In Iran, Mehrdad Oskouei’s Film’s Explore Risky Topics

Abstract: TEHRAN This is not something I should be doing,” Mehrdad Oskouei says, shuffling through thick stacks of sepia-tinged postcards of long-bearded Qajar noblemen, mustachioed revolutionaries, veiled women and wandering dervishes. Mr. Oskouei, perhaps Iran ’s most prominent documentary filmmaker, has spent a considerable amount of time and money assembling the collection, a venture that many of his friends and relatives see as a quixotic cultural crusade. But he is determined, seeing the publication of hundreds of these photographic relics from the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a way to reconstruct a part of Iran’s visual history, filling a vacuum left by a government that lives in constant denial of its pre-revolutionary past. “There should be a whole office doing this, and I don’t even have an assistant,” he said. “But I believe in it.” For Mr. Oskouei (pronounced os-koo-WEE), picture postcards are as much a part of the cultural healing process as the documentaries for which he was a recipient of a 2010 Prince Claus Award of 25,000 euros (about $37,000) from the Dutch Foreign Ministry. His films have broached delicate issues like female suicide in traditional communities, juvenile drug addiction and Iran’s crisis of youth identity, themes that could easily land an Iranian in jail. He is best known outside Iran for his 2006 film, “Nose, Iranian Style,” about the prevalence of nose jobs in Iran, a world leader, per capita, with 60,000 to 70,000 operations a year. That reflects in part the fierce competition among young women for marriageable men after the 1980s war with Iraq, in which 400,000 Iranian men died. But the film’s real target, Mr. Oskouei says, is the consumerism and nihilism of contemporary Iran, compared with the years after the 1979 revolution, when people were prepared to die for their ideals. In his 2004 film, “The Other Side of Burqa,” Mr. Oskouei’s camera captures the hurried night burial of a young bride who hanged herself from a ceiling fan in a fishing village on the Persian Gulf island of Qeshm, an all-too-common occurrence in a traditionalist society where young women can feel trapped. His knack, experts say, is to capture these deeply personal scenes almost as if neither he nor his cameras were in the room. “He gets what he wants without any disturbance in the process,” said Ahmad Alasti, a professor of film studies at the University of Tehran. Mr. Oskouei even penetrates the pagan exorcism ritual of zaar, a dance that originated in East Africa but is practiced in the coastal regions and islands of southern Iran. It is a wildly expressive dance performed to the driving rhythms of drums and the chants of men, and provides a rare outlet for women to unleash their passions in a restrictive society. Many of the women in the film speak frankly of their struggles with patriarchy and economic hardship, which severely limit their development as individuals. But perhaps his most remarkable accomplishment is to handle these subjects mostly without running afoul of the clerics, the censors or other artists, some of whom have accused him of being too accommodating. “In the Western world it is enough just to be an artist, but not here,” said Ali Dehbashi, the editor of a cultural magazine, Bukhara. “Knowing the censors, knowing how things are monitored, is the most important thing.” “Art is not having one film banned and running to Los Angeles or Paris,” Mr. Dehbashi added. “The point is to stay, to work and to continue.” When asked about his ability to take on apparently taboo topics without retribution, Mr. Oskouei said in measured tones, “We live in a very particular social and political situation.” His own extensive footage of supporters of both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the top opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, during the 2009 election campaign remains unedited — perhaps for historians to examine in a later age. “Should I make a film that means I get thrown out of this society?” he asked. “I don’t want that. Should I make a film and use it to seek asylum in another country? I don’t want that at all. In the end, people have to be flexible. I think about how far I can go.” Many of the giants of Iranian cinema, like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, as well as the Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi, have avoided the issue by shifting their base of operations abroad. But for Mr. Oskouei, that would risk what a close friend, Nasser Fakouhi, described in an article as a “slow death,” far away from all the “little rascals and desperate women” who populate his films. Not only does Mr. Oskouei tread a careful middle path, he encourages students at his many workshops to do the same. Recently, he chided five of Iran’s new generation of independent documentary filmmakers, who were reluctant to take government money to make films about famous figures of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. “This has nothing to do with politics or your beliefs,” he told the five. “There are funds for these films, and if we don’t make them, someone else will come along and make heroes out of them.” In his latest film, “The Last Days of Winter,” Mr. Oskouei follows a group of juvenile offenders on a special holiday excursion to Iran’s northern coast on the Caspian Sea, not far from where he shot his first landmark documentary and where, as a child, he thought of drowning himself after his father was imprisoned, throwing the family into poverty. That was in the 1970s, in the last years of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. His father, who was active in the anti-shah nationalist movement, was arrested, tortured and imprisoned for five years. “MY father asked me if I wanted to get involved in politics,” Mr. Oskouei said. “I said, ‘No, not at all.’ So I began to think of what I was capable of doing. “Did I want to be president or prime minister or an M.P.? I didn’t want that. Or did I want to delve into the spirit of my people and their everyday lives and understand what made them who they were and express this in art? This was what I wanted to do.” Some of the most affecting scenes in “The Last Days of Winter” were shot on the windy Caspian coastline, where the boys —as young as 10 and driven to crime by poverty and drug addiction — confessed their deepest feelings to Mr. Oskouei’s camera. Mr. Oskouei said he learned to close the gap between himself and his subjects during his years studying cinema at the University of Tehran, when he occasionally went to the bus station and bought a ticket to wherever the next bus was headed. “When they asked me where I wanted to go, I told them it made no difference, and they thought I was making fun of them,” he said. He traveled to the far corners of Iran, to the rural spaces of a wide and unforgiving land, developing a deeper understanding of his country. “That’s how I came to know my people. Their dreams, their despair, their hopes, their everyday lives,” Mr. Oskouei said.

Mehrdad Oskouei
Documentary Films and Programs
Iran
Censorship
Politics and Government


Head of Private Military Firm Denies Ties to Ex-Blackwater Chief

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The president of a company training foreign mercenary troops for the United Arab Emirates has told the State Department and members of Congress that Erik Prince, the former head of the security firm Blackwater Worldwide , plays no role in operating the business. In letters sent to lawmakers and Obama administration officials, the head of Reflex Responses, a company based in Abu Dhabi, said that Mr. Prince “has no ownership stake whatsoever” in the business. “He is not an officer, director, shareholder, or even an employee of R2,” wrote the company’s president, Michael Roumi, referring to the company by its common name. Mr. Roumi’s letters, dated May 18, were sent in response to inquiries by members of the House of Representatives after The New York Times reported last month that the United Arab Emirates had signed a $529 million contract with R2 to build the foreign battalion . According to American officials and former company employees, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi hopes to use the foreign troops to put down labor unrest in the country and defend the U.A.E. from terrorist attacks. One of Mr. Roumi’s letters was passed to a group of congressmen by Victoria Toensing, Mr. Prince’s lawyer. The Justice Department has opened an inquiry into whether the company may have violated United States laws prohibiting Americans from transferring military technology or expertise overseas. Investigators have interviewed at least one former R2 employee, according to two people familiar with the inquiry. American officials and several former company employees said Mr. Prince was deeply involved last year with R2 and in recruiting contractors to train the foreign troops, The Times reported. Mr. Prince’s current relationship with the company remains unclear. Five former employees, speaking on condition of anonymity because they had signed confidentiality agreements, said Mr. Prince had overseen the hiring of American military and law enforcement veterans for the project, as well as European and South African contractors. They said he made occasional trips to the desert camp where the foreign troops, many of them Colombians, were being trained. And some of R2’s top managers had worked with Mr. Prince at Blackwater. The former employees said that Mr. Prince took pains to mask his role in the operation, and that his name did not appear on contract documents between R2 and the U.A.E. that were provided to The Times. R2’s origins and affiliations are unclear; most corporate records are not public in Abu Dhabi. R2’s commercial license lists two other companies as partners, and the name of a third business was posted outside the office suite R2 had been using in the last year. American laws governing the export of defense technology are murky, but American citizens involved in training foreign troops run legal risks if the State Department does not grant permits for the training. A State Department spokesman said the Obama administration was aware of R2’s operations, but would not say whether the company was operating with licenses from the department.

Xe Services
Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates)
Defense Contracts
Prince Erik D
Private Military Contractors


Geithner and Boehner Defend Their Stands on Fiscal Crisis

Abstract: WASHINGTON – At a stalemate in their talks to avoid a self-imposed fiscal crisis at the end of this month, the lead negotiators for the White House and Congressional Republicans used the Sunday morning news shows to defend their positions and blame the other side for the impasse. “Right now I would say we’re nowhere, period. We’re nowhere,” House Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’ve put a serious offer on the table by putting revenues out there to try to get this question resolved,” he said. “But the White House has responded with virtually nothing.” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner countered Mr. Boehner on Fox and the four other programs by outlining President Obama’s proposals for long-term deficit reduction and insisting that Republicans were blocking compromise by their opposition to letting the Bush-era tax rates on high incomes expire as scheduled by law on Dec. 31. Mr. Obama and Democratic lawmakers want to extend the tax cuts on household incomes below $250,000 a year, but not for income above that level, as the president vowed in his re-election campaign. “There’s just no reason why 98 percent of Americans have to see their taxes go up because some members of Congress on the Republican side want to block tax rate increases for 2 percent of the wealthiest Americans,” Mr. Geithner said. “Remember, those tax rates, those tax cuts, cost a trillion dollars over 10 years.” “Those rates are going to have to go up,” he added. “That’s an essential part of a deal.” The televised jousting reflected the political posturing that is typical in the early stages of Washington budget negotiations, with leaders of each party seeking to persuade the public that their position is the right one and to bring pressure on the other side to compromise. Mr. Geithner was scheduled to give interviews on all five major Sunday shows, and Mr. Boehner, in turn, requested time on Fox late last week, prompting the network to cancel appearances by two senators it had booked. The White House and Congress do not have much time for the usual negotiating games, with the year-end deadline looming and the holidays approaching. Absent a deal offering an alternative, across-the-board cuts in domestic and military programs and immediate tax increases for all Americans – the result of the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts — would take effect in January. Together, the automatic spending cuts and tax increases would cut the deficit for fiscal year 2013 by more than $500 billion, an amount so sudden and large that economists say it would cause a recession. They have called it the “fiscal cliff.” “I don’t want any part of going over the cliff,” Mr. Boehner said on Fox. Mr. Geithner, also on Fox, said it was a “decision that lies in the hands of Republicans who are now opposing an increase in the tax rates.” The goal of both Mr. Obama and Congress is a package of alternative spending cuts and revenue increases. Republicans, led by Mr. Boehner, have offered since the president’s re-election to accept higher revenue, but they have refused to support a partial extension of the Bush tax cuts that would let the top income tax rates rise to 39.6 percent, the level that was in place during the Clinton administration, from the current 35 percent. The separate television appearances of the two men came after their private meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday, when Mr. Geithner outlined the president’s positions for about $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the first 10 years to Mr. Boehner and the No. 2 Republican in the House, Eric Cantor of Virginia. The specifics were the same as those proposed by Mr. Obama in his budget earlier this year, without any additional concessions. The proposal includes $1.6 trillion in new revenue from upper-income taxpayers; $600 billion in reduced spending for Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies and other programs; $1 trillion in other spending cuts that the president and Congress committed to last year for the coming decade; and an $800 billion reduction in projected war spending, reflecting the winding down of American combat operations overseas. As he had late last week, Mr. Boehner dismissed the administration’s offer as “a nonserious proposal” for including too little in spending cuts and too much in additional stimulus measures, and for letting the top income-tax rates rise, which Mr. Boehner said would hurt some small businesses. On television, he recounted his reaction to Mr. Geithner at the meeting last week. “I was flabbergasted. I looked at him and said, ‘You can’t be serious,’ ” Mr. Boehner said. “I’ve just never seen anything like it. You know we’ve got seven weeks between Election Day and the end of the year, and three of those weeks have been wasted with this nonsense.” The speaker said Republicans had proposed “a dozen different ways” to raise additional tax revenue without raising rates. But he did not say what those were, and so far Mr. Boehner’s office has not provided details. Administration officials said Republicans have made no specific proposals. Generally, Republicans — much like Mitt Romney in his presidential campaign — have not specified how additional revenue could be raised over 10 years by limiting tax deductions for the wealthy rather than raising their rates. The White House and nonpartisan policy groups have done analyses showing that revenue cannot be raised on that scale without ending popular deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes, even for some middle-income taxpayers. Mr. Geithner, on the ABC News program “This Week,” said the ball is “absolutely” in Republicans’ court to specify alternatives. “They understand that,” he said of Republican leaders. “And when they come back to us and say, ‘We would like you to consider this and we’d like you to consider that,’ we’ll take a look at that.” Mr. Geithner said Mr. Obama was willing to consider proposals to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security, but as a matter separate from a comprehensive deficit-reduction agreement. The president’s bipartisan Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission in 2010 similarly called for Social Security to be considered separately since it operates as a pay-as-you-go system — current revenues, mainly from workers’ payroll taxes, are used to pay current beneficiaries – and because it is not contributing to deficit projections nearly as much as Medicare and Medicaid are as the population ages. Republicans want the president to at least support a proposal that he tentatively agreed to in unsuccessful debt-reduction talks with Mr. Boehner in mid-2011. That proposal would alter the formula for calculating beneficiaries’ cost-of-living adjustments in a way that would reduce future increases but, many economists say, would also more accurately reflect inflation.

Federal Budget (US)
Boehner John A
Geithner Timothy F
United States Politics and Government
United States Economy


For Randle and Wildcats, Dream Ending Is Stymied by the Huskies’ Defense

Abstract: ARLINGTON, Tex. — In a corner of Kentucky’s locker room, Julius Randle was surrounded by cameras, boxed in, not unlike how he looked during the previous 40 minutes of basketball. This could have been Randle’s fairytale ending, the hometown boy leading vaunted Kentucky to yet another national title in front of legions of family and friends. Instead, it was his nightmare. His eyes were red, his throat occasionally caught, his voice was barely above a gravelly whisper. “Just came up a little short,” Randle said. Randle found out the Final Four was coming to AT&T Stadium, just down the interstate from where he grew up, when he was in eighth grade. He told his family he would play in it. In 2012, he even spelled out his dream, writing on Twitter that it “would be crazy” if he won a national title in front of friends and family here. Instead, Randle sat humbled in the losing locker room Monday after scoring just 10 points — on only 7 field-goal attempts — with 6 rebounds, suffocated by Connecticut’s interior defense. Randle, Kentucky’s leading scorer during the regular season, was perhaps too passive in the first half, attempting just one field goal before the final minute or so. He seemed bothered by leg cramps, although he denied that he was hurt after the game. Kentucky Coach John Calipari said Randle merely got winded early on. “He’s a freshman, and he was anxious,” Calipari said. “He ran up and down the court three times and he got winded. It’s normal.” Randle scored consecutive buckets right before halftime, and it seemed as if that might get him ready for a big second half. But it never came. He took just four more shots the rest of the game, opting to pass out of the double-teams that Connecticut consistently took to him rather than bull through them as he had done in the past. “The defense just collapsed on me,” Randle said. “I tried to create for other people.” Randle was not the only Kentucky player to get off to a slow start, and Calipari blamed some nerves for why the Wildcats seemed so out of sorts while UConn built a 15-point lead. “They’re all freshmen,” Calipari said. “They were scared to death. I tried to settle them down, but they were rattled early.” Connecticut also pushed the tempo as a way to nullify Kentucky’s size advantage with big men like Randle and Dakari Johnson. “We were getting up and down the floor, and they were gassed,” guard Ryan Boatright said. “They were bent over, and we were still standing straight up and ready to go.” UConn’s pestering defense had been showcased throughout this tournament, leading to forgettable nights from other star players like Iowa State’s DeAndre Kane and Florida’s Scottie Wilbekin. It found ways to stymie the 6-foot-9 Randle, the nation’s leader in double-doubles and a force that many consider N.B.A.-ready. Randle had to deal with the lanky forwards DeAndre Daniels and Niels Giffey, who double-teamed him on almost every possession and bodied him effectively in the paint. They funneled his passes out to the perimeter, where Kentucky hit 5 of 16 3-point attempts to stay in the game. But their inside production suffered. “Shots didn’t matter,” Randle said. “I was penetrating, guys were open on the wings. That’s my job if they sunk in. I don’t care about shots.” Late in the game, Kentucky again tried to get Randle going, but he continued to be frustrated by Connecticut’s defenders. The Huskies’ defense this tournament ultimately held opponents to 41.4 percent shooting and 63.6 points per game. Randle finished with 417 rebounds for the season, breaking Kentucky’s season rebounding record for a freshman, set by Anthony Davis, who had 415 in 2012. He was also Kentucky’s steadiest offensive presence throughout the postseason, a skilled post scorer who was ferocious on the offensive glass. On the biggest stage of his life, however, his dream was not fulfilled. “This group of guys was special,” Randle said. “We kept fighting and we were able to make this run. I just hate that it ended like this.”

College basketball
NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness
University of Kentucky
University of Connecticut
Julius Randle


‘Ten Unknowns’ Opens at the Schoolhouse Theater

Abstract: Most people don’t like Malcolm Raphelson. Even in his 70s, he is a menacing, arrogant, womanizing, narcissistic artist who has never forgiven Jackson Pollock and the other Abstract Expressionists for stealing his thunder in the 1940s and ’50s. Raphelson has an appetite for destruction, including his own. “Malcolm loves Armageddon scenarios,” his handsome assistant observes. “They have a kind of kiddie-porn appeal to him.” Luckily, few people have to put up with Malcolm; he ran away from New York to rural Mexico in 1963, almost three decades before the action of Jon Robin Baitz’s “Ten Unknowns” begins and half a century before the Schoolhouse Theater production, which began on Thursday. One reason Pamela Moller Kareman, the director, chose the play, which opened at Lincoln Center in 2001 with Donald Sutherland in the lead, is the playwright. Mr. Baitz is best known to theatergoers for plays like “Other Desert Cities,” for which Judith Light won a Tony Award, and to television viewers for his ABC drama series “Brothers & Sisters,” for which Sally Field won an Emmy Award. “I love his take on our culture and where we’re at today,” Ms. Kareman said. Ben Brantley, reviewing “Ten Unknowns” in The New York Times in 2001, described its playwright as “without peer among his contemporaries in creating dialogue that spontaneously conveys a character’s social context and moral limitations, not to mention a self-consciousness about both.” Mr. Brantley also praised the play’s “richly articulate” characters. Malcolm (Keith Barber) interacts with his assistant (Jack Berenholtz), who has a history of drug and money problems; an art dealer (Kevin Cristaldi), who has a sexual history with the assistant; and a graduate student (Hannah Wolfe), who is in Mexico trying to save an endangered frog species. “Men kiss, and the woman is naked, and there’s very foul language,” Ms. Kareman said. “That’s what we do here at the Schoolhouse. We give them what they might not normally see.” While attitudes about gay relationships may have evolved since 2001, Mr. Baitz wants to make it clear that his script has no need to. “I don’t think any attitudes about anything have changed — onstage, that is,” he wrote in an e-mail. “In the real world, sure. Things change all the time. But very little changed in the world of ‘Ten Unknowns.’ ” Except one character. “Julia just seemed slightly underwritten by the time she made her debut at the Mitzi,” he added, referring to the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. “I think I just gave her a little bit more aggression and certitude. More identity?” Malcolm already had plenty of certitude. Now Mr. Barber has the unenviable job of making him lovable. “That’s actually part of the challenge, to flesh out the humanity of this man who has been so bitter, so detached for three decades,” Mr. Barber said. Though Donald Sutherland was in his mind, Mr. Barber identified more with Stacy Keach, who starred in the Los Angeles staging of “Ten Unknowns.” “There’s a roughness about him, an Everyman quality,” he said. Malcolm’s presenting symptom is artist’s block. He has not painted anything he considers worthwhile in years. Until now — or so it seems. Ms. Kareman sympathizes with that terror. “If you can’t express yourself, it’s like being invisible,” she said. It is a near-miracle that she found time to direct “Ten Unknowns” since she started a new job eight months ago running the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan. Running a theater school (and its building) has proved to be even more demanding than she had expected. But then, “I raised two kids, I had a husband, I taught acting all these years,” she said. “I think I’m pretty good at time management.” It has helped that Ms. Kareman’s longtime backstage Schoolhouse team is together for this production. She has worked with Mr. Barber before, too; this is his 11th Schoolhouse production, and he was an acting student of her husband, Fred Kareman, who died in 2007. “Keith is one of those wonderful actors where class is like going to the gym,” she said. “He knows this doesn’t end. You’ve got to keep stretching.” Right now, he is learning the new acoustics. This is the first production since the theater’s renovation, which includes new bathrooms and an honest-to-goodness light and sound booth. It is the first time, Mr. Barber said, that he has ever had an opening delayed by renovations. “It’s a little bit of a godsend,” he said. “It’s a beautiful piece of work, and it was a nice break for us to have another week to be able to explore it.”

Theater
Schoolhouse Theater
Jon Robin Baitz
Kevin Cristaldi
Hannah Wolfe
Jack Berenholtz
Keith Barber


A NASA Satellite Ends the Silent Treatment

Abstract: NASA has re-established contact with an errant spacecraft. In October 2006, the space agency sent twin satellites into orbit to study the Sun. The satellites follow Earth’s orbit around the sun, one ahead of us and one behind: STEREO-A and STEREO-B. Our Vast Solar System and Its Many Explorers The Juno spacecraft has reached Jupiter. Here are some other spacecraft exploring our solar system, launched by NASA and the world’s other space agencies. The devices were expected to last two years, but they lasted longer. Scientists realized there would come a time when they would each be in a position where the sun would interfere with their transmissions for almost four months. During this time, the spacecraft would reset every 72 hours — a hard-wired function that could not be changed. So in October 2014, as a test, NASA turned each one off and then back on again three days later. All went well with STEREO-A. But when STEREO-B was turned back on, the signal was lost. Finally, after much effort, the wandering twin was heard from last week. It turned out that a gyroscope problem had started a chain of events that prevented solar panels from recharging the batteries. “We only know how fast it’s spinning, roughly in which direction it’s pointing, and that the battery is at least partially charged,” said Joseph B. Gurman, a project scientist at NASA. But at least STEREO-B is back in touch.


Big East Memories: Everybody Knew Hersh

Abstract: Writers who covered the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden share their favorite memories. As the Big East men’s basketball tournament comes to an end of sorts this weekend, memories of the most thrilling moments mix with recollections of the league’s biggest stars, who for 31 years made Madison Square Garden shake and buzz each March. But the tournament was also home to lesser-known stalwarts of the game, some of whom never played or coached in it but were as much a fixture as Jim Boeheim, John Thompson or Ray Allen. One such individual was Arnie Hershkowitz, a high school teacher, street agent, summer league coach and mentor, and a true character of the game. Hersh, as he was known to promising high school players and all of the coaches in the Big East, was as ubiquitous at the Big East tournament as school bands and tipsy alumni. Pacing the hallways, razzing assistant coaches in the tunnels, schmoozing with young players as they sat in the stands and offering advice to pro scouts — the best of whom understood that he knew the players as well as anyone else — Hersh made the Garden his office and home during the week of the tournament, from its inception until his death on March 1, 2004, at age 60. “He was there every day for the first game in the morning until the final buzzer at night,” his widow, Beverly Hershkowitz, said. “It was his convention. He knew everybody. Arnie ate, drank and slept it. “I would go with him sometimes, but I can’t go anymore. He knew some of the ushers and could always get us in for free. But I can’t do that, and it’s too expensive for me.” Image Arnie Hershkowitz was as ubiquitous at the Big East tournament as school bands and tipsy alumni. A teacher at Westinghouse High School in Brooklyn, Hersh established bonds with many players, some of whom became well known, like John Salley, Mark Jackson, Kenny Anderson, Conrad McRae and Lloyd Daniels. Those who did not make it to the pros, and those like Daniels, who ran into trouble, could always find a place on Arnie and Beverly’s couch. Beverly Hershkowitz still refers to them as their children. “We had all those guys,” she said. “They loved Hersh.” Some thought that he was like many street agents — an operator looking for under-the-table payments from colleges that wanted him to direct a player their way. But some of those who knew Hersh well said he was never interested in money. “I don’t think Hersh ever took anything,” said Bill Bayno, an assistant coach with the Minnesota Timberwolves who was an assistant with Seton Hall in 1985-86. “He was about helping the kids, and he just loved to be around them and the game. Whenever I saw him, he was always giving me or someone else a hard time about something. He was a classic.” Hersh was at home on every playground court in the city. Wherever an orange rim hung in New York, Hersh was known. He would push his way through the crowd at the old Rucker tournament on 155th Street in Manhattan — long before it became a theme-park event — and with a flick of his thumb tell players to get off the end of the bench so that a friend of his could sit. And they would move. When he called people, instead of asking for them by name, he would just utter, “Uhh, Hersh.” On March 1, 2004, Hersh went for a jog and had a fatal heart attack. The Big East tournament and New York City basketball continued on. But it never had quite the same flavor, and was never quite as interesting. “I miss Hersh,” Bayno said. “I miss just talking to him. There was never anyone else like him.”

Arnie Hershkowitz
Big East Conference
College basketball
Madison Square Garden


Red Rock Island

Abstract: Jutting out of the blue near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge is Red Rock Island, a homely atoll with a colorful history and a sizable price tag. Many have made plans over the years to develop this ideally situated islet with spectacular views, but it is currently uninhabited. HANK PELLISSIER What’s There? Scattered brush, a few pine trees, migrating Canada geese, sea gulls, bats and perhaps rabbits, and former mine tunnels. The island is 500 feet wide, 750 feet long and 176 feet high. Only a 20-minute ride from Sausalito, the beach provides safe landing for boaters and driftwood for campfires. Stone Value The “red rock” of the island is oxidized manganese. Tons of this low-grade ore were removed in the 1860s and shipped to Europe to be used as paint pigment. Perhaps more valuable than the manganese is the island’s Franciscan schist, a rock used in road building. Triple County Red Rock Island encompasses three counties because it was established as a triangulation point by surveyors in 1850. About four acres of the island are in Contra Costa County, one and a half acres are in San Francisco County, and less than one-tenth of an acre is in Marin County. Flip It A San Franciscan, David Glickman, bought the island in 1964 for $49,500. Today it is on the market for $22 million, including mineral rights. Sad Slaughter Russian and Aleutian fur hunters, looking for sea otters, used Red Rock Island as a campsite in 1812. Thousands of sea otters lived in San Francisco Bay until they were clubbed and trapped to near extinction. Population: 1 Selim Woodworth built a cabin and lived on Red Rock Island in the 1800s. He tried to claim title to the island via the Homestead Act, but officials refused because they thought the government would eventually use the area. Tiny Siblings Red Rock is the only privately owned island in San Francisco Bay, but at 5.783 acres it is far from the smallest. The Brother Islands and the Sisters, two pairs of nearby rocky islets, are all one acre or less in size. Cult Customer The island was almost sold in 1985 to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the Indian “sex guru” with 93 Rolls-Royce limousines who set up a commune in Oregon. In 1984, his followers contaminated restaurant salad bars in Oregon with salmonella . The Red Rock deal fell through when Bhagwan was deported.

Islands
San Francisco (Calif)
Rajneesh Bhagwan Shree


Dog’s Tale: From Death Row to Doorstep

Abstract: SALEM, Mo. — It might have played out like an ordinary story of a family dog accused of biting someone else’s child, until a mysterious man wearing a baseball cap and a fake beard showed up at the home of Patrick and Amber Sanders, talking about secret codes and safe houses. At that point, the complicated tale of Phineas, the yellow Labrador retriever on death row, grew well beyond ordinary. Under quarantine since last June, he had “disappeared” at times — once when the city hid him in the basement of a firehouse. There was talk of a plot to have someone kidnap him. And there were accusations of intimidation and official corruption. In this Ozark town of 5,000, where excitement can be as sporadic as a deer walking past a hunting blind, Phineas became a running soap opera. Then two weeks ago he vanished, and the town was left wondering. Enter the lanky man with the fake beard, who appeared at the home of Phineas’s owners two Fridays ago, claiming to have the answer. Image Lexie Sanders after being reunited with her dog, Phineas, on Saturday. “My heart,” Mr. Sanders, 29, recalled, “was just a chugga-lugga-lugging.” But that’s getting ahead of the story. Phineas had been a part of the Sanders family since 2010, a gift from a friend. They named the dog after a character from the cartoon “ Phineas and Ferb .” His journey to becoming a household name began on a sunny Friday afternoon in late June 2012. Lexie Sanders, 7 at the time, was eating a Popsicle in her backyard with two friends. As the girls were leaving, Lexie clutched the 25-foot rubber-coated cable that tethered Phineas to a chain-link fence, but she tripped. The next thing she knew, she said, her friend, Kendall Woolman, 7 at the time, had fallen and rolled beneath the high-sprung Chevy pickup truck in the driveway. Kendall screamed and cried. Image Lexie said she did not see Phineas bite Kendall, but the other friend, also 7, told the police that she saw him bite her left rib cage and drag her about four feet. Later that evening, Jarred Brown, the town’s code officer, took Phineas for what was supposed to be a 10-day quarantine while the case was investigated. But the four-year-old Labrador never returned. After accusations arose of two previous unreported biting episodes, the Salem mayor, Gary Brown, deemed Phineas a vicious dog under town ordinance, and ordered him euthanized. The dog’s execution was delayed by a court appeal — and there was a brief, unexplained disappearance last fall — but then reinstated in March by Judge Scott Bernstein . City officials quickly moved Phineas to a secret location — it turned out to be the basement garage bay at the fire station — so he would not be snatched before his execution. Running out of options, Phineas supporters got in touch with the Lexus Project , a dog rescue operation based in New York State. The group set up a “Save Phineas” Facebook page that quickly drew tens of thousands of “likes” (now up to nearly 180,000) and was the catalyst behind a rally and “Save Phineas” billboards along an interstate highway. Image The Sanders family, from left: Owen, Patrick, Bella, Lexie, Easton and Amber. After the biting episode in June 2012, the dog was quarantined, vanished twice and mysteriously reappeared. Kendall Woolman’s family said they received threats. Joseph P. Simon, a lawyer for the Sanders family, accused a relative of the Woolmans of calling Salem “his sandbox” and threatening to exert his influence on city officials to make sure Phineas died. The story caught the attention of David Backes , the captain of the St. Louis Blues hockey team, who offered to fly to Salem to rescue the dog and take it to a no-kill shelter. Approaching his execution date in late April, Phineas got another stay when Mr. Simon appealed for a new trial. With the case pending, Jackie Overby, a Salem resident, said she asked the city administrator, Clayton Lucas, if he could give her the dog so she could usher him away to safety. A few days later, she said, Mr. Lucas showed up at her job and said, “We want the dog gone,” and told her that they could make arrangements for her to secretly take him. Image Mayor Gary Brown of Salem received pleas by letter, e-mail (and at least one T-shirt) after saying that Phineas, a Labrador retriever accused of biting a girl, should be euthanized. Credit Steve Hebert for The New York Times Mr. Lucas denied ever making such an arrangement. (Mr. Brown, the mayor, conceded to joking with Mr. Lucas about letting someone kidnap Phineas.) In late May, city officials moved Phineas into Dr. J. J. Tune’s veterinary office near downtown, but the doctor said he feared that the dog would be stolen because of all the attention and because his clinic was not well secured. Sure enough, when Meridith Michaels opened the clinic about 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 12, Phineas was nowhere to be found. No sign of forced entry, no clues. “My heart sank to the bottom of the ground,” she said. The Sanderses feared the worst — that someone had either taken him for ransom or killed him. Ms. Sanders, 28, searched the woods. Image The veterinary clinic from which Phineas disappeared. Credit Steve Hebert for The New York Times Concern and doubt festered for days, until a rainy night, the day after the latest court hearing to decide Phineas’s fate. As the Sanderses cleaned up from dinner with their four children, the man appeared at their door, asking for them by name. “I just want to tell you,” he said, “that Phineas is doing just fine.” “Well, that’s good,” Mr. Sanders said, exhaling. The man explained that he had seen a Phineas billboard and read about the case on Facebook. Sympathetic, he snatched Phineas and took him to a safe place where he was playing with another dog, the man told them, his fake mustache slipping down his face. He asked them to set up a safe house, they said, where he could bring Phineas for them to play with. But he did not trust cellphones. So he asked them to activate a landline, and when they had the safe house ready, they were to post the sentence, “I saw a dog today that reminded me of Phineas,” on the Facebook page. That would be his signal to call and arrange a meeting. Ms. Sanders posted the message last Monday, and the man called on Wednesday night from a disposable cellphone. He arranged to return Phineas to them on Saturday morning. With the judge’s decision still pending, they were not taking any chances: They planned to ship Phineas to an undisclosed location. Yet in a final twist, Judge Bernstein essentially said Friday that the drama should never have happened. He ruled that Phineas did not even bite the girl and overturned the death sentence. Still worried that people might want to harm Phineas, the Sanderses kept the Saturday reunion secret. The man, wearing his fake beard, arrived at the drop point in a rural patch surrounded by dirt roads before the Sanderses arrived, and when an intermediary told him they were still on their way, he left Phineas and said, “Well, I’ve got to go.” Minutes later, Salem’s most popular dog was bounding into his owners’ arms.


Au Bon Pain Won’t Unseat Greek Diner at Bellevue

Abstract: A Greek diner that closed over the weekend after serving as a late-night refuge for patients and staff at Bellevue Hospital Center since 1984 will be able to reopen, and will not be supplanted by an Au Bon Pain, as some had feared. The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs Bellevue, reached an agreement Tuesday night with the family that owns the diner, the Tower Cafe, whose contract expired on Saturday. The agreement allows the cafe to continue operating for at least three years. The diner reduced its hours in January, seven months after Au Bon Pain won a contract to open a kiosk selling sandwiches, croissants and other food items under the glass tent of the I. M. Pei-designed lobby. The chain was also seeking to operate the dining concession. The decision to reach a new agreement with the diner came as Councilman David I. Weprin, a Queens Democrat who is chairman of the Council’s Finance Committee and is a candidate for city comptroller, held a news conference questioning the hospital system’s deals with Au Bon Pain and calling for an audit by the state comptroller. Mr. Weprin and other critics, including Councilman Daniel R. Garodnick, whose district includes Bellevue, raised questions about the Health and Hospitals Corporation’s decision to award Au Bon Pain similar contracts at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx and Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn. The Prepis family, which owns the Tower Cafe, offered a competing proposal for the kiosk contract, which Au Bon Pain won last June. The family said that it lost the competition even though it offered superior terms, and also accused the hospitals agency of unfairly favoring Au Bon Pain. The family hired a political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, and enlisted statements of support from supporters like Louise Dankberg, chairman of the hospital’s Community Advisory Board. Ana Marengo, a spokeswoman for the Health and Hospitals Corporation, said the new three-year contract with the Tower Cafe had an option to extend for two more. The space occupied by the cafe, which “has not been upgraded for a very long time,” will get a full upgrade, she said. The hospital agency had suggested that it favored Au Bon Pain because the chain could provide detailed nutritional information on its menu, something that is all but impossible for mom-and-pop operations.

Tower Cafe
Bellevue Hospital Center
Au Bon Pain


In Rochester, a Photo Album Like No Other

Abstract: WHILE the Eastman Kodak Company was promoting the idea of picture-perfect moments to its customers, it was doing the same to its employees. The Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester , in the city where Kodak is based, houses a collection of largely unseen material from Kodak archives, including internal magazines from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. It was a time long before the rise of digital photography, which would leave the company in bankruptcy protection, though aiming to rebound. “As would be expected of a magazine which bears our Company’s name, photographic reproductions of beauty and high quality will have a prominent place,” wrote F. W. Lovejoy, then Kodak’s president, in a 1935 issue. The trove includes images by great photographers, alongside pictures shot by employees. Kodak was also host to camera clubs, picture contests and photo salons — and it sponsored exhibitions of employee photos, including an all-women show highlighting work by 66 female employees. KERRI MACDONALD and DARCY EVELEIGH

Photography
University of Rochester
Eastman Kodak Company
Colleges and Universities


Deutsche Bank C.E.O. Calls for More European Bank Mergers

Abstract: LONDON — The chief executive of Deutsche Bank on Wednesday called for more consolidation in the banking industry in Germany – and across Europe – and action by central banks as the region’s lenders struggle to navigate an environment of historically low interest rates. The chief executive, John Cryan, said that the European Central Bank helped stabilize Europe after the financial crisis, but that monetary policy had since weighed on bank profits – by cutting into net interest income – and had hurt savers and their pension investments. He said that lenders must become more efficient and improve their technology, but that central banks also needed to act if the financial sector was to become more stable and secure. “It is undeniable that Europe’s banks are stuck in a fundamental dilemma,” Mr. Cryan said in his prepared remarks at a conference in Frankfurt. “We have become significantly more secure since the financial crisis. We maintain more capital and liquidity with fewer risks in our balance sheets. However, we are also far less profitable today.” Mr. Cryan’s remarks came after Germany’s Manager Magazin reported that Deutsche Bank had internally considered a potential merger with Commerzbank, which is partially owned by the German government. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Mr. Cryan said during a question-and-answer session at the conference that Deutsche Bank was not planning any large mergers “any time soon.” Deutsche Bank, one of Europe’s largest banks, has been under pressure from investors as Mr. Cryan tries to turn it around. The lender posted a huge loss last year after it took 5.2 billion euros, or about $5.8 billion, in charges related to legal costs for past wrongdoing and endured a 58 percent plunge in profit in this year’s first quarter. The Federal Reserve also gave a failing grade to its United States subsidiary in stress tests in July. Deutsche Bank’s share price has dropped by nearly half in the past year. Shares of Deutsche Bank rose about 3 percent in midday trading in Frankfurt on Wednesday. That said, Mr. Cryan said on Wednesday that there were “too many banks in Germany” and that has resulted in fewer economies of scale, more competition and higher price pressures. He noted that many banks in Germany were under no pressure to generate attractive returns because they were de facto owned by the German government or did not have to compete in the capital markets. And Germans are particularly price sensitive when comes to banking products, Mr. Cryan said. “We need more mergers, at a national level, but even also across national borders,” Mr. Cryan said. “Only then can we be profitable in the long run. And only then can we compete internationally.”

Deutsche Bank
John Cryan
Commerzbank
Mergers and Acquisitions
Banking and Finance
Germany
Europe


2 American Scientists Win Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Abstract: Two Americans shared this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for deciphering the communication system that the human body uses to sense the outside world and send messages to cells — for example, speeding the heart when danger approaches. The understanding is aiding the development of new drugs. The winners, Dr. Robert J. Lefkowitz , 69, a professor at Duke University Medical Center in Durham , N.C., and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, and Dr. Brian K. Kobilka , 57, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California , will split eight million Swedish kronor, or about $1.2 million. Dr. Lefkowitz spoke by telephone during the news conference Wednesday at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm , which awards the Nobels, and said he did not hear the ringing of the early morning phone call to tell him that he had won. “I wear earplugs when I sleep, and so my wife gave me an elbow,” he said. “And there it was, a total shock and surprise, as many before me have experienced.” It also changed his plans for the day. “I was going to get a haircut,” Dr. Lefkowitz said, “which if you could see me, you would see is quite a necessity, but I’m afraid that’ll probably have to be postponed.” Dr. Lefkowitz and Dr. Kobilka filled in a major gap in the understanding how cells work and respond to outside signals. “It’s a great tribute to human ingenuity and helping us learn intricate details of what goes on in our bodies,” said Bassam Shakhashiri, president of the American Chemical Society. Scientists already knew, for example, that stress hormones like adrenaline trigger the body’s fight-or-flight reflex — focusing vision, quickening breathing, diverting blood away from less urgent body systems like the digestive tract — but adrenaline never enters the cells. “A receptor was correctly assumed to be involved,” said Sven Lidin, a member of the Nobel Prize committee for chemistry during a news conference on Wednesday, “but the nature of this receptor and how it reacted remained a mystery for a long time.” Dr. Lefkowitz said that although the notion of cell receptors went back more than a century, “when I kind of started my work in the area in the early ’70s, there was still a lot of skepticism as to whether there really was such a thing.” By attaching radioactive iodine to a hormone, Dr. Lefkowitz was able to track the movement of the hormone and explore the behavior of these receptors. Over the years, he was able to pull out the receptor proteins and show they were specific molecules. In the 1980s, his group, which included Dr. Kobilka as a postdoctoral researcher, searched for and found the gene that produced one of these protein receptors. The genetic blueprint indicated that the shape of the protein included long spirals that wove through the cell membrane seven times. Meanwhile, other researchers had discovered a class of proteins, called G proteins, inside the cell that, when activated, set off a Rube Goldberg cascade of molecular machinery. The receptor was the last missing piece. “If you have something like adrenaline, it sticks in there, turns the key, changes the shape of the receptor, and now the receptor, having changed shape, is able to tickle the G protein,” Dr. Lefkowitz said. There was a “eureka moment,” Dr. Lefkowitz said, when he realized that his receptor was the same as another receptor that had been found in another part of the body — the light receptor rhodopsin in the retina. “We said, ‘Well, wait a moment, maybe anything which couples to a G protein looks like this,’ ” he said. Within a year, they were able to decode the genetic blueprints for several other similar receptors, and they were right. About 1,000 of these receptors, known as G protein-coupled receptors, are now known, residing on the surface of cells and reacting to a host of hormones and neurotransmitters. Dr. Lidin of the Royal Swedish Academy said that it turned out that half of all drugs target such receptors. Dr. Kobilka, who moved to Stanford, then set out to determine the three-dimensional structure of the receptor, which requires building a crystal out of the proteins and then deducing the structure by bouncing X-rays off it. Membrane proteins are notoriously difficult to pack into crystals. Last year, he and his research group were able to get an image of a receptor at the moment it was transferring a signal from the outside of the cell to a protein on the inside. Knowledge about the shapes of different receptors could refine drug design. Many drug molecules attach to cells not only at the intended target but also to other receptors, causing side effects. “We hope by knowing the three-dimensional structure we might be able to develop more selective drugs and more effective drugs,” Dr. Kobilka said. Dr. Kobilka received his good-news phone call at 2:30 in the morning California time. “When you have a number of people with credible Swedish accents congratulating you, you feel it’s probably not a joke someone is playing on you,” he said.

Nobel Prize
Duke
Stanford
Chemistry
Robert J Lefkowitz
Brian K Kobilka


Zambia: Challenger Says Election Is Rigged

Abstract: As voters cast ballots for president on Thursday, the main opposition candidate, Michael Sata, accused the governing party of rigging the election. Mr. Sata is the main challenger to the acting president, Rupiah Banda, who took office after the death of President Levy Mwanawasa in August. After casting his vote in Lusaka, the capital, Mr. Sata accused the police and army of working together to fix the outcome so Mr. Banda could continue in office.


Mississippi: District Attorney Wins Special Election for Seat in Congress

Abstract: Trent Kelly, a Republican, won a special-election runoff for a United States House seat on Tuesday, defeating Walter Zinn, a Democrat, in the First District, encompassing all or part of 22 northern counties. Republicans have controlled the district for most of the past 20 years. Mr. Kelly, 49, is a district attorney, and Mr. Zinn, 34, is a lawyer and political consultant. Mr. Kelly will finish the term of Alan Nunnelee, a Republican who died of brain cancer in February.

Mississippi
Trent Kelly
Walter H Zinn
Alan Nunnelee
House races
Congressional elections


Economic Crisis Sweeps Eastern Ukraine

Abstract: MAKEEVKA, Ukraine — Few areas of Europe have taken such a body blow from the world economic crisis as the industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine, home to giant enterprises in the steel and metals industry in which orders have dried up nearly completely and prices have plummeted. In the Donetsk region, home to 4.6 million people, around 80 percent of the economy is tied to the metals industry. In January, when industrial production dropped by a precipitous one-third throughout Ukraine as a whole, in Donetsk it fell by half against the previous year. Small wonder, then, that Sergei Yeryomin is looking for some place to vent his rage and despair. Mr. Yeryomin, his wife, Tatyana, and thousands of others lost their jobs at the giant Kirov Metallurgicals Factory in this city on Jan. 1. “If we had a leader to lead us out on the streets, we would go,” he said, sitting in his living room and wondering how to support his wife; his son, Anatoli, 15; and his daughter, Ekaterina, 8. “In Makeevka, everyone was connected to the factory. If it wasn’t the father, then the son worked there.” In the absence of a galvanizing voice rallying the workers, or a politician in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, to marshal the popular anger, Mr. Yeryomin and many others are focusing their unhappiness on the borders of this part of Europe, sliced and diced in countless wars through the centuries. “I look with pride at Russia,” said Mr. Yeryomin, who lived in Russia as a child and counts himself among the 40 percent of inhabitants of the Donetsk region who are considered ethnically Russian. “We should cut Ukraine in two, and give half to Poland and half to Russia.” This part of eastern Ukraine has always felt more attached to Russia than to western Ukraine and neighboring Poland. For many here, the fraying economy is accompanied by a sense that officials in Kiev, where the government is paralyzed by political infighting, have abandoned Ukrainians to their fate. Just last week, more than 10,000 protesters gathered in Kiev to demand a change of government, prompting President Viktor A. Yushchenko to issue a surprise announcement that he was considering early presidential and parliamentary elections. Whether any politician can allay both the global and the homegrown troubles of the metals industry in Ukraine is unclear. For now, the national currency, the hryvnia, has lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar from its high last year, and the reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund as a condition for receiving a life-giving $16.4 billion loan are the subject of endless wrangles in an argumentative Parliament. The Ilyich Metallurgical Combine , the second-largest steel producer in Ukraine, epitomizes the recent plunge back into poverty. Even by the maximalist standards of the post-Soviet metals industry here, it is huge: 50,000 employees; production facilities scattered over more than five square miles in Mariupol, some 75 miles south of Makeevka; disparate sidelines including fisheries and an airline. Today, it is operating at only half capacity. Orders for March were anemic; those for April are trickling in. Workers have taken an average 30 percent cut in salary to avoid layoffs. Of the six furnaces in the open-hearth shop, only one is working full time. Another has been stripped for parts. Storage yards that a few months ago were stuffed with steel slabs for shipment are bare. Silence has descended over large swaths of production, close to 80 percent of which went to export. Global steel orders — for cars, ships, construction or heavy machinery — dropped to virtually zero last fall, analysts say. Prices for a ton of semi-finished steel dropped from around $1,000 to just $250. That is not enough to cover the relatively high cost — $360 per ton — of producing at Ilyich’s open-hearth furnace. Steel-company owners who gobbled up the state enterprises of the Communist era have not done enough to modernize, according to industry analysts in Kiev, and are now paying the price. Similarly, employment rolls remain bloated — another homegrown problem and a relic of Soviet times, when full employment was a government tenet. “Ilyich could easily cut 20,000 to 25,000 people and keep the same output,” said Sergiy Gayda, a steel analyst with Dragon Capital, an investment bank in Kiev. Where, however, do those workers go? “Nobody wants an uncontrollable mass out on the streets,” said Yevgeny Shendrik, deputy chairman of the regional council of trade unions in the city of Donetsk. It is a city where unemployment has officially almost doubled, to 67,500, in the past two months, and the authorities suspect that up to one-third of the 1.2 million registered workers are toiling for a small fraction of their nominal salary. In Ukraine, statistics are as murky as prospects for the future. Some analysts argue that the recent slump has helped Ukrainian steel become competitive because of the fall of the local currency. Last year, some companies’ profits were as high as 60 percent. Ilyich Steel, the main shareholder of the Ilyich metal works, in March issued a $31.3 million dividend to shareholders for 2008. “The situation is not as bad as people say,” said Eugene Cherviachenko, a metals and mining analyst for Concorde Capital, another Kiev investment house. “Ukraine has huge resources — everything you need for steel production.” In Makeevka, with 400,000 residents, just outside Donetsk, the Kirov factory laid off nearly all its workers in December and January. Now, an average of four people vie for every job. In nearby towns, that ratio soars to 70 or 80 people for every available job, officials say. Mr. Yeryomin and his wife accepted severance pay of about $7,000 on Dec. 31. Since then, he has received one month’s unemployment benefits, the equivalent of about $240, and found no new job despite searching daily. “I don’t know how to do anything,” he said, “except work with pig iron.”

Ukraine
Economic Conditions and Trends
Recession and Depression
Steel and Iron
International Monetary Fund
Yushchenko Viktor


How Anna Chakvetadze, Rising Star at 20, Became a Retiree at 26

Abstract: As Russia faces Italy in the Fed Cup final without its top 11 players , Anna Chakvetadze will be watching and reminiscing. She represented her country eight times at the Fed Cup and helped Russia defeat Italy in the final six years ago. A few weeks later, her perspective on life and her career changed forever. Chakvetadze, then 20, was the new darling of Russian tennis after a breakthrough season that included a trip to the United States Open semifinals and a move into the top five rankings. But on Dec. 18, 2007, six armed men broke into her family home outside Moscow. They tied up Chakvetadze, threatened her at knifepoint and beat her parents before making off with $306,000 worth of cash and goods. “I thought that my life was over, at times, during that night,” she said in a recent phone interview. “They had weapons, and we didn’t know what they were going to do.” It was not an act of random violence. Chakvetadze had been targeted. As she told reporters after the robbery, the thieves demanded the Rolex watch she had received at a recent exhibition in Belgium. As they left, they warned her: “Keep playing. We’ll come again.” Chakvetadze kept playing, returning to the tour just two weeks later. Her career never reached the same heights again, and this September, she announced her retirement at 26 after years of battling a crippling back injury. The robbery was merely the first step in a chain of events that led to the premature end of her career. Chakvetadze said the physical injuries had a more lasting effect. “Mentally, I completely forgot about it in a few days,” she said. “The first day or two were difficult because everyone was calling me and asking, ‘Anna, how are you feeling?’ “But 2008 was a tough season. I hadn’t had an off-season because of the robbery, and it was tough to put everything together for the tournaments in Australia at the start of the year. I couldn’t practice, and I was a bit injured. “Looking back, that was the time when I needed to take a few weeks off, but instead, I played every week, and my body wasn’t prepared for it.” Chakvetadze’s fragile physique began to buckle under the strain of the tour. At the start of 2010, she began having the back problems that ultimately ended her career. A year later, a virus caused her to faint on the court in the United Arab Emirates. After multiple comebacks, she made the painful decision to end her career after being semiretired in 2012. Her decision was not without a few regrets. “If I could turn back the clock, I would try to listen to my body more,” she said. “I would not push myself so hard. When I was out for seven months in 2011, I wanted to practice more and become a better player. But when you have a break, you have to take it easy and start slow again. I was maybe rushing too much, and I wasn’t ready for all the training I was putting myself through.” This season, many players have spoken about how they push themselves through the pain to stay on top. Marion Bartoli decided she could no longer endure it and retired about a month after becoming the Wimbledon champion. “I was surprised,” Chakvetadze said of Bartoli’s decision. “But I understand because she’s a hard worker, she practiced so hard all the time and she was playing a lot of tournaments, almost every week for a few years.” With Maria Sharapova also struggling with a shoulder injury, there has been plenty of focus on how the increase in power in the women’s game is making players more prone to injury. But Chakvetadze said the main problem was the decision-making of the athletes themselves. “I think players get injured because they don’t take breaks when they need to,” she said. “They’re trying to do too much, trying to play every week. Some tournaments are mandatory, and they have to play in some others because they’ve signed a contract. But sometimes, you’re not playing your best and you’re out of shape, and then maybe it’s better to take some rest. It’s not easy to know when to stop. If you’ve had a bad week, you want to put it right immediately, but in the long run, that’s not so healthy.” Chakvetadze is still involved in tennis, commentating on Grand Slam events and coaching some of Russia’s most promising junior players. But her back injury has compromised her to the extent that she is not able to play full points against her young protégées. She said she found it difficult to satisfy her competitive spirit now that she was no longer on the tour. “Sometimes, when I watch tennis, I want to be at the tournaments to chat with the girls,” she said. “And I miss playing matches. I miss that feeling when you’re playing well, you’re in good shape and you feel there’s so much you can achieve. But unfortunately, I had to quit. I thought I would quit a lot later than 26, but it wasn’t to be.” The men who robbed her family, she said, were never brought to justice. But after coming so close to losing everything, she says she became a different person. “From then onwards, I’ve just been trying to enjoy the moment instead of thinking what could be better,” she said. “During that night, I thought that it was all over, or at the very least I wasn’t going to play ever again. Many different things went through my head, but these days, I don’t think about it anymore.” For now, Chakvetadze merely hopes to recover to the point that she can play a more active role as a coach. But what about a future comeback? “Never say never,” she said, laughing. “You never know what will happen in the next few days. Who knows what will happen in, say, three years? There’s been so many players who’ve made comebacks over the past few years. Maybe I’ll feel better and return. We’ll see.”


Michael Turner, Falcons Back, Still Shoulders Load

Abstract: FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — The Atlanta Falcons, who play their home games in the living-room comfort of a domed stadium, began practice outdoors here Wednesday morning in a 38-degree chill, but without topcoats. A national radio sports talk host labeled the Falcons a finesse team that will capitulate in the kind of chilly, sloppy weather the Giants occasionally play in, which made Falcons running back Michael Turner laugh. “I’m from Chicago,” Turner said with a grin. “I’ve played in some weather before. Finesse? Give me a break.” The Falcons (10-6) have been nothing close to a finesse team in the four years Turner has played in Atlanta, including this season, when the team mixed into its scheme the fascinating and fast rookie wide receiver Julio Jones. There were assumptions that the Falcons were going to change their identity as a one-cut, downhill-run team when they acquired Jones, an all-American from Alabama, but Turner is still the 247-pound billboard of the Falcons’ offense. Despite dealing with a groin strain, Turner carried the ball 301 times this season, second in the league to Jacksonville’s Maurice Jones-Drew (343). Because of Turner, who rushed for 1,340 yards this season, the Falcons have a varied offense that does not have to put every game in the hands of quarterback Matt Ryan. “To me that has been the most misrepresented statement about us, that we lost our identity,” said Thomas Dimitroff, Atlanta’s general manager, who signed Turner to a six-year contract in 2008. “I started hearing that earlier in the season. We never lost our identity. We are based around a strong running game. We have always talked about working down the middle of the field. When we acquired Julio, we never had plans to go away from having Michael run the rock.” Turner, who averaged 4.5 yards per carry this season, has run the ball more than 300 times in three of the four seasons he has been in Atlanta. Only Tennessee’s Chris Johnson (5,645) and Minnesota’s Adrian Peterson (5,411) have more rushing yards in the last four seasons than Turner (5,281). When Turner went five consecutive games without a 100-yard game in the second half of this season, some theorized that he was wearing down and that maybe the Falcons needed to develop a more fancy offense. Turner is 29 and spent four years in San Diego (2004 to 2007) as a backup to LaDainian Tomlinson. Punishing blows make a short shelf life for an N.F.L. running back, and this is Turner’s eighth season. “I’m not wearing down,” he said. “We just lost some of our chemistry there for a few games. It fell off a little bit; hopefully we have our consistency back.” Ovie Mughelli, a Pro Bowl fullback in 2010, was placed on injured reserve Oct. 25 with a knee injury and the Falcons lost some traction in their run game. They seemed to reconstitute the running game last Sunday against Tampa Bay, when Turner ran for 172 yards, albeit against a team that lost its last 10 games of the season. “It was great to see Michael Turner get back on track,” Coach Mike Smith said. “We knew that our run game had been trending down over the last four or five weeks. It was something that we looked at very closely.” The Falcons put Turner on a routine in which he was not practicing Wednesdays and Thursdays, and he looked fresh against the Bucs. He dashed 81 yards for a score, and defenders tried to avoid head-on collisions on his way down the field. Turner is the essence of the Falcons because they are designed to be a fourth-quarter team. They want to run the ball and limit possessions, keeping the score down, and to chew up a defense. Atlanta has a veteran field-goal kicker, Matt Bryant, so it can win those low-scoring games. The running game is so effective that the Falcons are also able to use play-action on first down to fake a run and throw a pass. They patiently poke around with the run, and while other teams might want to show off their playbook, the Falcons will come back to successful rushing plays. The opponents who have been successful against the Atlanta ground game, like Jacksonville, stay in a base front on defense and do not move around. They want to make Turner cut back abruptly and know how to fit against the Falcons’ blocking so they have two tacklers coming straight to the point of attack. Turner is the antidote to the Giants’ pass rush because his early-down gains can keep the Falcons out of bad situations, like third-and-7s. “Things have always worked out for me,” Turner said. “I was never worried this season about being that piece, not being that piece. I’m a guy who waits his turn and tries to be part of the team.”

Football
Turner Michael
Atlanta Falcons
New York Giants
National Football League
Jones Julio (1989- )


Censure and Clashes After West Bank Attack

Abstract: JALAZOUN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli forces while thousands of Israelis flocked to rallies, all of them protesting an arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler — a rare instance of mutual shock in a land attuned to bitter violence. Israel’s president implored the country to consider how the attack on Friday morning could have happened; Palestinians pointed to a widespread sense of impunity among Jewish extremists . Such extremists were suspected to have firebombed a house in the West Bank hamlet of Duma, killing an 18-month-old boy, Ali Dawabsheh, and severely burning his parents and 4-year-old brother. “A blatant disregard for the rule of law, for human dignity, for a love of mankind, for a love of Israel, and freedom of opinion has spread within us and is wreaking havoc,” President Reuven Rivlin of Israel said at a rally Saturday in Jerusalem. Israeli political leaders swiftly called the firebombing an act of terrorism, a term usually reserved for Palestinian attacks against Israelis. Editorials in the Israeli news media said that condemnation would not be enough. “The accumulation of unsolved hate crimes in the weeks, months and years before the Dawabsha attack would strongly suggest that Jewish terrorism has not been a top priority for Israel’s security establishment,” David Horovitz, founding editor of The Times of Israel, wrote in an op-ed in the newspaper. He added, “We had better ensure we act to prevent more of the same and worse.” Palestinians said they were most angered that the assailants stood over the bodies of the couple as they burned, and did not save the children. By Saturday evening, some sought revenge. Assailants suspected to be Palestinians hurled firebombs toward a Jewish settlement in Hebron, causing a fire in a community center, Israelis and Palestinians said. No injuries were reported. Clashes erupted near Duma, where residents marched to a nearby main road to protest the attack in their village. Soldiers fired tear gas at the demonstrators, and youths threw rocks and projectiles. An Israeli military spokeswoman said about 200 protesters near Duma hurled rocks and rolled burning tires at the Israeli forces. “People are angry,” said Yaser Dawabsheh, 53, a resident of the village, where many residents share the family name. “A child melted in a fire before their eyes, and they did nothing.” Clashes also took place here in the Jalazoun refugee camp, near the Palestinian city of Ramallah. They followed the funeral of a teenager who died overnight from wounds suffered after he was shot in a protest Friday, where youths hurled rocks at Israeli forces. Laith al-Khaldi , 17, was the sixth Palestinian to be fatally shot by Israeli security forces in recent weeks. An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers fired at an assailant who had thrown a firebomb toward them. She said the shooting was “in response to immediate danger.” Few shootings ever lead to prosecutions, and Palestinians and their advocates say that has led to a lack of accountability among Israeli forces. “The Israeli government has given the opportunity for settlers and the army to attack, and that is making the lives of Palestinians hell,” said Ghassan Khatib, vice president of Birzeit University in the West Bank.

Palestinians
Israel
Civil Unrest
West Bank
Arson
Military


Doctors Ration Health Care in Pursuit of High Reimbursements

Abstract: UNEQUAL access to health care is hardly a new phenomenon in the United States, but the country is moving toward rationing on a scale that is unprecedented here. Wealthy people will always be able to buy most of what they want. But for everyone else, if we stay on the current course, the lines are likely to get longer and longer. The underlying problem is that doctors are reimbursed at different rates, depending on whether they see a patient with private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid . As demand increases relative to supply, many doctors are likely to turn away patients whose coverage would pay the lower rates. Let’s see how this works. Medicare is the major federal health program for the elderly, who vote at high rates and are politically influential, and so it is relatively well financed. Medicaid, which serves poorer people, is paid for partly by state governments, and the poor have less political clout than the elderly, so it is less well financed. Depending on the state and on the malady, it is common for Medicaid to reimburse at only 40 percent to 80 percent the rate of Medicare. Private insurance pays more than either. A result is that physicians often make Medicaid patients wait or refuse to see them altogether. Medicare patients are also beginning to face lines, as doctors increasingly prefer patients with private insurance. Access to health care will become problematic, and not only because the population is aging and demand is rising. Unfortunately, the new health care legislation is likely to speed this process. Under the new law, tens of millions of additional Americans will receive coverage, through Medicaid or private insurance. The new recipients of private insurance will gain the most, but people previously covered through Medicaid will lose. Ideally, higher demand for medical care would prompt increases in supply, which in turn would lower prices and expand access. But the health care sector does not always work this way. Doctors are highly regulated and in that manner restricted in supply. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the United States could face a shortage of 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years. To its credit, the new health care bill does improve incentives for general practitioners, but still, supply probably will not keep up with the crush of demand. We could go further by giving greater scope to nurse practitioners , admitting more immigrant doctors, reforming malpractice law and allowing cheap, retail “Wal-Mart style” medical care, all to increase access and affordability. Yet these changes do not seem to be in the offing, so access is likely to decline. The health care bill will further privilege private insurance coverage by offering many individuals new subsidies for its purchase. That will create incentives for employers to game the system, dropping or discouraging coverage and sending their workers to buy health insurance on the more expensive federally subsidized exchanges. That will strain the federal health care budget. This problem is outlined by Amy Monahan and Daniel Schwarcz, law professors at the University of Minnesota, in their new paper “Will Employers Undermine Health Care Reform by Dumping Sick Employees?” There is also the danger that a few governors with tight budgets will shirk their Medicaid responsibilities, with an eye toward sending potential recipients to the federally subsidized insurance exchanges. In both cases, the quest for a better deal will strain the federal budget . The American system of federalism, with its checks and balances and slow policy evolution, has many strengths, but it has also helped create this crazy quilt of health care reimbursement rates. The more demand-side pressure is placed on medical supply, the more Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements rates will determine who and what is rationed. One option is to simply allow budget pressures to dominate, forcing down even private insurance reimbursements. Most people would end up with low, Medicaid-like reimbursement rates, and would endure long waits and low-quality service. But wealthier people could jump the line by paying more. Think of “Medicaid for everyone” but the rich. An alternative is giving most people means-tested vouchers for a fixed amount of insurance coverage — which can run out or face up-front caps — making Medicaid and Medicare less of a blank check. The cost explosion would be checked by shifting more of the burden onto consumers. We would have better incentives for consumer-oriented care, and cost control, but we would be making an explicit public decision, at some point or another, to let some people do without medical care. Recently the Arizona state government restricted transplant coverage for Medicaid patients, but it remains to be seen whether such measures can be applied to Medicare recipients. President Obama already has reversed some of the planned, budget-saving cuts to Medicare. AN entirely different approach is suggested by the system in Singapore, where the government requires savings (say 10 percent to 12 percent of income), patients pay for medical care from those savings, and the government takes care of additional catastrophic expenses. That system has a good record for cost control and access, but would Americans accept so much required saving? The default course is to maintain or extend Medicare reimbursement rates, raise taxes considerably and accept that Medicaid recipients will face worsening health care access. If you hear of a new solution to the health care puzzle, put aside the politics and instead think through the endgame. Ask not about the rhetoric, but rather about the reimbursement rates.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010)


Obama to Announce Troops’ Return

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama’s decision to remove 34,000 American troops in Afghanistan by this time next year represents a careful balancing of political interests and military requirements. The decision, which administration officials disclosed on Tuesday and which Mr. Obama highlighted in his State of the Union address , enables the White House to say that slightly more than half of the 66,000-strong American force will be out of Afghanistan by the end of February 2014. But Mr. Obama will also give the military commanders in Afghanistan flexibility in determining the pace of the reductions and will enable them to retain a substantial force until after the next fighting season, which ends in October. That, according to administration officials, satisfies one of the major concerns of Gen. John R. Allen, who recently left his post as the top commander in Afghanistan. At the same time, officials said, it rebuffs arguments by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to pull out troops more quickly. Administration officials said last year that they would determine the size and composition of the American presence after 2014 before determining the withdrawal schedule for the next two years. But on Tuesday, officials said that Mr. Obama had not yet made a decision on the post-2014 force, which is likely to number no more than 9,000 or so troops and then get progressively smaller. “Beyond 2014, America’s commitment to a unified and sovereign Afghanistan will endure, but the nature of our commitment will change,” Mr. Obama said. “We are negotiating an agreement with the Afghan government that focuses on two missions: training and equipping Afghan forces, so that the country does not again slip into chaos, and counterterrorism efforts that allow us to pursue the remnants of Al Qaeda and their affiliates.” There still appears to be a debate within the administration about the plans for after 2014. Officials said there was also a reluctance to go public with a final number of troops and a description of their missions while still in the early stage of negotiating a security agreement with the Afghans over retaining a military presence after 2014. From the start, the Afghan issue has been a double-edged sword for the White House. Mr. Obama campaigned for his first term on the premise that the conflict was a “war of necessity” to deprive Al Qaeda of a potential sanctuary in Afghanistan, and in 2009 he ordered a surge of more than 30,000 troops. Video The White House correspondent Peter Baker examines how President Obama’s State of the Union addresses tell the story of his time in office. As the war dragged on, and the 2012 presidential election approached, Mr. Obama began to take troops out of Afghanistan on a more expedited schedule than his commander at the time, Gen. David H. Petraeus, had recommended. Mr. Obama’s talk of a war of necessity was supplanted by his refrain that the “tide of war is receding.” But since his re-election, Mr. Obama has confronted the question of how to stay true to his pledge to wind down the war without undermining the still-fragile military gains. Presidents in their second terms often tend to think about their foreign policy legacy, and the conflict in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq, has come to be known as Mr. Obama’s war. The troop withdrawal question came to the fore last month after Mr. Obama met with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in Washington , where Mr. Obama said he would accelerate the transfer of responsibility for security to the Afghans this year. As he had done before, Mr. Obama set the parameters of the deliberations over the troop level by issuing planning guidance to the Pentagon. Operating on the basis of those presidential instructions, which the White House has not made public, General Allen prepared three options. Administration officials said that the White House had essentially endorsed the general’s preferred option — what Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in a statement was General Allen’s “phased approach.” According to the new withdrawal schedule, the number of troops is to go down to 60,500 by the end of May. By the end of November, the number will be down to 52,000. By the end of February 2014, the troop level is to be around 32,000. The February 2014 number is less than some military officers had hoped would be on hand when the Afghan presidential election is held that April. But that seems to be more than offset by the decision to allow the military to keep the bulk of its force through the 2013 fighting season. “The intensity of combat in the warmer months is twice what it is in colder months,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution. “For the next eight months, it is as good an outcome as proponents of the current strategy could have had.” Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that withdrawing half of the American troops over a year would reduce the chances of success because insurgents would still have havens in the eastern part of Afghanistan, and it is not clear whether Afghan forces will be able to maintain control of the southern part of the country with an extremely limited coalition presence. “But if the command really does have the flexibility to control the pace of the withdrawal and to bring about a short-term increase of specialized units, then a chance of campaign success remains,” Mr. Kagan said.

Afghanistan War
Barack Obama
US Military
Afghanistan


For Horse Trainer Dallas Stewart, Diamonds in the Rough Are a Specialty

Abstract: The trainer Dallas Stewart admits that his willingness to enter horses who seemingly lack the background to be competitive in major races comes off as “a little bit sketchy.” His wife, Yvette, is more blunt in discussing her husband’s makeup. “He’s a little nuts, if you ask me,” she said. But as Stewart continues to turn long shots into contenders, it becomes clear he is more shrewd than sketchy, more sly than a little nuts. His latest sleight of hand involves Tale of Verve, an unexpected runner-up in the Preakness Stakes who looms as a threat to foil American Pharoah’s Triple Crown bid in the Belmont Stakes on June 6. Tale of Verve showed little promise in opening his career with five consecutive losses before he broke through for his first victory, against other nonwinners in a mile-and-three-sixteenths race at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky., on April 23. Stewart, a former top assistant to the risk-taking Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, could not get the long-awaited win out of his mind as he drove home to Louisville, Ky., after the race. Tale of Verve had relished the distance, finishing powerfully. He had his usual voracious appetite upon returning to the barn and acted as if he had just completed a stiff morning gallop. The more Stewart reflected on what he had just seen, the more he was convinced that Tale of Verve should be given the opportunity to start in the one-and-a-quarter-mile Kentucky Derby, the one-and-three-sixteenths-mile Preakness and the one-and-a-half-mile Belmont. The issue became persuading Charles Fipke, the breeder and owner, to pay the $50,000 fee to start in the Derby. Stewart said he began the phone conversation by saying, “I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, but. ...” He then laid out his case for taking a shot in the Derby. Fipke, a geologist whose fortune stems from his ability to locate and mine diamonds, typically bases decisions on extensive research, whether searching for precious stones or matching the right mare with the right stallion in the hope of producing a champion racehorse. Image Dallas Stewart saw something in the horse Tale of Verve. Credit Rob Carr/Getty Images In this instance, Fipke, a client of Stewart’s for a decade, went with his trainer’s overwhelming gut feeling that Tale of Verve was prepared to make the extraordinary jump from beating nonwinners to opposing American Pharoah, who was the champion as a 2-year-old, and the rest of the finest 3-year-olds in his class. “Coming from another trainer, you would question whether the horse could make such a huge leap,” Fipke said. “But coming from Dallas, he’s done it before.” Stewart, 55, convinced Fipke that Golden Soul belonged in the 2013 Kentucky Derby, even though his past performances suggested otherwise. Golden Soul, largely dismissed at 34-1, splashed home in second, two and a half lengths behind Orb. Stewart persuaded West Point Thoroughbreds to take a stab with Commanding Curve in last year’s Derby. Commanding Curve, at 37-1, rallied to finish second, failing to overtake California Chrome by a length and three-quarters. Macho Again went off at nearly 40-1 for Stewart when he placed second to Big Brown in the Preakness Stakes in 2008. No one will know how Tale of Verve might have performed in the Derby. His earlier flops kept him from having enough points to qualify for the 20-horse field. He was placed second on the also-eligible list, but not enough horses were scratched in time for him to enter. Churchill Downs refunded the $50,000. Since Fipke’s breeding program is designed to produce horses with the stamina to handle classic distances, his and Stewart’s focus turned to the Belmont Stakes, with the uncommon approach of treating the Preakness, the middle leg of the Triple Crown, as a prep race for the Belmont. Jay Privman of The Daily Racing Form thought so little of Tale of Verve’s Preakness chances that he wrote, “Plenty of easier spots far more suitable than this folly.” Tale of Verve, snubbed at 28-1, was last in a field of eight in the early going before he unleashed the closing kick expected from him for so long. He finished seven lengths behind American Pharoah, giving Stewart yet another second-place finish in a Triple Crown race. Leave it to the trainer’s plain-spoken wife to put the situation into perspective. “He’s kind of got that seconditis,” she said. “But it’s better than running in the back.” Stewart, born in McComb, Miss., knows the jubilation that accompanies Triple Crown victories. He was a major figure in the operation when Lukas won six consecutive spring classics, including an uncommon sweep in 1995 as Thunder Gulch sandwiched Derby and Belmont wins around Timber Country’s success in the Preakness. Stewart is driven by wanting to capture that feeling again — and knowing he led the effort. He has trained on his own since 1997. He said of the misses that history is quick to forget: “I’ve thought about it a little bit. It drives you. It gets you up in the morning. I’m giving it all I’ve got, I’ll tell you that.” Fipke believes that Tale of Verve, a son of Tale of Ekati, may reveal himself to be a diamond in the Belmont Stakes and prevent American Pharoah from becoming the 12th Triple Crown champion and the first since Affirmed in 1978. He points to his horse’s pedigree, suggesting that it makes him better equipped than American Pharoah to handle the grueling distance and to give Stewart his long-awaited breakthrough.

Horse racing
Dallas Stewart
Triple Crown Horse Racing
Belmont Stakes


Yale Celebrates Earning a 12th Seed and a Game Close to Home

Abstract: NEW HAVEN — The big event here Sunday was the annual St. Patrick’s parade, and the Yale campus was unusually quiet after students had cleared out on Friday for their two-week spring break. But the roar that erupted inside the John J. Lee Amphitheater when Yale formally received its first N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament berth in 54 years very likely echoed through generations of alumni, fans and former players. Not since 1962, when only 25 teams made a tournament that was completed in 13 days, have the Elis been on this basketball stage. That the campus was nearly empty might have been a blessing for the team, which has spent the last month dealing with the fallout from the departure from the university of its captain, Jack Montague, in connection with a sexual misconduct accusation. Shortly after 6 p.m., when 12th-seeded Yale was paired with fifth-seeded Baylor in a first-round West Region game on Thursday, the 200 or so in attendance leapt to their feet and roared with the Yale players and coaches at their good fortune of playing just up Interstate 95 in Providence, R.I. Soon after, the impact of what the 22-6 Ivy League champion Bulldogs had accomplished was shared among the Yale basketball family on hand. “For us alums, it’s almost like we all feel we won the Ivy League title,” said Butch Graves, captain of the 1984 team and Yale’s career leading scorer with 2,090 points. “This takes a weight off all our shoulders.” Graves was referring to Yale’s close calls in recent years. It lost in a playoff for the Ivy title in 2002, and last year was upset on a last-second shot at Dartmouth when a victory could have clinched an N.C.A.A. berth. Yale then lost the playoff game to Harvard, 53-51, at the Palestra in Philadelphia. “That’s what makes this year that much sweeter, to finish off what we came so close to accomplishing last year,” said the former player Sean Fitzgerald, who graduated in 1994 and was joined yesterday by his onetime teammate Tom Trimmer and a passel of their children. James Jones, in his 17th year as Yale’s coach, was born two years after the team lost in overtime to Wake Forest in its last N.C.A.A. tournament game. “It’s great that so many are energized by what we’ve done, so I’m happy for the many friends of this program,” he said. “They all feel like they’re a part of it, and they are.”

NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness
College basketball
Yale
Baylor University
Sexual harassment


From Mexico to Canada, and Back

Abstract: Scott Williamson reached the Mexican border yesterday, completing a 5,300-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail that he began May 22. Williamson, 34, hiked from Mexico to Canada and back, a route he refers to as a yo-yo. It is the second such hike Williamson has made. He is believed to be the only person to complete the journey in a single year. “I think over all, this one was more difficult than the 2004 hike,” Williamson said in a telephone interview from the Mexican border. “I started later and had to push a lot more to make it, and so mentally it was a lot more difficult than the last one.” The weather, which was expected to be Williamson’s greatest obstacle, was not much of a factor until yesterday, when it began raining. “I made it through the High Sierra earlier this month and the last 700 miles went pretty smoothly,” he said. Joining him for the final section of the trip were his father, Dave Williamson, and about 60 friends and supporters.