for critical reading, 515 for mathematics and 494 for writing). Fifteen of the students will enter four-year colleges this fall, including one at Temple University in Philadelphia, another at Morehouse College in Atlanta and a third at a small college in Pennsylvania. Most of them, though, will stay closer to home. Two students each will attend Drew, Rutgers and New Jersey City University. Others will go to Kean University, DeVry University and Berkeley College. Three others chose Catholic schools: Georgian Court University and Felician College. Two students will go to Hudson County Community College, including one girl who was accepted at the University of Miami but could not afford to go without a scholarship. Another student will attend Essex County College. Another girl is enrolled at a beauty school. The Learning Community’s efforts to assess its impact comes as charter schools are expanding rapidly across the nation, buoyed by a widespread belief that independently operated but publicly financed schools can outperform their traditional counterparts. Nationwide, there are more than 3,000 charter schools, including 96 in New York, with another 22 scheduled to open this year. In Connecticut, there are 16 charter schools, with two more expected to open this year. New Jersey began with 13 charter schools, including the Learning Community. Now it has 56, many of them concentrated in and around Newark, Trenton and Jersey City. Six more charter schools are expected to open in September, and another 25 have applications pending with the state. But the academic results in New Jersey and elsewhere have been mixed, with several recent studies suggesting that charter schools on the whole perform no better than other public schools. In a 2006 report, the federal Department of Education found that fourth graders in traditional public schools scored an average of 4.2 points better in reading and 4.7 points better in math than their counterparts in charter schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress test, often called the nation’s report card. Charter school advocates have disputed the findings, saying the methodology was flawed. “The good news is: Charter schools work, but not everywhere,” said Gary Miron, a researcher at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo who has evaluated charter schools in seven states, including Connecticut, Michigan and Ohio. “But as a policy, the notion of granting autonomy in exchange for accountability is not working, since the overall results are similar to traditional public schools.” Here in Jersey City, the Learning Community is often held up by its parents and teachers as a model for the city’s struggling school system, which was taken over by the state in 1989 after an investigation revealed problems ranging from an inadequate curriculum to mismanaged finances. The Learning Community operates on a bare-bones budget of $4.1 million a year, which includes $140,000 from foundation grants and parent fund-raising activities. The school is crammed into a warren of concrete block rooms at one end of the Boys & Girls Club of Hudson County and overflows into trailers parked out back. There is no cafeteria (students eat delivered lunches in classrooms), library or computer lab. The student population is racially and ethnically mixed, with black students making up one-third, and Latinos, Asians and other minority children another third with the rest being white. About 30 percent of the students are poor enough to qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, a figure that has dropped in recent years as more middle-class families have discovered the school. MS. GRIERSON, who has been the principal since 2001, said the case study of the school’s first students confirmed for her that the lessons taught here have been carried on. “Did a small nurturing school make a difference?” she asked. “I think the small classes and individual attention were irreplaceable, because some of these kids would have fallen through the cracks. You can’t sit in a classroom here and hide.” Kristen Ulfsparre said that her son, Chris Matthew, 17, became so accustomed to the creative and challenging environment that he grew bored in a traditional high school. He started going to school late and missing classes, and he was unable to graduate with his classmates this spring. He will attend night school this fall. “You have this high-quality education through eighth grade, and then you’re put through the drive-through at McDonald’s, it just doesn’t compare,” said Ms. Ulfsparre, 46, an administrative assistant. For students like Harley Cabrera and Edward Holland, both 18 now, the early years were often an experiment in progress as the curriculum developed around them. For instance, after school officials decided in 1999 that music should be taught, they hired instructors, rented instruments and formed a band — only to find they had to hold practices in the hallways. The band was phased out after teachers struggled to be heard over the noise. Art and music electives were later added, ranging from ballroom dancing to hip-hop and, more recently, digital photography and yoga. Grades and some textbooks were also introduced into classrooms. Harley recalled taking art and science lessons in parks and on the Hudson River, and classes in Broadway singing, comedy improvisation and even stage combat. Harley, who will study broadcast journalism at St. Peter’s College here, said that her experience at the charter school made her confident and outgoing. She was once asked by her friends what a charter school was. She told them: “It’s the best thing in the world, because it’s individual and has its own rules. It doesn’t follow the system.” Edward recalled that when he first visited the charter school, he liked the small classes so much that he stayed all day. He later came to think of the school as his family. “If I had gone to public school, I probably wouldn’t be the same person I am today,” said Edward, who plans to study computer graphics at DeVry. “If you stay with a positive group of people, you’re going to stay well rounded. It lives up to its name — Learning Community — because you actually feel the community.”

Education and Schools
Charter Schools
New Jersey


William Morris and Endeavor to Become One Talent Agency

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — After months of discussion and rumors, two of the entertainment industry’s largest talent agencies, William Morris and Endeavor, agreed on Monday to merge as William Morris Endeavor Entertainment. Hollywood is scrambling to shore up traditional movie, television and music businesses that are struggling with a digital revolution, while reaching for a grip on forms of entertainment that are still taking shape. The merger ends a period of relative stability among the major agencies, raising the possibility of new combinations and a stronger thrust by talent representatives into fresh lines of business involving finance, digital distribution or corporate alliances. But the more immediate question may be whether the new company is really poised to become a powerhouse, or if this is the just the start of another Hollywood power struggle. The combination was announced in a brief statement after votes by each company’s board on Monday. State and federal regulatory approvals are required before the merger can become final. WME Entertainment — the shortened name is inevitable — will rank in size and scope with the Creative Artists Agency, recognized for decades as a leader in the rough-and-tumble world of show business representation. It will have more than 300 agents, representing clients in film, television, music, books, commercials and corporate branding. In the near term, the new agency must deal with the layoff of hundreds of agents and supporting staff, a restructured management and the attention of competitors hungry to pick off prime agents and clients. James A. Wiatt, who was chief executive of Morris, is to be chairman of the new company. Ariel Z. Emanuel , who was the dominant partner at Endeavor, but held no title, will have substantial authority in the new company. He was named a co-chief executive, along with Patrick Whitesell, from Endeavor, and David Wirtschafter, from William Morris. For years, virtually every significant Hollywood agency has explored possible mergers with competitors as companies looked for growth and new horizons at a time when core movie and television businesses have been constrained by digital inroads and cost cutbacks. Past merger proposals foundered as principals clashed over ego, control and internal economics. But Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Wiatt persisted in talks that began last year — each driven by a sense that his own company could overcome some obvious limitations when matched with the other. “I would expect to see more of it,” Thomas P. Pollock, a partner in the Montecito Picture Company, said of the merger and other signs of entertainment industry consolidation. “The business is shrinking a little bit. That’s not to say it’s not profitable, but it’s evolving and changing,” said Mr. Pollock, a former chairman of Universal Pictures. William Morris, formed in 1898, has been particularly strong in music, has a deeply entrenched book business and represents clients in the commercials business. Its star clients include the performer and music entrepreneur Kanye West, the filmmaker and television producer J. J. Abrams and the toymaker Hasbro, which has a stake in films based on the Transformers and other toy lines. Endeavor, just 14 years old, has been much stronger in film and scripted television, but had little hope of challenging Creative Artists without added financing and resources. Its roster of stars includes Adam Sandler, Matt Damon, Tyra Banks and Ben Stiller. The merger could prove a boon to competitors like the United Talent Agency, International Creative Management, Paradigm and the Gersh Agency, all of which have pockets of strength, and have spent the last few months sizing up the agents and clients who might fall away from a combined William Morris and Endeavor. “I think it changes our world in a great way,” said Jeremy Zimmer, a partner at United Talent. “It makes us the clear alternative in a much smaller agency environment.” Through the weekend, many agents at both William Morris and Endeavor were fretting about who might make the cut or where they might fit into the new venture. Mr. Emanuel, whose brother Rahm is the White House chief of staff, told agents who flocked to his office that the weak economy was a major impetus to consolidation. The atmosphere was also tense at William Morris, where more than a dozen members of the agency’s large board found they would not have a place on a new nine-member board — which will include four from Endeavor and five from William Morris. The politicking is not likely to end with the vote. Agents must now establish an informal pecking order within a new organization that will have neither the cohesiveness of Endeavor, which took pride in its somewhat communal culture, nor the long traditions of William Morris. One of the first to say he would not be joining the new operation was Tom Strickler, a founding partner at Endeavor who was known internally as a keeper of the corporate culture. Mr. Strickler fostered a familial sense at the agency by overseeing rituals that accompanied promotions, and spreading elaborate gifts among the staff at his own expense. Before Monday’s vote, Mr. Strickler informed co-workers by e-mail that he would not be coming along for the ride. “I’ve wanted to get on to the next chapter of my life for while,” Mr. Strickler said, speaking by phone on Monday. He said he did not have a next job lined up. At William Morris, another prominent agent, David Lonner, said he was told by Mr. Wiatt and Mr. Emanuel that he would not be part of WME Entertainment, according to a report on the Variety Web site. Mr. Lonner did not respond to a call seeking comment. He has shared representation of Mr. Abrams — whose film “Star Trek” is set for release May 7 — with John Fogelman, who is in charge of the William Morris feature film department, and will have a place on the new board. Spokesmen for Morris and Endeavor declined to discuss the departures.

Morris William Agency
Endeavor Agency
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Wiatt James A
Agents (Business)
William Morris Endeavor Entertainment
Emanuel Ariel Z