Still Flaunting the Luxe Life

Abstract: Last year, Joseph C. Nunes, a professor of marketing at the University of Southern California , published a paper with two colleagues in the Journal of Consumer Psychology titled “Conspicuous Consumption in a Recession: Toning It Down or Turning It Up?” Examining product lines from Louis Vuitton and Gucci developed right before the financial crisis of 2008 and during the recession , the researchers concluded that despite the predictable musings of the popular press forecasting diminished ostentation, showiness was thriving. Logos were far more prominently displayed on products introduced during the recession than they were on products that went out of circulation, they determined. Prices were raised, and the profits of the companies hardly suffered as a result. While those living in TriBeCa lofts furnished with reclaimed wood, folk art and flax bed linens might find this paradoxical, marketing theorists do not. Citing previous research on luxury shopping that divides affluent consumers into two groups — “patricians” and “parvenus” — Dr. Nunes and his partners argued that the latter group, ever intent on deriving status through what it buys, remained resistant to the pressures others felt during difficult times to appear restrained in their habits. While patricians (by which we mean both third-generation occupants of Park Avenue apartments and those who might shop at ABC Carpet) seek an even more quiet tastefulness, parvenus angle to dissociate themselves more obviously from the less-well-off. Some luxury companies, realizing this, begin to focus more aggressively on those unburdened by sensitivities to distress. Few experiences in New York could have lent this theory greater credence than the peculiar event known as the Luxury Review , which took place at the Metropolitan Pavilion, an event space in Chelsea, on Thursday night. Created by Bradford Rand, who is in the business of putting on job fairs, particularly for the intelligence community, the Luxury Review is a trade show for high-end jewelers, watchmakers, boat builders, automotive dealers and so on who come to market themselves to people who buy expensive things and also to market themselves to one another in the hope of forging various alliances. Outside the pavilion, a stretch of West 18th Street was given over to two Aston Martins — a 2011 DB9-Volante and a 2012 Vantage S Coupe — and a 34-foot Hacker-Craft runabout, a mahogany boat that took 2,000 production hours and costs $289,000. Midway through the evening, guests were asked to turn their attention to the debut of a Champagne (actually from Champagne) called Billionaires Row. Inside was a new Bentley , the Silverlake 2012 Bentley Continental GTC convertible, eventually unveiled, and beside it was the president of Bentley Americas, Christophe Georges, who informed me that sales of Bentleys in the United States increased 32 percent last year over sales from 2010. The United States is now the company’s biggest market. When I asked Mr. Georges to outline in specific terms the profile of his customer base, he explained that the Bentley owner typically has five or six luxury vehicles. These are the kind of wealthy people, he said, “who want to reward themselves for their great achievements.” The scene at the pavilion begged for broad generalizations about what those achievements might be. One young woman in a lace minidress, orange platform stilettos and a Hermès Kelly bag — a uniform one has not come to associate with Meg Whitman — wandered about aimlessly deflecting male attention. Another woman, Natalia Darialova, 20 or so years older, described herself in quick succession as a fashion designer, a television executive and, as she said some referred to her, “the Oprah of Russia .” She was there as the guest of Sean Koh, the scion of an entrepreneurial family whose holdings include Manhattan Woods , a golf club in West Nyack, N.Y., that had a booth in the pavilion. If you are the kind of person who might be reluctant to join a club that would have you as a member, then you would presumably ingest your 9-irons, spit them out and repeatedly stab yourself with the prongs of your golf shoes before you would affiliate yourself with one that sought to promote itself at a miniaturized convention at which Ivanka Trump’s jewelry line was also on display. Mr. Koh seemed to realize his predicament, stressing that “we are not here actively seeking membership,” and describing the club as “very exclusive.” The difference between New York and a place like Los Angeles or Moscow or Chengdu is that we believe patrician tastes dominate here. We believe that a certain ambivalence about money still clings to some fraction of the well-to-do. The city is more virtuous in part because its excesses are less visible. We might walk down Fifth Avenue in the 80s knowing we are walking past some of the most expensive real estate in the world, but because we are not bombarded by a view of gates and fountains and garden attendants, we imagine ourselves in a more sacred place. And yet, hasn’t this view become ever harder to maintain? On Thursday evening, I met only one person who seemed aggrieved by what surrounded her, Miriam Luan, a former investment banker who divides her time between private-equity work in Manhattan and winemaking in Argentina . “This,” she said, surveying the room, “is not luxury.”

Recession and Depression
Luxury good
US Economy
NYC
Conventions and Trade Shows


Robert Hite, 95, Survivor of Doolittle Raid and Japanese Imprisonment, Dies

Abstract: Lt. Col. Robert L. Hite, the last survivor among eight crewmen who were captured by the Japanese when American bombers brought World War II home to Japan in Jimmy Doolittle’s daring air raid in 1942, died on Sunday in Nashville. He was 95. The cause was heart failure, his son, Wallace, said. The raid led by Colonel Doolittle inflicted relatively light damage on military and industrial targets, but it delivered a moral victory to Americans, disconsolate since the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor less than five months earlier, and it was a stunning psychological blow to the Japanese, who had been led to believe that their homeland was inviolable. The raid became the basis for the 1944 movie “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” adapted from the book of the same title by Capt. Ted W. Lawson, a pilot who took part in the attack. Mr. Hite, the son of tenant cotton farmers from Texas, almost missed the mission. He had volunteered for it and was assigned to pilot one of its B-25 bombers, but was bumped from the roster when all the planes originally massed for the raid could not fit on the aircraft carrier Hornet , which was to ferry them toward their target. At the last minute he replaced the co-pilot of another crew. He was 22. Sixteen planes and 80 airmen took part in the mission , flown low to the ground in daylight by pilots who had never taken off from a carrier; the planes were designed for takeoff from land bases. They left the Hornet on April 18, 1942, their targets 800 miles away. After completing their bombing runs, the planes were to land at airstrips in China that had not fallen to the Japanese; the Hornet’s deck was too short to accommodate their return. But the planes encountered a storm and ran low on fuel, forcing crash landings and bailouts that killed three of the 80 crewmen. Eight others were captured. Three, including the pilot and the gunner of Mr. Hite’s plane, were shot by a firing squad. Another died from disease. Mr. Hite was imprisoned for 40 months, 38 of them in solitary confinement. His weight had dropped to 76 pounds from 180 when the war ended. With his death, only two Doolittle Raiders now survive: retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole and Staff Sgt. David Thatcher. The Raiders will be honored with the Congressional Gold Medal on April 15 in Washington. Robert Lowell Hite was born in Odell, Tex., on March 3, 1920, the son of Robert and Lena Hite. After three years at West Texas State Teachers College, he enlisted as an aviation cadet in 1940, flunked the physical, passed a do-over the next day and was certified an Army Air Corps pilot in 1941. Image Lieutenant Hite in 1942, the year of the raid. Credit U.S. Air Force He was gung-ho to volunteer for the Doolittle mission and even more so once the target was identified. “After I accepted to go with Bill,” he recalled, referring to the pilot who chose him, Lt. William G. Farrow, “I had people offering me $500 for my place. I said, ‘No way.’ ” The mission started inauspiciously. A sailor’s arm was severed when he was blown into a propeller on the windswept deck as Mr. Hite’s B-25 took off for Japan. But the plane, carrying four 500-pound bombs and nicknamed Bat Out of Hell, survived antiaircraft fire by flying as low as 500 feet as it struck a fuel depot and aircraft factory in Nagoya, southwest of Tokyo. Short of fuel, however, the crew bailed out near Nanchang, China. Mr. Hite landed in a rice paddy and was captured by Japanese soldiers. He and other captured crew members were flown to Japan, where they were subjected to water torture. They were then imprisoned in China, tried as war criminals for strafing civilians and sentenced to death. “We were war criminals according to the Japanese because we had attacked their homeland,” Mr. Hite recalled, adding: “To save face, they had to designate someone responsible and execute them. So they designated the first pilots and the gunners.” After three were executed, Mr. Hite and four others were granted a reprieve, though they were told that they would be shot if Japan lost the war. He remained in prison until Japan’s surrender in August 1945, then released, which he termed a miracle. After returning home, he married Portia Wallace. She died in 1999. Mr. Hite died in a Nashville nursing home. In addition to their son, he is survived by their daughter, Catherine Landers; five grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren. Recalled during the Korean War, Mr. Hite trained pilots until he left active duty in 1955. Afterward, he operated hotels in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas. He retired at 51, his son said, “because of the wear and tear of the 40 months he was a prisoner.” That emotional toll had been lightened when his jailers provided the captured crew with a copy of the King James Bible, Mr. Hite said in an oral history for the Air Force Historical Research Agency . “We were no longer afraid to the extent that we had been, at least,” Mr. Hite recalled. “We no longer had the hatred.”

Obituary
Prisoner of war
World War II
Pilots
US Air Force
Robert Hite


Auction Official Pleads Guilty in Scheme to Smuggle Wildlife Products Worth $1 Million

Abstract: An auction house official from Beverly Hills, Calif., pleaded guilty in a New York City court for his part in a scheme to traffic items made of rhinoceros horn, elephant ivory and coral worth at least $1 million, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday. The official, Joseph Chait, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for charges related to conspiring to smuggle wildlife products, according to a statement from the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. He is expected to be sentenced in June. Prosecutors said Mr. Chait, 38, falsely claimed on customs forms that items of rhinoceros horn or elephant ivory were made of bone, wood or plastic. Among the allegations, prosecutors said that in 2011, in New York City, he and his partners agreed to sell a carving of a figure made of rhinoceros horn even though they knew it was not an antique. (Trade of such items is restricted unless they can be proved to be over 100 years old.) When the piece sold for $230,000 at auction, he offered to make a fake invoice saying it was plastic and worth just $108.75. “Mr. Chait took full responsibility for his conduct, and is very sorry for his actions,” his lawyer, Judith H. Germano, said.

Smuggling
Poaching
California
Ivory
Coral
Joseph Chait
Auction
NYC
Rhinoceros
Elephant


Ex-Louisiana Congressman Sentenced to 13 Years

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Former Representative William J. Jefferson , a New Orleans Democrat whose political career once seemed to hold high promise, was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison for using his office to try to enrich himself and his relatives. The sentence was far less than recommended by prosecutors, who had sought at least 27 years. Mr. Jefferson, 62, who was convicted on Aug. 5 of bribery, racketeering and money laundering involving business ventures in Africa, might have had to spend the rest of his life behind bars with such a sentence, since there is no parole in the federal prison system, and the only leniency is 15 percent off for good behavior. Judge T. S. Ellis III sentenced Mr. Jefferson in United States District Court in Alexandria, Va., where a jury had found him guilty of 11 of 16 counts. Mr. Jefferson said nothing before sentencing. His chief lawyer, Robert P. Trout, has said he would appeal the conviction. The jury concluded, after a six-week trial, that from 2000 to 2005 Mr. Jefferson sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from companies involved in oil, sugar, communications and other businesses, often for projects in Africa. In return, prosecutors said, he used his post on the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee to promote the companies’ ventures without disclosing his own financial interests in the deals. Mr. Trout tried to convince jurors that, while the business-promotion activities might have been unwise, they were not criminal because they did not qualify as “official acts” under public corruption laws. Mr. Jefferson graduated from Harvard Law School. In 1990, after 11 years in the Louisiana State Senate, he became the first black person from Louisiana elected to Congress since Reconstruction, according to The Almanac of American Politics. From time to time, he showed interest in running for senator or governor. But mired in scandal, he lost his House seat in the 2008 election. Prosecutors said that while he might have sought millions of dollars in bribes, Mr. Jefferson might have actually received less than $400,000. In any event, his case gave rise to episodes of near-comedy, and to an intragovernmental battle with constitutional implications. In a raid on Mr. Jefferson’s Washington-area home in August 2005, federal agents found $90,000 neatly wrapped in aluminum foil in a freezer. Prosecutors said the money was from Kentucky business interests and was supposed to be a bribe for a high Nigerian official, who later denied being part of any scheme. In May 2006, agents raided Mr. Jefferson’s Congressional office, the first time the Federal Bureau of Investigation had ever searched a Congressional office, and the action was denounced by lawmakers in both parties as an unconstitutional intrusion on Congressional independence by the Justice Department. A federal judge upheld the raid, but an appeals court ruled that it was constitutionally flawed. The Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court.

Jefferson William J
Bribery
Decisions and Verdicts


A Pregnancy Souvenir: Cells That Are Not Your Own

Abstract: Recently, a team of pathologists at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands carried out an experiment that might seem doomed to failure. They collected tissue from 26 women who had died during or just after pregnancy. All of them had been carrying sons. The pathologists then stained the samples to check for Y chromosomes. Essentially, the scientists were looking for male cells in female bodies. And their search was stunningly successful. As reported last month in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction, the researchers found cells with Y chromosomes in every tissue sample they examined . These male cells were certainly uncommon — at their most abundant, they only made up about one in every 1,000 cells. But male cells were present in every organ that the scientists studied: brains, hearts, kidneys and others. In the 1990s, scientists found the first clues that cells from both sons and daughters can escape from the uterus and spread through a mother’s body. They called the phenomenon fetal microchimerism, after the chimera, a monster from Greek mythology that was part lion, goat and dragon. But fetal cells don’t just drift passively. Studies of female mice show that fetal cells that end up in their hearts develop into cardiac tissue. “They’re becoming beating heart cells,” said Dr. J. Lee Nelson, an expert on microchimerism at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The new study suggests that women almost always acquire fetal cells each time they are pregnant. They have been detected as early as seven weeks into a pregnancy. In later years, the cells may disappear, but sometimes, the cells settle in for a lifetime. In a 2012 study, Dr. Nelson and her colleagues examined the brains of 59 deceased older women and found Y chromosomes in 63 percent of them . (Many studies on fetal microchimerism focus on the cells left behind by sons, because they are easier to distinguish from the cells of their mother.) Experts now believe that microchimerism is far from rare. “Most of us think that it’s very common, if not universal,” Dr. Nelson said. But it remains quite mysterious. In recent years, researchers have found many clues suggesting that microchimerism can affect a woman’s health. Tumors may be loaded with fetal cells, for example, suggesting that they might help drive cancer. Yet other studies have suggested that fetal microchimerism protects women against the disease. “In each instance of a disease, it seems like there is this paradox,” said Amy M. Boddy, a postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University. Fetal microchimerism has been found in a number of mammal species, including dogs, mice and cows. It’s likely that fetal cells have been a part of maternal life for tens of millions of years. “Microchimerism is something that humans have been evolving with since before we were humans,” said Melissa Wilson Sayres, a biologist at Arizona State. During that time, fetal cells could have evolved into more than just bystanders. Writing in the journal Bioessays last month, Dr. Boddy, Dr. Sayres and their colleagues suggested that fetal cells may produce chemicals that influence the mother’s biology, allowing fetuses to manipulate her from within . Some cells may help maintain the health of the mother — for example, by healing wounds. But there is also an evolutionary conflict of interest between mothers and their young. A mother’s reproductive success depends on the total number of children she raises to adulthood over the course of her life. Devoting too many resources to a single child may leave her too frail to care for later children. If a child can somehow coax its mother to provide more resources, on the other hand, he or she may be more likely to survive to adulthood and reproduce. Fetal cells may let children manipulate their mothers to this end, Dr. Sayres and her colleagues propose. Fetal cells are frequently found in breast tissue, even in milk, for instance. The researchers argue that children might thrive more if their fetal cells drove up milk production. Mothers also nurture their babies with body heat. The thyroid gland, located in the neck, acts like a thermostat, and fetal cells in the thyroid gland in theory could cause mothers to generate more heat than they would otherwise. This biological tension might help explain how fetal microchimerism sometimes causes harm to a mother. It may simply be an occasional side effect of the cells’ manipulations. There are some clues that mothers, too, pull hard in this evolutionary tug of war. The immune system kicks into high gear after giving birth, possibly to clear away leftover fetal cells. This defense may pose its own risks: Women with autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis can have relapses after pregnancy. Some straightforward experiments could put all of these ideas to the test. Scientists could look at which genes become active in fetal cells in different parts of the body, for example. They could then see how the activity of the genes influenced a mother’s physiology, such as the production of milk. If the preliminary results hold up, Dr. Boddy and her colleagues suggest that scientists also should consider how fetal cells in the brain might influence women’s behavior. “It’s the most exciting part, but it’s the part where there’s the least research at the moment,” said Athena Aktipis, a psychologist at Arizona State and an author of the Bioessays article. “There may be a role of microchimerism in postpartum mental health.” Dr. Nelson, who was not involved in the new paper, said that it raised a lot of ideas worth pursuing. “It’s going to be interesting to see how the data coming in over the next several years stacks up,” she said.

Pregnancy
Molecular Human Reproduction
Bioessays
Amy M Boddy
Melissa Wilson Sayres
Genetics and Heredity


Soccer, Faith and Technology

Abstract: LONDON — The stadium was empty, as it has been for two years since Tunisia’s government banned public gatherings after the Arab Spring. But when Club Sportif Hammam-Lif scored, the roar of 93,000 voices ringing around the arena banished the ghostly silence. The sound was pumped out of 40 speakers positioned around the stands. Hammam fans far and wide were able to communicate their passion, their hope and support vocally to the players in a relegation fight against Stade Tunisien in March without being anywhere near the home stadium in the coastal town of Hammam-Lif, 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, south of Tunis. This was raw emotion turned into applause, into crescendos of noise and moments of scary silence, from afar. “The fans are 50 percent of our motivation,” one player said as he left the field after the 1-0 victory. “We have needed to hear them.” But what the necessity of public order made remote and silent, human ingenuity and the appliance of science took a stab at restoring. Of course, it was synthesized to a degree. The outpourings of the Hammam followers — frustration or joy, despair or elation — could be registered at the touch of an app on their cellphones as they watched live telecasts of the game. And the story of how Hammam was saved at the foot of the Bou Kornine mountain was recognized at the Cannes Lions Awards for creative use of technology this month. Another soccer club figured prominently at that same festival in Cannes. Some similarly inspired technicians and communications experts have turned the lifelong support of the fans of the Brazilian team Recife into something beyond life. Soccer’s global appeal would be nothing without the tens of millions who care, from the day they can think to the day they die, for the team they regard as their club. Players can come and go at Recife, just as they do anywhere on earth, but the true aficionados of a club have no place they would rather be than in the home stadium. The Recife innovation was to take that fan base and, through integrated promotional tools, to convert as many of them as possible into organ transplant donors. It was started at one of the most important games of the season, Sport Club Recife versus Santos. Players took to the field alongside patients from local hospitals who were dying for want of vital organs. One of the biggest barriers to organ donation in Brazil is apparently a lack of family authorization. But in introducing the appeal at a soccer game, where generations of families are in the stands together, and in using soccer as the catalyst, the organizers hoped they might cut through this resistance. Fans lined up after the game to sign up as donors of hearts, lungs, eyes, kidneys. The catchphrase “Immortal Fans” was coined by the promotions company Ogilvy Brasil. And in its short promotional film entry at the Lions Awards, the company showed both fans who had given organs and recipients who in return pledged that they would also now support Recife unto death. Often meaningless statistics are trailed out after a game of soccer. Much more meaningful is the claim that more than 51,000 followers of this one club now carry donor cards, that organ donations have increased 54 percent in one year and that the waiting list for heart and corneal transplants in Recife has been reduced to zero. Maybe the promotional line about fans’ being able to cheer beyond their lifetime can seem a touch over the top. But if it’s working, what better use of the emotions stirred by sports, the commitment of the supporters to a truly important strand in their lives and the medical revolution that Brazil so clearly needs. Pope Francis was in Rio de Janeiro over the weekend. He addressed the young and, as a fellow soccer fan (in his case, of the Buenos Aires club San Lorenzo), he used the analogy that “being a good Catholic is like training to play the game.” Jesus, the Pope said, offers something more than a World Cup. And soccer in Brazil, as in Tunisia, can mean so much more than eleven gifted and often privileged players kicking a ball around. In a way, the Tunisian example is easier to see and to follow the values of faith in a game together with technological advancement. The Memac Ogilvy team of graphic designers, sound engineers, and modern mobile communications experts who created the special end to Hammam’s fight against relegation hit on the idea of creating a cellphone app to register fans’ feelings. Memac Ogilvy, like Ogilvy Brasil, is a regional associate of the multinational Ogilvy Mather. Huddled around television sets, watching in small groups or alone in their living rooms, the fans were asked to tap the app and keep on tapping it, while the ball was in play. The responses were then turned into noise in the stadium, piped out through the speakers that surrounded the field. If there was any time lapse, as one might imagine, this was minuscule compared with the deadly silence, the ripple of applause that might otherwise occur from the two dozen or so staff or officials allowed inside the stadium. Once again, the Hammam group, comprising the club’s supporters and Memac Ogilvy, produced the all-important sound and visual evidence in a video clip of how their invention allowed players and supporters to at least feel they were together again when it mattered. The tap of a finger converted into clapping, calling, drumming, singing was a “virtual experience” turned into a real game-saver. Club Sportif Hammam-Lif and Sport Club Recife exist in different parts of the world and are separated by circumstances beyond the dream they possibly share. But in Cannes this month, the annual Lions Awards, which have been running since 1954, managed to cross that barrier between ever-changing mobile technology and never-ending human response to sports. Pope Francis is a man of sport and religious faith. His address in Rio de Janeiro over the weekend possibly underestimated what soccer, to many a religion in itself, can achieve with applied imagine — and science.

Soccer
Cannes
Tunisia
Santos Soccer Team
Recife


Online Health Sites Share Personal Data, Privacy Groups Say

Abstract: QualityHealth is a popular health Web site with more than 20 million registered users that offers online medical information and e-mail newsletters on a variety of topics, including diabetes , allergies , asthma and arthritis . But according to a complaint filed Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission, site visitors who provide personal details about themselves might not be aware that QualityHealth collects information about people’s medical conditions, preferred medicines and treatment plans and uses it to profile its users for prescription drug marketing. Rob Rebak, the chief executive of QualityHealth, a company also known as Marketing Technology Solutions of Delaware, did not return a request for comment. QualityHealth is one of a number of companies cited in the complaint to the F.T.C. filed by four nonprofit privacy and consumer advocacy groups. In the complaint, the Center for Digital Democracy , U.S. PIRG, Consumer Watchdog and the World Privacy Forum charged that online marketing of medications, products and medical services posed fundamental new risks to consumer privacy and health because of sophisticated data collection and patient-profiling techniques. Asserting that such techniques are unfair and deceptive, the groups asked the F.T.C. to investigate the health marketing used by some popular sites including Google, HealthCentral, Everyday Health, WebMD and Sermo, a site for medical professionals. Some sites, the complaint said, were not transparent enough about how they tracked people through users’ online heath searches and discussions or how they categorized and marketed to their conditions. Other sites may not be entirely open about how they create and use data profiles about users or blur the line between independent and sponsored content, the complaint said. The concern, said Ed Mierzwinski, the consumer program director at U.S. PIRG, is not just about data mining and marketing that could influence patients to seek drugs they do not need or to spend more money on branded drugs rather than generics. More broadly, employers or health insurers could gain access to the consumers’ data profiles, leading to potential problems or penalties against the consumer, he said. “You could be searching for health information about your cat or your neighbor and it could end up harming your health care in terms of denial or increased cost,” Mr. Mierzwinski said. “If people knew what kind of surveillance, eavesdropping and data mining were being used to collect information about you, encourage your use of prescription drugs and essentially use you as a research guinea pig, I think people would think twice.” The complaint comes at a delicate moment for online and social media marketing of medical products and services. The Food and Drug Administration , which oversees drug marketing, is developing industry guidelines for digital and social media. In a two-day agency hearing on the subject last winter , many health sites, drug makers and marketing firms promoted the idea of digital health as a tool that empowered consumers, allowing patients to easily access medical information and form supportive interactive communities with other patients. “There are clear public health benefits for health care providers and patients to be able to access truthful, scientifically accurate and F.D.A.-regulated information about medicines online from the companies that research and develop them,” said Jeffrey K. Francer, assistant general counsel of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry trade group. His group is still reviewing the complaint, he said. But Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said that the industry had provided the F.D.A with a “fairy-tale version of digital health marketing.” Online data collection techniques give “pharmaceutical companies and health marketers a kind of digital X-ray of a health consumer’s concerns, fears and behaviors,” Mr. Chester said. “There is no meaningful disclosure of how that data is collected and used.” A notice at the bottom of QualityHealth’s member registration form , for example, provides a link to the site’s privacy policy . The policy explains that information that may or may not identify someone may be used for ads aimed at consumers. But QualityHealth provides greater detail about its methods in its pitch to business clients — like how the site uses tailored messages, informed by patient profiling , to prompt members to seek prescriptions for specific brands from their doctors. “We can reach consumers just before their next doctor visit,” the site says, “as well as follow up with reminders and relevant information, for maximum impact.” The site’s privacy policy states that the company is committed to providing consumers with clear notice and choice about its practices and that visitors are asked to opt in to the company’s data use policy. Adam Grossberg, a spokesman for WebMD, said that WebMD had always been transparent and direct with its users. “All sponsored content on our site is clearly labeled as such, he said.” He added that the company could not comment on the specifics of the complaint because it had not received it. A spokesman for Google said the company declined to comment for this article. HealthCentral, Everyday Health and Sermo did not respond to requests for comment. The groups decided to file their complaint with the F.T.C., Mr. Chester said, because it oversees consumer privacy issues and because, the groups believed that the F.D.A., which has long overseen traditional marketing of drugs in print, radio and television, lacked the staff and the expertise to oversee online and social media drug marketing. An F.D.A. spokeswoman said the agency planned to review the complaint. David Vladeck, the director of the F.T.C.’s bureau on consumer protection, said he had not yet read the complaint. But, he said, the F.T.C. plans to soon release a report about online privacy because it is concerned about sensitive personal information. Mr. Vladeck offered a hypothetical example of a core privacy question. “Suppose someone goes online to read about depression , should that person get targeted with ads for antidepressants , for counseling services or books about depression?”

Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Privacy
Computers and the Internet
Advertising and Marketing
Consumer Behavior
Federal Trade Commission
Medicine and Health
Food and Drug Administration
WebMD Health Corp


At Brown University, Columbus Day Is Now Indigenous People’s Day

Abstract: Most of the United States knows the second Monday of October, a federal holiday since 1934, as Columbus Day. Because of a national debate about whether Christopher Columbus , the Italian explorer who landed on American shores, is worthy of celebration, Brown University has instead called the holiday Fall Weekend since 2009. On Tuesday, however, the university faculty renamed the holiday once again — this time to Indigenous People’s Day. “In discussions prior to the vote, faculty expressed their support for the name change as an opportunity to show support for Native Americans on our campus and beyond, and to celebrate Native American culture and history,” Thomas Roberts, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said in a statement . Several cities and states across the United States have already renamed the holiday, including Berkeley, Calif., which had its first Indigenous Peoples Day in 1992 . (Although they seem to agree with one another on the sentiment, they don’t agree on the apostrophe. Brown said it would celebrate Indigenous People’s Day; Minneapolis celebrates Indigenous Peoples Day; while Seattle celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day .) In Hawaii, the holiday is known as Discoverers’ Day, and it’s Native Americans’ Day in South Dakota. Alaska renamed it Indigenous Peoples Day in 2015, while Washington State does not recognize Columbus Day as a legal holiday. At Brown, faculty members were moved to act after a student organization, the Native Americans at Brown, called for the change after 2015’s Fall Weekend. The new name “would recognize the contributions of Indigenous People/Native Americans to our community and our culture and foster a more inclusive community,” according to a motion presented to the faculty. The movement to rename the holiday is based on the contention that Columbus was no hero, but instead a deliverer of genocide to Native Americans. His legacy is the subject of endless debate .

Christopher Columbus
Brown
Indigenous peoples
Columbus Day


Warren Beatty’s Howard Hughes Film Is Almost Here

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Forty years in the making, Warren Beatty’s Howard Hughes film, still untitled , almost has a release date. The Hollywood Reporter reported that New Regency, which is backing the film, has confirmed that Fox will release the movie this fall in the heat of the annual film awards season. No specific date was mentioned, however. The confirmation came as Mr. Beatty paid tribute to New Regency’s founder, Arnon Milchan, who was receiving an award on Wednesday at CinemaCon, a theater owners’ convention in Las Vegas. The film, which stars Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich, is a fictional story of two young people who find their way in 1958 to Hollywood, where they encounter Mr. Hughes and his strange world. Mr. Beatty, 79, plays Mr. Hughes in the film, on which he has been working as writer, director and producer since the mid-1970s.

Movies
Warren Beatty
Lily Collins
Alden Ehrenreich
Howard Hughes


Kang Sok-ju, Key Nuclear Negotiator for North Korea, Dies at 76

Abstract: Kang Sok-ju, a key architect of North Korea’s nuclear diplomacy who haggled with United States negotiators, once by quoting from a favorite American book, died on Friday. He was 76. The cause was esophageal cancer, the North Korean government said in a statement. The statement did not say where he had died. Mr. Kang had been absent from state functions since last summer. In what was apparently an attempt to drive home his country’s determination to develop nuclear weapons, no matter what the United States said, Mr. Kang once told American negotiators that he would quote from the novel “Gone With the Wind.” He said slowly in English, “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.” Mr. Kang, the most trusted foreign policy aide of Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader from 1994 until his death in 2011 and the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-un, was best known for the “agreement framework,” which he negotiated with the United States in 1994 when he was North Korea’s vice foreign minister. Under that deal, North Korea agreed to suspend activity at its Yongbyon nuclear site in return for fuel shipments and the construction of two light-water nuclear power reactors. The agreement was hailed as a breakthrough, and some still credit it with slowing North Korea’s nuclear weapons development for a time. But the deal fell apart in 2002 when the United States accused the North of cheating on its terms by secretly pursuing uranium enrichment. James A. Kelly, then the American envoy, visited Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, to confront Mr. Kang with this accusation. The framework was the first in a series of short-lived accords the United States has struck with North Korea in failed efforts to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. Critics of North Korea now say that the country never intended to give up its nuclear program, and that it used the deals to win temporary economic incentives while buying time to develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Kang, a career diplomat with more experience in the West than most in North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, was self-assured but could turn prickly, bombastic and sarcastic, especially when he was tired, according to “The Two Koreas,” by Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin. He was also a loyalist who began his negotiations with the Americans with a lengthy paean to the glories of Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s founding president and the grandfather of the current leader. North Korea has conducted four nuclear tests since 2006, the most recent in January . The United States responded by rallying international support to impose United Nations sanctions against the country. It insists that it will not engage North Korea in serious dialogue again until it volunteers credible assurances that such negotiations will lead to its denuclearization. But this month, when the North’s ruling Workers’ Party held its first congress in 36 years, the country adopted the expansion of its nuclear arsenal as a key national policy goal. It also declared that it was a nuclear power and would deal with the United States as such. In that meeting, Mr. Kang retained his membership on the party’s Central Committee but lost his seat on its Politburo and his title as party secretary. Ri Su-yong, who has served as foreign minister under Kim Jong-un, moved into the Politburo, apparently replacing Mr. Kang as the country’s top foreign policy official. Mr. Kang was born to a “poor worker family” on Aug. 29, 1939, according to the North Korean government. No information on survivors was provided.

Kang Sok-ju
Nuclear weapon
North Korea
Obituary


Russian Tycoon Acquires British Newspaper

Abstract: Alexander Lebedev, a Russian billionaire who was once a K.G.B. agent stationed in London, struck a long-awaited deal to buy The Independent newspaper on Thursday, little more than a year after he acquired another of Britain’s respected major papers, The Evening Standard of London. In a sign of the parlous times for publishers, The Independent’s owner had to pay to cut it loose, agreeing to contribute £9.25 million (about $13.7 million), to its operation over 10 months. In announcing the deal, the owner, Independent News and Media, an Irish company that has papers in several countries, disclosed that The Independent lost £12.4 million (about $18.4 million) in 2009. In a market dominated by racy tabloids, Britain has four widely respected, general interest national papers, each with a Sunday sister paper: The Independent and The Guardian to the left of center, and The Times and The Daily Telegraph to the right. The Independent, with a circulation under 200,000, is the smallest, and has lost money steadily since its creation in 1986. A statement released by the Lebedev family cast the purchase as a move that would “safeguard the future of the business.” “I invest in institutions which contribute to democracy and transparency and, at the heart of that, are newspapers which report independently and campaign for the truth to be revealed,” Mr. Lebedev said in the statement. “I am a supporter of in-depth investigative reporting and campaigns which promote transparency and seek to fight international corruption. These are things The Independent has always done well and will, I hope, continue to do.” The sale, which includes The Independent, The Independent on Sunday and their Web site, independent.co.uk, is expected to take effect within weeks. Mr. Lebedev, 50, first went into business in the early 1990s and built his main company, National Reserve Corporation, into a conglomerate that owns one of Russia’s major banks; large stakes in Aeroflot, the airline, and Ilyushin, the aircraft maker; and holdings in several other industries. Forbes magazine estimates Mr. Lebedev’s wealth at $2 billion. His past as a spy raised eyebrows when he entered the British market in January 2009 by buying a 75.1 percent stake in The Evening Standard, the only major paper specifically for the London region. He made waves again last fall by making The Standard free to readers, more than doubling its circulation and increasing its advertising revenue. He has not said whether he will do the same with The Independent, or what role will be played in it by his son, Evgeny, 28, who is chairman of The Standard.

Lebedev Aleksandr Y
Independent News and Media PLC
Newspapers
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Independent of London The


Amid Binghamton Gunfire, Pleas to Police and to Heaven

Abstract: BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — In a storage room filled with tables used at parties to celebrate passage of citizenship exams, 14 immigrants huddled around a refrigerator in the corner, quietly counting off so their teacher could tell the police how many were hiding there. No. 4, Con Thi Thach, a mother of seven from Vietnam, kept thinking to herself, “Don’t let me die.” In the basement boiler room, five men guarded the two doors as Katherine Gruss, their English teacher, burned through five cellphone batteries talking to a 911 dispatcher. “We didn’t realize the extent of it,” Ms. Gruss said of the massacre on the floor above them. “We just thought it was one person, maybe two people.” In a closet-size alcove off a back staircase, Marie Jourdain lay on her stomach next to three people, silently praying as she listened to the gunman pacing and nervously talking to himself. “I listened to him walking and talk, talk, talk,” said Ms. Jourdain, a 47-year-old hospital housekeeper from Haiti. “If he see the stairs, he come in, because there’s no door where I’m in.” The immigrant students hiding in corners of the blond-brick building here Friday morning were in a sense Americans-in-progress, studying how to be Americans, practicing how to speak American (Ms. Thach’s class was guessing at the meaning of “in the black” when the gunfire erupted). Instead, they learned a darker American lesson, one of sudden, inexplicable violence, when the gunman, Jiverly Wong, an immigrant like them who until weeks earlier had also taken English classes at the American Civic Association, burst in with two handguns. Mr. Wong, who the police and acquaintances said had been distraught over his unemployment and his inability to speak English, killed 13 students and employees of the association and wounded 4 others before taking his own life. His motive remained unclear. Binghamton’s American Civic Association was founded by 11 immigrants in 1939. It is a multilingual hub in largely rural Broome County, providing immigration services, English instruction, citizenship classes, ethnic celebrations and refugee resettlement. In decades past, Binghamton and the surrounding area was built in large part by the immigrant labor of Irish, Italians, Polish and others drawn by the promise of jobs at companies like the Endicott-Johnson shoe company. Though many of those jobs have disappeared, and the county’s population is now only 5.8 percent foreign-born, the association has continued to thrive. It often holds Irish dancing exhibitions. The block letters on the marquee outside on the sidewalk on Friday advertised an Italian luncheon on April 14. Local lawyers called the center when they needed translators. The Binghamton police said on Saturday that they had been contacted by nine foreign countries and two consulates. Those huddled Friday morning in corners of the building were as diverse as any block in Queens: Russians, Iraqis, Georgians, Vietnamese, Serbs, Cubans, Kurds. Ms. Jourdain’s English had already improved, though she had been studying at the association for just a few weeks. On the coffee table of her small apartment in a public housing project, she keeps a proud possession: her 10-year-old son’s framed certificate of perfect attendance from Benjamin Franklin Elementary School. Ms. Thach, 53, failed her first citizenship test, in 2004, and has been taking classes at the association five days a week ever since, carrying the “Daughters of the American Revolution Manual for Citizenship” in her purse. On Friday, she woke up, took her pills and rushed to catch the bus, but still arrived late for her 10 a.m. English class. While Ms. Thach and her classmates guessed at the meaning of “in the black” — some thought it might relate to the black market, others were puzzled why a color would have any other meaning — Ms. Gruss led her introductory English class of 12 in a lesson on pronouns. Ms. Gruss, 60, a retired elementary school teacher, had worked at the civic association for one year, and her 9 a.m. class shared space in the basement with another class. “It’s a very safe place,” she said of the association. “They all love to come there. We have weddings, dinners, lunches.” The glass front doors opened around 10:30 a.m., and Mr. Wong, dressed in a green jacket, stepped inside, shooting two receptionists without uttering a word, the police said. Ms. Thach re-enacted what she heard in a single breath: “Pop, pop, pop.” In an instant, she said, the class bolted through a door in the back of the room to the storage area. One student locked the door and they all crowded tightly together, holding their knees to their chests. When the teacher, Megan Lollie, pulled out her cellphone, a student tried to stop her. “Don’t turn on the light! They might see!” Ms. Thach recalled the student saying. The teacher kept the phone close to her chest as she dialed 911, whispering into it. “Come help us!” Ms. Thach recounted. When the dispatcher asked how many people were with her, they took turns whispering their numbers as if in a game of telephone until they totaled 14. “Help me,” Ms. Thach silently prayed. Ms. Gruss, midway through the pronoun lesson, said she first thought the pops were fireworks, or maybe somebody hammering loudly above. Soon she was guiding 24 students from the two basement classes into a boiler room. In the chaos, four students went upstairs and tried to escape through a back door, only to find it barricaded by Mr. Wong’s car. They ran downstairs and hid behind a mattress, Ms. Gruss said. The doors in the boiler room had no locks, so five men — including two brothers from Uzbekistan and a Russian — volunteered to stand guard. Ms. Gruss borrowed a student’s cellphone to dial 911, speaking loudly enough to make her voice heard over the grumbling boilers. Nobody in the room knew exactly what had happened on the floor above. One student received a call from her son in Florida, who brought the grim news. A Kurdish woman turned to Ms. Gruss and said, “They fire in Iraq. They fire in the United States.” “She was almost defeated in a way,” Ms. Gruss said. “She couldn’t find a safe haven. She was one of those who had to walk over the mountains from Iraq to Turkey to escape Saddam. Then they’re shooting at her.” Upstairs in the alcove, Ms. Jourdain lay staring at the floor. She and three other students fled their classroom when they heard the first shots, hiding in a doorless alcove off a back staircase. She, another woman and a man lay on the floor, shoulder to shoulder. Another man crouched near them because there was no room for him to lie down. She could hear the gunman’s footsteps, could hear him talking to himself, though she could not understand what he was saying. She kept praying. “Thank God he did not see the stairs,” Ms. Jourdain said. Soon, she heard different sounds: the voices of officers, telling them it was safe to come out. “I say, ‘Thank you, God,’ ” she said. “He gives me life again.” Three hours and 15 minutes after they first entered the boiler room, Ms. Gruss and the students were escorted out by the police. Afterward, several students told Ms. Gruss they would not be returning to class. “Many were refugees, they came to the United States for safety and get attacked here,” she said. “It was just an awful intrusion.” The police also led Ms. Thach and the others out of the storage room and into the hallway, one by one, hands on their heads, as the officers had instructed. “Americans are very good people; they love people,” she said. “How could this happen here? They are very good.” Ms. Thach said she would return to classes. On Saturday morning, in the living room of her small house on Baxter Street, she went to her purse. Her hands shook as she reached for her citizenship manual.

Murders and Attempted Murders
Binghamton (NY)
Immigration and Emigration
Wong Jiverly


Donald Trump Does Not Correct a Man Who Called Obama a Muslim

Abstract: Donald J. Trump is not often criticized for remaining silent, but on Friday, other presidential candidates rebuked him for not correcting an apparent supporter who said Barack Obama was a Muslim who was not born in America. At a town hall event held on Thursday evening in Rochester, N.H., Mr. Trump took the man’s question, which began with the statement: “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims.” The audience member continued, “We know our current president is one.” And as Mr. Trump responded, perhaps reflexively, “Right,” the man added, “You know he’s not even an American.” Mr. Trump, in a statement released late Thursday through a spokeswoman, defended his decision not to correct the man. “The media wants to make this issue about Obama,” Mr. Trump said in the statement. “The bigger issue is that Obama is waging a war against Christians in this country. Christians need support in this country. Their religious liberty is at stake.” But Mr. Trump’s response contrasted starkly to a similar question posed to John McCain when the Republican senator from Arizona was running for president in 2008. “I have read about him,” a woman at a campaign rally said, “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain stopped the woman and shook his head, saying the president was a “decent family man citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.” Late Thursday, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the highest-profile Democratic candidate, spoke out in defense of the president and criticized Mr. Trump’s behavior. “Donald Trump not denouncing false statements about POTUS & hateful rhetoric about Muslims is disturbing, & just plain wrong,” she wrote on Twitter , adding, “Cut it out.” Many of Mr. Trump’s Republican competitors stayed quiet about the remarks on Friday, but Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey appeared on the “Today” show to say he would have responded differently. “I would just tell you that if somebody at one of my town hall meetings said something like that, I would correct them and say, now, the president’s a Christian and he was born in this country,” Mr. Christie said to the program’s host, Matt Lauer. “Those two things are self evident.” For years, Mr. Trump has led the charge to cast doubt on the president’s citizenship, and has credited himself with forcing the president’s decision to publicly release his birth certificate in 2011. Even after Mr. Obama released the document, Mr. Trump continued to doubt the certificate’s authenticity. Mr. Christie said that Mr. Trump’s reaction to the anger around the episode in New Hampshire will be a test for his campaign. “He’s got to decide how serious a candidate he wants to be,” Mr. Christie said, “and how he handles different problems like this are going to determine that in the eyes of the American people.”

Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
Muslim Americans


Disney’s Chief Agrees to Hold Off on His Retirement Until 2016

Abstract: Robert A. Iger will remain chief executive of the Walt Disney Company until July 2016, an extension of 15 months beyond his previously announced retirement date, the entertainment conglomerate said on Monday. Under the terms of Mr. Iger’s contract, signed in 2011, he was to step down as chief executive in March 2015 and remain as executive chairman until the middle of the following year. But Disney’s board, which was eager to retain a leader with a highly successful track record for as long as possible, last week asked him to stay on as both chief executive and chairman until June 30, 2016. Mr. Iger’s compensation will not change. In 2012 he received $37.1 million , according to figures compiled for The New York Times by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm. “Now Disney will continue to have the full benefit of Mr. Iger’s leadership,” Orin C. Smith, the independent lead director of Disney’s board, said in a statement. Mr. Smith cited Mr. Iger’s ability to “consistently deliver against a strategy of producing high-quality branded content, technology innovation and international expansion.” Big media companies, notably News Corporation and Viacom, have a spotty track record when it comes to succession-planning, and Mr. Iger himself took over Disney in 2005 after a period of turbulence following a bitter dispute between Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney. But keeping Mr. Iger in place does not signal that Disney needs more time to groom a successor. Disney has a deep bench of chief executive candidates, including James A. Rasulo, chief financial officer; Thomas O. Staggs, chairman of Disney’s theme park division; and Anne Sweeney, co-chairwoman of Disney Media Networks. Rather, retaining Mr. Iger’s services reflects an if-it’s-not-broken-don’t-fix-it strategy. Disney has suffered the occasional setback — a movie flop, for instance, like “John Carter” last year — and has continued to struggle in video games, but over all the company has been soaring. Its shares closed Monday at $63.93, a 32 percent increase compared with one year ago. Disney reported profit of $5.68 billion last year, an 18 percent increase from a year earlier, on $42.28 billion in revenue. By remaining at Disney’s helm, Mr. Iger will be able to see to fruition the high-stakes opening of Shanghai Disneyland, a sprawling resort on a par with Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. The Shanghai entertainment and vacation complex, Disney’s first major outpost in China, is expected to open in late 2015. Disney is still working to integrate its latest acquisition, Lucasfilm, and restart the Star Wars franchise. ABC, now owned by Disney, also is under pressure to introduce a hit this fall. Mr. Iger, 62, started his entertainment career at ABC in 1974 and took over as chief executive of Disney in 2005. He will be 65 upon his departure; Disney’s mandatory retirement age for board members is 74. Since chief executives typically leave their corner offices reluctantly, attention has focused on what Mr. Iger has planned for his long-term future. There has been speculation that he has political ambitions. He has steadfastly declined to comment on his life beyond Disney.

Appointments and Executive Changes
Walt Disney
Robert A Iger
Star Wars


Balance of Power in Spanish Soccer Shifts to the Capital

Abstract: LONDON — The Clásico is one — make that two — league games per season, and they count for no more points than the rest. But as Europe moves its clocks from summer to winter time and the leaves fall, this contest had the look of a pendulum shift toward Madrid. It was not simply that Real, Europe’s reigning champion, outplayed its Catalan foe in the Bernabéu; instead, it was the manner of the victory. Coming from behind, against a team that had not conceded one goal in eight previous La Liga games, the Whites kept their heads, rhythm and confidence in check to win in a fashion that suggested they had more to spare than the final score of 3-1 suggested. “I don’t know if I’ve found the perfect formula,” Madrid Coach Carlo Ancelotti told reporters after the game. “I liked many things of my team tonight. The physical aspect is very important. The tempo was high. We wanted to attack, with possession, using the wings. In the second half, we won because we wanted it.” Barça, we can be sure, wanted it as well. But desire is not enough. Neither is simply putting onto the field talents that cost two billion dollars for each team. After Neymar had given Barcelona such an early lead, and after Lionel Messi of all people had squandered an opportunity to double that, the better team, by far, won the contest. Barcelona’s new coach, Luis Enrique, rolled the dice. He chose Luis Suárez on the right wing. The man who had not played a competitive game for four months was making a debut on multiple fronts — for his team, in a new league and in this, the most lauded of contests. Yes, Suárez played a part in Neymar’s goal. One day, perhaps pretty soon, the Uruguayan will earn his starting role ahead of the tenacious Pedro or the precocious Munir. But the pace of Saturday’s game overwhelmed Suárez at times, leaving him isolated at points. El Clásico is for the tried and the trusted. It came after just a few days of rest for both clubs following Champions League encounters. Ancelotti made a point of complimenting his players for keeping their heads together and their energy levels so high just three days after they won at Liverpool’s imposing Anfield Stadium. He knew he could rely on Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema in attack and on Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos in defense, because they have been there, done it in this series. However, the fulcrum of Saturday’s victory was built on controlling the center of the field. Barcelona had, a tad surprisingly, gone back to Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta, in hopes that Xavi might manage one last hurrah for the Clásico and that Iniesta would manage more of a game than his calf injury ultimately allowed. Ancelotti had a changed midfield. His president, Florentino Pérez, is always acquisitive, always buying new stars and effectively saying to the coach, “You fit the jigsaw.” Even with all their qualities, James Rodríguez, the star of Colombia’s fine World Cup team, and Toni Kroos, a World Cup winner with Germany, both have needed time to adapt and integrate since joining Madrid over the summer. Without the injured Gareth Bale able to fly down one wing on those fast counterattacks for Real, the coach has brought in Isco. A man who many believe is the future of Spanish soccer, Isco is more of a creative spirit than a swift winger. Yet Ancelotti works him in Bale’s role and educates him as few coaches can. Ancelotti has won everything in the sport two times over, both as a player in Italy and as a manager in Italy, England, France and Spain. “Bale,” he said in the Bernabéu on Saturday, “is fundamental in this team and will play” when he is fit. The coach had told Isco before the Liverpool and Barcelona games that the Spaniard already runs enough, and now must learn to be clever in his running. There is a subtle difference, a line between effort and effectiveness. And there is on Madrid a player who might never get the headlines, even if his work is just as effective as that of Ronaldo and all the rest of the big names. That player, Ancelotti’s key man in holding the middle ground and directing the moments when the team springs forward, is Luka Modric. Now 29, Modric is a true players’ player after a decade of knitting together teams in Zagreb, London and Madrid. Elegant on the ball and energetic without it, he gives a team balance, patience and stealth. Why would we notice him, a player who seldom scores on a team of such prolific and wonderful strikers? Why highlight Modric, when in front of him is Ronaldo and behind him are two players who inspire debate, the wild and not always wonderful Pepe and Sergio Ramos? Because, ultimately, Saturday was Modric’s night. He was the controller who outshone and outlasted Xavi. The architect whose efforts are meant to be sacrificial to the headliners. Modric is, in that sense, a Croatian version of Ancelotti. He can exert influence while being as quiet as a mouse, at times as pragmatic as a judge. He understands the rhythm and flow of the game. He gives the right ball to the right player at the right time. You can be sure that Enrique would have loved such a controlling figure in the Bernabéu because, despite all the riches he has up front, his Barcelona lost the contest in the midfield.

Soccer
Real Madrid
Barcelona Soccer Team
Cristiano Ronaldo
Luis Suarez


A Digital Divide in Detroit

Abstract: For most Americans, it is hard to imagine not having easy access to the Internet. It is also hard to imagine how you would function in modern society without it. Never mind not having your favorite food delivery and ride-hailing apps. Without broadband Internet access, you may have a hard time applying for a job, a driver’s license, financial aid or public assistance. For residents of Detroit, which has the worst rate of Internet access of any big American city, that’s not unusual. Four out of 10 residents of the Motor City lack broadband. As Cecilia Kang reports , Detroit has made some economic gains in recent years. Unemployment has declined from 19 percent three years ago to 11 percent, though that is still double the national average. But in some poor Detroit neighborhoods, the rate can be double the city’s average. No doubt, poor Internet access adds to the challenge of changing that rate.

Detroit
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry


Deere Profit Soars on Farm Machinery Purchases

Abstract: Deere & Company , the world’s largest maker of agricultural equipment, said on Wednesday that its quarterly net income had more than doubled as rising crop prices encouraged farmers to buy new machinery and increase planting. The company also raised its earnings prediction for the year. Deere’s sales increase was driven by demand for heavy farm equipment, with revenue for four-wheel-drive tractors and large combines rising more than 50 percent. Deere is expanding overseas operations, but its sales are rooted in North America, with United States and Canadian sales rising 35 percent in the quarter. Outside those core regions, sales rose 22 percent in the quarter. The company said it earned $513.7 million, or $1.20 a share, in the quarter, up from $243.2 million, or 57 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue in the period, which ended Jan. 31 and was the first quarter of Deere’s fiscal year, rose 27 percent, to $6.12 billion, from $4.83 billion. Stock in Deere, which is based in Moline, Ill., rose $2.24, to $95.86 a share. Deere said construction demand was up as well. Construction and forestry sales climbed 81 percent, and the unit turned an operating profit in the quarter after losing money a year earlier. Deere predicts net income this fiscal year of about $2.5 billion, up from a November prediction of $2.1 billion. Analysts currently predict $2.37 billion.

Deere & Company
Machinery and Equipment
Agriculture
Company Reports


Palin Recaptures Her Image

Abstract: “Oh, man, it’s so obvious I’m a Washington outsider, and someone just not used to the way you guys operate,” she said after her opponent explained, somewhat awkwardly, why he had voted in favor of the Iraq war. And that was how Sarah Palin got the better of Sarah Palin. The debate wasn’t so much between Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Palin as it was between the dueling images of the Alaska governor: the fuzzy-minded amateur parodied — with her own words — by Tina Fey on “Saturday Night Live” or the gun-toting hockey mom who blazed into history at the Republican convention. There was a little of both on stage Thursday night, though Ms. Palin spoke far more fluidly and confidently than she had in her devastating interviews with Katie Couric of CBS. Ms. Palin did stumble into a few loop-the-loop non sequiturs, but mostly she stuck to practiced talking points. She didn’t answer questions directly, but she spoke out with self-assurance and even cockiness, correcting Mr. Biden when he tried to repeat the Republicans’ slogan about oil exploration in Alaska. “The chant is ‘drill, baby, drill,’ ” she said. And Ms. Palin was the one who set the tone, making Mr. Biden sound stuffy before he had a chance to make her look unsteady. She bounded onto the stage, shook hands with her opponent and said brightly, “Hey, can I call you Joe?” He said yes, then addressed her as “Governor Palin.” She twinkled, cocked her head, and spoke as plainly as she could. “Darn right it was predator lenders,” she told the moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS, when asked who was to blame for the mortgage meltdown. Her sentences had lots of pep and patriotism, and few g’s at the end of her words — “You betcha” and “Get down to gettin’ business done” and “doggone it.” Expectations for both candidates were low, but the expectations for the debate were almost absurdly high — cable news commentators led up to the event like children on a Halloween sugar bender, deliriously excited by what The Washington Times described as a “Thrilla in Manila” showdown. Mr. Biden made few mistakes; he appeared more measured and thoughtful on substance, and made forceful points that contrasted with Ms. Palin’s slogans. But she provided the more vivacious, visceral television performance: it was a 90-minute sprint to reclaim her identity as a feisty, folksy frontierswoman ready to storm Washington. And she did it like a reality show contestant — broadly, with stagey asides to the camera, including an assurance to some third-grade students, in what she called a “shout-out,” that they would get extra credit for tuning in. She was friendly and respectful to Mr. Biden. Then, every now and then, she cocked her head, winked, and nudged him hard — like a little sister who knows her older brother cannot hit back. And while her showmanship may have exhilarated her fans, it also helped Mr. Biden, who is normally known as something of a know-it-all showoff; in contrast to her, he seemed reserved and sincere. Ms. Palin attacked her opponent’s positions on taxes and on the war with gusto, at one point accusing Mr. Biden of “waving the white flag of surrender” in Iraq. But mostly, she tried to recoup from past blunders on foreign policy. She twice dropped the name of Kim Jong Il of North Korea, made a point of referring to Iran’s president and described the Cuban leadership as “the Castro brothers.” She also recast her television interviews as traps set by liberals, not unforced errors of her own. At the end of the debate, before she was surrounded by her husband and children, and burped her newborn, she thanked the moderator for the chance to talk to the American people “without the filter, even of the mainstream media, kind of telling viewers what they’ve just heard.” It was a pre-emptive strike against commentators poised to critique her performance and a retroactive strike against the other Sarah Palin.

Presidential Election of 2008
Debating
Palin Sarah
Biden Joseph R Jr


Even as Power Shuts Down, the Bills Keep Surging

Abstract: ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — There was no play clock, no replay, no scoreboard, no television. A power failure that began when some Mylar balloons became ensnared in electrical lines near Ralph Wilson Stadium knocked out the N.F.L. ’s modern amenities for much of the Buffalo Bills ’ game Sunday, leaving only darkened locker rooms and throwback football in its wake. That was fitting for the Bills, who are constructing a season that has begun to evoke reminders of their glory days of two decades ago. Their 4-1 start did not include a victory over an elite team, though, a point made by analysts that Coach Dick Jauron carefully mined for motivation for the two weeks leading to Sunday’s game against San Diego. But with a 23-14 victory against the Chargers , the Bills look more like those great teams than ever before, relying on a smashmouth defense and a dynamic quarterback to propel themselves into the elite of the American Football Conference. “We’re gaining a lot of confidence,” Buffalo quarterback Trent Edwards said. “This is definitely a statement game for us. We may face them again this year.” That can happen only in the playoffs, which is where the Bills, who have not been to the postseason since 1999, seem to be heading. They begin their division schedule against the Miami Dolphins next Sunday, but with the lights out, their play against a team that last week demolished the New England Patriots provided a jolt to a topsy-turvy division race. Edwards, two weeks removed from a concussion and spared of any pressure from the Chargers’ pass rush, was nearly flawless. He completed 25 of 30 passes for 261 yards and a touchdown pass that Lee Evans caught one-handed at the side of the end zone. Edwards was particularly impressive when the power was out for a large chunk of the first half and a portion of the second. The game clock and the play clock went dead, forcing the quarterbacks to spot hand signals from the back judge to know when there were 10 seconds left to call the play. Edwards also relied on wristbands with plays written on them because the speaker in his helmet that allows his coaches to talk to him was out, too. “It was really hectic on the sideline,” Jauron said. “There was a lot of noise, people yelling, trying to find out how much time was left. My dad told me a long time ago that if you play the game long enough, everything happens, and it seems like it’s working out that way.” This might have been football from the Stone Age — the Bills sat in a dark locker room before the game and at halftime — except it was not technical difficulty that troubled the Chargers as much as it was the Bills. Playing without two defensive starters, Buffalo held running back LaDainian Tomlinson to 41 yards on 14 rushes. And the Bills limited the damage from quarterback Philip Rivers, whose second-quarter fumble gave Buffalo a short field to drive for a touchdown. In the fourth quarter, linebacker Kawika Mitchell read a Chargers play so perfectly that as Rivers, who is having a breakout year himself, tried to thread a 9-yard pass to Antonio Gates for a touchdown, Mitchell seemingly came out of nowhere to intercept it in the end zone. It was a play the Bills had practiced during the week, and Mitchell, a former Giant, had made an interception in practice, too. The Bills drove for a field goal that gave them a 9-point lead. A little more than three minutes after the interception, Mitchell sacked Rivers and hit Rivers’s elbow with his helmet, forcing a fumble that sealed the victory. It was a remarkable effort against a team that had been averaging 29 points a game and that now faces a long — extra long — flight to London for a game against the New Orleans Saints next week. In a season that has already provided mind-bending parity, the Chargers are a case study in inconsistency, capable of pulverizing the Patriots one week, then falling flat, failing to generate a pass rush or tackle well, the next. “It was extremely disappointing,” Chargers Coach Norv Turner said. The disappointing days seem to be behind the Bills for now, and they are a team that is growing with each game in a way that reminded Mitchell of the Giants last season. Jauron said: “We are a young team, and we haven’t done it year after year. They have. It’s still just one game and it’s still early in the season, so nobody will know what it means until we get down the line.” Even in the dark, the Bills can see all the way to January.

Buffalo Bills
San Diego Chargers
Football
National Football League


Jabari Parker Will Play College Basketball at Duke

Abstract: CHICAGO — With a deep breath and a smile, Jabari Parker held up a blue T-shirt with a bright, white “D” on it. All around the Simeon Career Academy gym on the South Side here, cameras flashed and TV cameras rolled as the country learned that Parker would play college basketball at Duke . Parker’s decision Thursday was a national sports news event, the latest testament to a celebrity rooted in both his skill — he has been considered one of the top players in the nation since his sophomore year — and his Mormon faith. Parker, a 6-foot-8 senior, has led Simeon to three consecutive Illinois state championships, has dazzled on A.A.U. courts across the country and was coveted by college coaches. His exceptional post moves and jump shot are perhaps exceeded by his biography: an African-American follower of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in urban Chicago. Parker was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated this spring, billed as “the best high school basketball player since LeBron James.” The article was accompanied by questions of whether he would serve the church on a mission upon graduation. He said Thursday that he would not but might later in life. His increasing fame stands in contrast to his unassuming presence off the court, where he comes across as a regular young man remarkably adept at handling the spotlight. “Everybody knows I hate attention,” Parker said at the news conference. “I almost had to do it this way. It wasn’t a choice for me. A lot of people wanted to know, and it would be selfish for me not to.” He also spoke repeatedly about the importance of going to Duke for an education. “I like being around kids, teaching people, so secondary education could be one of those things,” Parker said when asked what he might major in. “I like animals, so biology could be a factor.” Parker’s mother, Lola, was born in Tonga and raised as a Mormon in Utah. His father, Sonny, enjoyed a six-year N.B.A. career with the Golden State Warriors in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Jabari Parker abides by Mormon customs. He does not smoke or drink alcohol. Church services trump his basketball schedule, and he regularly attends Bible study classes before school. “Jabari’s faith defines who he is,” Lola Parker said. “Character is everything to our family because when you have faith in something other than yourself, then you become humble. He understands there is a responsibility that comes with all this.” Jabari Parker included Brigham Young on his final list of colleges, and his official visit there last month created a frenzy. Students printed thousands of T-shirts with the slogan “From Chicago to Provo” and produced an Internet video that went viral. It was not enough. “It’s just Coach K,” Parker said, referring to Mike Krzyzewski, Duke’s longtime coach. “He’s one of the best coaches ever, and I want to be able to experience the things he has.” At Simeon, which the former No. 1 draft pick Derrick Rose also attended, Coach Robert Smith has called Parker the best player he has ever coached. “Jabari can be great, a five- or six-year All-Star player, and make the Hall of Fame,” Smith said. “Everyone wants me to determine who’s the best between him and Derrick. They are both humble, mild-mannered, and love their families. The things you look for in a kid, they have it.” Still, Parker’s seemingly smooth life has hit some bumps this year. Playing for the United States team in the FIBA U-17 World Championships in Lithuania this summer, Parker fractured a bone in his right foot. He tried to come back too soon for Simeon’s season, aggravated the injury and will now most likely be sidelined for the rest of December. That did not scare off college recruiters, or stop him from being among the most sought-after recruits in the country. After Thursday’s news conference, Simeon got back to practice. Parker watched from the sideline, resting his foot, before leaving with his mother and father. “This took off a lot of weight on me,” Parker said. “It got me away from all the sharks — the media, all of that. Any little spec on Twitter or any site could blow up the world, so I just wanted to get it done.”

Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)


Man’s World at White House? No Harm, No Foul, Aides Say

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Does the White House feel like a frat house? The suspicion flared in recent weeks — and not for the first time — after President Obama was criticized by women’s advocates and liberal bloggers for hosting a high-level basketball game with no female players. The president, after all, is an unabashed First Guy’s Guy. Since being elected, he has demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of college hoops on ESPN, indulged a craving for weekend golf, expressed a preference for adopting a “big rambunctious dog” over a “girlie dog” and hoisted beer in a peacemaking effort. He presides over a White House rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other “dude” and testosterone-brimming personalities like Rahm Emanuel, the often-profane chief of staff; Lawrence Summers, the brash economic adviser; and Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, who habitually speaks in sports metaphors. The technical foul over the all-male game has become a nagging concern for a White House that has battled an impression dating to the presidential campaign that Mr. Obama’s closest advisers form a boys’ club and that he is too frequently in the company of only men — not just when playing sports, but also when making big decisions. While the senior adviser Valerie Jarrett is undeniably one of the president’s closest White House confidantes, some women inside or close to the administration complain that Mr. Obama’s female advisers are not as visible as their male colleagues or, they suspect, as influential. “Women are Obama’s base, and they don’t seem to have enough people who look like the base inside of their own inner circle,” said Dee Dee Myers, a former press secretary in the Clinton administration whose sister, Betsy, served as the Obama campaign’s chief operating officer. Ms. Myers said women have high expectations of the president. “Obama has a personal style that appeals to women,” she said. “He is seen as a consensus builder; he is not a towel snapper and does not tell crude jokes.” Mr. Obama, in an interview with NBC on Wednesday, called the beef over basketball “bunk,” saying that the players were largely picked from a regular Congressional game and that the list of invitees was reviewed by women on his staff. “I don’t think it sends any kind of message or signal whatsoever,” said the president, who often points out that he is surrounded by strong females at home (where he is the only non-canine male). He added, in the interview, that he had hired women into “some of the most important decision-making positions in this White House.” Ms. Jarrett similarly rejected the notion that the West Wing had been overrun by Y chromosomes, saying such complaints were “a Washington perception that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground.” She cites the prominent women Mr. Obama has appointed to top positions, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and six other cabinet-level officials; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor; the health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle; and the domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes. According to figures provided by the administration, there is a 50-50 gender split among White House employees. Still, some high-profile sectors of the White House — economics and national security, for instance — are filled with men and exude an unmistakable male vibe. Mr. Obama’s inner circle includes Mr. Gibbs, Mr. Emanuel and his senior adviser, David Axelrod (“The Boys,” as they are known to some female staff members). Women in important White House jobs tend to be less visible than their colleagues, even as the administration is trying to elevate their profiles. (In the same week as the basketball game, Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, hosted a group of women reporters for an off-the-record meeting with Ms. Jarrett over chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies.) One Democratic media strategist says that while Mr. Obama does place women in important roles, his comfort level with staff members is not always perceived as equal. “There is a sense that Obama has a certain jocular familiarity with the men that he doesn’t have with the women,” said Tracy Sefl, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign who speaks regularly to some female aides in the administration. In interviews, five women who work in the White House or advised officials there described the culture with more of a collective eye-roll than any real sense of grievance or discomfort. One junior aide, who like the other women spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about appearing publicly critical, said that the “sports-fan thing at the White House” could become “annoying” and that her relative indifference to athletics could be mildly alienating. And while this is not uncommon in any workplace, sports bonding can afford a point of entree with the boss. Ben Finkenbinder, a junior press aide and scratch golfer, was recently invited into a foursome with Mr. Obama. (In records kept by Mark Knoller of CBS, the president has played 23 rounds of golf since taking office, none of which have included women, though Mr. Knoller allows that the press office does not always release the names of every player. A White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said Friday that Mr. Obama planned to play this weekend with Ms. Barnes.) Mr. Obama is hardly the first commander in chief whose penchant for sports and other guyish stuff (comic books, “Star Trek”) has become part of his presidential persona. The first President George Bush presented himself as a horseshoe-playing, pork-rind-eating Texan. He was followed by the Big Mac-gobbling, cigar-chomping Bill Clinton and the brush-clearing, bike-busting George W. Bush. It worked to good effect, said Mark McKinnon, a media adviser and mountain bike companion of the latter Mr. Bush. “We see them as president but know they can also shoot hoops and put the hammer down on a chain ring, which makes them more accessible, normal and likable,” Mr. McKinnon said. Recreation is only one source of affinity within a White House culture, people there say. Obama veterans describe a camaraderie forged over a grueling campaign and a merciless nine months at the White House. It is not about gender, they say, but shared experience. “Many of us have known each other for a long time, and we have brother-and-sister kind of relationships,” said Jen Psaki, the deputy press secretary, who works in an office with seven other spokesmen under 35, all “brothers” from the campaign. Other women in the administration say that any discussion of White House culture should account for how politics has long been dominated by men but is now more inclusive. Ms. Dunn, who had to take a typing test three decades ago to work for a campaign, rejects the notion of a boys’ club. She calls the Obama administration “refreshingly un-self-conscious” about matters of equality, maybe to a point where they neglected the “optics” of the all-male basketball game. Ms. Dunn said that she recently hosted a baby shower for an administration official and that no men from the office were invited. She is comfortable with that — just as she is fine with never playing basketball with the president. “That is just part of the culture here that I am excluded from,” she said. “And I don’t care.”

Athletics and Sports
Women and Girls
Obama Barack


Lawyers Seek to Block Muslim Cleric’s Extradition to U.S.

Abstract: LONDON — Lawyers for a Muslim cleric wanted in the United States on terrorism charges said on Tuesday that the preacher, Abu Hamza al-Masri , was physically unfit to face the accusations against him and that it would be “oppressive to extradite him” under the terms of British law. Mr. Masri, 54, has been resisting extradition since 2004. American prosecutors want him to face charges of calling for holy war in Afghanistan , involvement in kidnappings in Yemen and participating in a plot to set up a terrorism training camp in Bly, Ore. Mr. Masri, who was born in Egypt and was notorious for fiery sermons at the Finsbury Park mosque in North London, has been in prison in Britain since 2006 on separate charges, including incitement to murder. Over the years, he has successfully avoided extradition through a series of legal hearings. But, last week, the European Court of Human Rights rejected a request for the right to appeal — a decision that British officials took as the final word permitting his extradition. In court filings on Tuesday before a scheduled High Court hearing, Mr. Masri’s counsel, Alun Jones, said he would seek an interim injunction arguing that there is an “uncontradicted medical opinion that a scan is medically necessary” in light of the cleric’s “deteriorating health.” If medical tests find him “unfit to plead, or arguably so, it will be argued that it would be oppressive to extradite within the meaning of” Britain’s extradition laws, Mr. Jones said according to The Press Association news agency. The law is very clear, Mr. Jones said. “If a person is established to be unfit to plead, he should not be extradited.” But if “there is an issue” concerning fitness to plead, “he should indeed be extradited.” Mr. Jones said a judge had referred in 2008 to Mr. Masri’s “very poor health.” “Over four years later, it appears there has been, or may have been, a further deterioration, perhaps attributable to sleep deprivation and the continued confinement of the appellant in an unrelentingly harsh environment,” the lawyer said. Mr. Masri, hook-handed and one-eyed from injuries many years ago, is one of five men wanted in the United States on charges ranging from murder to running a jihadist Web site. All five are seeking High Court injunctions to prevent their extradition, but none of them was expected to appear in court. Their cases will be heard by two judges over the next few days. The four other suspects are Seyla Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary, Khaled al-Fawwaz and Babar Ahmad. Mr. Bary and Mr. Al-Fawwaz were charged with multiple murders in the 1998 bombings of the American Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed more than 200 people. Mr. Ahsan, like Mr. Ahmad, is charged with providing support to terrorists and conspiracy-related offenses. British civil liberties activists have complained about the treatment in particular of Mr. Ahmad, 37, a computer expert accused of being a fund-raiser for terrorist causes. He has been held without charge or trial for eight years. In an unusual interview earlier this year, Mr. Ahmad declared: ‘'I have been in prison now for nearly eight years without trial. I am facing extradition to the U.S. to spend the rest of my life in solitary confinement. I have never been questioned about the allegations against me. I have never been shown the evidence against me.” Last April, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain could legally extradite all five men. They asked for the right of appeal but that request was denied last week, triggering the latest moves at the High Court.

Masri Abu Hamza al-
Extradition
Terrorism
Great Britain


After Losing Lawsuit, Yankees Pass a Free-Choice Test

Abstract: On Friday night, most of the 46,197 people at Yankee Stadium stood solemnly by their seats during the playing of “God Bless America,” a seventh-inning rite that began soon after Sept. 11, 2001. But Rich Popaduke, 55, a building-materials salesman from White Plains, was not one of them. To test whether patriotism is a matter of choice at the baseball park, as the Yankees assert, and not something aggressively enforced by security guards, as one fan’s lawsuit recently claimed, Mr. Popaduke headed for the bathroom. “Freedom is what makes us American,” Mr. Popaduke said, as he scurried down the steps of Section 414. It was the first game at home for the Yankees since July 6, when the team settled a lawsuit brought against it by Bradford Campeau-Laurion, a Red Sox fan who said he was kicked out of the ballpark last summer for trying to use the bathroom while Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” was playing. The song is played during the seventh-inning stretch, just before the Yankees come to bat. Police officials said that Mr. Campeau-Laurion was using inappropriate language and reeked of alcohol, and that he was ejected from the stadium by police officers who were working off duty on a shift paid for by the Yankees. After Mr. Campeau-Laurion, 30, sued the Yankees, the city and the police, he received a settlement of $10,001, with $12,000 more in legal fees going to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The money was paid entirely by the city, though it admitted no wrongdoing. The Yankees, as part of the settlement, affirmed that there was no policy restricting fans’ movements during the song. The settlement may have ushered in a new era of live-and-let-live political tolerance at the stadium. Even though Mr. Popaduke passed within inches of a guard on Friday while speakers boomed about “oceans white with foam,” the guard barely looked up, which was also the case when a reporter passed her a few seconds later. “Everybody has free choice. You cannot interfere with that,” the guard said later, identifying herself as Nicole Farrell from East New York, Brooklyn. She also acknowledged that tolerance had been strongly encouraged by her boss when she started the job in June. Even though many fans interviewed on Friday were aware of Mr. Campeau-Laurion’s suit and its outcome, few actually chose to leave their seats during the seventh-inning stretch, which, at the stadium, includes a moment of “silent prayer” for soldiers, and the song traditionally played during the stretch, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” But most fans said they were glad to have the right to opt out of the singalongs, even if they chose not to exercise that option. “If you have to go, you have to go,” said Shirley DeMeo, a jewelry consultant from Suffolk County, explaining that she felt sympathy for Mr. Campeau-Laurion because she had an illness that sometimes required ill-timed trips to the bathroom. Also, she joked, with all the brown plastic bottles of beer that the vendors relentlessly hawk, “the stadium is sort of asking for it.” Regardless of the team’s policy, there will always be some fans who might be somewhat less attuned to one’s right to free speech, or one’s right to walk out during a flag-waving anthem. “If they tried to do that in my aisle, I would have stuck out my leg,” said Sue Coster, from Waterbury, Conn., saying that she was sensitive to the patriotism issue because her brother had served in the Persian Gulf war. Another of her brothers, Mike Coster, from Milford, Conn., who wore a black T-shirt showing a cartoon dog flexing a bicep against a Stars and Stripes background, agreed: “I would wait till the end of the song.”

Freedom of Speech and Expression
Suits and Litigation
Yankee Stadium (NYC)
Baseball
Stadiums and Arenas


Nets’ Keith Bogans Works From a Corner Office

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Keith Bogans likes to joke that he has lived in the corners beyond the 3-point arc his entire professional career. That is where he has made most of his success in 10 years in the N.B.A., he said, with something of a self-deprecating tone. It is not the most glamorous spot on the court. Those who thrive there may be akin to baseball players who slap-hit singles or the linemen who do the long snaps in football. It did not take long for Bogans to summarize his nightly routine. First, he runs to the corner. Then “I just stand and wait for my shot to come,” Bogans said. It sounds simple enough but, over the course of his career, carving that niche has been a longer practice than he lets on. As a second-round draft pick out of Kentucky, he was no corner artist. In fact, the early scouting report on him was the opposite. “I used to hear that I couldn’t shoot,” Bogans, 32, said after the Nets practiced Thursday. “That’s something I definitely used to hear a lot.” His evolution from a slashing, rim-running point guard to a reliable jump shooter off the Nets’ bench is another N.B.A. survivor story, a tale of a player adept enough to reform his game and adroit enough to notice the need to do so before it is too late. This season, especially of late, Bogans’s value for the Nets has come from right in that cozy corner, running off screens and settling for a pass off the inevitable double team sprung at either Deron Williams or Joe Johnson. “I’m licking my chops at that point,” Bogans said. Bogans hit three 3-pointers in the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s win over New Orleans , the eighth time this season he has made three or more 3-pointers in a game, despite averaging only 18.1 minutes of play a game. Remarkably, 44 of Bogans’s 84 field goals this season have been from either the left or right corner of the 3-point arc. Image The Nets' Keith Bogans summarizes his nightly routine as: First, running to the corner. Then “I just stand and wait for my shot to come,” he said. Credit Kathy Kmonicek/Associated Press He is shooting 39.3 percent from the corners, compared with just 33.9 percent from elsewhere beyond the 3-point line. “I’m a role player,” Bogans said. “I’m not going to dominate the ball, plays aren’t going to be run for me. I’m going to get to the weak side. If I can stand and make the open shot, it’s hard to get me off the floor.” It is a mentality that did not come naturally. In his first three seasons, most of Bogans’s field-goal attempts were from inside the paint. But in his fourth season, playing for the Orlando Magic, his fourth N.B.A. team, he began lingering after practice to shoot 3-pointers with Grant Hill, and watched Hill’s work ethic and repetitions in shooting, especially from the corners beyond the 3-point arc. Two years after playing with Hill, in 2009, Bogans joined the San Antonio Spurs, who were looking for a spot-up shooter who could replace Bruce Bowen. Bogans attempted 111 shots from the corners that season, compared with 83 from elsewhere around the arc. Under their former coach Avery Johnson, a onetime Spurs player, and now P. J. Carlesimo, a former Spurs assistant, the Nets have incorporated some of San Antonio’s offensive philosophy, particularly the notion of getting open looks from the corners. “Percentage-wise it’s a red area, it’s a real good area to be shooting the ball from,” Carlesimo said. “And Bogs is really good out of the corner. That’s his hot spot. That’s where we like him to shoot it from.” This season, only 10.3 percent of Bogans’s attempted shots have been inside the paint. He said he could not put a number on how many shots he takes from the corners every day at practice. But his success there has come from daily repetitions, with the assistant coach Doug Overton, putting up shots until he said his arms get tired. “That’s where he makes his mark,” Williams said. “We know where Bogs is going to be, sitting in that corner, waiting.” REBOUNDS Joe Johnson (left heel) practiced Thursday but remains questionable to play Friday against Dallas. Johnson said he was confident that he would suit up. “It’s better,” Johnson said. “Not 100 percent, but definitely better.” Johnson has missed the past three games. ... MArShon Brooks missed practice with a sprained right wrist and is questionable for the game.

Basketball
Brooklyn Nets
P J Carlesimo
Keith Bogans


San Francisco Police Officers Sue City

Abstract: The San Francisco police officers suspended in December for participating in a video that city officials deemed racist and sexist sued the city, the police department and its chief saying they were victims of discrimination and unfairly disciplined. The lawsuit, which seeks $20 million in damages from San Francisco and Police Chief Heather Fong, was filed in Superior Court in San Francisco on behalf of 18 officers who participated in a Christmas videotape that parodied the life on the job at the Bayview police station in a largely black section of the city.

Police
Suits and Litigation
San Francisco (Calif)
Discrimination