President’s Speech Changes Few Minds Among Poll Respondents

Abstract: Last month, Mary Haas, a 62-year-old retiree in Wisconsin, told pollsters that she disapproved of President Obama ’s handling of the economy. While his State of the Union address did not change that opinion, Ms. Haas did say Thursday that she now appreciated his frustrations about dealing with Congress, particularly on health care. “Even though I didn’t vote for him, I really want him to succeed,” she said. “It’s in the country’s best interest. But he can’t do it alone.” Mr. Obama did not appear to change many minds with his address. In about two dozen interviews after the speech, people who last month told a New York Times/CBS News pollster that they supported the president’s handling of the economy and health care continued to do so, while those who said they disapproved were still doubtful that he would make much progress. But, according to those interviewed, Mr. Obama succeeded in making Congress and the vague bureaucratic entity known as Washington at least an equal partner in the blame for failing to reform the health care system or stanch a bleeding economy. And he found sympathy for the magnitude of his challenges. “He has expectations that maybe no other president has had before,” Ms. Haas said. “He’s bound to be disappointed, as is the American public. But it’s not all his fault, either.” The president’s proposals for directing $30 billion in credit toward small businesses won him some praise, as did his proposals to build a generation of nuclear power plants. But what seemed to resonate most were his stern words to Congress. “He was right to scold,” said Kathy Steiner, a lawyer in White Plains who voted for Mr. Obama. “He has not done one thing in which he has not been open to compromise.” “He was echoing a lot of peoples’ frustration,” she said. “He certainly echoes my frustration. I’m really sick of the whole thing. They all need to step up to the plate and do what’s right, and worry about the next election at the next election.” But Ms. Steiner, 52, added that she blamed the American people as well as Congress. “If we believe that Congress is the obstacle at this point, we have to send that message, that we’re not interested in hearing them bicker,” she said. “We’re interested in finding a solution. Despite our dire straits, we need to say, we know this is hard, but take a step in the right direction. We can’t let our frustration and anger prevent us from moving forward.” The people interviewed on Wednesday night and Thursday were originally questioned in a New York Times/CBS News telephone poll conducted Dec. 4 through Dec. 8. The poll of 1,031 adults throughout the United States had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. In that poll, 50 percent approved of the way the president was performing his job, and 39 percent disapproved. While nearly half of poll respondents said the economy, along with jobs, was the most important issue facing the country, 47 percent approved of the president’s handling of the economy, and 43 percent disapproved. For some of the respondents, that disapproval did not budge. “He talks about the recession being over,” said Gene Bell, 83, a retired livestock inspector in Phoenix, who voted for Mr. Obama but now disapproves of his handling of the economy. “Well if it is, that must be on Wall Street.” Many of those interviewed, even those who support the president, appreciated his appeal to bipartisanship. “I do think we have to find a way for everybody to work together,” said Amy Holt, 39, a Republican in Hoover, Ala., who continues to disapprove of Mr. Obama’s handling of health care and the economy. But many also expressed little confidence that he would be able to do so. “I like to hope for the best in people, but I deeply think the Republicans are not going to be any help and they’re going to block everything, even if the end result would be better for the country,” said Amanda White, 24. “You can see it,” she said. “They don’t clap, they don’t stand, they’re very put-offish. It’s rude.” Ms. White, a Democrat who a month ago said she disapproved of the president’s handling of health care, said this week that she hoped he would aggressively push the issue. Unable to find a full-time job after she graduated from Illinois State University last May, she now works part-time as a waitress and substitute teacher and lives with her parents. But Ms. White was bounced from their health care policy when she turned 22 and now pays about $200 a month out-of-pocket for coverage — a problem Congress has been trying to address with provisions that would let adult children stay on their parents’ policies longer. John Rue of Wyoming, Minn., a general manager of a bus service that provides rides for people with special needs, was among those who liked the idea of expanded credit for small businesses. With more low-income people eligible for service, he has more business than his fleet can handle, but the company has not been able to buy additional buses or hire more drivers because banks have turned it down for loans three times in two years. But Mr. Rue, 41, a Republican who voted for Mr. Obama, said he barely bothered to listen to what the president said on health care. Not that the issue does not affect him — his health premiums rose 25 percent last year, he said, and his wife’s doubled, and neither can afford to insure their children on the plans they get from work. But he has little confidence that anything will change. “I really did shut down and didn’t listen too much, because that’s all we’ve been getting drilled at us for so long, and it goes nowhere,” Mr. Rue said. “There’s too much even with his own party that they don’t agree with him on. Nothing’s going to happen.” Laverne Bolton, 75, a retiree in Summerville, S.C., who did not vote for Mr. Obama, said that as much as she appreciated his frustration at the lack of bipartisanship, he was not without blame. “One thing he said last night that bugged me to no end is that he’s going to have a monthly meeting with Republicans,” she said. “Why hasn’t he been doing that for the last 12 months? He excluded them. He should have been working with the whole Congress.” Dwayne Poeppel, 47, an unemployed manager from Snohomish, Wash., who voted for Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican opponent, disapproved of Mr. Obama laying the blame for many of his administration’s problems on eight years of policies of the Bush administration. “He really came out very defensive, very against Republicans, antagonistic,” he said. “He was blaming people for what he inherited, which was a contrast to what he said he was going to do when he got into office. It was like, ‘Here we are again.’ It was very disheartening.” Still, Mr. Poeppel said, he found the president as likeable as ever, and believed he was sincere. “I think he genuinely wants to get these jobs and the economy going,” he said. “But there are so many parties involved, it has got to be a tough job. Even though I don’t have a job, I wouldn’t want that one.”

State of the Union Message (US)
Obama Barack
Polls and Public Opinion


Marketing Firms Cleaning Up With ‘Reverse Graffiti’

Abstract: When Jim Bowes, founder of the Dutch marketing firm GreenGraffiti, asks to pay licensing fees for plastering public property with advertisements, city officials still are not sure how to respond. In truth, neither the authorities nor Mr. Bowes knows whether GreenGraffiti’s widespread outdoor ad campaigns are even legal. That is because Mr. Bowes’s company is not putting up posters or monopolizing billboard space. It is “washing” corporate logos onto dirty sidewalks. Using stencils and high-pressure water sprayers, GreenGraffiti selectively washes down pavement, leaving behind “clean” words and images that gleam through the grime. Street artists have been using the technique, called “reverse graffiti,” for decades, but the firm is among the first to employ it for the purposes of publicity. “The city is our canvas,” Mr. Bowes said. “We can tell a story over the course of two blocks if we want to, without paper, without ink. We don’t want to be the bad guys anymore; we want to show the world that the advertising industry is capable of providing alternatives.” GreenGraffiti now has licensing agreements in more than 10 countries and is among a number of environmentally conscious marketing agencies concerned more about the sustainability of the medium than that of the message. Since its inception — it grew out of the graphic design firm Hemshaven and was established as a stand-alone business in February 2008 — five other “reverse graffiti” ad companies have cropped up in the Netherlands alone. Some skeptics question how environmentally friendly the medium really is. A single 140-centimeter-square, or 55-inch-square, green graffiti impression requires 15 to 20 liters, or four to five gallons, of water. That is about 30 times less than is needed to produce a paper poster of comparable size, Mr. Bowes says. And to compensate even for that, the company has adopted a program of matching every liter used with a donation of a liter of clean drinking water to a drought-stricken region. It also plans to switch the power source for its pressure hose pumps from gasoline — it takes a liter to create 50 street displays — to renewable fuels. Mr. Bowes and his team have handled campaigns for the likes of Starbucks, Good Housekeeping and MTV. Clients also include official bodies: The company has done two campaigns for the Amsterdam police, and this month it concluded a seven-country biodiversity campaign for the European Union. Domino’s Pizza was one of the earliest U.S. companies to commission GreenGraffiti, investing less than $20,000 in a campaign that included 210 street impressions, spread across New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles last summer. Pedestrians were invited to send in photographs of themselves with the street images to win Domino’s gift cards. Domino’s estimated that the campaign brought it about $1 million worth of publicity. “We think this is a great avenue to keep the buzz going in a nontraditional, more viral way,” a Domino’s spokesman, Chris Brandon, said. Domino’s used GreenGraffiti for a second time in January, outside the Super Bowl in Miami. Curb Media, a London-based “natural media” company, takes the idea of paperless promotion a few steps further. As well as offering reverse graffiti, its collective of artists creates elaborate, large-scale advertisements using only organic elements. For Extreme, a sports channel and lifestyle brand, employees wielding custom stamps tagged snowbanks in London after a blizzard in 2008. For Shredded Wheat, it cut a huge logo into a wheat field on a British farm supplying grain to the cereal maker. “Type in ‘sustainable marketing,’ and everything that comes up is focused on messages that are going to make people feel green, think green, buy green,” said Anthony Ganjou, founder of Curb Media. “But it’s not just about the creative message, it’s about the way in which you communicate it. Consumers look at traditional media advertising, and they don’t necessarily equate the impact of the medium — a poster, say — on the environment. We’re trying to change that.” Curb’s clients — among them Adidas, Häagen-Dazs and Johnson & Johnson — are eager to take a step toward sustainability, but the green agenda comes second to making sales. And nothing turns heads quite like a life-size Volkswagen made entirely of sand, Mr. Ganjou says. It is fairly rare for a billboard to cause a stir. “But we can do an advertisement out of mud anywhere in the world, and I guarantee that 25 out of 30 people will stop and take a photo of it with their mobile phone,” he said. “And at least half of those people will upload it to their social media network.” Both GreenGraffiti and Curb Media have made a point of not limiting themselves to brands that identify themselves as eco-friendly. “We’re going to work with any company who’s authentically trying to do things in a better way,” Mr. Bowes said. “Our job is to show companies that they can take a very small step in a positive direction and have a valuable campaign come out of it.” Whether or not his clients are socially concerned, for Mr. Bowes reverse graffiti is just the start of a more ambitious exercise. He says that in the next two months he plans to introduce a corporate responsibility-based marketing program. Participating companies would spend some of their ad budget to clean up a disadvantaged neighborhood, which would then be branded with green marketing messages. The aim would be to encourage residents to associate the trademark with positive change. “In place of sticking two billboards on the main highway, you’re actually investing in a community,” Mr. Bowes said. When a campaign is over, it leaves no garbage behind. “We can go into a park and set a message into a bank,” said Mr. Ganjou. “Once the message has been communicated, we’ll replant the seeds and let the grass grow back to where it was before.”

Advertising and Marketing
Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Ecology and Environment Inc


Jonathan Lippman, New York’s Former Chief Judge, Joins Latham & Watkins

Abstract: New York State’s former chief judge has joined the litigation and trial practice of the law firm Latham & Watkins. Jonathan Lippman, who retired last week as chief judge of the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, is of counsel for the firm, where he started on Monday. The former judge, who is 70, is focusing his advice on New York law and appellate matters as well as continuing his long-standing efforts to expand access to legal services for the needy. During his time on the bench, Mr. Lippman pushed for more free legal services to help the poor in civil cases such as housing disputes, and he urged private practice attorneys to give more free legal advice for the public good. Latham & Watkins, which has 2,200 lawyers in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States, has donated 2.5 million hours in free legal services since 2000, including 100,000 hours last year. In an interview, Mr. Lippman said the global reach of the firm and its emphasis on pro bono work made it “the perfect match for me.” In New York, where it has 400 attorneys, Latham & Watkins has worked with The Legal Aid Society, New York Legal Assistance Group, Lawyers Alliance for New York, Sanctuary for Families and the Fair Housing Justice Center. Life in a big law firm will be an adjustment for Mr. Lippman, who spent 43 years in the New York State court system in various roles, including staff attorney, administrator and judge. “I don’t believe in taking time off,” he said in the interview. Gov. David A. Paterson appointed Judge Lippman as the chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals in 2009. Before that he was presiding justice of the First Judicial Department of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, having been appointed to the position by Gov. Eliot Spitzer in 2007. He was chief administrative judge of the New York State Courts from 1996 to 2007, responsible for overseeing 3,600 state and local judges and a $2.5 billion budget.

Jonathan Lippman
Appointments and Executive Changes
New York
Lawyers


Knicks Take Georgia Tech Guard Shumpert

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y. — By the time the 2011 draft arrived, his last draft, Donnie Walsh had already disassembled and reassembled the Knicks in spectacular fashion, installing true stars where false idols once stood. His final stroke was necessarily more modest. In what will probably stand as his last major move, Walsh selected Iman Shumpert, a defensive-minded guard from Georgia Tech, with the 17th pick Thursday night. Walsh is stepping down as team president on June 30, after three years of running the franchise, and after clashing with team ownership over issues of autonomy. With no more blockbuster deals to make, no great assets to trade and a low pick in a weak draft, Walsh still filled some needs Thursday. Shumpert, who stands 6 feet 5 inches and 212 pounds, can play both backcourt spots and some small forward. He is regarded as a superb defender and athlete, with a 42-inch vertical leap and a 6-10 wingspan. He could play alongside Chauncey Billups or back him up, adding critical depth to a talent-depleted roster. And he will bring a defensive posture to a team that ranked in the bottom third last season. “I really like him a lot,” Walsh said. Shumpert averaged 17.3 points, 3.5 assists and 2.7 steals as a junior and was on the all-defensive team in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He was not a prominent name, however, and his selection evoked immediate boos at the draft in Newark. “I feel good about it, I really do,” Walsh said of taking Shumpert. “I kind of came into this league with everybody booing me when I took Chuck Person, who was rookie of the year, and Reggie Miller the next year. And I’m going out with everybody booing me, and that’s a good sign.” Walsh laughed. He has been right more often than not in 25 years of stocking rosters in Indiana and New York. He is leaving the Knicks with an arsenal of All-Star talent, with Amar’e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and Billups now anchoring the lineup. The need now is for high-quality role players, as well as shooting, rebounding and size. But the best shooters and big men were gone by the time the Knicks picked. Those needs will have to be addressed in free agency. Shumpert does not need the ball to be effective, making him a solid complement to the Knicks’ three stars. Although he is considered more of a combination guard than a true point, Walsh said Shumpert has the requisite playmaking skills. The Knicks need an eventual heir to Billups, who will be 35 next season. “I think with our team offensively, he probably will play more point than he will two guard, because Chauncey can play ‘two’ probably as good as anybody,” Walsh said. “I think he can run pick-and-roll, I think he’ll see the play, and he’ll get better at it.” Walsh said that Shumpert is also a better shooter than his reputation suggests and shot well during his workout for the team “His shot’s not broken,” Walsh said, adding, “He has good form.” At one point, it appeared that forward Kawhi Leonard, a small forward from San Diego State and a projected lottery pick, might fall to the Knicks, which would have changed their plans. Leonard was taken 15th, by Indiana, and traded to San Antonio. Walsh could have chosen a top rebounder (Kenneth Faried) or the draft’s most versatile defender (Chris Singleton), but he said Shumpert was the best choice, given the need for backcourt help. Singleton, a 6-8 small forward, would have had trouble finding playing time behind Anthony, and he is not suited to play shooting guard, Walsh said. Although team officials had thoughts of trading up in the draft, they had few assets to use, and a reluctance to part with the few young players they had. The Knicks did not have a second-round pick, but they bought the rights to Kentucky’s Josh Harrelson, a 6-10 forward, from the New Orleans Hornets, who took him 45th. Walsh will become a team consultant on July 1 and hand the front-office reins to Glen Grunwald, the team’s senior vice president of basketball operations. Grunwald will serve as interim general manager until the team identifies Walsh’s heir. The next order of business is to address the status of the scouting and front-office staff and Coach Mike D’Antoni’s assistants, all of whom have contracts expiring at the end of the month. Walsh said that he expected everyone to be retained. The selection of Shumpert seemed to surprise ESPN’s studio analysts, who were promoting Singleton and Faried as the logical choices. Jon Barry praised Shumpert, but added, “He’s not great at one particular area.” “Don’t expect miracles out of him,” Barry said, “but he’s a guy who can play defense. That’s what the Knicks need.” Three years ago, Walsh returned to New York, his hometown, to fix a broken franchise. This spring, the Knicks made the playoffs for the first time in seven years and posted their first winning record in a decade. But the franchise did not pick up Walsh’s contract option, and negotiations on an extension broke down when Walsh failed to get assurances of autonomy from James L. Dolan, the Madison Square Garden chairman. “I’m going home,” Walsh said with a mixture of glee and relief. “I loved it here, I really did.”

Shumpert Iman
New York Knicks
Draft and Recruitment (Sports)
Basketball
Walsh Donnie


Finland Claims Third Junior Title

Abstract: Rasmus Ristolainen scored in overtime to give Finland its third world junior hockey title with a 3-2 victory over Sweden in Malmo, Sweden. Ristolainen, a Buffalo Sabres defenseman, slid a backhander under goalie Oscar Dansk’s right leg pad for the winner. Finland also won the under-20 event in 1987 in Czechoslovakia and 1998 at home in Helsinki. Russia beat Canada, 2-1, in the third-place game.


Ebola Outbreak Erodes Recent Advances in West Africa

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — Nineteen thousand doctors and nurses will soon be needed to make a dent in West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, but the world has yet to send more than a small fraction of them, the United Nations says. Of the 1,000 vehicles needed to help the effort, only 69 have arrived. Of the 500 burial teams needed to ensure that infected corpses do not spread the disease, only 50 are now on the ground — and there is no clarity on who will pay them. In the breach, Ebola is fast washing away the small gains made over the last decade in war-scarred parts of West Africa, as schools shut down, immunization campaigns are suspended and a food crisis looms as farmers abandon their fields. Donors had spent millions of dollars in an effort to strengthen the public health systems of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone long before the three countries became the center of the Ebola outbreak. Aid agencies of the United Nations have been active there for decades, with projects to train health workers, improve child mortality rates and get more children into school. United Nations peacekeepers helped shore up Sierra Leone for 20 years, since the end of its crippling war; Liberia had some 5,000 peacekeepers when the outbreak began this year. Now, a virus that doctors have controlled elsewhere has ballooned in West Africa, unraveling many of the gains made in these countries in recent years and potentially threatening the hard-won stability of this tinderbox part of the world. Some clashes and strikes have broken out. Tensions are simmering between neighbors in the region, who have long fueled wars in one another’s countries. The International Fund for Agricultural Development, another United Nations agency, warned last week that the Ebola epidemic could “lead to a hunger crisis of epic proportions.” Yet, only two months ago, the Security Council was considering scaling back its peacekeeping mission in the region more quickly, because United Nations troops were required in other countries. That proposal has since been suspended, and the United Nations is now clearly trying to make sure it can hold on to the blue-helmeted soldiers that it has on the ground, which may not be easy. The Philippines has announced that it will pull its troops from Liberia, citing Ebola risks. “It seems obvious now that the health crisis could have knock-on effects on the economy and so on, but that wasn’t apparent” earlier, said a United Nations diplomat who did not want to be identified in keeping with diplomatic protocol. The United Nations has taken pains to assure diplomats that the peacekeeping mission has done all that it could to fight Ebola, including by spreading public health messages on its radio network, donating cars and body bags to the Liberian government, and helping to level the ground for the construction of treatment centers, according to a confidential memo to the Council. The United Nations has spent upward of $8 billion on the peacekeeping mission in Liberia since 2003. Now, the United States is sending 4,000 soldiers to build Ebola treatment centers in Liberia. Britain and France are separately sending their own forces to build centers in their former colonies, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The biggest gap now is staffing. The United Nations emergency Ebola mission says the 19,000 doctors, nurses and paramedics are needed by Dec. 1. By then, 10,000 Ebola patients could be pouring in each week. To turn around the transmission rate, the United Nations has set an ambitious goal: to isolate at least 70 percent of the sick and conduct safe burials for at least 70 percent of the dead. The scramble follows a Security Council resolution, passed in mid-September, declaring Ebola to be a potential threat to peace and stability in the region. The secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has appealed for nearly $1 billion in aid; on Tuesday his trust fund had a cash deposit of just under $9 million. Donors have separately given money and noncash contributions to specific programs, adding up to about $386 million , or just under 40 percent of what Mr. Ban has asked for. “There’s nowhere close to the money we require, nowhere close to the personnel we require, nowhere close to the assets we require,” Anthony Banbury, the head of the United Nations mission to contain Ebola, said by phone from Accra, Ghana, after reviewing the needs on the ground. “It’s unconscionable.” Jan Egeland, a former United Nations official and now head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said his group could not send health experts to West Africa until they were assured of proper care if they get Ebola and of being treated in an Ebola-free hospital if they are in an accident. The United States military is now building a treatment center for foreign aid workers in Monrovia, the Liberian capital; it is projected to be ready by early next month. The European Union recently announced a medical evacuation system for international health workers. “All of this should have been fixed early on” by the United Nations, in cooperation with the United States and European Union, Mr. Egeland said. Aid has picked up since the Security Council’s appeals. The United States plans to build 18 treatment centers across Liberia. Germany is building a treatment center in Sierra Leone and another in Liberia, and using its military aircraft to transport supplies for the United Nations. China announced that it would send motorcycles to help track the disease, along with $6 million for food to those who are quarantined. A consortium of East African countries have promised to send 600 health workers. But hospitals are needed for non-Ebola patients, too, and even before the Ebola outbreak, Liberia had a severe shortage of medical staff. “The focus, rightly so, has been to set up treatment centers, but if you have people coming to them with malaria, labor complications or other health needs, there are currently no hospitals or clinics to safely refer them,” said Kris Torgeson, a liaison officer for Doctors Without Borders in Liberia. Mr. Banbury, who was in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, working to muster an international response, called the Ebola epidemic the toughest and most complex humanitarian crisis he had ever seen. Haiti is a critical object lesson for the United Nations. The earthquake was followed by a deadly cholera outbreak, and the United Nations has never addressed whether its peacekeepers were to blame. It faces a class-action lawsuit over cholera. Nor has it come close to rallying donors to help Haiti curb the disease once and for all.

Ebola
Guinea
Liberia
Sierra Leone
Africa
Epidemic
Humanitarian aid
UN


Plans for Annex to Governor’s Mansion Draw Critics

Abstract: NASHVILLE, Nov. 29 — A low-key Democrat, Gov. Phil Bredesen is often praised for his level head and business sense. He was easily re-elected to a second term last fall, sweeping every county in Tennessee . But in Oak Hill, a semiautonomous community in southern Nashville, Mr. Bredesen and his wife, Andrea Conte, are being roundly criticized over plans for a $4.8 million 12,000-square-foot underground entertainment annex to the governor’s mansion, to be paid for with private donations. Opponents, including donors to a lengthy renovation of the entire brick Georgian Revival mansion, say the annex, whose cost is included in the $19 million redo, would be far too elaborate and expensive. They also say that the new structure would be out of place in a residential neighborhood steeped in Civil War history. “There has been concern because of the fact that the project does not appear to be appropriate for this particular location,” City Manager William H. Kraus said. Critics have suggested that the governor’s support for the annex, which some call Bredesen’s Bunker, has caused them to question his fiscal responsibility and the propriety of using private money for such a project. “This is so totally inconsistent with what I would think his overall philosophy would be,” said Lee Beaman, a neighbor and a prominent businessman. “I’m scratching my head saying, ‘Where did this come from?’” Although the mansion renovation has been under way for years, many Oak Hill residents said they learned the annex details only recently. Surprise turned to anger with news that dynamiting had been scheduled to start next month. Some neighbors are raising money in case they decide to sue to try to block the project. One neighbor, Lorelee A. Gawaluck, said the project showed misplaced priorities and predicted that it would become a “pink elephant” for Oak Hill and the state. “This is unacceptable from the get-go,” she said. “This secrecy is all about trying to railroad it through before citizens of Tennessee and the taxpayers really know what the heck is going on.” On Wednesday, the Bredesen administration delayed construction of the annex for 30 days to allow Oak Hill officials to review the plans. Deputy Attorney General Kevin G. Steiling insisted that the state could begin work on the annex at any time because the property is state owned. Ms. Conte said that objections stemmed partly from misinformation, and that communication with neighbors could have been better. “Many of them have been huge supporters, and so I regret that these problems have come up,” she said in an interview. Neighbors say the dispute is the first in memory over the residence, which the state bought in 1949, 20 years after it was built. Eight governors lived there. By Mr. Bredesen’s election in 2002, the heating and cooling systems were antiquated, the roof leaked and the house had other serious problems, too, said the longtime state architect, Mike Fitts. The Bredesens remained in their house here to allow the renovation, the mansion’s first, to proceed. The administration decided to use $6.4 million raised by the Tennessee Residence Foundation, founded under Mr. Bredesen’s predecessor, Don Sundquist, a Republican. Ms. Conte is a member of the foundation board. State money will pay for the remainder of the renovation. The donor list is a Who’s Who of Tennessee politics, including donors to Mr. Bredesen’s campaign for governor and registered lobbyists. At least one contributor, Nissan North America, has received benefits from the state. When Nissan announced in 2005 that it would move its corporate headquarters to Tennessee from the Los Angeles region, the state gave it a $197 million incentive package that included $80 million in tax credits and almost $64 million in relocation aid. Nissan gave $100,000 to the foundation in February 2005, before it announced the move; $100,000 in January 2006; and $50,000 last March. To suggest a quid pro quo existed between the donations and the incentive package, Ms. Conte said, “is an insult.” “There have been no deals” between the state and any donors, she added. A spokesman for Nissan, Fred Standish, said officials did not expect it to contribute to the foundation. “We viewed this as just being a good corporate citizen,” Mr. Standish said. Mr. Fitts said the mansion, whose dining room seats about 22, lacks a dignified space to entertain large gatherings of lawmakers or other dignitaries. Typically such events, he said, require tents with temporary heating, cooling and toilets. Ms. Conte said she and Mr. Fitts recognized the renovation as an opportunity to add a permanent entertainment space financed by the foundation. Early plans called for an above-ground conservatory. But when the state invited architects to submit qualifications, a Memphis company, Archimania, included the underground proposal that caught their attention, Mr. Fitts said. The architects suggested carving what they described as an “eco-friendly” hall from limestone under the back lawn. It would hold up to 499 people and include a 3,000-square-foot area for 160 diners. The sole above-ground visibility would be an oval opening in the roof of a subterranean atrium. In addition to the $4.8 million cost, $3.8 million in state money would make it accessible for disabled people. At least one other state, Colorado, has used donations to spruce up its governor’s mansion. Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause, the watchdog group, said such use of private money was acceptable if there were transparency and oversight. Still, Mr. Edgar said, such donations “raise some hairs on the back of your head.”


Tainted Chocolates Found in Hong Kong

Abstract: BEIJING (AP) — Hong Kong said Sunday that its health inspectors had found two Cadbury chocolate products containing considerably more of the industrial chemical melamine than the city’s legal limit, in the growing scandal over tainted food made in China. In another blow to China’s food industry, Iran banned imports of all dairy products from China because of the contamination concerns, state radio in Iran reported. In China, the chief food safety regulatory agency said that no traces of the melamine had been found in new tests of milk powder sold domestically, as officials sought to restore public trust in dairy products. Baby formula containing melamine has been blamed for killing four infants and sickening more than 54,000 in China. Melamine can cause kidney stones and other ailments. Chinese authorities suspect that suppliers trying to increase output diluted their milk and added melamine because its nitrogen content can fool tests measuring protein content. The contamination has led to global concern about Chinese food imports and to recalls in several countries of Chinese-made products including milk powders, cookies and candies. Hong Kong’s food regulatory agency, the Center for Food Safety, said samples of two chocolate products made by Cadbury, the British candy maker, at its Beijing factory contained considerably more melamine than the city’s legal limit of 2.5 parts per million. The two items are among 11 Chinese-made products that have been recalled by Cadbury in parts of Asia and the Pacific. The Center for Food Safety said that Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Hazelnut Chocolate Bulk Pack contained 56 parts per million of melamine, while Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Cookies Chocolate contained 6.9 parts per million. Calls to Cadbury’s headquarters in London and its regional Asia-Pacific offices went unanswered Sunday. In Iran, the Health Ministry said the ban on imports of dairy products from China would be in place until further notice, according to state radio. The ministry is assigning health workers to destroy suspect Chinese dairy products currently on the Iranian market. China’s government has been struggling to contain the damage from widespread contamination of milk supplies, castigating local officials for negligence while promising to keep stores supplied with unadulterated milk. The latest tests of 129 batches of baby formula and 212 batches of other kinds of milk powder showed they were free from melamine contamination, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its Web site.

China
Melamine
Food Contamination and Poisoning
Milk
Dairy Products
Chocolate


Yahoo Wants You to Linger (on the Ads, Too)

Abstract: Four editors were deep in debate at Yahoo Food’s offices in Manhattan: Would Yahoo visitors click on a feature about foods of the ancient Silk Road, or would they prefer a guide to cheese fries and other snacks that go well with ranch dressing for the Final Four basketball games? Rachel Tepper, the resident history buff, said people would be interested in how wheat and millet spread throughout the world millenniums ago. Julia Bainbridge, who joined Yahoo Food last year from Bon Appétit, had her doubts. “I don’t see our readers clicking on, ‘What’s the deal with the Silk Road?' “she said. Such choices — ranch dressing versus food history — are the stuff on which Yahoo’s future now depends. The Internet pioneer still attracts a huge audience, but advertising, its prime source of revenue, is steadily declining. Marissa Mayer, the chief executive, has decided that one way to reverse that decline is to turn the company into a media empire with a constellation of what it calls digital magazines on topics like food, technology, movies and travel. Ms. Mayer says that she wants to make Yahoo a “daily habit” for its 800 million users. But she doesn’t want people to come to Yahoo just to read email, post photographs on Flickr or get the latest sports scores. She also wants Yahoo to be a place where they curl up and spend some time, whether they are into haute couture, the latest gadgets or tabloid gossip. And curling up right beside them would be the advertisers. Built using technology acquired last year as part of the company’s $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr, the new publications combine original articles and material licensed from other sites, as well as big photos and videos into an endless page of tiles aimed at enticing people to linger. Mixed into that stream is a different kind of advertising — so-called native ads or sponsored posts — which look almost exactly like all the other articles and videos on the page except that they are sponsored by brands like Knorr, Best Buy and Ford Motor. These ads, Yahoo hopes, will attract the attention of more readers and make more money for the company. In some cases, Yahoo editors even help to write that advertising — a blurring of the traditional lines between journalists and the moneymaking side of the business. “We think that digital magazines can be a great advance, creating a different category of content consumption,” Ms. Mayer said in an interview a few months ago at the company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. “You can layer in video. You can change the content. You can bring in the social aspect. You can tell someone, ‘Oh, by the way, your friend also read this article and thought it was interesting.' ” Ms. Mayer has spent millions of dollars on this push, much of it to recruit celebrity talent. The newest magazine, Yahoo Beauty, which went online on Monday, is edited by Bobbi Brown, founder of the cosmetics line that bears her name. The company has also snagged big names like Joe Zee, formerly creative director of Elle, and David Pogue, a best-selling author of personal technology books and a former columnist for The New York Times. For video, Ms. Mayer hired Katie Couric to conduct interviews and to host several programs; clips are shown both on the magazines and on Yahoo News. Each magazine has also begun its own video series. But despite the bold hires and grand ambitions, the plan to turn Yahoo into a media giant has a been-there, done-that feel, and it is far from a sure thing. Since its early days, Yahoo has repeatedly plunged into media — creating a celebrity gossip site, starting dozens of video projects and hiring journalists to do original reporting around big events like the Academy Awards — then faltered and retreated. Becoming a content powerhouse is even more challenging now. Image The new sites have drawn few ads, but Ned Brody, a Yahoo executive, says it’s still early in the game. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Today, people get much of their news and entertainment through links from social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The Huffington Post and a host of smaller sites are masters at manipulating Google’s algorithms to show up at the top of its search results. Apps on smartphones and tablets, where Yahoo has a minimal presence, are rapidly displacing the personal computer, the company’s traditional stronghold. And viewers have learned to tune out display and banner ads, sending ad prices (and Yahoo’s revenue) plunging. The magazines certainly aren’t generating much excitement among shareholders. Much of Yahoo’s $34.3 billion market value comes from a stake in Alibaba, China’s leading e-commerce company, which plans to sell stock to the public in the United States later this year. “Yahoo’s problems are fairly deep, and just having some relatively new content initiatives is not going to solve their structural problems,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Capital. Still, Yahoo needs to do something different if it wants to reverse its long slide toward irrelevance. Ms. Mayer hopes the magazines will be a classier place to advertise and more lucrative for the company. Ms. Mayer, an unabashed fan of glossy print publications like Vogue and InStyle, would like to see Yahoo’s sensibility gradually move more upscale, even though its core visitors are more midmarket. Analysts and others in the industry are skeptical that this will work. “A brand like Elle or Vogue is really luxury fashion,” said a longtime magazine industry executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of continuing relationships with Yahoo. “That kind of content is never going to resonate” on Yahoo. ‘Out in the Wilderness’ Image To bring back advertising dollars, Yahoo is building a stable of digital magazines. Debating story ideas for one of them — Yahoo Food — were, from left, Rachel Tepper, Julia Bainbridge and Sarah McColl. Ms. McColl has since left the company. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times Jerry Yang and David Filo founded Yahoo two decades ago as a directory to the nascent World Wide Web. They soon added a better search engine as well as news, weather, sports and email, competing with mass-market sites like AOL to become the gateway to the Internet for the hundreds of millions of people just discovering it. Consumer brands, seeking the best way to advertise to web users, were initially drawn to Yahoo’s large audience, and Yahoo raked in the ad dollars. Then came Google. As more people began their web forays with a Google search, advertisers flocked to it, siphoning much of Yahoo’s search ad business. And a proliferation of specialty sites — and, later, Facebook — began competing for display ads. When Microsoft made a $44.6 billion bid for the weakened company in 2008, many investors urged Yahoo to take the money and run. Yahoo’s board rejected the offer but cut a deal to hand its search technology to Microsoft and share search ad revenue. Yahoo spent the next four years drifting without a clear strategy, going through four C.E.O.s and losing tens of millions of users before Ms. Mayer was hired from Google in 2012. She focused first on improving Yahoo’s products and expanding its mobile team. The company revamped Yahoo Mail and the Flickr photo-sharing service and added smartphone apps like the Yahoo News Digest and Yahoo Weather to give the company a foothold in mobile. But until recently, Ms. Mayer did little to court consumer-brand advertisers. Last year, Yahoo brought in $4.7 billion in revenue, down 6 percent from the previous year, as sales of both display and search ads, which together made up about four-fifths of Yahoo’s revenue, continued to fall. Ms. Mayer concluded that the executive whom she had handpicked to lead advertising efforts, Henrique de Castro, was ill-suited to the job, and she dismissed him in January. “From an advertiser perspective, they were out in the wilderness for the better part of a decade,” said Bryan Wiener, chairman of 360i, a marketing agency that handles digital campaigns for brands like Coca-Cola, Oscar Mayer, Toyota and Oreo. “Other than a massive user base, they could not articulate a reason for being.” Ms. Mayer hopes that the magazines will bring back some of Yahoo’s old mojo, attracting readers who will stay on the site longer and offering new ways for advertisers to make an impact. Image The newest magazine, Yahoo Beauty, which went online on Monday, is edited by Bobbi Brown, founder of the cosmetics line that bears her name. While special advertising sections and “advertorial” articles have a long history in news media, sites like BuzzFeed and Vice are remaking the form, presenting this sponsored content as equal to anything produced by the staff. Such native advertising has been considered and pursued by many other publications, including The Times , because research has shown that visitors are less likely to ignore these ads. Leading the media push is Kathy Savitt, Yahoo’s chief marketing officer, who was put in charge after Mr. de Castro’s departure. Ms. Savitt, a former public-relations executive who worked at Amazon and American Eagle Outfitters before forming her own e-commerce company, had little experience managing a sprawling media operation. But current and former associates say she has Ms. Mayer’s trust. “We have to give someone a reason to make Yahoo their daily habit,” Ms. Savitt said in an interview. “ ‘Magazine’ is sort of an accessible term that talks about a place where you are passionate about a subject, where you can go to get that completely immersive experience.” Giving Ads ‘a Point of View’ The magazines, which get little promotion from Yahoo’s powerful home page and main news page, are off to a modest start. In May, Yahoo Tech had nine million unique visitors on desktop and mobile devices in the United States, making it seventh among tech sites, behind rivals like CNet and Gizmodo, according to comScore, a research firm; Yahoo Food had 7.9 million visitors, making it No. 12 in the food category. Food content is a noisy bazaar on the web. Lifestyle magazine publishers own some of the juggernauts: Meredith, for example, has the top site, Allrecipes.com. Niche sites, cable channels (like the Food Network), celebrity chefs, amateur bloggers and general-interest sites like The Huffington Post also compete for readers. Even top brands like Kraft and Betty Crocker publish popular content. For Yahoo Food to be heard in the cacophony, its editors are constantly striving to find the right mix to appeal to a wide range of readers, from recent college graduates who live on their smartphones to Yahoo’s traditional audience of older readers who visit by computer. Image For Yahoo Food to be heard in the cacophony, its editors are constantly striving to find the right mix to appeal to a wide range of readers. Julia Bainbridge, one of the editors, says the magazine strives to be “the host of a cocktail party” — making sure that the conversation is interesting for everyone. Sometimes that means serious posts, like an essay on cooking for the sick and heartbroken , In other cases, it’s pure whimsy. The day after the debut of “Klondike,” the TV mini-series about the 19th-century Canadian gold rush, the title was hot on social media. So Ms. Bainbridge assembled a post in which she embedded images of Klondike ice cream bars in photos from the show — a technique called photobombing. The post prompted the “Klondike” show to post its own ice cream photobomb on Twitter. Yahoo’s post probably didn’t hurt its standing with Unilever, a major advertiser, which owns Klondike, though Yahoo says the post was unrelated to that relationship. The magazine’s tone is also influenced by native advertising, which the editors help advertisers create. For example, Unilever, which also owns the Country Crock brand, sponsored a post on 10 breakfast options for people who hate breakfast . In keeping with native advertising’s more subtle — or sneaky, depending on your perspective — approach, editors made sure Country Crock margarine was just a bit player in the post. The only place the brand was mentioned was in the byline, and only one breakfast suggestion even linked to a recipe that used the spread. “That was our most popular story for two days in a row,” said Sarah McColl, who was Yahoo Food’s editor in chief until about a week ago, when she left to pursue graduate studies in creative writing. “I think our involvement elevates the advertising,” she said. “Our ability to bring editorial knowledge and finesse to advertising content makes it better and gives it a point of view.” Yahoo said it’s up to the editors of each magazine to decide whether to get involved with advertising. Some editors, like those at Yahoo Tech, are adamant about keeping a strict separation. Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, said that such mixing of journalism and advertising could confuse readers and erode their trust unless the connection between the advertiser and the content was very clear. “Not all advertiser-funded content is bad, but it has to be transparent,” she said. “Where did this come from? Who is supporting this?” Yahoo says its data show that its users click on native ads at roughly 10 times the rate they do for display ads on the site. Rob Master, Unilever’s vice president of media for the Americas and Europe, says he has been impressed by the format so far. “We see ourselves as brands creating content, whether it’s recipes or the latest in hair care — how to do up-dos,” he said. “It provides us an opportunity to deliver our content that’s not out of context.” Although he said Unilever saw some benefits from the Yahoo Food campaign, he declined to be specific. More important to him was that Yahoo is paying more attention to advertisers. In recent years, Unilever’s spending with Yahoo “dropped dramatically,” Mr. Master said. Last year, Ms. Mayer met repeatedly with Unilever executives and asked how Yahoo could improve. When she shared her thinking about sponsored content for some new digital lifestyle magazines, Mr. Master said, “We put our hand up and said, ‘We will do that.' ” Unilever has since expanded its commitment to advertising on Tumblr and Yahoo sites. Yet even with the big push and the wooing of brands, the magazines have attracted little advertising over all. Yahoo Tech, in particular, has sometimes gone weeks without a single ad. “It’s hard for anyone to have embraced it yet because it’s just starting,” said Ned Brody, who heads Yahoo’s advertising business in the Americas. “This is about changing the way an advertiser can interact with its audiences.” Drawing From Tumblr Technology taken from Tumblr, which Yahoo bought last year, is the template on which the digital magazines are built. On Tumblr, there is no line between branded content and everything else. Rather than offering traditional ads, marketers create Tumblr blogs with posts that are often lighter and more humorous. Those posts can be shared by any Tumblr user, much the way a brand’s Facebook posts can. Image A Tumblr page for the Splenda brand. Executives at Yahoo and Tumblr are now pushing brands to pay to show those blog posts to a wider audience. Last week, they announced tools that allow marketers to run Tumblr posts as ads anywhere on Yahoo’s network of sites. One of the first brands to jump to Yahoo from Tumblr was Splenda, the artificial sweetener owned by Johnson & Johnson. Yahoo worked with Splenda to build a Tumblr site to showcase one low-calorie recipe a day, said Kim Holdsworth, group brand director for Johnson & Johnson’s nutritional products. In May, that material began appearing on Yahoo Food, where it was seen more than 32 million times in the first two weeks. Splenda is considering another campaign this year. “The Tumblr platform was this natural fit for us,” Ms. Holdsworth said. “It gave us easy-to-digest content.” This kind of advertiser hand-holding is labor-intensive, and Yahoo clearly can’t keep doing it forever. But it may be necessary, at least for a while. “I’ve been clear with investors that this will take multiple years,” Ms. Mayer said. “We’re doing the right stuff.”

Yahoo!
Marissa Mayer
Online advertising
Magazine
News media,journalism
Search Engines
Tumblr
advertising,marketing


Rangers’ Chris Kreider Keeps His Nose to the Scholarly Grindstone

Abstract: The 140th commencement at Boston College is scheduled for 10 a.m. May 23 at Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Mass., but Christopher James Kreider has no plans to walk with his class to pick up his long-pursued and long-promised bachelor’s degree. “We’ll be in the playoffs,” Kreider said. “I can just go pick it up or something.” Chris Kreider, 24, earns a living as a rangy forward for the Rangers. He got off to a slow start this season but is playing well as of late, scoring in each of his last two games and five of his last nine. Kreider even fough t with Pittsburgh forward Chris Kunitz on Sunday, and won. “Pucks are going in,” said Kreider, who has 16 goals over all. “The stats as of late are better than the underlying numbers. Before that, the underlying numbers were better than the stats. It’s just how it goes sometimes. You get to a point where the underlying numbers are just as good as the stats.” The Rangers will open a critical three-game trip Wednesday with a game against the Anaheim Ducks. The trip, which includes games against the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday and the San Jose Sharks on Saturday, will help determine the Rangers’ playoff seeding. For most of the season, Kreider has also been working on completing his degree. At 6 feet 3 inches and 226 pounds, Kreider is a fast and powerful skater. But he is also cerebral and introspective. When the Rangers go on the road, Kreider takes a Kindle reader. He said he was completing a book of short stories. He likes to read in his hotel room before he falls asleep. Asked what he likes about reading, Kreider said: “What everyone enjoys about it. It’s something to do.” Nevertheless, he put together a summer reading list last July for CNBC.com . The Ernest Hemingway novel “The Old Man and the Sea” was on it. When asked what he majored in at Boston College, Kreider smiled and said: “Hockey. My minor was communications.” Kreider did major in communications as he compiled a successful three-year hockey career at Boston College, helping the Eagles win N.C.A.A. titles in 2010 and 2012. Three days after the 2012 title game, Kreider, who is from Boxford, Mass., and went to Andover Academy, signed with the Rangers, who had selected him in the first round of the 2009 draft. He was a phenom, scoring five goals in 18 Stanley Cup playoff games. But Kreider had already made a promise to his parents, Kathy and David, to finish work on his bachelor’s degree. He took a full course load in the summer of 2011, but he was still four courses short when he left college. Kreider later learned he needed six courses. “I was told four initially,” he said, “but at the time there was turnover from dean to dean, so there was a change in the system. Course numbers and credits were different than before that. There was a lot of red tape. It almost fell through the cracks.” Kreider, who is fluent in Spanish and Russian, said he took a few courses at Boston College in the off-season and a few online. He had to get an English elective done. His professor, the Rev. Robert D. Farrell, gave him a choice of topics: American Popular Literature, New World Classics or New Forms, New Fictions. “He selected American Popular Literature because it was based on an original and refreshing concept — to apply the critical approaches one would use to evaluate classical literature to novels found on the racks at Walmart,” Farrell wrote in an email. “The program required Chris to write a five-page appreciation of each of the six novels. He approached each assignment differently.” Farrell added, “His papers revealed over and over again that Chris himself has the writer’s gift.” Kreider played down the bachelor’s degree, saying: “I put a lot of time and effort to get to a certain point. I was just kind of seeing it through to the end.” He said his grandfather, who died in November 2014, would have been proud of him. But Farrell said that Kreider was not just going through the motions. “Chris told me that he was happy to have the opportunity to work with the popular literature course and said that he was delighted to complete the work for his degree because it would mean so much to his family,” Farrell wrote. Farrell added: “He gave me the impression that he really treasured his B.C. degree which he had worked so hard for while playing hockey at Boston College, and then continued to pursue over the years while playing for the Rangers. It was a long and demanding process for a very disciplined young man.” Asked what he might be doing if he were not playing hockey, Kreider shrugged and said, “This is what I wanted to do for a long time.” Since he will have a degree in communications, perhaps Kreider could be an announcer when his career is over. He thought about it and said, “I definitely have the face.”

Ice hockey
Chris Kreider
College
Boston College
Rangers


Transcendent Islanders Moments at the Nassau Coliseum

Abstract: I am working up a rush of nostalgia during the Islanders ’ final spring at Nassau Coliseum. The Isles, who clinched a postseason berth Thursday, play their last regular-season game at the Coliseum on Saturday against the Columbus Blue Jackets. There were so many great times in that squat, prosaic arena near the bright lights of Hempstead Turnpike. Image Bob Nystrom and Lorne Henning in 1980 after a goal by Nystrom made the Islanders Stanley Cup champions within a decade of being born. Credit Associated Press I say the Islanders were the best team I ever covered because they had more so many stars who delivered with Canadian-Swedish-suburban modesty. And they won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980 through 1983. Somehow I narrowed my favorite moments to five. MAY 24, 1980 Bob Nystrom’s overtime goal to win Game 6 of the 1980 Stanley Cup finals made the Islanders champions within a decade of their being born in 1972 as an expansion team out in the suburbs. It was not a lovely goal but was typical of the hard-working Nystrom, from western Canada, who secured his reputation by winning the Cup. Bobby Ny married a Long Island woman and stayed on the Island to become perhaps the player who remained closest to the team over the decades — and the father of an N.H.L. player . This was the start, by a guy who became a storied figure. Without his goal, we would not be having this discussion. Image Bobby Nystrom, left, John Tonelli and Butch Goring after Tonelli's overtime goal secured a win and the 1982 Stanley Cup for the Islanders. Credit Bruce Bennett Studios/Getty Images APRIL 13, 1982 John Tonelli saved a dynasty. His goal at 6 minutes 19 seconds of overtime secured a 4-3 victory in the fifth and deciding game of the Patrick Division semifinals against the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Islanders trailed by 3-1 in the third period before Mike McEwen scored at 14:33 and Tonelli netted the tying goal at 17:39. The Islanders had won two straight Cups, but a number of teams had done that. Edmonton was the coming power out west. A dynasty was on the line as the Islanders had six minutes left in regulation time. The transfer of power from the Islanders to Edmonton did not happen until two years later. Tonelli was a great guy — almost everybody on that team was — and has become a successful businessman in New York, but somehow he has not been honored the way many of the Islanders’ greats have been. MAY 8, 1982 Mike Bossy intercepted a bad pass and scored late in overtime to take the first game of the Stanley Cup finals against the Vancouver Canucks. I was there, and as I remember, it was cold outside for May. I can still see Harold Snepsts making the bad pass, and Bossy swooping in and shooting while Snepsts was already breaking his stick. Image Mike Bossy after he intercepted a bad pass and scored late in overtime to take the first game of the 1982 Stanley Cup finals against the Vancouver Canucks. Credit Bruce Bennett Studios/Getty Images About eight years later, my son David was a young reporter in Peoria, Ill. Snepsts was coaching the Peoria Rivermen. As David tells it, he introduced himself and said, “Mr. Snepsts, I am from Long Island — and in 1982 I was the happiest kid ...” And Snepsts said, “You’re talking about the Bossy goal!” I caught up with Snepsts at an All-Star Game in Vancouver in 1998. He still wanted that pass back. APRIL 20, 1983 The Islanders crushed the Rangers, 7-2, in Game 5 of the Patrick Division finals, and Bob Bourne made the most beautiful, athletic goal I will ever see. He picked up the puck behind his own net, with Billy Smith watching, and flitted his way right, then left, split two defenders and scored at an angle. True, the Rangers were already behind, 4-1, and going down. But as I wrote back then , this was straight off the pond. Bourne was a great athlete and played minor league baseball, splitting first base with Clark Gillies in the Houston Astros’ chain. To watch him was to watch an athlete at the peak of his career — impromptu beauty. Image Former Islanders coach Al Arbour, who led the Isles to those four Stanley Cups in his 19 seasons with the team, coached a final game in 2007 to round off his total at 1,500. Credit Jim McIsaac/Getty Images NOV. 4, 2007 When Al Arbour was 75 and had long since retired after coaching 1,499 games for the Islanders, the team signed him to coach one more game and round off the numbers. I watched the team’s head coach at the time, Ted Nolan, go along with it, with great professional respect. Arbour, who led the Isles to those four Stanley Cups in his 19 seasons with the team, had come into a news conference the day before and spotted me and two other oldies from New York papers. He gave a mock groan, and we said he couldn’t escape us. The next night, the Isles fell behind the Penguins by 2-0 but won, 3-2 , for Arbour’s 740th victory. I love hockey because of the respect for history and for the game itself. This was a perfect example.

Ice hockey
Nassau Coliseum
Bobby Nystrom
Mike Bossy
Bob Bourne
Al Arbour
Islanders


Porto Rico, a Venerable Old-Timer in Greenwich Village

Abstract: PETER LONGO was sitting in his office making a long story short, or at least he kept promising to. I figured that his sense of time was different from mine because his office, on the ground floor of 201 Bleecker Street, which houses his store, Porto Rico Importing Company, is downstairs from where he was born 62 years ago. I think if you grow up in the building where you were born and work there your whole life, you develop a sense of place the rest of us don’t have. You never have to hurry. You’re already home. Mr. Longo, one of 66 contributors who wrote essays for “Greenwich Village Stories: A Collection of Memories,” edited by Judith Stonehill (Universe) and published this week, was sharing some family history in celebration of the book. His family lived here, in the same house on Bleecker Street, for more than a century. In this transient big city, he sees small-town continuity. There may not be a white picket fence in front of his childhood home, but the store has an awning. His mother, Rose, a lifelong smoker who died last year at 100, when still living upstairs, used to flick her butts out the window and burn holes in it. That’s a Village grandma for you. In the office, Mr. Longo and I drank espresso and talked about the company’s oddly spelled name. “There are a few theories,” Mr. Longo said. He is a genial fellow, who often waves his tattooed forearms for emphasis. “It began as an Italian store in 1907. Puerto Rico coffee was famous then, the pope drank it, and this was the Italian spelling. Or the owner might have meant rich port of products, a cornucopia.” The Longo family has owned the business since 1958; Mr. Longo has been in charge since his father, Angelo, died in 1976. Since then he has opened stores at three other locations, on St. Marks Place in the East Village, in the Essex Market on the Lower East Side and on Grand Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Although each has a coffee bar, Mr. Longo stressed that Porto Rico’s specialty has always been coffee beans and tea leaves, not cafes. He sells 130 varieties of coffee from 28 countries, retail and online, and he sells wholesale to 350 restaurants. His warehouse and roasting plant are in Brooklyn. Image The Caffe Reggio coffeehouse. Credit Philip Greenberg for The New York Times But the Longos came late to coffee. They started with bread. Mr. Longo’s grandfather was a baker who bought 201 Bleecker in 1905 for $5,000. Angelo, who was also born upstairs, in 1910, joined the business, and Longo Sanitary Bakery turned out bread six days a week. “There were a lot of bread bakeries then,” Mr. Longo said. “People didn’t have ovens in their apartments, so they would bring in big turkeys and other things to cook. It was very Italian, this neighborhood, and this business was founded selling things they couldn’t get here that they used to get at home: espresso beans, dried mushrooms, spices.” Mr. Longo’s parents attended dances down the block at the Bethlehem Chapel, where the Little Red School House is now. “It was a Presbyterian organization,” Mr. Longo explained, “and the center of social life for the kids. My father fell like a ton of bricks for my mother.” Rose, the daughter of a tailor, was born across the street at 190 Bleecker. She worked at Macy’s in sales and later at Forbes magazine in subscriptions. In 1934 she and Angelo married and they moved to the top floor at 201 Bleecker, where they raised Mr. Longo and his two older sisters. After Mr. Longo went to Our Lady of Pompeii School on Bleecker Street and La Salle Academy, on Second Avenue in the East Village, a recruiter persuaded him to try Lewis College, a Roman Catholic college in Romeoville, Ill. “I wanted to leave New York and I loved it,” he recalled. Long before that, though, his father tired of the bakery. “He woke up at 3 a.m. every morning to bake, opened the store at 8 a.m., closed at 6 p.m.,” Mr. Longo said. Angelo tried his hand at sales, landing at Fromme’s Coffee, a small company in Brooklyn. Once he learned the business, he approached Patsy Albanese, the owner of Porto Rico, then at 195 Bleecker. Angelo bought the company and eventually moved it to its current location. Our espressos drained, Mr. Longo and I took a neighborhood walk. He is definite about the things he doesn’t miss: “If I went to meet a girl, a million women were all sitting in these windows, watching. When I moved away as an adult, it was a relief that nobody knew me. Image The Minetta Tavern restaurant, left, and Rocco's Bakery. Credit Philip Greenberg for The New York Times “Also, when I was growing up, I was unaware of the prejudice between northern and southern Italians. When I made deliveries to some Italian restaurants, they treated me with contempt because the northern Italians considered us Sicilians bums. So I don’t miss that. It was ugly.” He does miss closing the store on Sundays — it’s now open seven days a week — which means less time with his wife, Catherine, and two sons, Peter, 22, and Matthew, 21. As we started up Bleecker, we arrived at the next corner, anchored by a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. I gasped, and Mr. Longo sighed. “When they opened, we gave coffee away the first three days,” he said. “But we’re not a place to sit.” He added, “Owning the building saves the day.” We walked into a packed Caffe Reggio, where Mr. Longo’s parents used to go, then down Minetta Lane to the Avenue of the Americas. He pointed out Trattoria Spaghetto on Bleecker. “That was called Renzo’s, run by a husband and wife, Renzo and Virginia,” he said. “They closed all summer to make pesto, then they’d reopen in the fall. The veal Milanese was beautiful, thin and crispy, green noodles from Raffetto’s and his pesto. During the summer when they were making the pesto, Renzo would work all day, then at night, he would play the accordion to Virginia. If you were local, you’d go in and chat. He closed when the owner raised the rent.” His eye traveled down the block. “We went to Joe’s Pizza all the time,” he said. “I still do.” He gestured farther down Bleecker. “I went to grade school with a kid whose family owned Caesar’s Pastry Shop, which is Rocco’s now, and his father used to let us fill the cannolis with cream from the bag.” Even though he looked like a boy himself at that moment, he spoke of his sons: “I think they’ll come into my business, but I’m careful not to force it.” As we parted, Mr. Longo shook my hand. He turned and left the way we’d started, walking back up Bleecker Street.

Coffee
Greenwich Village Stories
Greenwich Village Manhattan
Peter Longo
Porto Rico Importing
Books


Zimbabwe: Diamond Researcher Is Arrested

Abstract: Farai Maguwu, who leads the Center for Research and Development in Mutare, the leading civic group investigating human rights abuses in the Marange diamond fields, turned himself in to the police on Thursday and was charged with providing false information to Abbey Chikane, the Kimberley Process monitor appointed to ensure that the diamonds mined there are not being sold illicitly to fuel conflict. Mr. Maguwu met with Mr. Chikane on May 25. Since then, Mr. Maguwu’s brother has been picked up for questioning, and his cousin has been arrested and charged with obstructing justice. “This is a message to civil society that there’s a price for fighting for your rights — no one is safe,” said Mr. Maguwu’s lawyer, Tinoziva Bere.

Zimbabwe
Diamonds
Freedom and Human Rights


Leaked Cable Stirs Tension Between Palestinian Sides

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Tensions were rising on Wednesday between Fatah and Hamas , the two main Palestinian political factions, over a leaked American diplomatic cable and ongoing accusations by each side regarding the other’s arrests, plans and statements. Gen. Adnan Damiri, spokesman for the security services of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, called a news conference and said that Hamas rockets, rocket launchers and automatic weapons had been found in Ramallah and Nablus. This was evidence, he said, of plans by Hamas to attack fellow Palestinians. “The security institutions are carefully considering the seriousness of the incitements to killing and the chaos that the illegal Hamas militias and leadership are carrying out in Gaza and Damascus,” he said, referring to the movement’s leaders, who are divided between Gaza and Damascus, Syria. Earlier, Fatah denied the assertions of a cable from 2007 released by WikiLeaks , in which the head of the Israeli Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, is quoted as saying that Fatah forces asked Israel to attack Hamas in Gaza and that the Palestinian Authority shared its intelligence with Israel. “They are approaching a zero-sum situation, and yet they ask us to attack Hamas,” Mr. Diskin was quoted as saying. “We have never seen this before. They are desperate.” In a statement, Fatah said that none of its members had ever acted in that way and that the leak was part of a Shin Bet plot to undermine the Palestinian Authority. General Damiri added that WikiLeaks should not be taken as truth without verification. “I wonder what Diskin was talking about,” he said. Hamas officials said the leaked cable proved that the Palestinian Authority was and remained a collaborator with Israel. Salah Bardawil, a Hamas official in Gaza, said the cable was further evidence that Fatah “wants to serve the occupation to uproot the resistance led by Hamas.” Fatah supporters accuse Hamas of increasing arrests of its opponents in Gaza and mistreating them just as Hamas accuses the Palestinian Authority of arresting its followers and torturing them in West Bank prisons. General Damiri denied the accusations, saying that there may have been individual errors by security force members but that the Palestinian Authority forces respected human rights. After years of domination by Fatah, the more nationalist and secular of the two movements, Palestinian politics shifted when Hamas, which has an Islamist orientation and support from Iran, won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. An uneasy power-sharing effort fell apart in June 2007 when Hamas forces pushed Fatah out of Gaza. Attempts at reconciliation have failed repeatedly.

Fatah Al
Hamas
Palestinian Authority
Wikileaks
Palestinians


Energy Secretary Is Resigning After 4 Years Focused on Clean Technologies

Abstract: Energy Secretary Steven Chu will step down soon, possibly by the end of the month, he said in a statement on Friday, ending a four-year tenure in which he concentrated on fostering research and development of clean energy technologies, and opponents pilloried him over stimulus loans that went bad. His departure will add to a constellation of vacancies at the top of related agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Department and the Interior Department. President Obama said in a statement that Dr. Chu “brought to the Energy Department a unique understanding of both the urgent challenge presented by climate change and the tremendous opportunity that clean energy represents for our economy.” He praised Dr. Chu for expanded support of research into “groundbreaking innovations that could transform our energy future.” Dr. Chu presided over a surge in expenditures in which the Obama administration tried to use the Energy Department to stimulate the economy and advance both energy efficiency and clean energy production. Dr. Chu said that some of the money would be used to “swing for the fences,” promoting a variety of ventures, of which some were certain to fail. But the successes would more than compensate for the failures, he said, especially in research and development, where breakthroughs could nurture new industries. As expected, some of the research has failed, and much remains a work in progress. One of the manufacturing failures was Solyndra, a company with an innovative design for solar cells that got a $535 million loan guarantee but built a product too expensive for the market. “He was given the thankless task of spending $40 billion on energy technology very quickly at a department with little existing capacity to do so productively, so it’s something of a miracle there weren’t more Solyndras,” said Paul Bledsoe, an energy aide in the Clinton White House. Mr. Bledsoe praised Dr. Chu’s focus on the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program , known as Arpa-e, an energy version of the better-known Darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Image Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House on Friday. He has presided over a surge in expenditures on energy programs. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, offered a more critical assessment of the administration’s approach to new technologies. “I found taxpayer losses on projects like Solyndra and the department’s deeply misguided effort to use taxpayer dollars as an investment bank for unproven technologies to be the most problematic aspects of his legacy,” he said. The next energy secretary, he said, should focus on “removing barriers for the safe use of proven technologies.” The commercial verdict on the department’s investments may not be delivered for years to come. The initial outlook for the Obama administration’s wind and sun programs has been dimmed by the success of an Energy Department initiative of the 1990s: the development of a method for drilling horizontally in shale formations and fracturing the rock to liberate natural gas, known as fracking, which cut the price of fossil energy just as renewable technologies appeared poised to reach price parity. Dr. Chu, a physicist , was the first cabinet secretary to come into office with a Nobel Prize (an honor he shared in 1997 for his work with supercooled atoms) and was the first scientist to lead the department. His 14 predecessors as secretary included a dentist, an admiral from the nuclear Navy, a former electric utility lobbyist and a variety of political figures. Several people have been mentioned as potential replacements: Christine O. Gregoire, a former governor and attorney general of Washington State, who once sued the Energy Department to force a cleanup of nuclear waste, and whom Dr. Chu mentioned in his departure announcement; Dan Reicher, an assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration; and Ashton B. Carter, a deputy secretary of defense, whose prior experience is well suited to the department’s main mission, the management of nuclear weapons. But it is not clear if the White House would move him from the Defense Department. Dr. Chu had the political skills to manage the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its 4,000 employees before being chosen by Mr. Obama, but he also showed a physicist’s penchant for speaking the truth plainly. In September 2008, before Mr. Obama was elected, Mr. Chu told The Wall Street Journal , “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” a statement that Republicans in Congress used to criticize him. Three months earlier, in a lecture he gave in Washington on energy, he said that new houses could be made energy efficient with an investment of $1,000, “but the American consumer would rather have a granite countertop.” His science focus was still clear after four years on the job. On Thursday, speaking to reporters at the Washington Auto Show, he was asked whether sequestration, the across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take place in March, would interrupt progress on energy problems. He replied by describing how it would still be necessary to sequester carbon dioxide from power plants. When the questioner clarified that the issue was not carbon capture and sequestration, but sequestration of federal money, he smiled and responded, “See what a nerd I am?”

Steven Chu
Energy Department
US Politics
Barack Obama


The Sermon on the Tapes

Abstract: Dearly beloved, let us bow our heads and mourn the passing of so many beloved media storage formats: Home-movie film reels (1932-1975). Floppy disks (1969-2002). Eight-track tapes (3:15 p.m. on Aug. 3, 1965, to around dinnertime on Nov. 5, 1988). Let us also say a prayer for vinyl records, audiocassettes and VHS tapes. They may not be dead yet, but they do wheeze a bit going up stairs. When their time comes, they, too, shall ascend to Format Heaven, where they shall be joyously reunited for all eternity with stone tablets, illuminated manuscripts and cave drawings. But yea, though these recent formats have the approximate shelf life of milk, there is still time to resurrect them. Unto ye I say, copy these crumbling films and disks onto shiny new recordable CDs and DVDs while they still walk among men. Here, then, for your clipping-to-the-fridge pleasure, is the latest wisdom on helping old recordings pass into their next life. AUDIO TAPES If the meaningful sonic records of your life are on tape — audiocassettes or even 8-track cartridges — you can do the rescue job yourself. You don’t even need a computer. Instead, you can buy a stand-alone audio CD recorder, from companies like Sony and Teac, for about $200. You connect your tape deck directly into the CD recorder, hit Play, and record directly onto blank CDs. Some say they offer automatic track detection, which creates a new track on the CD each time it hears an interval of silence; in practice, this technology can be flaky. If you want the CD to recognize each song as a separate track, you’ll usually wind up baby-sitting the process and hitting a New Track button at the end of each song. If you have a computer, you can connect your tape deck directly to it. The cable you need has stereo RCA jacks (round red and white) that plug into the tape deck’s stereo outputs, and a headphone-style miniplug for the audio input jack on your Mac or PC. Next, equip your computer with some recording software. Free programs abound, like MusicMatch for Windows or Audacity for the Mac. Of course, you’ll get better, faster results using programs like Toast (for Macintosh) or Easy Media Creator (Windows), each $80. Each includes special software that eliminates hiss from tapes and crackles and pops from vinyl records. Visit your computer’s sound control panel, or the options screen in your recording software, to make sure that it is “listening” to the correct audio input (and not, for example, its microphone jack). Once you’ve set the volume levels, press Play on your tape deck, and Record in the recording software. If you save each song as a separate file on your hard drive, you’ll be all set to turn them into traditional tracks on the finished CD. But that entails stopping the tape after every song and exporting the file before continuing. In the real world, many people spare themselves all of that administrative work and treat one side of each audiotape as a single “song” on the resulting CD. Once a song has safely arrived on your hard drive, you can export it — in AIFF or WAV format, for example — and then import it into a program like iTunes or Windows Media Player for burning to a blank CD. VINYL RECORDS The gear you need depends upon the gear you already own. If you have a turntable and a computer, you can follow the same steps described above — except that in most cases, you also need a preamplifier between them. This little $40 box boosts a record player’s feeble signal until it is strong enough for your computer to hear. If you no longer have a record player, $171 buys you Ion’s unique iTTUSB turntable, which is designed to connect directly to the U.S.B. jack of a Mac or PC. The music plays straight into an included audio-editing program. If you have neither computer nor turntable, you can turn to a last resort: the Teac GF-350, a cheaply built turntable with a built-in CD recorder ($350). The sound quality isn’t great, but those who are neither techno- nor audiophiles may be content. No matter which method you use, a word of advice: If you’re going to immortalize your old records on new CDs, clean each LP carefully before beginning. OLD VIDEOTAPES If most of your old tapes are on VHS, a dual-deck combination VCR/DVD burner will make the transfer. Such a machine connects to your TV and serves as both a VCR and a DVD player. It can copy a VHS tape onto a blank DVD with one button press. Panasonic and other companies make these decks for $135 and up. (These decks do not duplicate copy-protected disks or tapes.) As a bonus, the same deck can transfer other old tape formats, like 8 millimeter and Hi-8. You just plug your old-format camcorder into the deck’s inputs, and burn your home movies to DVD in real time. An alternative is Sony’s DVDirect deck ($220), which doesn’t require a TV hookup at all. It has its own built-in screen. You plug your camcorder or VCR into its inputs, insert a blank DVD, and hit Record. Once again, the transfer takes place in real time, but at least you can park the thing anywhere and avoid tying up your home-entertainment setup for hours on end. OLD FILM REELS If you still have the projector you need to view your old home movies — Super 8, say, or 16 millimeter — it’s possible to do the transfer to DVD yourself. In theory. You project the movie onto a screen or white wall, as small and sharply focused as possible. Then you use a modern digital camcorder, on a tripod directly in front of the screen, to shoot the image. Afterward, you can transfer the camcorder’s footage to a computer, edit it and then burn it to a DVD. This trick is cheap, but it’s not ideal. First, it’s incredibly time-consuming, since you’re sitting through the footage at least twice. Second, if your camcorder doesn’t have audio inputs, you’ll have a tough time capturing the soundtracks of the films (if any). Worst of all, most film reels haven’t been kept cool for the last few decades — and so the color has begun to shift. Red is the last pigment to disappear, which is why many old home movies look as if they were shot on Mars. Old film can be color-corrected, but not by you, the amateur. Even the drugstores and discount stores that offer film-transfer services generally don’t do color correction. That’s why most people wind up sending their films to professional transfer labs. These companies use much higher-quality transfer machines — refrigerator-size reel-to-reel machines called telecine decks — to convert film into video, and then employ colorists to adjust each scene before committing the result to a DVD. In short, sending your reels away to professionals is convenient and offers the best possible quality — but it’s expensive. MyMovieTransfer.com , for example, charges $20 a reel (each reel is about four minutes long), plus 10 percent if there is sound, plus $10 per DVD or MiniDV tape, plus $10 for FedEx shipping. Some transfer houses also handle videotapes, audiotapes and LPs, for those with more money than time. THE NEXT RESURRECTION Thousands of people have rescued their recordings already, and have posted elaborate step-by-step tutorials on the Web. Do a Google search for “audio tape computer transfer Mac” or “transferring LPs to CDs Windows,” for example. If you opt for the do-it-yourself approach, steel yourself for a fairly lengthy project; depending on the number of old recordings you have to transfer and how many misburned discs you encounter, completing the transfer could take weeks or months. But dearly beloved, just think of what you’ll have begot: a stack of shiny new CDs or DVDs that will live in the kingdom of recorded media forever and ever. Or at least until the next format comes along, and you have to do the whole thing again. Amen.

Computers and the Internet
Recordings and Downloads (Audio)
DVD (Digital Versatile Disk)


Japan’s Parliament Approves a Secrecy Law Amid Protests

Abstract: TOKYO — In an unusual late-night session with protesters chanting outside, Parliament passed a secrecy law on Friday that the prime minister said would strengthen national security but opponents warned would stifle democracy. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used his governing coalition’s majority to get the bill approved by Parliament in about four weeks, a blistering speed by the standards of Japan’s consensus-driven political world. This brought howls of protest from opposition parties that Mr. Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party were ramming through a potentially dangerous new law without giving them, or the public, a chance to understand it first. Mr. Abe says the new law will improve Japan’s ability to manage delicate diplomatic, defense and counterterrorism-related information, making it easier to share classified intelligence with allies like the United States. The move is part of his broader strategy for strengthening Japan’s defense posture that also includes a new American-style national security council, which held its first meeting on Wednesday. However, the secrecy law has drawn intense criticism from news media, law and civil rights groups, who say its broad and vague definition of what constitutes a secret will only further strengthen Japan’s already-secretive central bureaucrats. They also warn that the law’s stiff penalty of up to 10 years in prison could be used to scare would-be whistle-blowers into silence, or even harass journalists, harming the public’s right to know. The Abe administration has sought to allay those concerns by adding provisions to exempt news gathering, and to create a committee of outside experts to oversee how secrets are handled. “We will try to protect the people’s right to know, and prevent arbitrary designation of secrets,” said Masako Mori, the state minister in charge of the secrecy law. Earlier on Friday, opposition parties tried unsuccessfully to pass a no-confidence motion against Ms. Mori in a bid to slow the bill’s passage. Opposition parties said they were unsatisfied with the government’s assurances, warning that the new law gives heads of government ministries and agencies broad powers in declaring secrets. They said Mr. Abe has left vague what powers the new oversight committee may actually have, and particularly whether its members will have clearance to review what information gets classified as secret, raising doubts about whether it will be an effective check on Japan’s powerful central bureaucrats.

Japan
Classified Information
Shinzo Abe
Liberal Democratic Party Japan


Nascar Fines Childress $150,000 for Altercation

Abstract: The team owner Richard Childress was fined $150,000 for assaulting Kyle Busch. Nascar also put Childress on probation through the end of the year, finding him solely at fault for Saturday’s incident at Kansas Speedway. Childress, 65, apparently approached Busch after the Trucks race, put him in a headlock and punched him several times.

Automobile Racing
National Assn of Stock Car Auto Racing
Childress Richard
Busch Kyle


Clijsters Back on the Baseline, Via the Receiving Line

Abstract: Kim Clijsters was running late. It wasn’t her fault, really, but with every step she ran into somebody she had not seen in a couple of years. Clijsters was the most popular player on the tour back then, and nothing has changed. She has a way of focusing those light blue eyes on people, and listening, actually listening. “She is very nice, very sweet, very unusual in the top 10, that is for sure,” said Viktoriya Kutuzova of Ukraine, who lost to Clijsters, 6-1, 6-1, in the first round of the United States Open on Monday. Clijsters missed the people, the friends, maybe even more than tennis itself, which is why she was running late, in the lobby of the players’ lounge, a place she thought she might never see again. “A lot of things change,” she said Monday. “Their lives go through these emotional parts, such a big part of your life.” Since she last passed this way as a player, Clijsters had become a mother of a girl, Jada, now almost a year and a half old, and has lost her father, Leo , the rugged core of the Belgian national soccer team two decades ago, who died of cancer on Jan. 5. And other people’s lives had changed. So she stopped and talked. The crowd buzzed around her, the life she gave up early in 2007. Agents and publicists, lanky young players, characters wearing spiky haircuts and speaking many languages, and over there, Guillermo Vilas himself — the usual players’ lounge mix. Kim Clijsters’s old life. Included in this life was the 2005 United States Open championship, the only Grand Slam tournament she has won, to date. The officials at the Open scheduled Clijsters at 11 a.m. Monday, not because she was a warm-up act as a wild-card entry, but as an homage to her championship in 2005. “I never got to defend the title,” Clijsters, 26, was saying in the hubbub of the players’ lounge, referring to the wrist injury that kept her out of the 2006 Open, before her two-year retirement . “I really appreciated this.” She recounted the details of her first trip back to the scene of her only Grand Slam title. “So much has changed,” she said. “New locker room, new gym.” When she came out Saturday to be part of Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day, she found herself strolling the same corridors, until she found daylight, a glimpse of the rainy center court at Arthur Ashe Stadium. “It felt nice,” she said. “This is where it all happened.”  Clijsters’s victory over Mary Pierce in 2005 was popular not only because of her personality but also because of her open, athletic style, the way she could slide into an acrobatic, and sometimes even frightening, split. Asked Monday if she could still perform the split, Clijsters replied, yes, giving it a comedic pause. But she was not about to perform one at the moment, she added. Maybe next time. In her next round she will play 14th-seeded Marion Bartoli of France, whom she defeated , 6-4, 6-3, in Ohio, in her first tour match back, on Aug. 10. Bartoli said then that Clijsters was already showing top-10 skill. “My mistake is that I don’t always finish off my movement the way I should,” Clijsters said Monday. “I’m kind of already preparing myself for the next shot while I didn’t even finish my serve yet.” She has time. The comeback began early this year when she accepted a challenge to play an exhibition at Wimbledon with Tim Henman against Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi. She had so much athletic pride that she threw herself into her training, and then she remembered what she loved about the sport. So with the blessing of her husband, Brian Lynch, an American basketball player , she went back to the old life. “This is really a bonus, seeing everybody again,” Clijsters said. She had been scheduled to play Kutuzova in a second-round match at Wimbledon in 2005, only to have Kutuzova come down with a rash that resembled chickenpox. Later Kutuzova discovered it was an allergy to, of all things, strawberries. “You know, you need to eat strawberries at Wimbledon; it’s important,” Kutuzova said Monday, this time suffering a reaction to a blue spider bite on her rear end, she said. Kutuzova took four tablets of Benadryl, which made her feel “very sleepy,” so to combat the sleepiness, she said she took some power gels of caffeine, which made her feel dizzy. “Today on the court on the long points, I did the best I could do, but it was double stress for me,” she said.  Kutuzova loves Clijsters’s game but added that she could not predict how Clijsters would do in this tournament. However, Kutuzova was glad to see her. “You don’t feel she is a somebody,” Kutuzova added. “Everybody is happy around her. She has a baby, so sweet.” Clijsters wanted to get back to the hotel to care for her daughter, but first she had to pass all her friends in the players’ lounge. Welcome back, they said. Welcome back.

Tennis
Clijsters Kim
United States Open (Tennis)


Iran: Guards Reportedly Put Down Prison Escape

Abstract: A botched prison escape attempt left at least 9 prisoners dead and 33 injured, Iran ’s state television reported. The prisoners, most said to be on death row, clashed with guards at Ghezel Hesar Prison, just west of Tehran. The report said that none escaped.

Iran
Prison Escapes
Prisons and Prisoners