Buchholz and Red Sox Defeat Rays

Abstract: Clay Buchholz allowed three hits in five innings in his first start since early June and the Boston Red Sox beat the host Tampa Bay Rays, 2-0, on Tuesday. Jonny Gomes and Jarrod Saltalamacchia each drove in a run for the Red Sox, who extended their lead over second-place Tampa Bay in the American League East to eight and a half games. Relievers Craig Breslow, Junichi Tazawa and Koji Uehara gave up only one hit among them. Uehara got the final four outs for his 19th save. David Price (8-8) had his third straight losing start, giving up just three hits and striking out nine in eight innings. Price retired 12 in a row before Mike Napoli doubled to center e to open the fifth. Gomes followed with a single that drove in Napoli to put the Red Sox ahead, 1-0. Image Rays center fielder Desmond Jennings making a catch on a Red Sox sacrifice fly. Credit Chris O'Meara/Associated Press Gomes, who has driven in 15 runs in his last 17 games, scored to make it 2-0 later in the fifth on a sacrifice fly by Saltalamacchia that required a leaping catch near the wall by center fielder Desmond Jennings. Buchholz (10-0), sidelined by a strained neck, had not pitched in the majors since beating the Los Angeles Angels on June 8. ROYALS 6, INDIANS 3 Jeremy Guthrie allowed one run in six innings and Alcides Escobar hit a home run as Kansas City won in Cleveland. Guthrie (14-10) was helped by three double plays. Mike Moustakas hit a two-run double in the sixth off Zach McAllister (7-9). ANGELS 12, BLUE JAYS 6 Mark Trumbo had four extra-base hits, including a home run, as Los Angeles won in Toronto. Josh Hamilton, Chris Iannetta and Erick Aybar also homered. Jerome Williams (7-10) pitched five-plus innings allowing six runs and nine hits. CARDINALS 4, BREWERS 2 Matt Holliday hit a two-run homer in the sixth inning and the rookie Shelby Miller (13-9) pitched into the seventh inning to lead St Louis at home. Image In Texas, celebrating the Pirates’ 82nd victory of the year. Credit Ronald Martinez/Getty Images Matt Holliday’s homer was the first St. Louis hit of the game against Wily Peralta (9-15). CUBS 9, REDS 1 Welington Castillo drove in three runs with two home runs to lead Chicago at Cincinnati. Donnie Murphy and pitcher Edwin Jackson added homers. Jackson (8-15) allowed nine hits and one run with four strikeouts in seven innings. PADRES 8, PHILLIES 2 Jedd Gyorko and Chase Headley each had three hits to back Andrew Cashner’s strong pitching as San Diego won in Philadelphia. Cashner (9-8) earned his first victory since Aug. 2, limiting the Phillies to four hits and a walk in seven and two-thirds innings. BRAVES 4, MARLINS 3 Julio Teheran (12-7) gave up three runs in the first then pitched shutout ball to lead Atlanta at Miami. Braves right fielder Justin Upton left the game in the fourth inning with a bruised right knee after fouling a ball off. His status was listed as day to day. ROOKIE REACHES INNINGS LIMIT Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez, approaching the 170-inning limit set by the team, will make his final start Wednesday against Atlanta. Fernandez, 21, was named to the All-Star team in his first season. His 2.23 earned run average is the second lowest in the majors, and he is 11-6 with 182 strikeouts. REDDICK RETURNS The Oakland Athletics activated outfielder Josh Reddick from the 15-day disabled list. Reddick, who had a sprained right wrist, was hitting .213 with 10 homers and 46 runs batted in.


Abuse Reports for TV Star Rise

Abstract: The television presenter Jimmy Savile was a far more prolific sex offender than previously suspected, a charity said Monday, citing at least 500 reports of abuse involving children as young as 2 and victims in a high-security psychiatric hospital. Mr. Savile, a major BBC celebrity and charity fund-raiser in the 1970s and 1980s, was unmasked after his death in 2011 at 84 as one of Britain’s worst sex offenders. He took advantage of children at hospitals and BBC premises, relying on his celebrity status to block any complaints. Research by the charity, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, showed that there had been at least 500 reports of abuse filed against Mr. Savile, more than the previously suspected 140, with most of the victims said to be 13 to 15 years old.

Rape
Child Abuse
Great Britain
Jimmy Savile


NBC and Bloomingdale’s in a Promotion

Abstract: WHAT do NBC and Bloomingdale’s have in common? They both have a lot of product to promote in the fall: new shows on the network, new skirts and shoes in the stores. So the two are working together this month and next, encouraging both tune-in and walk-ins. In a marketing partnership that will be formally announced on Wednesday, Bloomingdale’s catalogs will feature actors from new NBC shows; shoppers will be invited to try out a virtual reality app that inserts them onto the red carpet of an NBC premiere; and the network’s “Primetime Preview Show” will be set partly in a Bloomingdale’s store. “This is about the qualities of the two brands coming together,” said Tim Farish, the senior vice president of marketing for NBC Entertainment. Frank Berman, the senior vice president for marketing at Bloomingdale’s, which has long thought about retailing as theater, said the overarching message was that shoppers and viewers could “look the part and be the part.” “It’s not to experience NBC as advertising; it’s to be a part of their fall lineup,” Mr. Berman said.  Every fall, NBC and the other networks seek novel ways to stand out from the crowd of new shows. Perhaps complicating future fall marketing plans for NBC, last week the network’s entertainment chairman, Bob Greenblatt, installed Len Fogge as the new president for marketing, replacing Adam Stotsky, who had been in charge for three years and had overseen the Bloomingdale’s deal. Mr. Greenblatt and Mr. Fogge previously worked together at Showtime. In September, NBC is introducing two dramas, “The Playboy Club” and “Prime Suspect,” and three sitcoms, “Free Agents,” “Up All Night” and “Whitney.” It plans a premiere of a third drama, “Grimm,” in October. Each of the September premieres will be highlighted by the Bloomingdale’s partnership, particularly “The Playboy Club” and “Whitney.” The retailer’s annual Best of Men’s catalog has Eddie Cibrian, one of the stars of “The Playboy Club,” on the cover, and Amber Heard, one of the club’s bunnies, as a centerfold. A section of the catalog is set at an actual Playboy Club in Las Vegas. The Hot Book catalog, for women, has a section set at Rockefeller Center in New York City that imagines a day in the life of a network executive — “a very glamorized version,” Mr. Farish joked. That catalog — as well as the separate Home catalog — has photos of Maria Bello of “Prime Suspect,” Hank Azaria of “Free Agents,” Christina Applegate of “Up All Night” and Whitney Cummings of “Whitney,” but the actors are not acting as models, he said. The network will also have a presence in Bloomingdale’s store windows in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. During the annual Fashion’s Night Out event in New York on Sept. 8, the NBC-themed windows will be interactive, Mr. Berman said. In separate interviews, Mr. Farish and Mr. Berman sounded most enthusiastic about a virtual reality experience that will be offered at Bloomingdale’s 39 stores from Sept. 8 to Sept. 25. Using an iPhone app called Goldrun, shoppers who stand in a certain spot in the store can snap photos of themselves and appear, through augmented reality, to be standing on a red carpet with stars like Ms. Applegate or Mr. Azaria. Mr. Berman called it a “virtual reality photography session” and said employees would be on hand at the stores to help passers-by. The companies hope that shoppers will share their photos on social networking sites; to encourage such behavior, the shoppers will be eligible to win a walk-on role on “The Playboy Club,” an NBC set visit, and $100 gift cards to Bloomingdale’s. Online, people can enter the sweepstakes by watching videos that NBC will produce about the fashion of the characters on the new fall shows. “It all links back to our Web sites as well as our Facebook pages and Twitter pages,” Mr. Berman said. Bloomingdale’s is also a co-star in the “NBC Primetime Preview Show” that is broadcast by NBC’s local stations, cable channels and Web sites before the fall premieres. Hosted by Ms. Cummings — whose mother was once a publicist for Bloomingdale’s — the end of the half-hour show involves a shopping spree at the Los Angeles store. At one point Ms. Cummings buys makeup for the men on “Grimm.”  Mr. Farish said that NBC had specifically sought out a fashion retailer for a fall season partnership. Bloomingdale’s was a great fit, he said, because the company attracts an upscale consumer and “has a sheen of quality.” Mr. Berman declined to comment on the financial terms of the partnership, but said Bloomingdale’s was not selling NBC ad pages in its catalogs. Both companies were “investing in this partnership equally,” he said.

Bloomingdale's
National Broadcasting Co
Television
Advertising and Marketing
Shopping and Retail


J. R. Smith, a Mischief Maker as a Knick, Learns to Share in Cleveland

Abstract: CLEVELAND — During the Cavaliers’ recent sabbatical from the N.B.A. playoffs, Cleveland’s J. R. Smith went to a comedy club to see a friend perform. Afterward, fans approached Smith to offer what he described as unconditional support for his team’s continued quest for a first championship. “You would think there’s so much pressure on us for being a team that hasn’t won in X amount of years,” said Smith, referring to the 46 years — or, the entirety of the organization’s existence — that the team has fallen short. “But they’re happy with what’s going on. Of course, they want a championship. But it’s never like ‘You guys have to get it done.’ It’s always ‘We’re rooting for you guys.’ ” Smith paused to offer perspective drawn from his not-so-distant past with a former employer. “I admire that,” Smith said, “because when I was in New York, there was a lot of desperation: ‘You guys got to do it.’ ” The Cavaliers, after sweeping their first two playoff opponents, had nine days to prepare for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals at Quicken Loans Arena on Tuesday night. A new round meant a new opponent (the Toronto Raptors) and a new defensive assignment (DeMar DeRozan) for Smith, who lately seems to bear only a vague resemblance to the guard who played for the Knicks. Defensive stopper? Charitable teammate? Judicious shooter? It still depends on the day, but there is little question that Smith has become more dependable and — get this — a steadying force for the Cavaliers. In the first two rounds of the playoffs, he averaged 12.3 points a game while shooting 47.8 percent from the field and 50.8 percent from 3-point range. Image Toronto’s Kyle Lowry driving against Smith, who has focused on his defense with Cleveland. Credit Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports, via Reuters “When we’re moving the ball,” LeBron James said, “the ball has energy behind it.” Smith is channeling much of that energy for the greater good, at least as far as the Cavaliers are concerned. As Smith prepared for Game 1 here, his old team was again tiptoeing onto a different type of stage for all the wrong reasons. The Knicks played a bit part at Tuesday’s N.B.A. draft lottery, having long ago traded the rights to their first-round pick as one component of the disastrous Andrea Bargnani deal with Toronto in 2013. Smith, of course, was an unwitting participant in another debatable move made by the Knicks, who sent him to the Cavaliers last season in a three-team, multiplayer deal that was largely a salary dump for the Knicks. To be fair, Smith was not exactly excelling for the Knicks at the time of the trade, having accrued fines for transgressions that included untying opponents’ shoelaces and making threats on one of his social media accounts. He was also shooting 35.6 percent from the 3-point line. In Cleveland, Smith has accepted life as the fourth option. He was quick to acknowledge that it took time for him to buy into a sharing-is-caring philosophy. He recalled having teammates earlier in his career who had advised him to get his shots, to post his numbers, to make sure he got paid. Smith had been eager to listen. But perhaps he learned something from the finals a year ago, when the Cavaliers, absent the injured Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, turned to Smith for some production and he floundered, shooting 31.2 percent from the field as the Golden State Warriors took the series in six games. Smith left the arena on a hover board. On Tuesday morning, Smith made the point that what he did on offense against the Raptors hardly mattered compared with what DeRozan was capable of doing, or not doing. So Smith was mostly focusing on his defensive responsibilities. He did not always have that mind-set — not with the Knicks, and not when he joined the Cavaliers. “It wasn’t easy, trust me,” Smith said. “It wasn’t easy coming in here and thinking, I’m not going to shoot the ball because we’ve got these three guys, four guys. I looked at it as, I really have to mature and grow up. Because it’s really about winning and playing defense.” He added, “Sometimes it’s hard running up and down the court for five minutes without touching the ball, but you know your impact is on the defensive end.” Smith went so far as to suggest that his effort on defense helped keep his teammates “accountable.” Yes, J. R. Smith actually used the word accountable. But there he was, pointing out that it was vital for the Cavaliers to involve Love in the offense, that he understood his place in the series’s star constellation, that passing the ball made the game more enjoyable. “I think the pressure releases from a lot of guys — from Ky, from Kev, from Bron — when everybody’s just knocking them down,” said Smith, who has a thing for monosyllabic nicknames. “When we’re flowing the way we’ve flowed the last two series, shooting the ball, moving the ball, that makes it so much easier to play.” When Smith stepped into his news media scrum after the team’s morning shootaround, James bellowed his greetings from across the court. “Oh, Swish!” James said, referring to Smith by his nickname, his voice bouncing off the walls of the practice facility. “I see you, boyyyyyy!” Gone, for now, are the league-imposed fines and the nights of gluttonous shooting. With a more understated approach, Smith has secured his place in the spotlight.

Basketball
J R Smith
Playoffs
Cavaliers
Raptors


U.S. Says Chinese Fund Breaks Trade Rules

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration filed a case against China with the World Trade Organization on Wednesday, siding with an American labor union, the United Steelworkers, in accusing Beijing of illegally subsidizing the production of wind power equipment. The decision is the second time in less than four months that the United States has accused China of violating world trade rules. It represents an escalation of trade tensions between the United States and China over clean energy, viewed by the Obama administration as a frontier in which American companies are struggling to remain competitive. The United States is challenging a special Chinese government fund that awards grants to makers of wind power equipment. The Americans say the fund provides subsidies that are illegal under W.T.O. rules because the grants appear to be contingent on manufacturers using parts made in China. “Import substitution subsidies are particularly harmful and inherently trade distorting, which is why they are expressly prohibited under W.T.O. rules,” Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative, said in a statement . “These subsidies effectively operate as a barrier to U.S. exports to China. Opening markets by removing barriers to our exports is a core element of the president’s trade strategy.” China’s Ministry of Commerce issued a brief statement on its Web site early Thursday afternoon in Beijing, defending the country’s policies but providing few specifics. “Measures to develop wind energy in China are conducive to energy conservation and environmental protection as well as an important means of achieving sustainable development, and are consistent with W.T.O. rules,” the statement said. The individual grants available under the Chinese program range from $6.7 million to $22.5 million. Chinese makers of wind turbines and associated parts can receive multiple grants as the size of the wind turbine models increases. Total subsidies under the program since 2008 could amount to several hundred million dollars, according to Mr. Kirk’s office. The United Steelworkers, which had protested the Chinese wind power fund as part of a larger, 5,800-page trade complaint it filed with the American government on Sept. 9, said the administration’s decision was only a first step in addressing a “vast web of protectionist policies” by Beijing. “The goal is not litigation,” Leo W. Gerard, the union’s president, said in a statement . “It’s to end their practices.” The accusation on Wednesday is the first step in the W.T.O.’s process for settling disputes.. If China and the United States cannot reach a solution through consultations, the United States may request the establishment of a W.T.O. dispute settlement panel. Members of Congress who have been pushing for a bolder stance against China on trade, currency and other commercial matters, applauded the decision to file the case. “The United States needs to take a more assertive approach to China’s mercantilist policies, and the administration’s action today is a welcome step in the right direction,” said Representative Sander M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees trade. Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said in a statement that China was on track to make half of the world’s wind turbines and solar panels and urged the administration to make trade enforcement a priority. “The United States cannot replace its dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on clean energy technology made in China,” he said. “American manufacturing must lead the way — and to do this, they need a level playing field.” The action grows out of an investigation Mr. Kirk’s office initiated on Oct. 15 in response to the Steelworkers’ case , which covered a range of practices in the clean-energy sector, including prohibited subsidies, export restraints and discrimination against foreign companies and imported goods.The case, known as a Section 301 complaint under the Trade Act of 1974, has been the subject of several talks between Chinese and American trade officials. After two days of meetings last week in Washington, part of an annual forum known as the United States-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, China agreed to lift one barrier to foreign developers seeking to build wind farms there. The Chinese government will allow overseas experience in wind farm development, and not just experience in China, to qualify the developers for Chinese projects. But several other barriers remain: foreign developers are banned from offshore projects for what China describes asnational security reasons, are not allowed to borrow as much money as domestic developers and are prohibited from selling carbon credits from their wind farms. Mr. Kirk said his office would continue to investigate other parts of the Steelworkers’ complaint but was not planning additional filings under Section 301, which authorizes the president to take “all appropriate action,” including retaliation, against practices by foreign governments that violate international trade agreements or discriminate against American commerce. “We will continue to work closely with the U.S.W. and other stakeholders in the months ahead on the remaining allegations,” Mr. Kirk said. “If we are able to develop sufficient evidence to support those allegations and they can be effectively addressed through W.T.O. litigation, we will pursue the enforcement of our rights at the W.T.O. independently of Section 301.” That statement prompted Mr. Levin and Mr. Gerard to call for trade enforcement to receive greater priority and more resources. Trade complaints are notoriously complex and involve extensive investigations before the government can file a case before the W.T.O. in Geneva. General Electric, which is a major supplier of wind energy equipment but has been sensitive about antagonizing officials in China, where it has substantial business, declined to comment on the decision. John Frisbie, the president of the United States-China Business Council, which represents American businesses working in China, reacted cautiously. Mr. Frisbie said the decision “appears to be an appropriate first step,” but that disputes between W.T.O. members are “nothing new or unique.” Rob Gramlich, senior vice president for public policy at the American Wind Energy Association, said that the United States “can be a world leader in turbine manufacturing and exports” and that “any practice that tilts the global playing field unfairly would be of serious concern to our members who want to play a role in China, which has become the world’s largest wind market.”

International Trade and World Market
Wind Power
World Trade Organization
United States
China


Rambus Settles European Inquiry Over Chip Patents

Abstract: BRUSSELS (AP) — The memory chip company Rambus and antitrust regulators in Europe said on Friday that they had tentatively agreed that the European Union would drop its investigation and any fines if the company reduced its royalty rates for DRAM memory chip patents. The European Commission charged Rambus with monopoly abuse in 2007, accusing the company of setting “unreasonable” royalties for DRAM patents fraudulently set as industry standards. Any company that wants to make DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, has to pay Rambus for the design it developed. The chips are used in personal computers, servers, printers, personal digital assistants and cameras. Worldwide DRAM sales were $34 billion last year. Rambus said Friday that it would cap the fees it charged for licenses over five years for certain memory types and memory controllers. The European Union said Rambus also promised that any future fee cuts would benefit the entire market. The European Union must check with other industry players that this satisfies antitrust concerns before the deal can be completed. Rambus said last month that the Federal Trade Commission had dropped a similar inquiry. Chip manufacturers claimed that Rambus was seeking royalties in the early 1990s even as it took part in industrywide talks that set standards for chips that were to be made mandatory — giving the company a monopoly over crucial technology patents. The company, based in Los Altos, Calif., has consistently denied wrongdoing. Rambus was cleared of these claims last year by a federal court that dismissed legal action by the chip makers Micron Technology, Hynix Semiconductor and Nanya Technology.

Rambus Incorporated
European Union
Computer Chips
Fines (Penalties)


MailChimp and the Un-Silicon Valley Way to Make It as a Start-Up

Abstract: ATLANTA — The typical start-up fairy tale goes something like this: You begin with young entrepreneurs from Stanford or Harvard who have come up with some novel idea for disrupting restaurants or dog walking or whatever else. After creating a prototype, the guys (they are almost always men) enter start-up boot camps like Y Combinator, recruit a group of early investors, and perhaps launch a Kickstarter with a slick video. If the initial plan succeeds, the founders go into heedless expansion mode, which usually means selling off huge chunks of their company in exchange for gobs of money from venture capitalists. Then, after a few years, if all goes according to plan, they hit the big time — an initial public offering and a chance to be the next face of the future. Well, sometimes. What’s often left out of the start-up dream story is any mention that there’s another way. In fact, it’s possible to create a huge tech company without taking venture capital, and without spending far beyond your means. It’s possible, in other words, to start a tech company that runs more like a normal business than a debt-fueled rocket ship careening out of control. Believe it or not, start-ups don’t even have to be headquartered in San Francisco or Silicon Valley. There is perhaps no better example of this other way than MailChimp, a 16-year-old Atlanta-based company that makes marketing software for small businesses. If you’ve heard of MailChimp, it’s either because you are one of its 12 million customers or because you were hooked on “Serial,” the blockbuster true-crime podcast that MailChimp sponsored. Under the radar, slowly and steadily, and without ever taking a dime in outside funding or spending more than it earned, MailChimp has been building a behemoth. According to Ben Chestnut, MailChimp’s co-founder and chief executive, the company recorded $280 million in revenue in 2015 and is on track to top $400 million in 2016. MailChimp has always been profitable, Mr. Chestnut said, though he declined to divulge exact margins. The company — which has repeatedly turned down overtures from venture capitalists and is wholly owned by Mr. Chestnut and his co-founder, Dan Kurzius — now employs about 550 people, and by next year it will be close to 700. As a private company, MailChimp has long kept its business metrics secret, but Mr. Chestnut wants to publicize its numbers now to show the road less traveled: If you want to run a successful tech company, you don’t have to follow the path of “Silicon Valley.” You can simply start a business, run it to serve your customers, and forget about outside investors and growth at any cost. Image Ben Chestnut, co-founder of MailChimp. Credit Dustin Chambers for The New York Times There are downsides to this approach. MailChimp’s path was circuitous, and it came without the glory of enormous funding rounds. But it is also suffused with a basic common sense. Start-ups fueled by venture capital often need to figure out how to run like ordinary businesses; they embark on unsustainable growth, they forget about earning money, they don’t learn how to weather tough times. From LivingSocial to Pets.com to the half-dozen on-demand companies that blew up last year , the tech economy is littered with companies that raised too much money — and suffered for it. “One of the problems with raising money is it teaches you bad habits from the start,” said Jason Fried, the co-founder of the software company Basecamp, who has written frequently on the perversions of the venture capital industry. “If you’re an entrepreneur and you have a bunch of money in the bank, you get good at spending money.” But if companies are forced to generate revenue from the beginning, “what you get really good at is making money,” Mr. Fried said. “And that’s a much better habit for a business to work on early on, to survive on their own rather than be dependent on money people.” For MailChimp, these lessons didn’t have to be learned — they were simply a necessary part of running the business. “The whole point of this business is to prove to small businesses that you can do this, because we did it,” Mr. Chestnut said. MailChimp is run out of two sprawling floors in the Ponce City Market, a massive complex in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood that was originally built as a Sears Roebuck warehouse. “A lot of people think it’s cool and vintage, but it’s actually a neat reminder of disruption,” Mr. Chestnut said. “Sears used to be the biggest thing, and then it went away.” On a recent visit, I found all the trappings of start-up life seen in countless offices in the Bay Area: Stylish décor, kitschy accents (there are paintings and sculptures of MailChimp’s logo, a chimp named Freddie, all over), and zany conference room names. The walls of MailChimp’s boardroom are covered from floor to ceiling in vintage skateboards, which Mr. Kurzius collects. Get it? It’s a “board room.” MailChimp wasn’t always this fancy. Mr. Chestnut and Mr. Kurzius founded the company in 2000, at the crest of the dot-com bubble, after they had gotten laid off from corporate web design jobs. They used their small severance checks to start a firm they called the Rocket Science Group, which offered design consulting for large and small businesses in Atlanta. Image MailChimp’s offices in Atlanta. The company employs about 550 people, and by next year it will be close to 700. Credit Dustin Chambers for The New York Times Late in 2000, some of those customers started asking for ways to reach their customers by email. Mr. Chestnut thought he could repurpose some old code he had used to create a failed online greeting card business. One of his old greeting cards featured a drawing of a chimp, so he thought he would call the new email service ChimpMail, but the domain name was taken. So he went with MailChimp. For years, the pair ran the email service as a side project to the main web design gig. Around 2006, they began to grow wary of web design; the business was growing, but not very quickly, and they weren’t passionate about it. What Mr. Chestnut and Mr. Kurzius were passionate about was helping small businesses grow. They had both been raised in entrepreneurial families — Mr. Chestnut’s mother ran a salon out of her kitchen, and Mr. Kurzius’s father was a baker whose business was forced to close after Wonder Bread moved into town — and they thought that maligned as it was, email presented a low-cost marketing channel for companies on small budgets. In 2007, they stopped doing web design and focused exclusively on MailChimp. At the time, MailChimp faced a host of larger and better-capitalized rivals, including Constant Contact, which went public late in 2007. But Mr. Chestnut said MailChimp had a proximity to its customers that its competitors lacked. Because MailChimp was itself a small business, it understood what those businesses wanted out of their marketing tools. Its offerings were cheaper, it added features more quickly, and it allowed greater customizations to fit customers’ needs. Though Mr. Chestnut insists that he isn’t worried about the longevity of email — people have been predicting its death for years, and email just keeps getting more important — the company is also pushing into other channels, including social media. The next phase of MailChimp, he said, is to become a one-stop shop for the entirety of a small business’s marketing needs. Its future is far from assured — new modes of communication like voice and text messaging could undermine email, and there is always the threat of some large platform like Facebook or Google building a rival to MailChimp. Still, to Mr. Chestnut, MailChimp’s future is more secure if he and Mr. Kurzius control the company, rather than run it at the behest of outside investors. “Every time we sat down with potential investors, they never seemed to understand small business,” Mr. Chestnut said. Venture capitalists always wanted MailChimp to serve “enterprise companies,” large businesses with thousands of employees and, potentially, thousands to spend. “Everybody we talked to said, ‘You’re sitting on a gold mine, and if you pivot to enterprise, you could be huge,’” Mr. Chestnut said. “But something in our gut always said that didn’t feel right.”

MailChimp
Startup
Small business
Entrepreneurship
Email
Venture capital
Ben Chestnut
Atlanta


Turkey Escalates Airstrikes on Kurdish Targets in Northern Iraq

Abstract: ISTANBUL — Turkey stepped up its offensive against Kurdish militias in northern Iraq early Wednesday, pounding targets in six locations from the air, officials said. The Iraqi government condemned the airstrikes, calling them “a dangerous escalation and an assault on Iraqi sovereignty.” Turkish officials said the airstrikes were carried out in response to a string of terrorist attacks in Turkey by militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., a separatist group that waged a 30-year insurgency against Turkish rule. The office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a written statement that the strikes on Wednesday were against shelters, depots and caves used as hide-outs by the group. No information was released concerning casualties. Iraqi Army Retakes Government Complex in Central Ramadi Efforts to stem the rise of the Islamic State. The P.K.K. reached a cease-fire agreement with the Turkish government two years ago, but that tenuous peace has fallen apart in recent weeks. The government says that the group has refused to disarm and that it has carried out a series of attacks since the parliamentary elections on June 7 , when Kurdish candidates made a strong showing . On Tuesday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan , the president of Turkey, said it was impossible to continue a peace process with the militants while they threatened national unity and brotherhood. He called on Parliament to deny immunity from prosecution to any lawmakers linked to terrorist groups, a remark seen as a threat to Kurdish lawmakers. Turkey agreed last week to take a more active role in the American-led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State , the Sunni Arab militant group that has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq. But Turkey’s air campaign since then has mainly been directed at the P.K.K. , and the bombing raids it began on Friday effectively ended the cease-fire. The possibility of retaliatory attacks by the P.K.K. prompted a warning from the German Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, saying that the underground rail network and bus stops in Istanbul could be targets, Reuters reported. Mr. Davutoglu said Turkey would keep bombing the Kurdish militants as long as the militants threatened violence. “If we have one martyr, we will continue all operations on that organization that ordered the attack,” Mr. Davutoglu told members of his governing party in a speech on Wednesday.

Turkey
Kurdish
Iraq
Kurdistan Workers' Party,PKK
Terrorism
Ahmet Davutoglu
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Military


Pynchon Won’t Be Surfacing for National Book Awards

Abstract: On Wednesday evening, the publishing industry will gather in black tie for the National Book Awards, where some of the most prestigious literary prizes in the business will be handed out. One of the top contenders for the fiction award, perhaps not shockingly, has opted to skip it. That contender is Thomas Pynchon, the author of “Bleeding Edge” and one of five finalists in fiction. Mr. Pynchon, famously averse to public appearances, has mostly avoided being photographed and interviewed. He will not be attending the event, Ann Godoff, the president and editor in chief of Penguin Press, Mr. Pynchon’s publisher, said on Monday. (In an article in August , New York magazine, lacking a recent photo of the author, resorted to a “speculative rendering” of what Mr. Pynchon, who is in his mid-70’s, might look like today, complete with unkempt gray hair, crow’s feet and a mustache.) Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, which administers the awards, said that Mr. Pynchon certainly could win the award even if he was not there to accept it. In 2007, Mr. Augenbraum noted, the author Denis Johnson was working in Iraq on the night of the ceremony and won in the fiction category for his Vietnam War novel “Tree of Smoke.” His wife, Cindy Lee Johnson, accepted the award on his behalf. “Bleeding Edge” was one of the most anticipated novels of 2013, but was welcomed with uneven reviews: for example, writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called it “a scattershot work that is, by turns, entertaining and wearisome, energetic and hokey, delightfully evocative and cheaply sensational.” The other finalists in fiction are Rachel Kushner for “The Flamethrowers” (Scribner); Jhumpa Lahiri for “The Lowland” (Knopf); James McBride for “The Good Lord Bird” (Riverhead); and George Saunders for “Tenth of December” (Random House). The other categories are nonfiction, young people’s literature and poetry. Mr. Pynchon is married to Melanie Jackson, a literary agent, who is expected to attend the awards on Wednesday. Mr. Pynchon’s name appears on a seating chart for the ceremony, which features a formal dinner of baked tagliolini, loin of lamb and tiramisu for more than 700 people. Organizers of the event said that they tentatively expected an editor at Penguin to fill the seat. David Steinberger, the chief executive of the Perseus Books Group and the chairman of the National Book Foundation, said that whether Mr. Pynchon appears or not, a win would place him among only a handful of authors who have repeated, including Philip Roth, John Updike and John Cheever. “You’re really in rare air if you win this a second time,” Mr. Steinberger said.

Thomas Pynchon
National Book Foundation
Ann Godoff
Penguin Group


For Mutual Funds, a New Effort to Improve Rating Systems

Abstract: EVERY mutual fund investor has been presented with the boilerplate warning that future performance isn’t guaranteed to resemble the past’s. Nevertheless, the industry’s scorekeepers are engaged in a wave of look-ahead analysis to make their data and rankings more useful. Morningstar , the dominant player, has created what it has described as a new, forward-looking rating scale, while Standard & Poor’s has adopted a new ranking system based on an analysis of portfolios’ contents. These changes reflect a growing belief that performance figures by themselves, no matter how precise or how well matched to a benchmark or a peer category, don’t fully capture a fund’s investment prospects. “Our quantitative star rating for funds is a backward-looking achievement test,” Don Phillips, Morningstar’s president of fund research, said in mid-November, when the new system was announced, “while the new analyst rating is more of an aptitude test signaling to investors our forward-looking perspective on a fund’s ability to be a strong investment option over the long haul.” The new system supplements the firm’s long-established star ratings — assigning one to five stars to each fund, by comparing its past returns with those of category peers after adjusting for risk and sales charges. (Ten years ago, the basis of star ratings started to shift from broader asset classes to more narrowly defined categories.) More subjective written fund assessments by Morningstar’s analysts will also continue, but the new system replaces Morningstar’s list of picks and pans, which began in 1999. Under the new scale, the firm assigns three medal ratings — gold, silver and bronze — along with neutral or negative ratings, to just over 400 mutual funds. It started with 350 and hopes to reach 1,500 by the end of this year. Its analysts score each fund on five qualitative and numeric factors: the so-called “pillars” of people, process, parent, performance and price. The “people” factor reflects considerations like portfolio manager experience, while “process” takes into account things like the fund’s strategic performance in the 2008 market plunge. The “parent” factor would look at, among other things, the fund sponsors’ stewardship in putting investors’ interests ahead of those of executives. The importance of these factors varies from fund to fund. “We don’t equally weight them,” said Karen Dolan, Morningstar’s director of fund analysis. “We don’t have a formula,” she said of the new rankings. For example, Ms. Dolan said expense ratios would be a major element in appraising index funds, while “people” would weight heavily for a fund like the highly concentrated Fairholme Fund , whose fortunes are closely tied to the stock-picking skills of its manager, Bruce R. Berkowitz. Morningstar’s analyst ratings committee, headed by Russel Kinnel, reviews the rankings to make sure the pillar criteria are properly applied. Funds earning the three medals, Morningstar said, are regarded as having “sustainable advantages” that position them favorably for at least five years of market swings. Mr. Phillips cautioned that the system was “not designed to be a market call on an asset class or a prediction of short-term performance,” and that a high ranking for a particular fund did not mean that it was necessarily suitable for every investor. Standard & Poor’s, whose mutual-fund rankings are lesser known, started an approach in late 2009 that evaluates the individual stocks and bonds that make up fund portfolios. And while the firm’s compliance department will not permit assertions that the system is “forward looking,” Todd Rosenbluth, its lead developer, allowed that it has an “inherently”’ predictive aspect in that S.& P.’s stock recommendations are based on expected gains over a 12-month horizon. For example, when the firm’s analysts favor, say, high-quality, dividend-paying stocks, this assessment carries over to its mutual fund rankings. “Understanding the fundamentals and risks of a fund’s holdings is as important as, if not more important than, the relative past performance,” S.& P. stated in its announcement. A year earlier, in 2008, S.& P. adopted this new approach for exchange-traded funds . S.& P. found that it proved fruitful, as top-ranked E.T.F.’s generally outperformed benchmarks, and low-rated ones underperformed. Using portfolio data supplied by Lipper, S.& P. rankings cover 19,000 funds, including all share classes, that have been in operation for at least six months. Money market, convertible securities and long-short funds are excluded. Rankings are updated weekly. Unlike issuers of corporate, municipal and other bonds, mutual funds do not pay to be rated but may, depending on the circumstances, need to license their use of ratings by the two services in advertising or when communicating directly with shareholders. Although the two rating services will often agree, they differ in many cases. For example, Morningstar rates Eagle Growth and Income as a five-star fund while S.& P. gives it three stars. On the other hand, S.& P. thinks more highly than Morningstar of the Manning & Napier Dividend Focus fund, awarding it five stars to Morningstar’s four. As for Lipper, it uses its vast database to produce separate lists of what it calls Lipper Leaders among funds, based on total return, consistency of return, capital preservation, expenses or tax efficiency. It also makes annual awards for top performance. The effort to help fund investors peer into the future has aroused some skepticism, though Ms. Dolan said she had been expecting more pushback, particularly on the choice of pillars, when explaining the medal scale to an industry group last month in New York. One skeptic is John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group. While declaring that he has long made use of Morningstar’s products, he contended that there was no better predictor of a fund’s performance over the long term than price alone — that is, its expenses. Other things being equal, the lower the expenses charged by fund companies, the better the returns to investors, he says. Mr. Bogle also wondered whether the raters would be able to keep up to date, given the rapid rate at which many managers turn over their portfolios. “I think they’ll find it’s very difficult” to be forward-looking in sizing up funds, Mr. Bogle said of the process. “It has to have inherent limitations.” And even if the predictions worked out, he sees a hazard for investors. Top funds, he said, might “get all the money, and they’d be too big to manage properly.”

Mutual Funds
Morningstar Inc
Standard & Poor's Corp
Standard & Poor's
Research


Darrell Issa’s Company and the S.E.C.’s Quandary

Abstract: It’s the kind of thing that the Securities and Exchange Commission might want to look into. First the company froze out investors with small holdings, cashing them out at a very low price. Within days, it began confidential talks seeking to find a buyer. It took a few months, but the net result was that the company was acquired for more than five times the price the small investors were forced to accept. Had the small investors not been frozen out, the remaining shareholders, including the executives and directors who made the decision to eliminate the small investors, would have received only pennies per share less in the eventual merger, which was approved by the remaining shareholders in late June. The S.E.C., in keeping with its normal policy, declined to comment on whether it had looked into the company, DEI Holdings, but there has been no indication that it is doing so. Just starting an investigation could pose substantial political risks for the agency. The founder of the company, who remained a director and substantial shareholder even after he stepped down from management, is Representative Darrell E. Issa , a California Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and has been a harsh critic of the S.E.C. He has cited his experience as a director in criticizing what he sees as burdensome S.E.C. regulations. He says he thinks rules should be changed to make it easier for companies to raise money from American investors — particularly relatively wealthy ones — without having to comply with S.E.C. disclosure rules. “As a member of the board of a small public company, I am well aware of the cost and difficulties of being public,” he told Mary Schapiro, the S.E.C. chairwoman, at a hearing of his committee in May , several months after the company froze out small shareholders and more than two years after the company deregistered its shares and stopped being subject to S.E.C. rules. Neither Representative Issa nor James E. Minarik, the chairman and chief executive of the company, which makes electronic equipment for autos, responded to requests for interviews. The tale of DEI Holdings as a public company was an unfortunate one for nearly everyone involved, but most particularly for individual investors who invested in it. It is a story that involves the way current rules allow companies to raise money from investors who believe they have the protection of American securities law, and then to withdraw much of that protection. The company went public in December 2005 in an offering that was relatively small — it raised $150 million — but nonetheless had a prominent list of underwriters. Goldman Sachs was the lead underwriter, with J. P. Morgan Securities, CIBC World Markets, Wachovia and Citigroup also listed on the cover of the prospectus. A large part of the money went to selling shareholders, including Representative Issa’s family foundation, which received $3.8 million, and most of the rest went to pay off debts. None of the offering proceeds were to be invested in company operations. In 2005, Goldman served as a lead underwriter of 20 American initial offerings. DEI, then known as Directed Electronics, sought less money than any of the other 19, although one of the other issues raised less after Goldman cut both the size of the offering and the price in response to weak investor demand. DEI was priced at $16, in the middle of the indicated range, when the company filed to go public, but the underwriters did not do a good job of estimating investor interest. The price fell 12.5 percent, to $14, in the first day of trading. It was the worst first-day performance of any Goldman I.P.O. that year. The stock held its own for more than a year, but by late 2007 was trading below $2. Goldman, which had never had a buy recommendation on DEI, stopped writing research on it on Dec. 13 of that year. Early in 2009, facing the loss of its Nasdaq listing because of its low share price, DEI chose to not only leave Nasdaq but also to “go dark,” as Wall Street jargon refers to a decision by a company to withdraw its S.E.C. registration. It could do that under a rule allowing such an action by a company with fewer than 300 shareholders of record. DEI said it had 284. The phrase “shareholders of record” is a term of art in securities law. Shares held by a brokerage firm are all counted as being held by the same owner, even if they are actually owned by dozens or thousands of investors. In announcing the decision , the company mentioned a lack of analyst coverage but emphasized costs. “Without the annual accounting expenses, legal costs and administrative burden relating to S.E.C. reporting obligations and compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we will be able to further significantly reduce our costs while still maintaining a strong financial control environment, and better focus on the day-to-day operations of our business, thereby delivering long-term shareholder value,” said Mr. Minarik, the chief executive. Companies that have gone dark normally get virtually no public attention. I would not have noticed this one had it not been mentioned in an article on Representative Issa that ran in The New York Times earlier this week. DEI shares continued to trade on the pink sheets, an over-the-counter market, as is common for companies that go dark. DEI’s share price plunged to less than 10 cents a share soon after it went dark, but the price slowly recovered and rose to as high as a dollar in September 2010. In October, the company announced that the board and a majority of shareholders had decided to freeze out small investors, who were not consulted on the decision. The method was one that is sometimes used by companies trying to reduce the number of shareholders so they can go dark, but that is much less common for companies that are already dark. First, there was a one-for-240 reverse stock split. Then there was a 240-for-one stock split. For anyone who owned at least 240 shares, the net result was that nothing happened. But those with fewer shares were cashed out, at 82 cents a share. All told, 76,000 shares were eliminated, meaning that more than 300 shareholders were forced out. Those were, of course, probably shareholders whose stock was in brokerage accounts and thus were not counted when the company went dark. The two splits took place on Dec. 8, 2010. About the same time, other things were happening that might have raised the share price had they been public. The company later disclosed that in December — it did not say when — it contacted private equity firms seeking a buyer and also consulted a bank about arranging financing. The first firms contacted eventually decided they were not interested, but two bidders found the company enticing. Charlesbank Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Boston, wound up paying $4.46 a share and took control in late June. A company spokesman did not answer my question about whether the management or board had decided to seek a buyer before the small investors were forced out. If so, the move could be seen as an effort by insiders to maximize what they would get if the company were sold. It is a question the S.E.C. might want to ask. Under the same rule that lets companies go dark with fewer than 300 shareholders of record, companies can be forced to register with the S.E.C. if they have 500 shareholders of record. At the hearing in May, Representative Issa urged the commission to find a way to raise that number and asked that it consider not counting wealthy investors, who are presumed to be sophisticated, against the limit. The congressman expressed great concern about the fact that fewer companies are going public now than did in the late 1990s. He told Ms. Schapiro there was little doubt as to the reason. It was “the costs of going public.” There is another possible explanation. The number of companies going public fell sharply after many investors were burned when the Internet stock bubble burst. An investor who bought 2,000 shares of DEI Holdings at the initial offering price of $16 in 2005 and held on to them wound up with $8,920 for his $32,000 investment, a loss of 72 percent. But one who bought only 200 shares wound up with $164 for his $3,200 investment, a loss of 95 percent. Neither has any reason to be happy with the outcome, but the smaller investor has more reason to be unhappy. Representative Issa says he believes his service as a director of DEI Holdings has given him valuable insights. He might have different feelings had be been a buyer, rather than a seller, when DEI went public.

Securities and Exchange Commission
Stocks and Bonds
Issa Darrell E
DEI Holdings
United States Politics and Government


Recruit’s Friend, Team’s Fan and Colleges’ Headache

Abstract: Chris Grace, an ironworker from suburban Chicago, is a Duke fan. A mural in his basement bears the likenesses of the former stars Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill, and he regularly checks Web sites to learn which high school basketball players the Blue Devils are recruiting. Then Grace goes a step further: he sends recruits a friend request on Facebook . “If they accept my friend request, I’ll send them a message telling them how great it would be if they’d commit to Duke,” said Grace, 30, whose father attended the university. “They don’t usually respond, but I think it helps a bit. But if they don’t commit to Duke, I unfriend them.” Grace said he saw nothing wrong with using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to reach out to some of the best high school players in the country, as long as there is no harassment. And he is far from alone in doing so. But what Grace and other fans like him may not know was that he had been violating N.C.A.A. regulations. The N.C.A.A. allows coaches to correspond with recruits via e-mail, fax and social networking sites. But since 2007, it has prohibited all other forms of electronically transmitted correspondence, including text messaging , instant messaging and posting messages on a user’s Facebook wall. Alumni, fans and boosters, individually or in organized groups, are not permitted to contact a recruit for the purpose of enticing him to attend a particular university. The N.C.A.A. would not say whether it had penalized any programs for transgressions by fans using social media, but it said the burden of monitoring and regulating the sites fell to the colleges. “If a school comes across an instance of this happening, it is expected that they would reach out to those athletics personnel, fans and boosters and reinforce the ground rules related to communicating with recruits,” Cameron Schuh, an associate director for public and media relations for the N.C.A.A., said in an e-mail. College officials argue that there is no practical way to comprehensively monitor an instantaneous medium like Facebook to ensure N.C.A.A. compliance. And the public has been busy, with many recruits in high-profile sports like basketball and football being contacted regularly through the Internet by people linked to a program only by their allegiance to it. Duke fans seem to be particularly active on Facebook. One group, Austin Rivers to Duke, was created to try to woo Rivers, a high school senior from Winter Park, Fla., who is the son of Doc Rivers, the coach of the Boston Celtics. Rivers may be the most visible high school athlete in the nation with more than 18,000 Facebook fans, more than 23,000 Twitter followers and YouTube highlight clips that have been viewed nearly a million times. He has committed to the Blue Devils. Duke noted that when the basketball star John Wall was in high school, its compliance office asked the creator of the John Wall Come to Duke! group on Facebook to cease and desist. The creator changed the name of the group to Wohn Jall Come to a School in Durham, then deleted direct references to Duke. Wall eventually landed at Kansas University, played one season and left for the N.B.A. One Facebook site dedicated to luring him to the Wildcats was called John Wall, I’ll Pay You to Come to KU. Anupam Chander, a University of California-Davis law school professor who writes frequently about social media, said colleges could institute code-of-conduct regulations to discourage their students from contacting recruits but could not infringe on the public’s First Amendment rights. “Schools are asked to comply with N.C.A.A. rules, but at the same time, they don’t have the power to control the speech of these individuals,” he said. “The best claim for any of these schools isn’t a legal one, but a moral claim. They can tell fans, look, please don’t jeopardize our good standing with the N.C.A.A., but that’s as far as they can really go.” For many promising athletes, collecting friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter is a validation of their talent. But the unprecedented level of direct communication with fans can have its drawbacks. Justin Anderson , one of the nation’s top junior basketball players, who attends Montrose Christian School in Rockville, Md., recently shut down his accounts before committing to Maryland because he was being inundated with messages from fans of colleges he was considering. In February, Cyrus Kouandjio, a 6-foot-7, 305-pound offensive lineman from Maryland, announced his intention to play for Auburn on ESPN, then changed his mind and signed a letter of intent to play for its archrival, Alabama. Not wanting, he said, to “disrespect anyone,” Kouandjio accepted all the friend requests he received during his recruitment. His total soared to 5,000, the limit for any personal Facebook account. Most of the messages he received were supportive, but a few were quite nasty. His wall, he said, became a “civil war” between fans of the two universities. “Some were just wishing bad luck on me,” he said. “That I’d break my leg or have to redshirt my freshman year, stuff like that.” Andre Drummond , a 6-9 center from Oakdale, Conn., whom many recruiting experts rank as the top high school junior in the country, has nearly 3,000 Facebook friends, among them Connecticut’s basketball coach, Jim Calhoun, and college players from programs that are recruiting him, including the N.B.A.-bound Kyrie Irving of Duke. A number of Facebook pages bearing Drummond’s name have been set up by others, most carrying pleading missives from fans of North Carolina, Kentucky, Duke and other programs. One of them, Andre Drummond Come to Louisville, has fewer than 60 members, but three are affiliated with the Cardinals: Zach Price and Chane Behanan are top recruits and the other, Rakeem Buckles, is a current player. It is unclear whether a player’s membership in a group constitutes a violation, and the N.C.A.A. would not comment on the matter, but it appears that it has not established clear guidelines for players and recruits regarding Facebook groups. Syracuse fans have tried to exert civic pride to pressure DaJuan Coleman, a coveted basketball recruit from nearby DeWitt, N.Y., to stay local. The group, Supporters for DaJuan Coleman to Stay in Syracuse, had nearly 500 members last month. Syracuse and Louisville representatives said in e-mail messages that they were unaware of the Facebook groups trying to steer recruits to their universities but indicated that they would ask the creators to take down the pages. Syracuse soon set up a Facebook account with the name Cuse Compliance and posted a note on the Coleman group’s Facebook wall asking that it be shut down. Within days, it was. Despite the concerns about social media sites, many high school and college coaches say Facebook, in particular, is an effective recruiting tool. “Kids don’t check e-mail, they don’t take calls and we can’t text, so Facebook is useful for us,” said Jason Williford, a men’s basketball assistant at Virginia. Chad Millard , a former top basketball recruit who committed to Louisville in 2004 when social media was in its infancy and college programs sent recruits printed literature, said sites like Facebook made the recruiting process more complex for players. “It would make me a little more nervous to be recruited now,” Millard, who later transferred to Creighton, said in a telephone interview. “It would have been flattering to get a friend request from someone like Jim Calhoun, but it’s also a little scary because you give people a real inside track on your life.” Blessing or curse, social media sites will probably continue to play a role in the recruiting process, and fans like Chris Grace maintain that trying to sway athletes online is harmless. “I’m sure some fans message them every day and harass players who commit to other schools, but I don’t do that,” he said. “I’ll hate them during the season. I don’t do it on Facebook.”

Social Networking (Internet)
College Athletics
Draft and Recruitment (Sports)
National Collegiate Athletic Assn
Colleges and Universities
Facebook.com
Twitter


Virtual Reality’s Possibilities Lure Video Game Developers

Abstract: Phil Fish, an independent video game developer who made the hit game Fez, quit the business in 2014 after burning out and becoming fed up with the gaming industry’s sometimes corrosive culture. Now he’s back, lured by the promise of a long-anticipated technology: virtual reality. “I’ve been dreaming about this since I was 10 years old,” Mr. Fish, 31, said from his office in Austin, Tex. “I just got really excited about the realization of the dream of V.R.” Mr. Fish is part of a four-person collective called Kokoromi that is poised next month to release a virtual reality game called Superhypercube. The object of the Tetris-like puzzle game, set in a red-tinged world of incandescent tubes and gleaming neon, is to rotate a cluster of blocks so that they fit perfectly through the corresponding hole in a rapidly approaching wall. All the while, players are suffused in 360 degrees of shimmering colors and must physically lean to peer around the blocks and align them in the 3-D space. Mr. Fish’s enthusiasm for virtual reality is being echoed by others in the video game business — in some cases pushing retired game developers to return and inspiring others with its creative potential — even as many hurdles remain to virtual reality’s entry into the mainstream. Paul Bettner, co-creator of the popular mobile game Words With Friends, has called virtual reality “the most important thing to happen to interactive entertainment in decades.” This year, he designed a virtual reality game called Lucky’s Tale. The creators behind the blockbuster 1993 computer game Myst recently came out with a spiritual successor called Obduction, which was released for both virtual reality devices and standard computers. What makes virtual reality so potent is not only how it envelops players in a 360-degree visual experience, but also how it uses 3-D lenses, immersive audio and head-tracking technology to create a profound sense of physical presence that developers are just beginning to explore. “We always wanted to build places and worlds, not just games, and V.R. just does that — it makes you feel like you’re in another place without even trying,” said Rand Miller, a co-designer of Myst and the designer of Obduction. The interest in making virtual reality games follows the introduction of several virtual reality headsets over the last year. On Oct. 13, Sony plans to release PlayStation VR, a $399 virtual reality headset that can connect to the company’s popular PlayStation 4 console, which has sold more than 40 million units. PlayStation VR is cheaper than other virtual reality goggles, like the $599 Oculus Rift and $799 HTC Vive, which also require expensive computers. That makes PlayStation VR one of the industry’s better chances at establishing a foothold with a mainstream audience. Superhypercube is one of the introductory games for the headset and will be available to download for $29.99. Image From left, Phil Fish, Heather Kelley, Cindy Poremba, and Damien DiFede, creators of the new virtual reality game Superhypercube. Credit Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times Yet these developers are betting on an unproved technology. Some critics remain unconvinced that virtual reality devices will become mainstream consumer products, given the cost, the potential to induce nausea in some people and the sky-high expectations for the technology. This month, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, said he believed that augmented reality — in which the digital world is overlaid on the physical one — had more consumer appeal than virtual reality, which he said would ultimately attract “lower commercial interest over time.” That does not faze Mr. Fish, who started making video games in 2005 with the games developer Ubisoft. In 2008, he formed a studio, Polytron Corporation, which developed Fez, a game featuring a two-dimensional character who discovers that he lives in a 3-D world. It sold more than a million copies for consoles and PCs. Mr. Fish has come and gone from the video game industry more than once, leaving in 2013 and returning in 2014 — only to depart again. All the while, he remained connected to Kokoromi, which he formed in 2006 with two other developers, Heather Kelley and Damien Di Fede, later joined by Cindy Poremba. They had originally met in Montreal, sharing a mutual interest in experimental games. Together, they developed Superhypercube for a 3-D-themed creative event in 2008. At the time, the game was more of an interactive art installation than a commercial product. Since there were no virtual reality headsets then with the necessary capabilities, they made their own with a Nintendo Wii Remote controller, stereoscopic LED glasses and hot glue. Although early versions of Superhypercube could be played at large parties and gaming events, there was no way to play it at home without building a do-it-yourself virtual reality headset. When the makers of the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles raised more than $2.4 million on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter in 2012, the members of Kokoromi realized that virtual reality technology was finally catching up to them. As other headsets were announced, it started to seem obvious that a newer, more polished version of Superhypercube could be made for a broad audience. “We had years of prototyping and play-testing data, because we were foolish enough to make a V.R. game with hot glue and plastic 3-D glasses,” Ms. Poremba said. “It’s an advantage that very few other people had bringing games into V.R.” Adapting Superhypercube for PlayStation VR gave Mr. Fish and Kokoromi the opportunity to fine-tune the game, experimenting with how to design elements like menus in 3-D and refining colors and lighting. Today, the visuals of Superhypercube evoke the retro-futuristic feel of films like “Tron” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” with their varicolored tunnels and neon lines slicing through the darkness. “We’re referencing this aesthetic history as if it were real, and making it real at the same time,” Ms. Kelley said. Although virtual reality’s commercial future is uncertain, Kokoromi remains more interested in the creative possibilities. PlayStation VR “could sell 100,000 units or it could sell 10 million units; we don’t know,” Mr. Fish said. “But it’s superexciting. It’s the Wild West right now. Everything’s a discovery, everything has to be reinvented and reconsidered.”

Virtual reality
Computer and Video Games
Phil Fish
Superhypercube
Sony


A Death on Staten Island Highlights Heroin’s Place in ‘Mainstream Society’

Abstract: The man entered the Red Robin restaurant inside the Staten Island Mall two minutes after 6 p.m. on a Friday. He walked straight past the booths and tables and entered the men’s room. A manager would find him there seven minutes later, lying on the floor with a needle and foaming at the mouth. His name was Jonathan Ayers, 27, and he was declared dead within the hour that evening, Sept. 9, apparently of a heroin overdose. Mr. Ayers’s fatal overdose was the latest addition to a body count without precedent. So far in 2016, there have been 71 deaths that appear to be from heroin overdoses on the island, the Richmond County district attorney’s office said, already on pace to more than double the record set two years ago. Nine people died of heroin overdoses in a recent 10-day period, prosecutors said. Mr. Ayers left behind an account of his addiction. After his death, his mother, Ann Ayers, and brother, Christopher, found a journal he had kept for the last couple of years that chronicled the lies he had told them to conceal his continued dependence on drugs. “I lie mostly I think because I am scared of being judged for the truth,” Mr. Ayers wrote in May 2015. “This journal is where I tell the truth.” Through the journal, his family would come to know the son and brother they had lost, and see the thoughts of a heroin addict. Staten Island has been home to a heroin epidemic for several years, and it rivals the Bronx for the highest rate of deaths from heroin overdoses in New York City. The drug arrived to meet demand for opiates and fill the void left by law enforcement crackdowns on prescription pills, which were widely abused there. Heroin, much cheaper than pills, became the drug of choice for the mostly white, middle-class neighborhoods on the island’s south end. It was brought in bulk from other boroughs and New Jersey, and easily found on the island as an attractive diversion for bored and restless young people — creating a crisis for law enforcement, treatment programs and the parents of addicts, who have seen too many of their children end up in jail or the morgue. Since 2010, the number of arrests on the island in which heroin or pills were found on the suspect has increased tenfold, to over 1,000 last year. Deaths attributed to heroin overdoses have also risen: In 2012 and 2013, the toll was 33 each year, and then jumped to 41 in 2014. The deaths fall within a nationwide heroin epidemic that officials have compared to the onslaught of H.I.V. in the 1980s and 1990s. An estimated 125 people a day die from drug overdoses, 78 of them from heroin and pills . The rise in deaths has left virtually no corner of the country untouched, from New England to Appalachia to the Midwest and Southwest. Image Mr. Ayers’s mother, Ann, 59, on the porch of her home in Staten Island. Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times On Staten Island, the numbers could be far worse. Emergency medical workers and firefighters administered naloxone, an antidote to opioid overdoses , 89 times from January through July. Police officers have used it to save lives 35 times this year. There have been new programs and initiatives and task forces and law enforcement operations and arrests. There have been infusions of funds. And yet nothing seems to be working. “The drugs are too accessible and too acceptable,” Michael McMahon, the Staten Island district attorney, said in an interview last month. “There seems to be a whole new population that thinks it’s O.K. and not taboo.” Mr. McMahon said too few resources were being directed to the epidemic. “If this many people were dying from Zika on Staten Island, we would have an all-out emergency crisis response to it,” he said. “Anywhere else in the city of New York, if nine people died in 10 days from one reason, it would be declared a citywide health emergency.” Mr. McMahon, shortly after taking office in January, announced the creation of the Overdose Response Initiative, with officers responding to every fatal overdose as if it were a homicide, gathering information on the victims and combing their cellphones for leads on the identity of the dealer of the drugs. The investigations have given prosecutors and the police real-time data on overdoses; in the past, they had to wait for lengthy toxicology tests. The response has linked fatal overdoses to suspected dealers in two recent drug takedowns that led to 18 arrests. Assistant Chief Edward Delatorre, the borough commander of Staten Island, said the police were initially led to believe that dealers had taken their own measure to avoid scrutiny — selling weaker heroin. “We got word back that they were cautioning the other dealers who sold, ‘Be careful what you sell on Staten Island,’” he said. “But here we are again in September with a surge.” Mr. McMahon believes that the recent string of deaths resulted not from a bad batch of heroin, but from the potency and ubiquity of the drug and the recklessness with which addicts are using it. “What does that tell you, the death in the mall?” said Luke Nasta, the director of Camelot, an addiction treatment center on Staten Island. “It’s part of mainstream society. Bright, shiny glass and nice stuff. The abundance of America, and using heroin and succumbing to an overdose. It’s a crosscut of society. It’s here. There’s no denying it.” Image Mr. Ayers’s brother, Christopher, 31, reading the journal. Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times A Chronicled Struggle Mr. Ayers’s overdose in the mall ended a struggle with addiction about which he wrote candidly in his journal while hiding it from his family. The journal and interviews with his family offer a glimpse of a middle-class addict seeming to hold his life together even as it spun downward. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak,” Mr. Ayers, a Catholic, quoted from the Bible in one entry. “My bones are troubled.” Tall and stout at around 300 pounds, he was the classic gentle bear of a man, his family said. He graduated from Wagner College in 2010 with a degree in sociology but without solid plans, they said. Behind the scenes, his troubles had already begun. “I had only been drinking, but when I started college I started smoking and eventually selling marijuana,” Mr. Ayers wrote in 2015, according to a transcript of the journal provided by his brother. “It seemed harmless at first, but I guess it wasn’t enough and I started to experiment.” This led him to pills. “And as the saying goes, ‘That was that,’” he wrote. “It went from a weekend thing to a 3-day-a-week thing only at night and eventually to an everyday thing.” He traveled to his brother Christopher’s home in Virginia in January 2015 to get away from the island. He stayed a month, attending church with his brother and sister-in-law, who were expecting a child, and discussing his troubles with his brother’s pastor. But he also took mysterious drives to Baltimore, Christopher said last week. Asked why, Christopher said, Mr. Ayers told him he was visiting friends. When Mr. Ayers returned to New York in February, his brother noticed $1,100 missing from his home, and he gave Mr. Ayers an ultimatum: Go to rehab or you’ll never see your niece. Mr. Ayers had been to an outpatient center on Staten Island, but had returned to pills, his family said. This time, he traveled to Florida for a three-week program. Mr. Ayers’s experiences were similar to those of many addicts on Staten Island. It is a widely held belief that one must leave the island to get clean. “We can’t just do the same old stuff we’ve been doing,” said Diane Arneth, the president and chief executive of Community Health Action of Staten Island, a treatment center. “This really is an incredible crisis.” Image Mr. Ayers, right, with his mother and brother in 2013. She said treatment centers have discussed identifying “crisis points” in an addict’s downward spiral when they are open to the possibility of treatment, such as after an arrest or a visit to the emergency room, where they might meet with a counselor. “That’s where people shift,” she said. Staten Island police officers see these crisis points every day, and they carry small containers of Narcan, a brand of naloxone , within easy reach in their pockets. Squirting it up the nose of an unconscious drug user blocks the absorption of opiates and stops an overdose. One officer, Crystal Vale, has saved three people with Narcan in the past year. “From being unable to respond, to being fully awake and not wanting to go to the hospital,” she said last week. She said she was present when a man was revived with Narcan, and when officers, paramedics and the man himself compared notes, they realized it was the third time he had been brought back from the brink — the Lazarus of Staten Island. Another officer, Louise Sanfilippo, has logged 13 Narcan saves in a year and a half. She uses the antidote so often that she hurries to restock after a save, uncomfortable with an empty pocket. “I never have none on me,” she said. The island lacks a 24-hour crisis center and relies on 9-to-5 offices to treat walk-in drug addicts looking for help. “People don’t need help just during regular business hours,” Ms. Arneth said. ‘I’m So Sick’ Mr. Ayers stayed clean after Florida, but not for long. “I should have never went to that damn party. Even deleting all the numbers out of my phone didn’t protect me from this,” he wrote in April 2015. “I felt so ashamed and I wasted the past 50 days of my life and let everybody down who believed in me.” He kept using: “I can’t even look at my mom in the eye right now. All I do is ruin her life.” A year passed. He got a job at a bar. But his mother would come home from work at Wagner College and find him on the couch. “‘I’m so sick, I’m so sick,’” he told her, Ms. Ayers said. “He’d ask me for money for Suboxone,” a prescribed drug that curbs opiate cravings, “and I gave it to him.” In August, he wrote his last journal entry: He needed to get his life together “or I’m going to end up in jail or worse dead.” On Thursday, Sept. 8, he said he had been to the doctor and that his prescription would be ready on Sept. 10. On Sept. 9, his mother came home from work. He was on the couch. He asked a question that almost every mother of a certain age has heard before, practically a rite of passage. Can I get a ride to the mall? He said he needed to meet a friend who had some extra Suboxone and was waiting at the massage chairs outside a Chase bank. “I don’t know where that is,” he told his mother. She did. She drove him to the mall. He said he would be right back. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Ayers did inside. But the massage chairs were right where he was told they would be, along with, his family assumes, what he came for. There he likely paused, figuring out a next move that would be his last, his mother waiting in the car outside, an escalator before him, the Red Robin below.

Heroin
Drug Abuse
Staten Island
Fatalities,casualties
Opioids


White House Takes a Bigger Role in the Oil Spill Cleanup

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — The response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico intensified abruptly on Thursday, with the federal government intervening more aggressively as the rapidly growing slick drifted ever closer to the fragile coastline of Louisiana . Resources from the United States Navy were marshaled to supplement an operation that already consisted of more than 1,000 people and scores of vessels and aircraft. Calling it “a spill of national significance” which could threaten coastline in several states, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the creation of a second command post in Mobile , Ala. , in addition to the one in Louisiana, to manage potential coastal impact in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida . Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered an immediate review of the 30 offshore drilling rigs and 47 production platforms operating in the deepwater Gulf, and is sending teams to conduct on-site inspections. The oil slick was only three miles offshore on Thursday afternoon and was expected to hit coastal Louisiana as early as Thursday night, prompting Gov. Bobby Jindal to declare a state of emergency and to request the participation of the National Guard in response efforts. About 40,000 feet of boom had been placed around Pass-a-Loutre, the area of the Mississippi River Delta where the oil was expected to touch first, a spokesman for Mr. Jindal said. The Navy provided 50 contractors, 7 skimming systems and 66,000 feet of inflatable containment boom, a spokesman said. About 210,000 feet of boom had been laid down to protect the shoreline in several places along the Gulf Coast, though experts said that marshlands presented a far more daunting cleaning challenge than sandy beaches . Eight days after the first explosion on the rig, which left 11 workers missing and presumed dead, the tenor of the response team’s briefings changed abruptly Wednesday night with a hastily called news conference to announce that the rate of the spill was estimated to be 5,000 barrels a day, or more than 200,000 gallons — five times the previous estimate. By Thursday, it was apparent that the cleanup operation desperately needed help, with no indication that the well would be sealed any time soon and oil drifting closer to shore. The response effort has been driven by BP , the company that was leasing the rig and is responsible for the cleanup, under the oversight of the Coast Guard and in consultation with the Minerals Management Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. While additional federal resources, including naval support, were available before Wednesday, officials had given little indication that such reinforcements would be deployed so quickly and at such a scale. “Some of it existed from the start,” Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard, the federal on-scene coordinator, said of the federal resources. “We can ramp it up as we need it.” Referring to what she called “dynamic tension” among the participants in a spill response, Admiral Landry said it was her duty to ensure that BP was trying every approach available. “If BP does not request these resources, then I can and I will,” she said. Asked whether the Coast Guard had confidence in BP’s efforts, Admiral Landry said, “BP, from Day 1, has attempted to be very responsive and be a very responsible spiller.” BP, in turn, has pointed out on more than one occasion that Transocean owned the oil rig and the blowout preventer, a device that apparently failed to function properly and that is continuing to be the most significant obstacle to stopping the spill. Underscoring how acute the situation has become, BP is soliciting ideas and techniques from four other major oil companies — Exxon Mobil , Chevron , Shell and Anadarko. BP officials have also requested help from the Defense Department in efforts to activate the blowout preventer, a stack of hydraulically activated valves at the top of the well that is designed to seal it off in the event of a sudden pressure release. Doug Suttles, the chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP, said the company had asked the military for better imaging technology and more advanced remotely operated vehicles. As of now, there are six such vehicles monitoring or trying to fix the blowout preventer, which sits on the sea floor. “To be frank, the offer of help from all quarters is welcome,” said David Nicholas, a BP spokesman. But Norman Polmar, an expert on military systems, said the robotic submersibles used by the oil industry were better equipped to try to stop the oil leak than any of the Navy’s minisubs. The Navy’s unmanned subs have cameras and can retrieve bits of hardware, he said, but are not designed to plug a hole in a pipe or do repair work. Other efforts to contain the spill included a tactic that Admiral Landry called “absolutely novel”: crews awaited approval on Thursday night to begin deploying chemical dispersants underwater near the source of the leaks. Aircraft have dropped nearly 100,000 gallons of the dispersants on the water’s surface to break down the oil, a more conventional strategy. BP is also designing and building large boxlike structures that could be lowered over the leaks in the riser, the 5,000-foot-long pipe that connected the well to the rig and has since become detached and is snaking along the sea floor. The structures would contain the leaking oil and route it to the surface to be collected. This temporary solution could take several weeks to execute. Mr. Suttles said three such structures were being prepared, one of which is complete and could corral the worst of the leaks. But citing the disclosure of the new leak on Wednesday night, experts said more were certainly possible. “All that movement is going to continue to stress and fatigue the pipe and create more leaks,” said Jeffrey Short, Pacific science director for Oceana and former chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who helped clean the spill from the Exxon Valdez in 1989. “This is not on a good trajectory,” he added. The next solution is drilling relief wells that would allow crews to plug the gushing cavity with mud, concrete or other heavy liquid. The drilling of one such well is expected to begin in the next 48 hours, Mr. Suttles said, but it could be three months before the leak is plugged by this method. The legal and political dimensions of the oil spill spread as well on Thursday, with lawyers filing suits on behalf of commercial fishermen, shrimpers and injured workers against BP; Transocean ; Cameron, the company that manufactured the blowout preventer; and other companies involved in the drilling process, including Halliburton . Representative Edward J. Markey , a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming , has asked the heads of major oil companies, including BP, to testify at a hearing about the spill. Opponents of President Obama ’s plan to expand offshore drilling have also called for a halt. Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, called Thursday for a moratorium on all new offshore oil exploration while the cause of this rig explosion is under investigation. Mr. Nelson, a longtime opponent of oil drilling off the coasts of Florida, said in a letter to Mr. Obama that the spreading oil spill threatened environmental and economic disaster all along the Gulf Coast. Administration officials stressed that the president’s offshore drilling plan was the beginning of a lengthy review process and did not mean that large new areas would see immediate oil and gas activity. They also said that they expected that members of Congress and the public would have new questions about the safety of offshore operations and that the administration would rethink its commitment to offshore drilling in light of the accident. “That is the beginning of a process,” said Carol M. Browner , the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy. “What is occurring now will also be taken into consideration.”

Oil and Gasoline
Offshore drilling
Environment
Gulf of Mexico
BP
Transocean
Accidents and Safety


Iran Hints at Possible Release of Washington Post Correspondent Soon

Abstract: GENEVA — A senior Iranian emissary hinted on Friday that Iranian authorities might be prepared to free a Washington Post correspondent who has been inexplicably imprisoned and kept virtually incommunicado since July 22. The emissary, Mohammad Javad Larijani, who was attending a United Nations Human Rights Council session, said that security service officials had prepared charges against the correspondent, Jason Rezaian , for activities “entering the area of the security of the state.” But he added that he hoped the charges would be dropped during court proceedings that he expected to start “soon.” Mr. Larijani, a member of a politically powerful Iranian family and secretary general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, declined to elaborate on the charges. Nor did he further specify the status of Mr. Rezaian’s case in the opaque Iranian judicial process. Mr. Rezaian has not been able to hire a lawyer because no charges have been formally made. But Mr. Larijani’s suggestion that the charges — whatever they may be — could be dismissed went beyond what other top Iranian officials have said about the mysterious case. “We, as the Council of Human Rights, requested a review of the charges before going to the court procedure,” he said in a short interview after the United Nations meeting. “As the court procedure is elaborate, it takes time. So the prosecutor was kind enough to take a second review, so we hope the charges will be dropped.” Mr. Rezaian, 38, a dual Iranian-American citizen from California, has been The Post’s correspondent based in Tehran since 2012. His unexplained imprisonment has been denounced by The Post and top American officials, and has exacerbated the underlying mistrust between the United States and Iran, which broke formal diplomatic ties more than three decades ago. Mr. Larijani spoke a day after Mr. Rezaian’s relatives in the United States issued a blunt statement calling his incarceration a farce. They said it was clear that the authorities had failed to find anything incriminating after 100 days of interrogating him. Otherwise, they said, he would have been charged by now. Ali Rezaian, Mr. Rezaian’s brother, said he was heartened by Mr. Larijani’s comments. “After 100 days in detention and no evidence, surely Mr. Larijani agrees,” the brother said in a statement. “We share in Mr. Larijani’s hope that any accusations will be dropped promptly and without need for a trial.” Mr. Larijani’s appearance here came against a backdrop of new accusations that Iran’s human rights record had worsened . In a three-hour discussion at the United Nations Human Rights Council, he defended Iran as part of a review that all member states undergo every four years. Earlier this week, a special United Nations investigator, Ahmed Shaheed, said in a report to the General Assembly that the use of capital punishment had increased in Iran, as had harassment of journalists like Mr. Rezaian. Mr. Shaheed said Iran had shown a “pattern of continuing general repression of freedom of expression.” Iran has faced a barrage of criticism over its capital punishment practices. The issue shot to prominence with the execution last Saturday of a 26-year-old woman, Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was hanged after being convicted of murder for killing the man she had accused of trying to rape her, despite concerns about the trial and international appeals for clemency. Delegates from many European countries at the Geneva meeting urged Iran to adopt a moratorium on the death penalty. Mr. Larijani promised Iran would respond in writing to all the recommendations put to it, but his delegation also rejected many of the concerns raised by governments and human rights groups. In the case of Ms. Jabbari, Mr. Larijani said he had pleaded “very humbly” for the family of the victim to forgive her, which under Iran’s law would have provided a way to spare her life. But he said the family had refused. “Perhaps one reason for that was the huge propaganda that was created against this case,” he said.

Iran
Jason Rezaian
Washington Post
News media,journalism
Human Rights
UNCHR


With Facebook as Alibi, Brooklyn Robbery Charge Is Dropped

Abstract: The message on Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, posted at 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, asked where his pancakes were. The words were typed from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem. At the time, the sentence, written in street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — meaningless to anyone besides Mr. Bradford. But when Mr. Bradford, 19, was arrested the next day as a suspect in a robbery at the Farragut Houses in Brooklyn, where he lives, the words took on greater importance. They became his alibi. His defense lawyer, Robert Reuland, told a Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Lindsay Gerdes, about the Facebook entry, which was made at the time of the robbery. The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook to verify that the words had been typed from a computer at an apartment at 71 West 118th Street in Manhattan, the home of Mr. Bradford’s father. When that was confirmed, the charges were dropped. “This is the first case that I’m aware of in which a Facebook update has been used as alibi evidence,” said John G. Browning , a lawyer in Dallas who studies social networking and the law . “We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become.” With more people revealing the details of their lives online, sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are providing evidence in legal battles. Up to now, social networking activity has mostly been used as prosecutorial evidence, Mr. Browning said. He cited a burglary case in September in Martinsburg, Pa., in which the burglar used the victim’s computer to log on to Facebook and forgot to log off. The police followed the digital trail to Jonathan G. Parker, 19, who was arrested. As part of his defense, a suspect in an Indiana murder case , Ian J. Clark, claimed he was not the kind of man who could kill his girlfriend’s child. But remarks he was found to have posted on MySpace left him vulnerable to character examination, Mr. Browning said, contributing to his conviction and a sentence of life in prison without parole. In civil cases, too, online communications have helped strengthen evidence, especially in divorce cases , where they are often used as proof of cheating. And postings by a probationary sheriff’s deputy, Brian Quinn, 26, of Marion County, Fla., on his MySpace page led to his firing in June 2006 for “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Such cases are becoming more prevalent in part because Congress in 2006 mandated changes to the federal rules of civil procedure, expanding the acceptance of electronically stored information as evidence. With the use of a Facebook update as an alibi, such communications may also be used to prove innocence, Mr. Browning said. Mr. Bradford’s arrest was for the mugging at gunpoint of Jeremy Dunklebarger and Rolando Perez-Lorenzo at 11:50 a.m. on Oct. 17, according to Mr. Reuland, Mr. Bradford’s lawyer. Mr. Bradford, who was facing charges in a previous robbery, contended he was in Harlem at the time of the Oct. 17 robbery — a claim supported by Mr. Bradford’s father, Rodney Bradford Sr., and his stepmother, Ernestine Bradford, Mr. Reuland said. Mr. Reuland acknowledged that, in principle, anyone who knew Mr. Bradford’s user name and password could have typed the Facebook update, but he regards it as unlikely. “This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this; he is not Dr. Evil,” Mr. Reuland said, adding that the Facebook entry was just “icing on the cake,” since his client had other witnesses who provided an alibi. Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said he could not discuss details of the case because it was sealed. But he acknowledged that Facebook was crucial to the charges’ being dropped. But Joseph A. Pollini , who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said prosecutors should not have been so quick to drop the charges. “With a user name and password, anyone can input data in a Facebook page,” Mr. Pollini said. “Some of the brightest people on the Internet are teenagers,” he said. “They know the Internet better than a lot of people. Why? Because they use it all the time.”

Facebook.com
Social Networking (Internet)
Robberies and Thefts
Computers and the Internet


Judge Gives UBS and U.S. Time to Seek a Settlement

Abstract: A federal judge agreed on Monday to delay a hearing on an effort by federal prosecutors to force the Swiss bank UBS to disclose the names of 52,000 wealthy American clients suspected of offshore tax evasion. The postponement had been requested by both the Swiss and American sides, who were involved in deepening negotiations on an out-of-court settlement. Karina Byrne, a UBS spokeswoman, called the delay a “positive development” that provided an opportunity “to come to a potential resolution.” A United States official briefed on the matter said last month that of the 52,000 clients, prosecutors are focused on several thousand very wealthy Americans with offshore accounts containing from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. On Sunday, the Justice Department said that it might fine UBS and possibly even indict the bank if a judge required it to disclose the names and it continued to refuse to do so. The Swiss government has said it will prevent UBS from disclosing any names. Judge Alan S. Gold of Federal District Court in Miami, who agreed to the postponement, rescheduled the hearing for Aug. 3. In February, the Internal Revenue Service, backed by the Justice Department, sued UBS, the world’s largest private bank and a pillar of the Swiss economy, to force it to disclose the 52,000 names. The civil suit was filed a day after UBS averted indictment by agreeing to pay $780 million to settle accusations that it had defrauded the Internal Revenue Service by allowing American clients to hide billions of dollars offshore and evade taxes.

Tax Evasion
UBS AG
Justice Department
Suits and Litigation
Federal Taxes (US)