Settlement May Be Near in Career-Ending Attack That Has Shadowed N.H.L.

Abstract: One of the most violent on-ice events in National Hockey League history seemed headed to resolution Tuesday more than 10 years after it took place, as lawyers prepared an out-of-court settlement to a $68 million lawsuit brought by Steve Moore, a former player, against Todd Bertuzzi, the opponent who attacked him during a game and ended his career. Terms of the potential settlement were not disclosed, but if a deal is reached, it will avoid a civil trial scheduled to begin in Toronto on Sept. 8. Commissioner Gary Bettman; John McCaw, the former owner of the Vancouver Canucks; and other league and team officials were expected to testify in a trial that would have shined a spotlight on professional hockey’s culture of violence and vigilante retribution. Moore’s camp did not comment or confirm that a settlement had been reached. But Bertuzzi’s lawyer, Geoff Adair, said late Tuesday afternoon, “Todd Bertuzzi is very pleased to have arrived at the end of this case.” The case has hung like a cloud over the league since Bertuzzi attacked Moore from behind during the third period of a game in Vancouver between the Canucks and Moore’s Colorado Avalanche on March 8, 2004. Bertuzzi, then 29, resumed his career after a 15-month suspension and is still active. Moore, a 25-year-old rookie at the time of the attack, sustained three fractured vertebrae and a concussion and never played again. “I lost my entire career in my rookie year,” Moore told The Canadian Press in March as the 10th anniversary of the attack approached and the long-delayed civil trial lay several months in the future. “I can’t recover anything else. I can’t recover my career, the experience of living out my dream from the time I was 2 ½ years old of playing in the N.H.L.” Moore’s lawsuit contended that he was deliberately attacked because of an unpenalized check he had thrown in a previous game that had given Vancouver’s Markus Naslund a concussion. Canucks Coach Marc Crawford, General Manager Brian Burke and several Canucks players criticized Moore after Naslund’s injury, which sidelined Naslund, the Vancouver captain, for three games. One player, Brad May, said “there is definitely a bounty” on Moore’s head. The teams next met in Denver, but with Bettman in the stands, the Canucks did not challenge Moore to fight. Five days later, the teams played in Vancouver. In the first period, the Canucks’ Matt Cooke fought Moore, which would normally end a hockey feud. But in the third period, with Vancouver leading by 8-2, Bertuzzi pursued Moore around the ice. When Moore ignored him, Bertuzzi grabbed Moore’s sweater from behind and struck him with a roundhouse punch with his gloved right hand. Moore collapsed to the ice face-first. Bertuzzi fell on Moore’s back, driving his head against the ice again, and started to throw another punch. But Moore’s teammate Andrei Nikolishin fell on Bertuzzi and restrained him. Then a Vancouver player fell atop Nikolishin. Moore lay motionless, his blood pooling about his head, for about 10 minutes before he was wheeled off on a stretcher. The N.H.L. fined the Canucks and suspended Bertuzzi. He missed the remainder of the season and the playoffs, and he was barred from playing overseas when the following N.H.L. season was lost to a lockout. The league was experiencing a trough in popularity at the time, and the notoriety it received in the attack’s aftermath made the situation worse. Four years earlier, Marty McSorley of the Boston Bruins was suspended 12 months for a stick attack against the head of the Canucks’ Donald Brashear. “I think that Canadians feel that there is a problem with hockey,” Paul Martin, then the Canadian prime minister, said after Bertuzzi’s attack. “I’d certainly say, ‘Clean up your act.’ ” Bertuzzi apologized for his actions in the months after the attack, but he has rarely spoken of it in subsequent years. He recently became a free agent after playing five seasons with the Detroit Red Wings. Bertuzzi has earned about $30 million in salary in the decade since the attack. In a court appearance last month, Timothy Danson, Moore’s lawyer, told the judge that Moore, a Harvard graduate, was seeking damages because he “is unable to obtain employment commensurate to anywhere near his high intellect” and college degree. The trial was expected to draw significant news media coverage on both sides of the border, and the prospect of renewed scrutiny was seen as potentially embarrassing for the N.H.L. “We are pleased that the resolution of this matter allows the parties to turn the page and look to the future,” the N.H.L.’s deputy commissioner, Bill Daly, told The Canadian Press on Tuesday afternoon, after initial reports that a settlement had been reached. Later in the day, when it became apparent that the settlement was still tentative, Daly declined to comment.

Todd Bertuzzi
Steve Moore
Ice hockey
Lawsuits
NHL
Markus Naslund


Health Magazine Reuses Recipes From Real Simple

Abstract: When Health magazine promoted “Your New Favorite Dinners” in its December issue, there was just one problem: the dinners weren’t exactly new. Real Simple, which like Health is owned by Time Inc., had created and run essentially the same five recipes, for dishes like chicken with roasted sweet potatoes, in its February 2009 issue. Health had slightly revised them and added nutrition facts. It also republished the original photographs. Ellen Kunes, the editor in chief of Health, said that Health had been careful to credit Real Simple as the source, and that the recycled recipes were “a rarity.” “I happened to see this story and I thought that it fit really perfectly with what we were doing,” she said. “I think Real Simple is a great magazine — I think their food is amazing, and I love the photography they do.” She said that editorial fit, not cost savings, had driven the decision. “What you need to know about this is that this is not free. Why it’s not free is because we retested these recipes,” she said, to make sure they met Health magazine’s nutritional guidelines. Health made minor changes: in a chicken dish, a tablespoon of olive oil was cut, and in all the dishes, Health specified the amount of salt-to-taste so it would meet its sodium limits. Also, Ms. Kunes said, Health paid to reuse the photographs. Sharing articles “has been common practice for a long time,” especially among small sister publications, said John Fennell, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. “What surprised me a little bit about this one is these are fairly big consumer titles,” Mr. Fennell said, which tend to be “a little more cautious.” Health has a circulation of almost 1.4 million, and Real Simple almost two million. But there is little overlap between the magazines — only about 7 percent of Real Simple’s readers read Health, and 8 percent of Health’s readers read Real Simple, according to Mediamark Research & Intelligence. But, Mr. Fennell said, with Time Inc. having cut its staff late last year, “clearly, they’re shorthanded in some cases.” He added, “Material that can be repackaged or repurposed is a way to keep up profits.”

Recipes
Magazines
Real Simple
Time Inc
Kunes Ellen
Diet and Nutrition
News and News Media


Arizona: Dust Causes a Deadly 19-Vehicle Pileup

Abstract: Thick dust blowing across a highway led to a chain-reaction crash that killed three people on Tuesday. Twelve other people were injured, at least one critically, in the 19-vehicle pileup on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson. One driver, Henry Wallace, described the crashes to KPHO-TV, saying, “I couldn’t see anything” because of the dust, “but I could just hear it, ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’ ”


Floyd Mayweather Jr., a Ring Virtuoso, Is Still Fighting to Be Appreciated

Abstract: LAS VEGAS After Floyd Mayweather Jr. dispatched another overmatched opponent Saturday night, in a welterweight title fight less strenuous than many of his sparring sessions, the debate about his place in boxing history resumed. To the supporters who lined the walls at a news conference after he won in a unanimous decision, there was nothing left to argue. They clapped and hollered and showered Mayweather with praise. “That’s right, champ!” “You tell ’em, champ!” “You the best, champ!” But to boxing insiders and more casual sports fans, Mayweather’s legacy, like his life, is not that simple. There remains a baseline contradiction from which he cannot escape: when it comes to competition faced and opponents chosen, the boxer who has not yet lost cannot win. Spread the blame around on that one. Blame Mayweather, his management team and the promotional companies he has worked with. Blame the era in which he has fought. And blame the critics who refuse, mistakenly, to give Mayweather the credit he deserves. As the news conference unfolded in typical only-in-boxing fashion — with a scuffle in the back, fans posed as journalists lobbing compliments disguised as questions, and Floyd Mayweather Sr. speaking in some combination of English and gibberish — Stephen Espinoza, the head of Showtime Sports, stood to the side. He acknowledged how difficult it had become for many to compare Mayweather Jr. with other boxing greats, in large part because there is no obvious historical comparison. Mayweather is the rare combination of subtle boxer and flamboyant personality, a tactical wizard inside the ring and a cocksure loudmouth outside it. He is undefeated and unapologetic. That complicated, combustible mix takes some focus off his ring skills as his triumphs blend with legal run-ins, including a guilty plea to misdemeanor domestic violence and harassment that led to his spending more than two months in jail last summer. There is the Mayweather who flashes stacks of $100 bills, who compares his strip-club spending habits to a stimulus package. And there is Mayweather, master boxing craftsman. “At this level, it’s all about selling fights,” he acknowledged again Saturday. That, Espinoza said, is part of why Showtime signed Mayweather to an unprecedented contract, banking on a 36-year-old pugilist with a history of legal problems to the tune of $250 million if he fights six times over three years (an ambitious, perhaps unrealistic goal). Espinoza said Showtime would like to portray Mayweather as more than the “Money” caricature he has created — as an artist who paints with his fists. Espinoza heard the restless crowd boo Mayweather and Robert Guerrero, known as the Ghost, at times at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. He saw some fans depart before the fight ended. He acknowledged that the action had become monotonous. He also argued, correctly, that those who found the fight boring had missed Mayweather’s genius. Mayweather dipped under Guerrero’s punches, slid around Guerrero’s grasp, landed right-handed pot shots. It was clinical, surgical, efficient. It was artistic. Ghost, busted. Yet there were those afterward who argued that Mayweather ran from Guerrero. They argued that Mayweather picked another challenger he was certain he could beat. Mayweather cannot win that argument. His opponents are always too old or too green, too small or too slow. That is the perception, which conveniently leaves out or minimizes his superior athletic gifts. One cannot defend the fact that Mayweather has not squared off against Manny Pacquiao — the best boxers of a generation, often in the same weight class, on paths to greatness that never intersected. The rest of his career — defensive fighter or not, knockouts or not, exciting fights or not — should be more celebrated, and it would be, too, were Mayweather not so caustic and divisive. “There is an underappreciation of him, and I don’t quite get it,” Espinoza said. “When he wins convincingly, people revise history and say he didn’t fight a good opponent. “He can’t win for winning.” The news conference plowed onward. Mayweather climbed onto the stage in a purple sweatsuit, his hat adorned with “MAY DAY” in large gold block letters. He was asked if his opponents actually believed that they could beat him or if they were simply content to collect a seven-figure paycheck and parlay an expected loss into exposure. Victor Ortiz, for instance, went from being knocked out by Mayweather to appearing on “Dancing With the Stars.” Someone asked Mayweather how he compared with history’s greatest boxers, with Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali, Roberto Duran and Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard and all the rest. “I’m not here to match myself against them,” Mayweather said, even though he had often engaged in that practice in recent years. “I’m here to fight the fighters of my era.” The question afterward, as always, was whom Mayweather should fight next. Among the names that surfaced — Amir Khan, Devon Alexander, Danny Garcia, Ortiz again — Canelo Alvarez was the most enticing, the closest thing to an opponent who could help produce a superfight. Mayweather declined to speculate, but he insisted he would fight again in September, which would be his shortest layoff between bouts in years. Mayweather had turned back the clock against Guerrero. He looked younger. He absorbed far less punishment — if any — than in his most recent fights. He said this training camp was his best and credited his father for his return to defensive prominence. Other boxers noticed. “Easy money,” Adrien Broner said. “He robbed a bank without a mask.” Peter Quillin said: “We’re living in the Mayweather era. There’s nobody like that.” A bodyguard placed nine belts on the table for the news conference, and each hit with a thud more impactful than anything that hit Mayweather on Saturday. He did not argue for his place in boxing history. He did not need to. At this rate, he will need to less and less. “I’ve got five more fights, and I’m through with the sport,” he said. Eventually, Mayweather will retire, sooner rather than later, and all the flamboyance will fade. This will present another contradiction. The less Mayweather boasts, the more his in-ring exploits will speak for him.

Boxing
Floyd Mayweather Jr
Robert Guerrero


Carlos Andrés Pérez, 88, former Venezuela President

Abstract: CARACAS, Venezuela — Carlos Andrés Pérez, the former president who tried to make Venezuela a leader of the developing world during a 1970s oil boom only to have his legacy upended in a tumultuous 1989 return to the presidency marked by civil unrest, coup attempts, impeachment and exile, died Saturday in Miami. He was 88. The cause was a heart attack, his daughter, María Francia Pérez, told the news network Globovisión. Mr. Pérez burst onto the Latin American political scene in the mid-1970s when a quadrupling of oil prices suddenly enriched Venezuela’s government, opening the way for state-led development efforts and an era of glitzy consumption known here as “Venezuela Saudita,” or Saudi Venezuela. A gifted orator known for his bushy sideburns and flashy suits, Mr. Pérez nationalized Venezuela’s oil industry and the holdings of American iron-ore companies. At the same time, he secured a vocal role for Venezuela in hemispheric affairs, portending, in some ways, President Hugo Chávez’s more assertive foreign policy. In his first term, Mr. Pérez re-established ties with Cuba and donated a ship to Bolivia, in support of that landlocked nation’s aspiration to regain sea access. He opposed the right-wing Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and encouraged Omar Torrijos, Panama’s leftist military leader, in his effort to gain sovereignty over the Panama Canal. Cultivating an independent streak that sometimes put him at odds with Washington, he tried to strengthen the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Venezuela was a founding member. With that goal in mind, he bought a full-page ad in The New York Times in 1974 to publish a letter to President Gerald R. Ford. “The establishment of OPEC was a direct consequence of the developed countries’ use of a policy of outrageously low prices for our raw materials as a weapon of economic oppression,” Mr. Pérez wrote. Mr. Pérez was born Oct. 22, 1922, the 11th of 12 children, to parents who were coffee planters in Rubio, a town near the western border with Colombia. He studied law in Caracas and married his first cousin, Blanca Rodríguez, in 1948, with whom he had six children. He was imprisoned that year for his opposition to a military coup and went into exile in 1949, roaming between Colombia, Cuba and Costa Rica, where he worked as editor of the newspaper La República. With the establishment of democratic rule here in 1958, he became a rising star in the government of President Rómulo Betancourt. As interior minister, he oversaw a counterinsurgency against Cuban-backed guerrillas. Later, at the helm of the Democratic Action Party, he mounted his successful 1973 bid for the presidency. That five-year term was marked by the rise of new fortunes in the private sector. Business deals were said to be discussed in the mansion belonging to his mistress, Cecilia Matos, who wore a gold replica of an oil tower on a chain around her neck; she said “Papi,” as she called the president, gave her the necklace, according to Fernando Coronil , a Venezuelan anthropologist at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. After his departure from office in 1979 and the bust in the 1980s that shook Venezuela’s economy, Mr. Pérez returned to power in 1989 following a campaign that demonized multilateral institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Yet soon after taking office, Mr. Pérez put in place an austerity program that included a $4.5 billion loan from the I.M.F. He announced spending cuts and raised gasoline prices, triggering the chaotic episode in February 1989 called the “Caracazo”: rioting and suppression by the security forces that took hundreds of lives. Mr. Pérez faced two coup attempts in 1992, the first of which was led by Mr. Chávez, thrusting the then-unknown lieutenant colonel into the national spotlight. Despite the turbulence of his second term, Mr. Pérez still sought an active role for Venezuela in regional politics. He forged warm ties with Jaime Paz Zamora, the former Bolivian president, and sent a plane for Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former Haitian president, when he was ousted in 1991. Still, resentment here festered against Mr. Pérez, culminating in his impeachment and removal from office in 1993 on corruption charges involving a secretive fund used in part to pay for the bodyguards of Violeta Chamorro, the former Nicaraguan president. “When the country’s future seemed promising, his power seemed immense; when conditions deteriorated, he was abandoned even by his own supporters,” said Mr. Coronil, the anthropologist. “His trajectory illustrated the transient nature of power.” Declaring his innocence, he was locked for 10 weeks in a 12-by-9-foot cell in a prison in one of this city’s slums. Then he was put under house arrest for two years in his hillside estate, where he would receive visitors in a chamber decorated with the framed gold pen he used to sign the papers nationalizing Venezuela’s oil industry. After Mr. Chávez’s election to the presidency in 1998, Mr. Pérez again went into exile, moving to the Dominican Republic, where he faced accusations from officials here of conspiring to oust Mr. Chávez. In 2003, Venezuela temporarily cut oil exports to the Dominican Republic, forcing Mr. Pérez to move to the United States, where he eventually settled with Ms. Matos, with whom he had two daughters. From the United States, he faced extradition proceedings in connection with his crackdown during the 1989 riots. Venezuelan prosecutors claimed that security forces used unnecessary force on rioters. Despite his deteriorating health in recent years, Mr. Pérez remained a vocal critic of Mr. Chávez, describing his government as “illegitimate.” He chastised the president for what he described as “unbecoming behavior” at a 2007 political summit meeting in Chile, during which King Juan Carlos of Spain publicly told Mr. Chávez, “Why don’t you shut up?” On Sunday, Mr. Chávez took note of Mr. Pérez’s death. “May he rest in peace,” he said in a televised speech in western Venezuela, according to The Associated Press. “But with him may the form of politics that he personified rest in peace and leave here forever.”

Venezuela
Politics and Government
Deaths (Obituaries)


Russian Wins Slalom Race

Abstract: Alexander Khoroshilov won a night slalom in Schladming, Austria, by a huge margin, for the first Russian World Cup victory in more than three decades. Khoroshilov finished in a total of 1 minute 46.39 seconds, 1.44 seconds ahead of Stefano Gross of Italy.

Skiing
Russia
World Cup Skiing
Alexander Khoroshilov


Female Business Travelers Make a Case for Pen Knives

Abstract: HERE is what the Transportation Security Administration said its screeners discovered in passengers’ carry-on bags at airport security in the seven days that ended last Thursday: 32 guns, 23 of them loaded and seven with rounds in the firing chamber; eight stun guns; a four-inch knife concealed in a suitcase lining; and an eight-inch tactical spike hidden in a sock. At the airport in Amarillo, Tex., screeners also encountered an agitated passenger who announced, “I don’t have any bombs — at least not yet!” Just a typical week at airport security, and that’s not counting the guns that undoubtedly slip through and are carried on planes without being detected. Yet there has been no outcry over guns at the airports. So it’s been interesting to me that flight crew unions and outraged members of Congress are up in arms, so to speak, over the T.S.A.’s decision to allow passengers to carry on board little pocketknives, with blades less than 2.36 inches long, starting next month. The agency’s administrator, John S. Pistole, has noted that passengers have been allowed since 2005 to carry small scissors, knitting needles and screwdrivers up to seven inches long, without incident. The decision to allow little pocketknives, which are valued by many passengers as all-purpose travel tools, was “common sense,” he told me last week, and conforms with international security policies already in place outside the United States. I asked for reader comment about this, and received a lot — more than 300 e-mail responses. A majority were in favor of the T.S.A. move, but there were also strong and articulate opinions against, saying that kind of knife posed an unacceptable risk to the flight crew and passengers. What surprised me most was the number of female business travelers who carry pen knives. Here are excerpts from just a few sample comments: “I think the flight attendants are getting riled up for nothing,” said Susan Klinger. “When I get to my destination, I like to have my little knife, which also has a toothpick, a tweezers, a scissors, screwdriver and nail file. It comes in very handy. The knife blade is so small that it doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans. Many times I have forgotten that it is in my handbag, and I have had several confiscated — and other times, no one notices.” Image Credit Brian Taylor Holly Smith wrote: “People who don’t understand why anyone would want a small knife on a plane are missing the point. Many people like to carry around a pen knife in their pocket or purse for the small tasks of everyday living for which such a knife is so useful. And these people don’t want to have to remember to take the knife out of their pocket or purse every time they fly. “In the meantime,” she added, “the flight attendants might remember that people carried pen knives on planes for decades before 9/11.” Nancy Pobanz said: “I like to carry a 2 x 3.25-inch Victorinox SwissCard that includes a 1.5-inch knife blade, a 3-inch scissors (scissor blades are 0.75 inches long), along with short nail file, toothpick, tweezers, a straight pin and skinny, short ballpoint pen. I do not carry this to use onboard, but to use during my travels. It is very handy for miscellaneous small tasks. Sure, we could check our bags in order to travel with this tiny but useful tool set, but the hassle and time involved for checking and retrieving bags is a complete and unnecessary nuisance.” Irene Bagby said of the new policy: “As an individual who has had two pocketknives taken away, I can say, hooray. When you travel extensively, a small pocketknife is a great thing to have in case of problems. It can be used as a screwdriver to tighten the screws on sunglasses, remove hang-tags from suitcases and a myriad number of other tasks. Running down to the hotel check-in desk to borrow a pair of scissors is a poor way to solve a problem that can be easily done by a pocketknife.” Janice Adair said: “It’s plain silliness that a small knife like a Swiss Army knife poses a risk. Their ban undermines T.S.A. credibility, especially given that knitting needles and small scissors — which can be sharper than a Swiss Army knife — are allowed.” And in one of my favorite responses, Mary Lane Scherer said: “I would like to go on record that I have been eagerly waiting for the T.S.A. to allow small knives since they banned them. I use the knife almost daily in my regular course of the day. It has scissors and a flashlight, a pen, and tweezers.” She added, “If someone thinks that a seven-inch screwdriver is safer than my little pen knife, I will tell them about the murder trial I served on where the victim was stabbed to death by a small screwdriver.” A spokesman for the T.S.A. said on Monday that the changes allowing small pen knives would go into effect as scheduled on April 25.

Airport security
Business travel
Knife
Airlines,airplanes
TSA
Women and Girls


Data Suggests Legs and Toes in Ancestor of Living Snakes

Abstract: From the robust boa constrictor to the venomous rattlesnake, all of the more than 3,400 snake species that slither today may have descended from the same prehistoric forest prowler, whose sinuous body had two small hind legs with toes and ankles, researchers reported on Tuesday. After analyzing data gathered through fossils, genetic sequencing and anatomical comparisons of 73 snake and lizard species, a team of paleontologists from Yale University has constructed what it calls the most comprehensive snake “family tree” to date. The findings provide an answer to longstanding questions about when, where and how modern snakes originated. “Having that tree as a backbone let us draw a ton of conclusions for what the ancestral snake would have been like,” said Daniel J. Field, a doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology and an author of the study. The team concluded that the most recent common ancestor of all living snakes was nocturnal, thrived 128.5 million years ago in the Southern Hemisphere and devoured relatively large prey whole using its sharp, hooked teeth as a hunting tool. To reach this conclusion, the team’s first step was to reconstruct the snake’s family tree from tips to its trunk. To better understand when certain characteristics — like the ability to constrict prey or hunt at night — first appeared, the researchers used the genetic and morphological data they collected to piece together how different groups of living snakes are related to one another. After mapping the relationships among distinct snake groups, the herpetologists used a series of algorithms to fill in when each trait first arose, in a process called ancestral state reconstruction. Mr. Field and his team identified 11 characteristics that they wanted to place onto the snake’s tree of life. Each trait would answer a question about snake evolution that scientists often debate: Did ancient snakes dwell in the water or on land? Originate from the Northern or the Southern Hemisphere? Ambush their prey or forage for food? Using the tree, team members could rule out the traits that could not have belonged to the most recent ancestor of living snakes and generate a model of what traits it did exhibit. They found that it did not constrict prey like boas and pythons, but did have remnants of hind legs, which Mr. Field said were most likely vestigial structures that served no purpose in locomotion. “I was most amazed by how strongly we inferred that the common ancestor retained hind limbs,” he said. The team published its tree of life for snakes in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology . The team’s ancestral reconstruction is not without its limitations, Mr. Field said. Because there are no fossil records of the most recent common ancestor of living snakes, Mr. Field and his team have no way of confirming that the creature they recreated with their models is correct. “Sometimes evolution plays out in unexpected and strange ways,” he said. “We think we’ve got a strongly supported idea, and based on the mathematical reconstruction it is what is most likely to be true.” Christopher J. Raxworthy , a herpetologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the study, called the work fantastic and said he was impressed by how strongly the genetic and fossil data supported the authors’ findings. But he said he was not surprised that the common ancestor of all living snakes had hind legs, because several living snakes have vestigial hind limbs and pelvic girdles. Dr. Raxworthy added a caveat to the work. He said that herpetology, like most of evolutionary biology, is on the cusp of a genomic revolution, and that many snake groups most likely will have their entire genomes sequenced in coming years. Because of that influx of genetic information, “it’s almost inevitable that there will be changes to this evolutionary history of snakes,” he said.

Snake
BMC Evolutionary Biology
Biology and Biochemistry
Genetics and Heredity
Evolution


Power Lost on Upper East Side

Abstract: An electrical fire on the Upper East Side yesterday caused a power failure that lasted hours and affected a dozen buildings near East 81st Street and Park Avenue, a Con Edison spokesman said. The fire, which took place beneath a manhole near the intersection and was caused by aging cables, began about 4 p.m. Workers spent several hours trying to replace the burnt wiring. In all, eight buildings on East 81st Street and four on Park Avenue were affected, including Public School 6. Power was restored to most of the buildings by midnight.

Blackouts and Brownouts (Electrical)
Manhattan (NYC)


Midwest Is Becoming a Center for Solar Power Plants

Abstract: CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — With surprising speed, and with the help of ample public incentives, a solar energy manufacturing center has emerged in the upper Midwest that is helping to supply the world’s growing demand for clean power. Here in this central Ohio city of 13,400 residents, DuPont is building a $175 million, 162,000-square-foot solar materials plant that will employ 70 people. About 320 miles north, near Midland, Mich., Hemlock Semiconductor is completing a $1 billion polycrystalline silicon plant to supply a basic raw material in the manufacture of solar photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight to electricity. The Hemlock plant will add 300 new jobs by the end of the year. In between the two plants are six more new solar facilities in Michigan and three others in Ohio. A number of conditions in the Midwest have allowed the sector to flourish. The upper Midwest has a history of advanced manufacturing, and machined parts and many of the basic materials of photovoltaic panels — polycrystalline in central Michigan, glass in the Toledo region, plastic films in Ohio — were already being made in the region. Both states have an abundance of shuttered plants that can be readily converted to new uses and are close to highway, rail and shipping supply lines in the center of the country. Equally important, both states have an army of unemployed or underemployed skilled manufacturing workers. The new DuPont plant, part of which encompasses a facility that was idled in 2009, is expected to open next year. “Frankly, an even bigger challenge we’ve had is to invest quickly enough to keep up with market demand,” said John Odom, global business director for DuPont Photovoltaic Fluoro Materials. This year the world will generate 38,000 megawatts of energy from the sun, 14,000 megawatts more than last year, according to a number of market research firms. The growth in the industry’s generating capacity is equivalent to 14 large coal -fired power plants. In comparison, in 1997 global demand for solar photovoltaic equipment totaled just 125 megawatts. Sales of photovoltaic cells and panels will reach $24 billion in 2010, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association. Much of that market is supported by incentives in the United States, Europe and Asia to build and install photovoltaic equipment. DuPont received $50.1 million in federal manufacturing tax incentives from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It also gained $7 million in state aid. Michigan has leveraged the 2009 federal stimulus bill and an array of state manufacturing incentives, tax credits and other public aid to produce $4.1 billion in public and private investment in the state’s solar manufacturing industry in the last three years, said Gregory Main, the chief executive of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, a state agency. In a national census of solar industry employment released last month, the Solar Foundation found that with 6,300 jobs, Michigan ranked fourth in solar sector jobs behind California, Pennsylvania and Texas. The Ohio Department of Development counts 1,500 jobs in its solar manufacturing sector. Toledo, Ohio, has become a center for the production of flexible sheets of photovoltaic cells called thin film that were developed from research programs at the University of Toledo. The sheets combine layers of hair-thin semiconductors with nonsilicon materials to generate power. First Solar just finished a 500,000-square-foot, $141 million addition to its existing photovoltaic thin film plant in Perrysburg, a Toledo suburb. The company, awarded a $16 million federal manufacturing investment tax credit, added 200 workers, bringing the plant’s employment to 1,100. Early next year, the Willard & Kelsey Solar Group plans to start production in a 280,000-square-foot, $250 million thin-film plant in Perrysburg that will employ 100 people and that was built with nearly $20 million in state support. Michael J. Cicak, the company’s chief executive and chairman, said that the company had already sold out all its production from the plant and added that Willard & Kelsey was looking 50 miles north to Tecumseh, Mich., for a second manufacturing plant. In Michigan, a center for solar industry is emerging in the Saginaw Valley around Hemlock Semiconductor’s polycrystalline silicon plant, which involves constructing multiple facilities on a 500-acre site. It is being built with the help of a $350 million state energy tax credit, Mr. Main said. Nearby in Midland, Dow Solar, a unit of Dow Chemical, plans a $249 million photovoltaic plant to make residential solar shingles, which generate electricity while serving as a conventional roof. The plant, which will open next year, was built with $17 million in federal manufacturing tax credits, and $123 million in various state aid programs. More plants are on the way, Mr. Main said. Clairvoyant Energy last year committed to a partnership with the Ford Motor Company to install a solar manufacturing facility in a shuttered Ford auto assembly plant near Detroit. But an industry that relies on government incentives and assistance is also vulnerable to the winds of political change. This fall, for instance, the value of Ohio’s public incentives and two-year-old state legislation to support solar and other clean energy manufacturing became an issue in the tight governor’s race. The incumbent, Ted Strickland, a Democrat, argued that state grants, loans and tax incentives in the last three years helped to prompt nearly $750 million in new solar investment in Ohio and hundreds of new jobs. But his Republican challenger, John Kasich, who on Nov. 2 defeated Mr. Strickland, said that Ohio’s 2008 clean energy standard, which requires utilities to produce 25 percent of their electricity from solar and other “advanced sources” by 2025, would raise costs and was a government intrusion. “You can‘t mandate invention,” Mr. Kasich said. Three weeks later in Washington, the United States Trade Representative’s office announced it would investigate Chinese government support for makers of solar, wind and other clean energy products that compete with similar equipment now made in the Midwest. Chinese officials responded that the investigation could set off an trade battle that the United States could not win. Solar industry analysts said that a confrontation with China could hit DuPont hard. The company’s new plant will manufacture Tedlar, a durable plastic film used to protect solar photovoltaic panels from moisture and ultraviolet radiation. Most of the Tedlar produced in Ohio will be sold to producers in China, who are now making half of the solar photovoltaic panels in a global market that is growing 30 percent annually. In both states, solar executives and political leaders expressed concern that the Democratic lawmakers both states sent to Washington, as well as the governors of both states that helped the solar initiatives had been replaced by Republicans who had expressed skepticism about publicly financed incentives. Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Governor-elect Kasich, said Mr. Kasich did not oppose Ohio’s renewable energy standard and would not seek to repeal it. “I know some people have said some negative things, but I suspect that we will continue to pursue alternative energy production,” said Mr. Main of Michigan’s development agency. “The track record in job growth has been so strong in our state. I can’t imagine us walking away.”

Solar Energy
Alternative and Renewable Energy
Factories and Manufacturing
Energy and Power
DuPont Company
Midwestern States (US)


Judge Rules Against U.S. Antidoping Agency Seeking to Depose Doctor

Abstract: A judge has denied an attempt by the United States Anti-Doping Agency to depose a Houston endocrinologist under investigation for possibly providing banned substances to track and field athletes. Judge Michael Gomez of the 129th Civil District Court of Harris County, Tex., ruled this week that Usada had not met requirements under Texas law to compel a deposition by Dr. Jeffrey S. Brown, an endocrinologist who has treated elite athletes affiliated with the track coach Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project. Judge Gomez also questioned whether the antidoping agency was trying to subvert a requirement that disputes involving Olympic-related sports be resolved by arbitration. Dr. Brown and Mr. Salazar have denied any wrongdoing. Joan Bain, Dr. Brown’s lawyer, said Friday that Usada lacked evidence against her client and was engaged in a “fishing expedition to see if they can find some kind of a problem.” She also said the antidoping agency appeared to have a vendetta against Dr. Brown and the Nike Oregon Project, whose runners include Galen Rupp, an American who won a silver medal in the 10,000 meters at the 2012 London Olympics, and Mo Farah, a Briton who won gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters. Mr. Rupp and Mr. Farah, who are scheduled to participate in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, which begin Aug. 5, have vehemently denied taking banned substances. The New York Times reported last month that Usada was seeking to depose Dr. Brown. The denial of Usada’s petition was first reported Friday by LetsRun.com. In recent court filings, Usada said it became concerned that Dr. Brown might be violating antidoping rules because a number of athletes from outside Texas began visiting him in Houston. Some unnamed athletes said they were not told of the nature of his treatments, which seemed more related to enhancing sports performance than addressing a medical condition, Usada said. For instance, the antidoping agency said, some athletes reported that their treatments were preceded and followed by treadmill tests. Variations in blood markers of some athletes raised concerns about possible manipulation, Usada said. The antidoping agency also said that at least one athlete had been asked to transport testosterone from Dr. Brown to a coach in Oregon, an allegation that Dr. Brown has denied. Ms. Bain, the doctor’s lawyer, said her client had cooperated with Usada by releasing medical records of seven athletes who had given their permission. Dr. Brown, however, was restricted from giving a deposition by medical privacy laws, Ms. Bain said. “You have a private physician who has ethical, legal and professional obligations, and they want him to say, ‘No problem, I’m just going to throw them away,’” Ms. Bain said of Dr. Brown and Usada officials. “He can’t do that.” Usada said Friday night that Dr. Brown was not bound by privacy laws because numerous athletes had given him permission to discuss his treatment of them. Only after Dr. Brown declined to follow the athletes’ wishes did the agency seek in court to depose him under oath, Usada said. “Any statements to the contrary by either Dr. Brown, or his counsel, are merely attempts to distract attention from the truth — that Dr. Brown is failing in his duty to adhere to his own patients’ request for transparency,” Ryan Madden, a Usada spokesman, said in a statement.

Doping
Olympics
United States Anti Doping Agency
Jeffrey S Brown
Alberto Salazar
2016 Summer Olympics
Track and field


Writer for People Magazine Describes Forced Kiss by Trump

Abstract: A former writer for People magazine wrote in a first-person account posted Wednesday night that Donald J. Trump cornered her alone in 2005, “pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat,” while she was at his Florida residence to interview him and his wife. People posted the story by the writer, Natasha Stoynoff , several hours after the publication of a New York Times article in which two women described sexually aggressive behavior years ago by Mr. Trump, now the Republican nominee for president. Mr. Trump and his campaign have vigorously denied the women’s accounts. Ms. Stoynoff wrote that the December 2005 interview focused on the first wedding anniversary of Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, who was pregnant at the time. That was the same year that Mr. Trump and the entertainment personality Billy Bush were recorded making vulgar and demeaning comments about women. Ms. Stoynoff said she knew the Trumps before the meeting — she had attended their wedding, reported on Mr. Trump at Trump Tower in New York City and covered his NBC reality series, “The Apprentice.” But during the 2005 assignment for People, she said, Mr. Trump told her that he wanted to show her around his Mar-a-Lago mansion, particularly one “tremendous” room she needed to see. His wife had gone off to another part of the residence to change into a new outfit, she wrote. Image Natasha Stoynoff in 2013. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times “We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us,” Ms. Stoynoff wrote. “I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat. “I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself,” Ms. Stoynoff wrote. She said the butler “informed us that Melania would be down momentarily.” She said that she had felt “utterly violated” by Mr. Trump’s actions that day in the room. Messages requesting an interview with Ms. Stoynoff were not returned early Thursday. On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump responded on Twitter , questioning why Ms. Stoynoff did not write about the “incident” when the People magazine feature was first published. On Thursday, the editor-in-chief of People, Jess Cagle, said that Ms. Stoynoff’s fear of retaliation by Mr. Trump had kept her from reporting the incident when it happened, but she eventually shared the story because she felt it was her duty to make the public aware. “To assign any other motive is a disgusting, pathetic attempt to victimize her again,” Mr. Cagle said in a statement. “We stand steadfastly by her, and are proud to publish her clear, credible account of what happened.” In her account, Ms. Stoynoff described how she tried to act normally and continue with her interviews. “I had a job to do, and I was determined to do it,” she wrote. “I sat in a chair that faced Trump, who waited for his wife on a love seat. The butler left us, and I fumbled with my tape recorder. Trump smiled and leaned forward: ”You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?” He became an attentive husband when Melania arrived, she wrote. Ms. Stoynoff eventually returned to New York and said she discussed what happened with a colleague. They talked about whether to have the feature canceled, but she said she was ashamed, and blamed herself. “I minimized it (‘It’s not like he raped me …’); I doubted my recollection and my reaction. I was afraid that a famous, powerful, wealthy man could and would discredit and destroy me,” she wrote. She said that her relationship with Mr. Trump and his wife had been "very friendly, professional” in the past. “Melania was kind and sweet during our many chats, and Donald was as bombastic and entertaining as you would expect,” she said. Afterward, she asked to be taken off the Trump beat and avoided them socially. Late Thursday, a lawyer for Mrs. Trump, in a letter , denied that she and Ms. Stoynoff had been friends.

2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump
Natasha Stoynoff
Sexual harassment
People Magazine
Melania Trump


Baseball Ties Olympic Reinstatement Bid to Women’s Game

Abstract: Having whiffed on an attempt to link its Olympic future with women’s softball, baseball is now following another gender-equity route in an attempt to gain reinstatement to the Summer Games of 2016. Baseball officials have aligned with the relatively seldom-played game of women’s baseball to burnish its chances of gaining re-entry into the Olympics after being dropped from the 2012 Summer Games in London. It is too early to know whether such a move will prove shrewd or merely desperate by baseball, which was evicted from the Olympics for several reasons, including concerns over the lack of participation by major leaguers and widespread doping. In October, the International Olympic Committee will award the 2016 Games to Chicago, Tokyo, Madrid or Rio de Janeiro. Two additional sports will be proposed for those Games, to be chosen among baseball, softball, golf, karate, roller sports, rugby and squash. In February, baseball was given the cold shoulder when it attempted to persuade softball to make a joint bid to regain their Olympic status. At the time, Don Porter, president of the International Softball Federation, said in a statement that softball would keep its bid separate, adding, “We have offered the I.O.C. a doping-free, universal team sport that reflects the values of Olympism all over the world.” Translated, softball did not want to be aligned with a sport that is awash in drug scandals and offers competitions, like the World Series and the World Baseball Classic, that may be considered more prestigious than the Olympics. By contrast, the Olympics represented the height of international softball competition for the 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 Summer Games before the sport was eliminated, many believe, because of American dominance. All of the world’s top softball players would be expected to participate in the 2016 Summer Games. Or as Porter said in another recent statement, in a thinly veiled reference to baseball, “The Olympic Games would not be just another competition in an overcrowded schedule for softball.” Rebuffed by softball, baseball chose to pair its Olympic proposal with women’s baseball, which is rarely played in the United States but, officials say, is played in more than 30 countries by more than 100,000 participants. Still, it is much less visible than softball, which officials said is played in 127 nations by 8.5 million participants. Harvey Schiller, president of the International Baseball Federation, said the pairing was made to address the I.O.C.’s insistence that Olympic sports be played by men and women and to counter softball’s support for a men’s Olympic tournament. Donna Lopiano, a former executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation, will chair the women’s baseball committee, Schiller said, adding that he had received thousands of e-mail messages in support. “You can’t believe the outpouring, people saying it’s about time,” Schiller said. “Our women are anxious to do it. And female baseball players like playing on the larger field.” Even so, few expect that women’s baseball will be added to the Olympic calendar. Men’s baseball may have a stronger argument to make if it can ensure the participation of some major leaguers, especially if the 2016 Games are awarded to baseball-mad cities like Chicago or Tokyo. Major League Baseball officials have suggested one possible solution: extending the All-Star Game break to five days to fit in a compressed Olympic schedule. Perhaps the season could be started a few days earlier, Schiller said. In any case, the major league season would not shut down for the entire 16-day Olympics, and teams would not likely be composed fully of big-league players, Schiller said. But, he added, “We’re making commitments to use a representative group of the best players.” Schiller emphasized that drug testing was now more thorough in baseball and that screening for the recent World Baseball Classic was done in compliance with the World Anti-Doping Agency. He said that more than 300 tests were performed in association with the Classic, compared with only 21 for the 2008 world softball championships. “If baseball’s not in the Olympics, it would be the world’s largest sport not in,” Schiller said. “That shouldn’t be.” Porter, of the softball federation, said he believed more than 21 screenings had been conducted during the 2008 world championships and reiterated that softball, in contrast to baseball, had been free of doping scandals. “It’s a clean, positive sport,” Porter said. He is attempting to spread the sport to Muslim countries in the Middle East and in Africa, trying to demonstrate to I.O.C. officials that softball is universal and not just a game played indifferently outside the United States. Perhaps the best argument for softball’s return was that the Americans lost the gold to Japan at the 2008 Beijing Games after dominating the three previous Olympics. Asked what he thought softball’s chances were for reinstatement, Porter said, “It’s hard to say; you hear different vibes.”


Rockets Defy Logic by Dominating Without Yao

Abstract: HOUSTON — The winding story of the Houston Rockets ’ season has rarely made room for logic, linear thinking or any standard notions of cause and effect. Star players disappear, expectations sink and the Rockets surge. They are confounding and exhilarating all at once. So when Yao Ming traded his red jersey for a dark suit Sunday, the Rockets simply followed their own well-worn script, defying the odds and stunning the Los Angeles Lakers with a 99-87 victory. Yao was declared out for the rest of the playoffs on Saturday evening, after doctors discovered a hairline fracture in his left foot. The Rockets’ championship dreams figured to go with him. But they have tied this Western Conference semifinal series at 2-2 and have already won a game at Staples Center, the site of Game 5 on Tuesday. “We don’t ever count ourselves out,” said the speedy guard Aaron Brooks, who led the Rockets with a career playoff-high 34 points. “We’ve been through a lot this year.” Before they lost Yao, their franchise center, the Rockets lost Tracy McGrady, their All-Star guard, to season-ending knee surgery in February. They lost Yao’s backup, Dikembe Mutombo, to a leg injury in the first round of the playoffs. “It’s the same thing,” Brooks said, making the adjustments sound routine. “We’ve been playing like that and we’re used to it.” The game was not nearly as close as the final score indicated. The Rockets, who also got a career playoff-high 23 points from Shane Battier, led by double digits for the final 43 minutes, the margin getting as large as 29 points. The Lakers made the score look respectable only in the final quarter, with a late scoring burst by Pau Gasol (30 points). “Was I angry at the team? Of course, you’re angry with the team,” Coach Phil Jackson said. “They weren’t ready right off the bat, they didn’t anticipate the energy that they were going to come with.” Kobe Bryant scored just 15 points, going 7 for 17 from the field. The Lakers’ lineup was generally listless until Gasol’s late outburst. Derek Fisher, who returned from a one-game suspension for his flagrant foul on Luis Scola in Game 2, never got going. The Lakers also finished the afternoon with a hole in the lineup. Lamar Odom crashed hard to the floor on a third-quarter layup attempt and left the game because of back spasms. His status for Game 5 is unclear. Brooks, who has been the starting point guard only since late February, was the best player on the court. He went 12 for 20 from the field, including four 3-pointers, and had 17 points in the third quarter, when the Rockets slammed the door shut. A rising star, Brooks reported to the postgame news conference wearing a bright red sport coat and a matching bowtie on a white shirt. He looked like a lost member of a local barber-shop quartet. “I got kind of tricked a little bit,” Brooks said. “We all got these red jackets and they told us that it was mandatory to wear them. So I figure if I had to wear a jacket like this, then I was going to go all out and look real ridiculous. “I don’t normally dress like this, but after a game like that I just might.” The extent of Yao’s injury was not known until Saturday evening, and it left the Rockets floored. They had figured to lose him for perhaps one game, because of an ankle sprain. “You can’t underestimate, when everybody heard the news about Yao, that’s a pretty big blow to a team,” Coach Rick Adelman said. “I think these guys responded in the right way.” Turnovers sank the Rockets in Game 3. This time, the Lakers gave the ball away nine times in the first half, leading to 17 points for the Rockets, which accounted for most of the 54-36 advantage at halftime. Battier paced Houston early, making his first four shots. “They shot the ball extremely well,” Bryant said. “We couldn’t recover from it.” Bryant dismissed suggestions that the Lakers had underestimated the Rockets but conceded that the Lakers, who had a chance to take a commanding 3-1 lead, had missed a great opportunity. “I’ve been on teams that made this dumb mistake before,” Bryant said. “I’ve been on teams that won championships that blew 2-0 leads, blew 3-1 leads and had to go to seven games and stuff like that. It’s just a part of the game. You’re not going to learn until you actually go through it.”

Houston Rockets
Los Angeles Lakers
Basketball
Playoff Games


Grisly Execution in Oklahoma Detailed in Court Brief

Abstract: The Oklahoma doctor involved in the bungled execution of Clayton D. Lockett in April made one last frantic attempt to insert an intravenous line in the prisoner’s groin but struck an artery by accident and was sprayed with blood, according to a document filed in Federal District Court. “It was a bloody mess,” the document quotes Anita Trammell, the warden of the Oklahoma state prison where the execution took place, as saying in an interview with state investigators. The court document, filed late Friday, includes gruesome details about Mr. Lockett’s final moments after he seemed to regain consciousness on the execution table, writhing in pain. The brief, filed in a lawsuit seeking to stop the executions of four prisoners in early 2015, also provides new evidence of the poor training and disarray among state officials, the paramedic who failed in numerous attempts to place a catheter and the doctor who tried to complete the task. The prolonged and apparently agonizing death of Mr. Lockett, who was convicted of shooting a 19-year-old woman in 1999 and burying her alive, prompted new debate about the reliability of lethal injection and over questions about the drug combinations that states have tried as alternatives when the traditionally used barbiturates became scarce. State officials had previously revealed that during the April 29 execution the doctor had, without realizing it, failed to place the catheter needle properly in Mr. Lockett’s femoral vein, causing the three drugs in the injection to diffuse locally rather than enter the bloodstream. When Mr. Lockett began to fight against his restraints and moan, officials closed the blinds on public witnesses. At that point, according to the new document, the doctor tried again to insert a needle through Mr. Lockett’s groin. He did not realize at the time, he testified, that there were no drugs left for the injection. In keeping with state law, the doctor and others directly involved in the execution are not identified in the brief. The doctor, working with a needle that he described as “kind of marginal” because it was shorter than those normally used to reach the femoral vein, punctured an artery. “Blood squirted up and got all over his jacket then,” Ms. Trammell testified. And the doctor, she told investigators, said he had to “get enough money out of this to go buy a new jacket.” Minutes later, officials formally called off the execution, but Mr. Lockett’s heart soon stopped anyway and no efforts were made to resuscitate him. Several officials acknowledged, according to the court brief, that they had no contingency plans in case Mr. Lockett failed to die according to plan. Originally, Mr. Lockett’s execution was supposed to be followed two hours later by that of Charles F. Warner, who was convicted of raping and murdering an infant in 1997. But Oklahoma immediately suspended his execution and others, pending a state investigation of what went wrong. Corrections officials say they have improved training and procedures, and Mr. Warner is now scheduled to die on Jan. 15, followed by three other convicts on Jan. 29, Feb. 19 and March 5. Officials have said they plan to use a three-drug combination similar to that used for Mr. Lockett: a sedative, midazolam, but at ten times the dose used in his case, followed by a paralyzing agent and one that stops the heart. The lawyers seeking to delay the planned executions contend, among other objections, that the use of midazolam is inherently flawed and that this regime amounts to unconstitutional experimentation on humans. In hearings on the suit this week, the lawyers plan to call medical experts who say that midazolam cannot reliably achieve a level of sedation needed for a painless execution and that multiplying the dosage does not necessarily cause deeper sedation. The same agent was used in an execution in Arizona in July that dragged on for nearly two hours, as the prisoner gasped and officials repeatedly injected more drugs.

Capital punishment
Clayton Darrell Lockett
Oklahoma
Lawsuits
Prison
Sedative


Paul Taubman Taking Reins of Investment Bank With Blackstone Ties

Abstract: When the longtime investment banker Paul J. Taubman left Morgan Stanley in late 2012, no one was quite sure what he would do next. Then, over the next two years, he helped spearhead two huge takeover bids — for Verizon and Comcast — climbing the ranks of Wall Street’s deal makers as a virtual one-man mergers advisory business. Now, Mr. Taubman is set to begin the next stage of his career: leading a new publicly traded investment bank formed from the merger of his own budding operations and the 30-year-old advisory arm of the Blackstone Group. The firm, PJT Partners , will begin trading on Thursday, testing whether Mr. Taubman can lead a rapidly assembled team of specialists in mergers, reorganizations and fund-raising for investment funds in the spotlight of the public markets. “This wasn’t on my radar when I left,” Mr. Taubman, 54, said in a telephone interview. “It’s just how the world played out. But I’m excited we’re in this place.” So-called boutique and independent investment banks have gained ground in recent years as longtime deal makers created new firms devoted solely to advising clients on takeovers and other transactions. Unlike the big firms, from which most of those bankers hailed, the new firms do not have huge trading desks or lending arms. Boutiques now make up about 30 percent of the market for merger advisory fees, according to data from Thomson Reuters, having risen fairly steadily from 13 percent in 2000. During that time, a flurry of independent firms — some publicly traded, some not — opened. They include the likes of Evercore Partners, Centerview Partners and Moelis & Company, all formed by Wall Street veterans. PJT is on the smaller side of those firms, with 330 employees and 46 partners. The 167-year-old Lazard, by contrast, has nearly eight times as many people on its staff. But PJT is being led by one of the top-ranked deal makers on Wall Street: Mr. Taubman, a 33-year veteran who presided over multibillion-dollar transactions involving not only the likes of Comcast but also the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Perhaps his most important deal, however, was helping to secure an investment for Morgan Stanley from the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group of Japan, a crucial lifeline during the financial crisis. The birth of PJT has taken place on an unusually fast timeline. After leaving Morgan Stanley, Mr. Taubman slowly began assembling his own team, including former colleagues like Scott Matlock and Johannes Groeller. But Blackstone’s senior management, including its co-founder Stephen A. Schwarzman, contacted Mr. Taubman late last year asking him to take over the business that became the foundation for what is now a $330 billion investment giant. Mr. Schwarzman, who began his ascent on Wall Street as a mergers banker himself, has spoken fondly of the advisory business. But the division increasingly suffered from conflicts with the firm’s other, much bigger investing operations. Some private equity firms, for example, did not want to hire Blackstone bankers to advise their portfolio companies when their colleagues at the Blackstone-owned GSO hedge fund were taking opposite bets on the debt of those companies. Bringing in Mr. Taubman and spinning off the advisory business would solve that problem. “This is a firm that has been able to achieve leadership positions with arguably one hand tied behind its back,” Mr. Schwarzman said. Soon after Mr. Taubman’s arrival, changes took place even faster at the advisory business, with about half the merger partners departing. In came notables like John Trousdale, a media deal maker from Credit Suisse, and Don Cornwell, a sports banker from Morgan Stanley. In the meantime, the restructuring team, led by Timothy Coleman, and the advisory business’s Park Hill fund-raising group, led by Dan Prendergast, were left alone. But being part of a firm focused entirely on advisory work would bring additional benefits, including regular access to the chief executive for clients. “What you have now is like the beginning of Blackstone,” Mr. Coleman said. “The head of the firm will go on pitches.” In the span of a year, the management team has had to make other decisions big and small, from the name of the firm to new office space in Manhattan and elsewhere around the world. When it begins trading, the question is whether the year of preparation will arm the firm for business, particularly in a still-frothy market for mergers. PJT so far has secured mandates on deals like Altice’s $9.6 billion acquisition of Cablevision and $9.1 billion takeover of the cable provider Suddenlink, as well as the sale of a huge stake in the Economist Group to a wealthy Italian clan. But if the environment for deals cools, the financial restructuring team is meant to provide a useful counterweight, according to PJT executives. And the Park Hill fund-raising business should remain a constant source of revenue. “When we think of this enormous M.&A. market out there, we expect to have real market share gains,” Mr. Taubman said. “Even if it cools a bit, it works to our favor if our other businesses outperform.”

Paul J Taubman
PJT Partners
Blackstone Group
Banking and Finance
Morgan Stanley
Mergers and Acquisitions
Private equity


Mixing It Up With the Elements at British Grand Prix

Abstract: The Silverstone circuit, where the British Grand Prix takes place this weekend, has been the site of the race 46 times, and the first-ever Formula One Grand Prix was held there in 1950. Set on a former World War II airfield, the track has been modified many times, most recently in 2010. But Silverstone has always kept its character, remaining one of the most challenging, exciting tracks for the drivers as well as being the second-fastest track of the season after Monza, in Italy. In terms of cornering speed, it is the fastest. It is also one of the most difficult tracks at which to set up the car during the Friday and Saturday practice sessions, given the frequently windy and rainy conditions. With aerodynamics crucial to success at Silverstone, the wind factor affects the setup. “It’s a circuit which is similar to Barcelona in the regard that it exposes weaknesses in downforce,” said Alan Permane, trackside operations director for the Lotus team. “You need an efficient car, one with a decent amount of downforce, but one which remains slippery for the straights.” “There are two straights where the cars exceed 300 kilometers an hour,” he added. “So too much drag will hurt here. There are some very high-speed corners, with the first sector of the lap consisting entirely of high speed turns.” Because of its mixture of straights and flowing, high-speed corners, the track is sometimes compared to the Suzuka circuit in Japan, which is also a favorite among the drivers. “Copse Corner, Maggots, Becketts and Chapel are amongst the four best corners in Formula One — they belong together,” the Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel said of a series of corners at Silverstone. “You have to catch the first one perfectly, otherwise the rhythm is off for all of them and at the end, Chapel is so insanely fast,” the three-time defending world champion added. “If you have driven properly in the previous three corners and the car is well tuned, then you can drive through full throttle. You go through at roughly 270 k.p.h. — really amazing.” After two races in which the setup of the car was geared toward mechanical grip — in Monaco and Canada — at Silverstone the teams aim for more aerodynamic grip. “The layout favors high-speed stability and a good change of direction, whereas the demand on the braking system is low,” said Tom McCullough, head of track engineering at the Sauber team. “The track is also quite bumpy in some areas, so the ride performance is important, too. The abrasive tarmac and high-speed nature of the circuit result in it being hard on the tires.” The downforce level must be set to medium in order to help in high-speed parts of the track, where too much drag is counterproductive, but it must also provide enough downforce for grip in the slower corners. For the slower corners, the cars may have more front wing. For stability in the high-speed corners, both aerodynamic balance and suspension settings are adjusted. After two circuits that have been soft on tires, Silverstone will provide teams with a challenge on tire wear. The manufacturer Pirelli has given the teams the two hardest compounds, the medium and hard tires, and the company predicts that there will be three to four pit stops per car to change tires during the race. “The track surface is very smooth, but wear and degradation can be considerable because of all the forces going through the tires, which peak at around 5g,” said Paul Hembery, director of Pirelli’s motor sports program. “The big variable in Silverstone is of course the British weather — which is capable of anything. We’ve seen wet and dry races in the past but at the same time it can be very hot, too. And obviously, the higher the temperature, the more demands are placed on the tire.” Should it rain, Pirelli will provide the intermediate and full-wet tires. Unlike at the last race, in Montreal, where teams had to keep the brakes cool through the heavy braking areas, the focus at the flowing, fast Silverstone track is on keeping the brakes warm so they will perform well when needed. Given the constantly high revs, the fast Silverstone circuit is hard on the engine, however. “A touch over 66 percent of the lap is spent at full throttle in qualifying and the average speed is well over 200 k.p.h.,” said Rémi Taffin, head of track operations at Renault. “However, it is the high-speed corners that also challenge the RS27, particularly the sweeping Maggotts-Beckett-Chapel complex,” he added, referring to the Renault engine. “Average speeds through this section are around 250 k.p.h. and no lower than 190 k.p.h. at any one point, with huge lateral forces put through the car. The oil and fuel systems therefore have to be resilient as the fluids are squashed from side to side, while the engine needs to be smooth to maintain the speed.”

Formula One
Car Racing
Great Britain
Monaco Grand Prix


Iraq: Insurgents Attack Worshipers at Mosque

Abstract: A string of insurgent attacks, including a car bombing against a Shiite mosque, killed 10 people in Iraq on Friday, officials said. The car bomb struck the mosque as worshipers were praying in a village near Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Three people were killed and 35 wounded, police officials said. Other acts of violence included an attack on a checkpoint near Dujail, 50 miles north of Baghdad, and the bombing of a police patrol in Muqdadiya, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Mosques
Terrorism
Iraq
Deaths (Fatalities)


Scientists See More Deadly Weather, but Dispute the Cause

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The United States experienced some of the most extreme weather events in its history this spring, including deadly outbreaks of tornadoes , near-record flooding, drought and wildfires. Damages from these disasters have already passed $32 billion, and the hurricane season, which is just beginning, is projected to be above average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Government scientists said Wednesday that the frequency of extreme weather has increased over the past two decades, in part as a result of global warming caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But they were careful not to blame humans for this year’s rash of deadly events, saying that in some ways weather patterns were returning to those seen at the beginning of the last century. “Looking at long-term patterns since 1980, indeed, extreme climatological and meteorological events have increased,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “But in the early part of the 20th century, there was also a tendency for more extreme events followed by a quiet couple of decades.” Presenting a new NOAA report on 2011 extreme weather , Dr. Karl said that extremes of precipitation have increased as the planet warms and more water evaporates from the oceans. He also said models suggest that as carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere and heats the planet, droughts will increase in frequency and intensity. “But it is difficult and unlikely to discern a human fingerprint, if there is one, on the drought record of the United States,” he said. Some other climate scientists were more categorical about the human contribution to extreme climate events. Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a university-sponsored institute in Boulder, Colo., said that when the greenhouse effect caused by burning fossil fuels is added to the natural variability of climate, weather disasters can be expected to occur more frequently. “Global warming is contributing to an increased incidence of extreme weather because the environment in which all storms form has changed from human activities,” Dr. Trenberth said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “Records are not just broken, they are smashed. It is as clear a warning as we are going to get about prospects for the future.” April was a particularly devastating month for tornadoes and rainfall, with 875 tornadoes reported during the month and heavy rain and snowmelt contributing to Mississippi River flooding later in the spring that surpassed the historic floods of 1927 and 1937, NOAA reported. So far this year, there have been nearly 1,400 preliminary tornado reports nationwide; those reports will most likely be whittled down to about 900 confirmed tornadoes, the second-highest annual total recorded in modern times. The record is 1,011 confirmed tornadoes in 2008. The year also is on track to be one of the deadliest, with 536 fatalities so far from tornadoes, placing 2011 in sixth place in United States history and the deadliest since 1936, NOAA reported.

Weather
Tornadoes
Drought
Global Warming


Taking Aim at Fatigue, Taxi Commission Limits Drivers to 12-Hour Days

Abstract: The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission on Monday voted to limit the number of hours a driver can transport passengers to a total of 12 a day, or 72 hours per week, and for the first time such rules would be applied to both city taxi drivers and private for-hire drivers. The regulations, aimed at reducing driver fatigue, would not take effect until Nov. 1, to give the commission time to “arrive at a more exact method” of collecting information on trip times, Meera Joshi, the chairwoman of the commission, said after the vote. “Our discussion has shifted to what is the best way to calculate fatigue, and the difficulty in doing so in a world with differing levels of data,” Ms. Joshi said. The delay in implementing the rules illustrates the challenge of regulating an industry that includes drivers who use newer app-based technologies as well as those who operate the city’s longstanding fleet of yellow taxicabs. The new rules would apply to all of the 140,000 drivers licensed by the commission, which include those in taxis, limousines, black cars, and Uber and Lyft vehicles. “There should be consistencies across all the industries we regulate,” Allan Fromberg, the spokesman for the commission, said. “A lot of rules were created before there were as many industries as there are now. It’s important to ensure that there is consistency and fairness across them.” Other large cities have adopted similar regulations. Chicago limits taxi drivers to 12 hours of driving; in Los Angeles, for-hire drivers are capped at 10 hours. Momentum for tightening the rules in New York has been building since an 88-year-old woman, Luisa Rosario, was killed last year in Manhattan in a crash involving a taxi driver who had been on the road for 16 hours with only minimal breaks. Only a small percentage of drivers ordinarily surpass the new limits; 3 percent typically drive more than 12 hours per day, and less than 7 percent drive for more than 72 hours per week, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Nonetheless, drivers turned out by the dozens to denounce the rules at a public hearing last month, saying the restrictions would cut into their incomes and further burden an already overregulated industry. A mere handful of drivers showed up for Monday’s vote, which was held during the commission’s monthly meeting. Nino Hervias, who has driven a taxi for 32 years, said afterward that drivers know when to take breaks and do not need additional regulation. “You get to know and you pace yourself for a long day,” Mr. Hervias said. “We don’t have a long day every day.” He said that one day last week, for example, he started work at 6 a.m. and went home at 11 p.m. The specifics of the new rules apply only to the time spent actually transporting passengers, so he was not sure if he would have been violating the new rules. “The devil is in the details,” Mr. Hervias said. Currently, taxi drivers are capped at 12 consecutive hours of driving, but the clock can be reset with a break as short as a single minute. The $25 fine for violating this rule has never been imposed, Mr. Fromberg said. In its public notice of the new regulations, the Taxi and Limousine Commission presented research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , which likened long periods without sleep to intoxication. Being awake for 18 hours results in impairment equal to a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.05, which is considered driving while under the influence in New York State, according to the C.D.C. The commission found that in 2014 and 2015, the crash rate for taxi drivers working more than 12 hours in a day was 23.8 percent higher than those who drove 12 hours or fewer. The commission does not track drivers in real time, meaning it can punish drivers and dispatchers — with fines ranging from $25 to $300 — but cannot warn drivers that they have been behind the wheel too long. “We are hardworking people,” said Osman Chowdhury, a taxi driver and member of the United Taxi Drivers Association (NYC) Inc ., who opposes the rules. At times, Mr. Chowdhury said, he drives seven days a week and the fluctuation in his income is “like a lottery.” “We don’t do the wrong thing,” he added.

Car Crash
Taxis
Distracted Driving
NYC
Taxi and Limousine Commission
Car Service


New Inspections Ground 38 Southwest Jets

Abstract: Southwest Airlines , combing through its maintenance files after being fined $10.2 million last week for an inspection lapse uncovered in 2007, said it found another problem and grounded 38 planes Wednesday, canceling about 125 flights. The planes, all Boeing 737s, were being inspected quickly and returned to service; half of them were back Wednesday afternoon, and the rest were expected to be flying Thursday. But the episode raises further questions about Southwest’s maintenance procedures and about oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration. The F.A.A. proposed the fine, a record, against Southwest last week because the carrier had continued for months to operate 46 older 737s that it had failed to inspect as required. Southwest also kept on flying the planes even after it realized it had missed a deadline. The agency termed those flights “deliberate violations.” The inspections were aimed at finding cracks in aging planes. Subsequent checks identified cracks on six planes, which were fixed. Southwest has a fleet of 523 Boeing 737s. After the F.A.A. announced its fine, James L. Oberstar, Democrat of Minnesota and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, released documents indicating an F.A.A. official had signed off on letting Southwest fly the planes after the maintenance lapse was reported. In a statement issued by the House panel Wednesday, Mr. Oberstar said that if the F.A.A. had investigated Southwest’s maintenance records last year, when the initial lapse was discovered, this latest problem would have been found, too. “F.A.A. should have immediately undertaken a review,” he said. The F.A.A. called 88 regional safety and inspection managers to Washington for a meeting on Tuesday to “make sure all carriers receive the kind of intensified scrutiny we’re looking at, at Southwest,” said Laura J. Brown, an F.A.A. spokeswoman. At Southwest, she added, “at least one F.A.A. inspector looked the other way. That’s wrong and inexcusable.” The latest problem involves inspections for cracks on fuselage areas surrounding windows. A Southwest spokeswoman, Brandy King, said the inspections were done in a timely manner, but a review of records Tuesday night left Southwest wondering whether it had performed the work properly. Some inspection was to be done visually and some using an eddy current, an electrical process used to examine metal structures without tearing them apart. “It wasn’t clear” from Southwest records, Ms. King said, if the two methods were used on the correct areas of the plane, so the planes were grounded until the work could be redone. Each inspection took about 90 minutes at maintenance bases that Southwest operates in Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Chicago, she said. The F.A.A. is auditing Southwest’s maintenance records and the carrier is examining its own work, with help from an outside consultant. Robert A. Sturgell, acting administrator of the F.A.A., met Wednesday with Gary C. Kelly, Southwest’s chief executive, for a briefing on the airline’s efforts. Keeping current on required maintenance, including airworthiness directives from the F.A.A., involves a huge amount of paperwork and coordination at big airlines. Maintenance tasks often overlap, though procedures for completing one can be quite different than those for completing another. “There are several airworthiness directives that cover the same piece of real estate on an airplane,” said John J. Goglia, a former board member at the National Transportation Safety Board , the agency that investigates accidents. “So, an airline creates a procedure where they’ll go in and do them all.” But some airworthiness directives are on a different timetable, Mr. Goglia added, which can lead to skipped work and problems. “What was unusual in the Southwest case was it went on for months,” he said. “That’s a concern.” Southwest flew the 46 planes from June 2006 to March 2007 without having done the required inspections. Its initial reaction to the fine last week was combative. It called the inspection “routine and redundant” and asserted that “the F.A.A. approved of our actions.” This week, the airline has seemed more chastened. Southwest is trying to attract more business travelers, which would let it collect more, on average, for each ticket sold. That involves selling corporate travel departments on the idea of flying Southwest. Southwest is generally regarded as the best-run domestic airline. “They start off with a lot of money in the good will bank, and they make a really, really bad mistake,” said Kevin Mitchell, who runs the Business Travel Coalition. “Most travel managers will probably give them a pass once.” Mr. Oberstar plans a hearing on the maintenance lapse and the F.A.A.’s handling of it April 3. The Transportation Department’s inspector general is investigating the F.A.A.’s oversight of Southwest. Mr. Mitchell, whose group represents many corporate travel departments, said he was most worried about the agency’s failure to act like a regulator. In recent meetings he has attended on ways to better manage crowded New York air space, he said, F.A.A. officials constantly refer to airlines as “customers.” “The culture there is dysfunctional,” he said.

Southwest Airlines
Federal Aviation Administration
Accidents and Safety
Airlines and Airplanes
National Transportation Safety Board


Indonesia Takes Steps to Cut Imports and Lift Investment

Abstract: JAKARTA — Indonesia announced a package of policy measures on Friday to reduce imports and bolster investment in labor-intensive industries as it struggles to revive confidence and consumer spending in its economy, Southeast Asia’s largest. The intervention by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono comes after a punishing week for emerging markets, with currencies from Brazil to India hit hard by fears of higher global borrowing costs and a reduction in cheap cash from the United States. Indonesia has faced sell-offs in the rupiah, stocks and bonds after an unexpectedly large second-quarter deficit in its current account — a measure of foreign trade and investment — prompted fears that the weak global economy would only further erode exports at a time when a surge in inflation is crimping domestic demand. The country’s chief economic minister, Hatta Rajasa, said the government would increase the import tax on luxury cars, seek to reduce oil imports and provide tax incentives for investment in agriculture and in metal industries. Chua Hak Bin, economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Singapore, said most of the measures looked like medium- and long-term efforts, like tax incentives and simplification of permits. “The near-term impact on the current-account deficit from these measures is less clear,” he said. The government revised its gross domestic product growth estimate for this year to between 5.9 percent and 6 percent, down from 6.3 percent earlier. Growth in the second quarter of 5.8 percent was the slowest since 2010. A slowdown in growth in China has squeezed demand and prices for Indonesia’s most lucrative exports, like coal, tin and palm oil, while foreign investment has slowed sharply on expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut back its bond-buying program later this year.

Indonesia
Economy
International trade
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono


Better Hepatitis C Treatment Is Costly for Texas Prisons

Abstract: Tattooing is ubiquitous behind bars, despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that it is banned. “It’s just unbelievable how creative they can be,” said Michele Deitch, a prisons expert at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs. “They can jerry-rig pens to become needles. They use the dyes in paper products.” But the practice carries with it more than the risk of punishment — it can also spread hepatitis C. The prison population is particularly prone to this viral disease, which is transmitted largely through infected blood and can lead to liver cirrhosis and cancer . Not only do inmates have a penchant for illicit tattoos, but they are also likelier than the general population to have engaged in high-risk behavior like intravenous drug use outside of prison. Prison health officials estimate that as many as 50,000 of the state’s more than 150,000 inmates could be infected with hepatitis C. The cost to treat Texas inmates with hepatitis C is expected to soar by as much as 380 percent next year, a result of the growing prevalence of the disease among inmates and a more effective, but more expensive, treatment protocol. Legislators, already facing a strained budget, will have to find millions more dollars to pay for this care. Not all inmates are tested for hepatitis C when they enter the prison system. They are tested if they have other clinical indicators, like H.I.V. or a history of intravenous drug use. In a 2007 report, health providers for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said they had identified and were managing care for about 20,000 inmates with hepatitis C. Dr. Stephanie Zepeda, the director of pharmacy services for University of Texas Medical Branch Correctional Managed Care, which oversees treatment of inmates, said she provided medication therapy for about 400 hepatitis C patients per month, at a cost to the state of about $2.8 million per year. Not all patients with the disease receive the medication, and the therapy can last from three months to a year. The current protocol is composed of two drugs, and its cure rate is about 40 percent, Dr. Zepeda said. But new medical guidelines call for the use of a third medication, which can be one of two different drugs. One of them would increase the cost of hepatitis C treatment in prisons to more than $8 million a year, the other to more than $13 million, Dr. Zepeda said. Dr. Zepeda said that adding a third drug raised the cure rate to 70 percent. But the drugs are not only expensive, they are also complicated to administer. “It’s great from a humanistic standpoint,” Dr. Zepeda said. “But it’s, practically, a challenge for the correctional system.” The new drugs must be administered precisely every eight hours. They must be taken with food, and patients risk developing a resistance to the therapy if they miss doses. In prison, where even small diversions from the regimented schedule require additional work for guards, and where inmates frequently move between units, ensuring that the expensive medications are given correctly could be problematic, Dr. Zepeda said. “It just takes a tremendous amount of coordination to do it right and to do it well,” she said. Another complicating factor, Dr. Zepeda said, is that new, potentially more effective drugs with simpler procedures are expected to be available as early as 2014. In addition to these changes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new recommendation in August calling for all people born between 1945 and 1965 to be tested for hepatitis C. The C.D.C. estimates that this age group accounts for nearly three-quarters of all hepatitis C cases nationally. More than a quarter of Texas prison inmates were born during that period, according to The Texas Tribune’s prisoner database. More testing, Dr. Zepeda said, is likely to result in diagnoses of more cases and an increased need for treatment. For Texas lawmakers, this means high costs now and potentially exorbitant ones in the future as inmates age and the disease progresses, causing liver disease and failure. Additionally, failing to control the disease in prisoners presents serious health risks to the general population. Inmates who are not cured of hepatitis C and are released could spread the disease, which the C.D.C. reports is now the leading reason for liver transplants nationally. “It is going to be a struggle as the disease continues to wreak havoc in the offender population,” said Dr. Owen Murray, the vice president of U.T.M.B.’s Correctional Managed Care program. (U.T.M.B. is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.) Dr. Murray said policy makers should consider ways to control other costs in the prison health care system in order to mitigate the expense of treating hepatitis C. Perhaps, he said, offenders with expensive health needs whose crimes are less severe could be paroled earlier, or state agencies could work with pharmaceutical companies to secure lower rates for drugs. It would be ideal, he said, if the state teamed up with a nursing home to provide care to the growing population of elderly inmates. Until then, Dr. Murray said, prison health officials will have to consider which patients immediately need hepatitis C treatment, and which ones can wait. “Ultimately, it’s going to be much like H.I.V.,” Dr. Murray said. “You’re just going to have to acknowledge you have this disease in prison and that it costs a lot to treat.” Ms. Deitch, the prisons expert, said preventing the use of dirty, homemade needles in prison by providing sterile ones for tattooing could be an inexpensive way to limit the spread of hepatitis C. “Would you rather make those tools available or deal with the long-term cost consequences of the spread of the disease?” she asked. Jason Clark, a spokesman for the criminal justice department, said the agency was not considering that, largely because of safety concerns. He said the agency already had rules in place to prevent the spread of diseases, including banning tattoos and sexual contact among inmates, along with the sharing of items like toothbrushes and razors. In 1998, Mr. Clark said, the department began an education program focused on disease prevention. In the program, which is available in 99 of the state’s 111 prison facilities, 1,300 inmates teach other inmates about risk factors for infection and how to avoid them. “They’re more likely to have firsthand knowledge about the risk factors among offenders, which gives them credibility,” Mr. Clark said. State Senator John Whitmire, Democrat of Houston, dismissed the notion of allowing sterile needles in prisons. But he said lawmakers should consider solutions beyond financing medication for inmates. “This is not just about inmates and their cellmates,” Mr. Whitmire said. “It’s about our communities where these inmates are being released.”

Prisons and Prisoners
Hepatitis
Preventive Medicine
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Texas


Nadal, Still a Fan Favorite, Prevails in First Match Since Wimbledon

Abstract: MONTREAL — Homecoming aside, Jesse Levine realized he would not be much of a fan favorite when he was introduced before his opponent Wednesday in a second-round match at the Rogers Cup. The ovation he received was warm, but nothing compared with the roar that greeted Rafael Nadal at Uniprix Stadium. “I think he took the cake on that,” said Levine, 25, who had played as an American professional until this year, when he declared himself a representative of Canada, the country of his birth. Nadal also took the contest, 6-2, 6-0, in his first match since losing in the first round at Wimbledon to the Belgian journeyman Steve Darcis. That was the first time Nadal had lost in the opening round of a Grand Slam event. His left knee was clearly troubling him by the end of the Darcis match. When he withdrew from a clay-court tournament in Hamburg later in July, there was speculation he would miss a second straight summer hardcourt season. “You know, Majorca is a great place to be in the summer,” Nadal said, smiling, trying to play down the severity of his chronic knee problems. That said, Nadal admitted that the pounding of hardcourt tennis across August has made it difficult for him to project how fit he will be for the United States Open later this month. Image Marion Bartoli, top, defeated Lauren Davis in the women’s Rogers Cup, which is being played in Toronto. Credit Mark Blinch/Reuters “It’s very difficult after what happened to me last year to look that far ahead,” he said. “I’ll go step by step, day by day, week by week.” After seven weeks of inactivity, Nadal arrived in Montreal last week to begin practicing on the hardcourts. The knee was pain-free, he said, motivating him to enter the doubles draw with his Spanish countryman Pablo Andújar. “I play for practice,” Nadal said. “After seven weeks without playing a tournament, one match of doubles before I play singles can help.” On Tuesday, Nadal may have gotten more practice than he needed when he and Andújar won their first match but needed to play a 12-10 third set to do so. But Nadal showed no ill effects in dispatching Levine on a windy day that played havoc with some of his topspin ground strokes early in the match. Once Nadal settled in, Levine was overpowered. “He was hitting the ball well and moving well,” said Levine, who had played Nadal just once before. “It’s good to see him back on tour. He’s so good for the sport — such a fan favorite.” As for Levine, he has become accustomed to enjoying partisan late-summer support in New York the past few years. After making the switch to play for Canada — he was born in Ottawa and lived there until he was 14 — he joked that he might have to wear a helmet when he returns in about three weeks. “A Rough Riders helmet,” he said, laughing, referring to Ottawa’s professional football team. In another second-round match on Wednesday, Andy Murray also played his first match since Wimbledon, where he became the first British man to win the tournament in 77 years. Murray had to rally from a 4-1 deficit in the second set to close out Marcel Granollers of Spain, 6-4, 7-6 (2). BARTOLI’S BACK In the women’s Rogers Cup in Toronto, Marion Bartoli, the Wimbledon winner who had missed the previous two tournaments because of injury, defeated Lauren Davis, 6-0, 6-3. With a month off between events, Bartoli was able to head home and receive treatment for a hamstring injury she sustained at Wimbledon. Image Andy Murray beat Marcel Granollers in the men’s tournament in Montreal. Credit Paul Chiasson/CP, via Associated Press “I’m just working on a daily basis to make sure I’m getting stronger and stronger on it so I don’t feel the same pain as I did in Wimbledon,” she said. Bartoli pointed to the opportunity to meet players from her favorite soccer club, Marseilles, as the highlight of her time after Wimbledon, and said she still enjoyed waking up next to the Venus Rosewater Dish, given to the Wimbledon winner, on her night stand. “The first day when I woke up and I got this bright light in front of me, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is a good view.’ ” Part of Bartoli’s resurgence can be attributed to a coaching change. In February she split from her father, Walter. “Splitting 22 years of a relationship just like that overnight, there was a lot of thoughts,” she said. “I’ve been through some really tough moments in the beginning of the year, then I was able to live the best moment of my life.” Bartoli now relies on the 2006 Wimbledon winner, Amélie Mauresmo, whom she calls her mental coach. She intends to rely on Mauresmo’s expertise for the rest of the season. Bartoli’s Wimbledon win has left her confident and hungry for more, but she hopes it does not change her personality. “I like my values. I like who I am — just simple, humble, easygoing, easy to speak to,” she said. “But of course, it gives me some confidence. I know I’ve been able to win one, so why not win more than one? But the competition is extremely tough, and I don’t expect it to be easy.” DHIREN MAHIBAN

Tennis
Canadian Open (tennis)
Rafael Nadal
Marion Bartoli
Jesse Levine


California: Council Approves New Airport Gates

Abstract: The Los Angeles City Council approved building 10 new gates at Los Angeles International Airport to handle international flights. The Council gave unanimous approval Wednesday to the $1.2 billion project, which will be financed by the fees airlines pay to use the airport. It should be completed by 2012.

Airlines and Airplanes
Los Angeles (Calif)