Obama Seeks New U.S. Role in Climate Debate

Abstract: WASHINGTON — When President Obama barged into a meeting of leaders from Brazil, China, India and other countries at a climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, he managed to extract a last-minute agreement to set a goal to limit the rise in global temperatures. It was the high-water mark of Mr. Obama’s leadership on climate change — even if the deal was less than the Americans or Europeans wanted — but it has been downhill ever since. Preoccupied with other problems, the president largely disappeared from the global debate. Now he is trying to reclaim the spotlight. Mr. Obama’s climate change speech at Georgetown University last week was aimed not just at a domestic audience, but also at foreigners convinced that a balky Congress had killed America’s commitment to tackling the issue. “Make no mistake,” he said, mopping his brow in the 90-degree heat, “the world still looks to America to lead.” Mr. Obama has done more than talk: he recently reached a deal with President Xi Jinping of China to reduce the use of hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs, a particularly potent greenhouse gas. In a meeting long on atmosphere , it was the only achievement that actually cleared the air. “We felt we needed to expand the discussion,” said Caroline Atkinson, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. “We’re working all the different international angles: multilaterally, bilaterally and actions on our own.” That last point is crucial because at Georgetown, Mr. Obama reaffirmed the pledge he made in Copenhagen that the United States would reduce its emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Without mandated cuts in emissions from American power plants, which Mr. Obama announced he would address using his executive powers, there is little hope that the United States can meet that goal. For a president who has been on the defensive over the National Security Agency’s surveillance operations and his failure to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the climate change plan offers a chance to reset his image overseas. It carries echoes of what once made him so popular, tempered with the pragmatism of a leader in his second term. Yet skepticism about America’s resolve to lead runs deep after four years in which climate change took a back seat in Washington to the financial crisis, a new health care law, fiscal negotiations and an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws — really, every other big-ticket item on Mr. Obama’s agenda. Whether the president can erase those doubts is an open question. While the United States drifted, Europe and Australia have plowed ahead with their own ambitious initiatives to reduce emissions. Critics were quick to fault Mr. Obama’s speech for its lack of specifics. “It’s no longer the case where everyone expects key decisions from the United States and are disappointed when they don’t come,” said Stephan Singer, director of global energy policy at the environmental group WWF in Brussels. “Many countries went ahead and did their own stuff, independent of the lack of action in the U.S.” Video At Georgetown University on Tuesday, the president outlined steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat global warming through a series of executive actions. Credit Credit Christopher Gregory/The New York Times Still, Mr. Singer and other experts said a re-engaged United States would make a difference in global climate efforts, particularly with countries like China and India, the world’s first and third largest emitters of carbon dioxide. Both still point to the laggard No. 2, the United States, as the main reason they should not be obliged to do more. Mr. Obama’s speech kindled hopes for a couple of reasons. The centerpiece of his plan does not require Congressional approval. And he announced that the United States would no longer finance the building of conventional coal-fired plants overseas, which would help curb emissions in developing countries. Mr. Obama also argued that confronting climate change need not threaten economic growth: that investing in windmills, solar panels and other types of clean-energy technology could spur scientific innovation and generate jobs. That mollifies countries like India that often complain that the West lectures them about cutting emissions, even if it constricts their development and deprives them of a better lifestyle. “The U.S. has become very sophisticated in its bilateral dealings with countries,” said Durwood Zaelke, who runs the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. “We are targeting things that India needs, like super-efficient air-conditioning.” On a recent visit to New Delhi, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a loan-guarantee program by the United States Agency for International Development intended to generate at least $100 million in private financing to develop clean-energy technologies. “The good news is that if we do this right, it’s not going to hurt our economies,” Mr. Kerry said. “It actually helps them. It won’t deny our children opportunity; it will actually create new ones.” Chandra Bhushan, an Indian environmentalist, wrote in the online magazine Down to Earth that it was “hypocritical” for Mr. Kerry to call for India to cut emissions in its residential sector without discussing how the United States planned to do the same. Still, Mr. Kerry got a warmer reception than his predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first visit to India four years earlier. After touring an energy-efficient building outside New Delhi that was meant to showcase American-Indian cooperation, she was caught off guard when an Indian minister warned the United States not to bully India into legally binding reductions of its carbon emissions. With his long history as a champion of climate change legislation, Mr. Kerry could serve as a not-so-secret weapon for Mr. Obama. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Kerry said he intended to put climate change at the heart of his agenda at the State Department. Mr. Kerry was at the table last month in Rancho Mirage, Calif., when Mr. Obama made his deal on HFCs with Mr. Xi. The administration is emphasizing these agreements, in part to work around the hurdles of negotiating a global deal to reduce emissions through the United Nations, an effort that has dragged on for years. For all Mr. Obama’s efforts to forge side deals and clean-energy partnerships, his reaffirmation of his goal to reduce emissions 17 percent ties him to the United Nations process. Attention now turns to the next big climate conference, which is expected to be held in France in 2015. The question is what role the United States will play. “There are still fears that the political issues in the U.S. could pull down the outcome in the 2015 meeting,” said Jennifer Morgan, director of climate and energy programs at the World Resources Institute. “But this breath of fresh air from the president could revive things.”


Lawsuit Alleges Plagiarism by Hartford Courant

Abstract: Newspapers have tried many ways to cover the news with dwindling resources: dropping certain topics, having people do double duty, using more wire service work. Routine plagiarism is not usually an option, but a lawsuit contends that it was for a while at The Hartford Courant. The Journal Inquirer of Manchester, Conn., has sued The Courant, the state’s largest paper, saying that it copied The Journal Inquirer’s work in articles published last summer, a time when The Courant was also, in a subsequent admission, lifting material from several other northern Connecticut newspapers. The suit, filed Wednesday in Connecticut Superior Court in Hartford, cites 11 Courant articles it says were largely taken from The Journal Inquirer in August and September, and The Journal Inquirer has cited other examples taken from other papers. Plagiarism has cropped up as an occasional transgression at many publications, but it is rarely exposed as a regular practice. Calls to executives at The Courant, which is owned by the Tribune Company of Chicago, were not returned. Online, The Courant credited many if not all of the articles to the original newspapers, Richard P. Weinstein, The Journal Inquirer’s lawyer, said. But in print, the attribution was often dropped, and the byline of a Courant writer was added. The articles were rearranged and rewritten to some extent, but some phrases from the originals remained intact. The suit addresses only examples when no credit was given to The Journal Inquirer, but Mr. Weinstein said that even with attribution, the extent of copying violated the law. He held out the possibility that the suit could be amended to add more examples. Mr. Weinstein said that, historically, The Courant was highly respected and was the most important news source in the region, but coming after deep newsroom cuts, the plagiarism “is just a sad, sad comment.” On Aug. 29, The Journal Inquirer published an article describing the plagiarism. The next day, The Courant published a statement saying that there had been errors stemming from aggregating news from various sources. Traditional news organizations have clashed with Internet aggregators that reprint their work, but those disputes generally involve taking snippets — not the bulk of articles — crediting the original source and linking to it. On Sept. 4, The Courant published another statement, from Richard Graziano, the president and publisher, saying that “we have determined that over the last several weeks, The Courant plagiarized the work of some of our competitors.” The Journal Inquirer suit, which seeks unspecified damages, asserts that at least one example was published after that statement. Mr. Graziano’s statement said the people responsible had been disciplined, but it did not name them or specify what punishment they had received.

Hartford Courant
Plagiarism
Newspapers
Suits and Litigation
News and News Media
Journal Inquirer The


Web Site’s Formula for Success: TV Content With Fewer Ads

Abstract: “THUMBS up” and “thumbs down” ratings for commercials. Choose-your-own-advertisement options before shows begin. Interactive games during advertising breaks. In the last year these online advertising innovations have been popularized by Hulu, the online video Web site that will celebrate its first anniversary on Wednesday. For all that has been written about Hulu’s easy-to-use, aesthetically pleasing interface, the advertising experience is equally important. In the place of the long commercial pods that TV viewers have become accustomed to, only one ad is shown during each segment break on Hulu. Fewer ads make the ones on the site more memorable, Hulu executives say, allowing the site to charge higher prices for the ad units. “The notion that less is more is absolutely playing out on Hulu,” Jason Kilar, the chief executive of the site, said. “This is benefiting advertisers as much as it is benefiting users.” While Hulu was not the first site to serve up full-length television shows or create new advertising units, it now dominates the emerging market for ad-supported TV and movie streaming. It emerged in public beta form one year ago with 10 advertisers, made its official debut in March, and now counts more than 100 sponsors, from General Motors to Old Spice. The site has grown steadily, providing 142 million streams to 6.3 million unique viewers in September, Nielsen Online reported last week. Hulu is now the sixth-most-popular online video brand in the United States, surpassing the online video networks operated by ESPN, CNN, MTV and Disney. (It ranks far below YouTube, which streams 20 times as many videos as any other brand in the United States, and behind sites owned by Yahoo, Fox, MSN and Nickelodeon.) With a library of more than 1,000 television series and 400 feature-length films, Hulu attracts a wider audience than individual network Web sites or competitors like Veoh and Joost. Recently, the site’s biggest hurdle has been a shortage of advertising amid a sudden increase in video viewing. The cause? “Tina Fey happened to do an unbelievably good impression of Sarah Palin,” Mr. Kilar said, referring to the “Saturday Night Live” skits lampooning the Republican vice presidential nominee. Buzz about the sketches drove millions to view them online. The first skit about Ms. Palin, on Sept. 13, was viewed 14.3 million times on Hulu and NBC.com and watched by 10.2 million on television. The second sketch, on Sept. 27, has been viewed 11.1 million times on the site after being watched by 7.9 million on TV. While the comparisons are inexact because online viewers could be watching more than once, “Saturday Night Streamed” may seem a more apt title for the show. At the same time that “Saturday Night Live” helped spike Hulu’s traffic, the fall premieres of many popular TV shows attracted more visitors. To match the advertising inventory to the rapid growth in video views, “we now have to go back out into the marketplace very quickly,” Mr. Kilar said. While the site, a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corporation, is reportedly not yet profitable, it has won over many advertising executives. “I’ve been waiting for this for 10 years,” Greg Smith, the chief operating officer of Neo@Ogilvy, an interactive agency of the Ogilvy Group, told Mr. Kilar during a product demonstration last November. Mr. Smith now uses the site regularly. “Hulu takes TV content, which is the best long-form video content there is — the Web has yet to come up with something as good — and it just breaks it out of the tyranny of the schedule,” he said in an interview. In a customer survey commissioned by Hulu and conducted by Insight Express in July and August, 76 percent of nearly 18,000 respondents said that the site had the right amount of ads given the can’t-be-beat cost of viewing (free). Just over 17 percent said there was less advertising than they expected. The survey also found a 22 percent bump in advertiser message association and a 28 percent increase in intent to purchase among users. Mr. Kilar is an advocate of the fewer-ads approach. The half-hour comedies that are so popular on Hulu — “Family Guy” from Fox and “The Office” from NBC — have an average of eight minutes of commercial time on TV. On Hulu, where the sitcoms are especially popular, each show averages about two minutes of ads. “We think that a modest amount of advertising is the right thing because that’s going to drive atypical results for marketers,” Mr. Kilar said. He said the site had no plans to increase the advertising load. As effective as the ads may be, it must be hard to resist adding more. ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, conducted focus groups with consumers last summer to gauge potential changes to the advertising load on its video Web site. The company is now analyzing the focus group findings, a spokeswoman said. ABC.com was the first network Web site to introduce full-episode streaming in 2006. Research by ABC last January found that the one-ad-per-segment format resulted in a 54 percent ad recall rate. ABC and the other broadcast networks now make the recent episodes of almost every TV series available for streaming. NBC put the season premieres of “30 Rock” and other shows online a week before they were shown on TV this season. Despite all the experimentation, it is still difficult to know exactly how many viewers are watching individual TV shows and movies online. Hulu ranks its most popular content, but unlike YouTube it doesn’t show the view count for each video. Still, it is clear that millions of viewers are watching some shows online. The Season 3 premiere of “Heroes” in September was streamed 8.1 million times on Hulu and NBC.com, according to the network. (All online streams are not counted as equal, because on NBC.com each segment of an episode is counted as a stream, so a full episode could count as six streams. On Hulu, one episode equals one stream.) It is easier to count the click-through rates for the video ads. On ABC.com, nearly one in four users participate when the ads are interactive, the network said. On Hulu, companies like Nissan have offered multiple versions of commercials for viewers to choose. The site is also experimenting with longer-form advertisements, sometimes letting users choose to watch a movie trailer in place of a 30-second spot. Hiccups remain, Mr. Smith said, noting that technology sometimes limits innovation. “I’m still getting the same spot five times in an hourlong program sometimes,” he said. “If I stop watching a movie and come back a few days later, it remembers where I stopped, which is great, but I wish it would remember which spots I was exposed to.” In a glimpse of the future of ad feedback, Hulu users are encouraged to click buttons indicating whether they like or dislike each ad they see. “As we collect more and more data, we can personalize the ad experience for you,” Mr. Kilar said.

Hulu.com
Online Advertising
Advertising and Marketing
Computers and the Internet
Television


Zuckerberg’s Legal Options Are Slender

Abstract: Millions of the moviegoers who made “The Social Network” the top box-office draw of the weekend saw an unflattering portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg , the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook . To many viewers, Mr. Zuckerberg comes off as a callow, socially inept schemer who misled fellow students who had wanted to build an online social network at Harvard and who also pushed out a co-founder of the company. With only a few exceptions — girlfriends and a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm — the names have not been changed to mask identities. The film’s truthfulness, however, has been strongly questioned in forums like Slate , the online magazine, and The New Republic . Many of those who know Mr. Zuckerberg argue that it is inaccurate in significant ways. David Kirkpatrick, who wrote a company-authorized history of Facebook titled “The Facebook Effect,” said, “The reality is, it’s a really good movie — however, it’s not a true story.” Mr. Kirkpatrick has written critically about the movie on the Web site The Daily Beast. And that raises a question: how can filmmakers take liberties with the story of a living person, and does that person have any recourse if the portrayal upsets him? After all, many movies run a legal disclaimer in the credits that says, “Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” There is nothing new about film biographies, though hagiographies are far more common than hatchet jobs. A movie in the works on Chesley B. Sullenberger III will focus on landing a plane in the Hudson, not on recreating a scene in a college bar where a girl called the protagonist a bad name — an important moment in the Facebook film. Studios will often seek the cooperation of subjects, paying them for the use of their life stories. When it comes to public figures, lawyers say, appropriating someone’s life story for a movie is not so different from telling such details in a news article or printed biography. Politicians have grown used to harsh onscreen treatment, having learned that there is a degree of latitude for inaccuracy and strong protection against libel suits. Eugene Volokh, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, law school, said that if Mr. Zuckerberg sued and was declared a public figure, he would then “have to show that the filmmakers knew the statements were false, or were reckless about the possibility of falsehood.” David L. Hudson Jr., a scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, agreed that “it would be pretty difficult” for a person like Mr. Zuckerberg, with a good likelihood of being found a public figure, to successfully sue over a movie he believes to be libelous. The legal standard was set in the realm of journalism, in cases like New York Times v. Sullivan, said Floyd Abrams, a leading First Amendment lawyer, but “a moviemaker is not going to get less protection than a journalist. If they’ve got sources and depositions and the like, and they use it in a reasonably fair way, they are likely protected.” Scott Rudin, one of the film’s producers, said that in fact, the filmmakers worked hard at discerning the truth in conflicting versions of events and telling it straight. “Where the plaintiffs and defendants don’t agree in life, they don’t agree in the movie,” he said. The result, he insisted, is accurate. “The movie is thoroughly vetted,” he said. “I’m very comfortable that we got the facts right.” Mr. Zuckerberg and his company, it seems, are not taking a benign view of the new film, and issued a statement that plays up the sense that the portrayal is fictional and shouldn’t be taken all that seriously. “They do a wonderful job of telling a good story,” the company said in the statement. “Of course, the reality probably wouldn’t make for a very fun or interesting movie.” The company also quoted the screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, who told New York Magazine , “I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling.” However, on the movie’s opening day, the staff at the company’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters bought two theaters’ worth of seats to catch an early screening . If the film’s audience continues to grow, and it begins to attract awards, it could prove a more nagging problem for a young company that has already come under attack from privacy advocates. In such a case, companies have chosen a forum more favorable than the United States to sue, Mr. Abrams said. “If he wanted to sue, he ought to sue in London, where the law is so very pro plaintiff and so very indifferent to what we consider to be free speech rights,” he said. But any courtroom would hold other risks for Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Abrams said. “The last thing he’d want is to bring a lawsuit on his whole life,” a headline-grabbing ordeal in which depositions and withering cross-examination could make anyone look bad. The company will most likely just let things stand. If the film, for all its critical acclaim, turns out to be a pallid performer at the box office, it could be out of the multiplex in a short time. Its opening weekend was solid, with $23 million in receipts. Any legal action against the film would bring more attention to it. There is some precedent in Silicon Valley for the image-conscious subject of such a film to bury the hatchet. “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” a TV movie that appeared on TNT in 1999, told the bits-to-riches stories of Bill Gates and Steven P. Jobs. It portrayed Mr. Gates as a nerdish conqueror and Mr. Jobs as a revolutionary creep. The film did not seem to leave hard feelings, though. At an Apple product unveiling in 1999, the actor who portrayed Mr. Jobs in the movie, Noah Wyle, pretended to be the “iCEO,” stepping onto the stage in Mr. Jobs’s signature black turtleneck and jeans and telling the crowd about the “insanely great” products to be announced that day. Steve Jobs himself then came out to whoops and cheers, and told the crowd that he had invited Mr. Wyle because “he’s a better me than me.”

Zuckerberg Mark E
Movies
Facebook.com
Libel and Slander
Social Network The (Movie)


In Lots of Animal Art, Wrong Foot Is Forward

Abstract: The way four-legged animals walk has been well known since the 1880s, when Eadweard Muybridge’s motion-capture photographs revealed the sequence of leg movements. They walk this way: the left hind leg moves forward, followed by the left foreleg, right hind leg and right foreleg, in order. You’d think that since this knowledge has been around for a century or so, artists, taxidermists, toy designers and others responsible for depicting animals would get it right. But a study by Gabor Horvath of Eotvos University in Hungary and colleagues shows that this is often not the case. After analyzing more than 300 depictions of walking animals in museums, veterinary books and toy models, the researchers report that in almost half of them the leg positions are wrong. The findings are published in the journal Current Biology. The researchers studied only depictions where it could be determined unambiguously that the animal was walking, and not trotting or otherwise running, as in those gaits the leg movements may differ. (In walking, two or more legs are touching the ground at all times while in galloping, for example, there are moments when all the legs are lifted.) The researchers found, for example, that a skeleton of a dog at a Finnish museum depicts the right hindleg in a rearward position while the right foreleg is lifted and moving forward. In a proper depiction the hindleg would be forward too, having moved before the foreleg. The researchers say that while toy designers may perhaps be forgiven, it is surprising that artists and others who provide depictions for natural history museums and textbooks are so scientifically incorrect.

Animals
Anatomy and Physiology
Art
Science and Technology


Bayer Deal for Monsanto Follows Agribusiness Trend, Raising Worries for Farmers

Abstract: Don Halcomb, a 63-year-old farmer in Adairville, Ky., is expecting his profit to vanish this year, largely because of the confluence of falling crop prices and rising costs for seeds and other materials. The price of an 80,000-kernel bag of seed corn rose to $300 from $80 in the last decade, as the companies that produced them consolidated, he said. And with the recent decline in commodity prices, Mr. Halcomb said he expects to lose $100 an acre this year. “We’re producing our crops at a loss now, just like the oil guys are pumping oil at a loss,” Mr. Halcomb, who grows corn, soybeans, wheat and barley on his 7,000-acre family farm, said by telephone on Wednesday. “You can’t cut your costs fast enough.” It is a common plight of farmers across the United States, with the global agriculture industry in a wrenching downturn. Because farmers have produced too much corn, wheat and soybeans, they have been forced to slash prices to sell their crops. They have also reduced spending on seeds, pesticides and fertilizer, which has eaten into sales at agribusiness giants, including Monsanto and DuPont. In response, these companies have sought multibillion-dollar deals to cut costs and weather the industry’s storm. Four major agribusiness mergers have been announced in the last year. The latest is Bayer AG’s $56 billion takeover of Monsanto — the largest acquisition of 2016 — announced on Wednesday. Every merger creates the possibility of higher costs for farmers. Video “We have very, very little overlap,” said Werner Baumann, C.E.O. of the chemical conglomerate, on regulatory concerns with a deal for the fertilizer maker. Credit Credit CNBC Mr. Halcomb buys seeds with traits licensed to Monsanto of St. Louis and seeds from DuPont, which has a deal pending to merge with Dow Chemical. His fertilizers are made of potassium compounds and phosphate produced by Agrium of Calgary, Alberta, which on Monday agreed to combine with the fertilizer producer Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. He uses pesticides made by Syngenta of Switzerland, which agreed in February to a takeover by the China National Chemical Corporation. “It’s just like any other industry that consolidates,” Mr. Halcomb said. “They tell the regulators they’re cost-cutting, and then they tell their customers they have to increase pricing after the deal’s done.” The companies say they are merging to diversify and increase growth and research capabilities, but these deals, given their size and scope, have already caught the attention of lawmakers and regulators in Washington. There is no guarantee that they will all receive regulatory approval, and some companies may have to sell assets to allay antitrust concerns. Dow’s merger with DuPont is under Justice Department review. The market seemed to anticipate hurdles for the Monsanto deal on Wednesday. Shares of the company closed about 20 percent lower than the $128 per share cash offer from Bayer, which is based in Leverkusen, Germany. Shares of each company gained less than 1 percent after the deal was announced. Adding the assumption of about $10 billion of Monsanto debt, Bayer’s total $66 billion pact is the largest all-cash deal, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters, ahead of InBev’s $60.4 billion offer for another St. Louis-based company, Anheuser-Busch, in June 2008. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, scheduled a hearing next week to discuss the possible effect of these agriculture-related mergers on farming. Iowa produced more corn last year than any other state, according to the National Corn Growers Association. Video “Farmers are starving for innovation and this, through time, will bring better innovation to them,” said Hugh Grant, chief executive of the American fertilizer maker. Credit Credit CNBC “It seems to be catching fire and happening so fast with so many,” Senator Grassley said in a phone interview. “When you have less competition, prices go up.” European competition regulators also said publicly, before a Bayer-Monsanto deal was even signed, that they would look at how it could affect prices and the availability of seed products, as well as research. Liam Condon, who leads Bayer’s crop-science division, said in an interview that the company did an “extensive analysis” with regard to antitrust before approaching Monsanto in May. Mr. Condon said that he does not believe there is much overlap between their portfolios, because Bayer’s focus is largely on crop protection, while Monsanto’s is on seeds and traits. He said the companies assume they may need to sell off some assets to appease regulators. Monsanto, which is famous for its production of genetically modified seeds, rejected several offers from Bayer as too low. Wednesday’s deal represented a 44 percent premium to Monsanto’s stock price on May 9, the day before Bayer’s interest in a deal surfaced. To assuage Monsanto’s concerns, Bayer threw in a $2 billion breakup fee if the deal fell apart on antitrust grounds. The strategic goal of the deal, according to Bill Selesky, an analyst at Argus Research, is to create a one-stop-shopping experience for farmers, making Bayer the world’s largest supplier of seeds and farm chemicals. By improving the product for farmers, the combined company could ultimately raise prices, Mr. Selesky said in an interview. Senator Grassley said that he had spoken with a few farmers who believed the deals were necessary so large agribusinesses could continue to absorb the costs of researching and developing products and getting government approval for them. Image Tim Hully harvesting corn at Walnut Grove Farm in Adairville, Ky. Credit Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times Bayer and Monsanto said they planned to cut about $1.2 billion worth of costs as part of the deal, helping to improve efficiency. But Jim Benham of Versailles, Ind., the president of the Indiana Farmers Union, was not so optimistic. He blamed the rising costs of inputs — seeds, fertilizer and the like — for eating away at farmers’ profit margins, and warned that consolidation will make it worse. Costs have already risen by double digits over the last four to five years, and the proposed Bayer-Monsanto merger could accelerate that. “The merger is going to hurt the farmer,” said Mr. Benham, who grows corn, soybeans and sometimes wheat on his 1,400-acre farm. “The more consolidation we have on our inputs, the worse it gets.” Mr. Condon of Bayer said that the company would not raise prices without providing more value to farmers. “This is a highly competitive industry, and just increasing prices without having any additional advantage or benefit for growers won’t go anywhere,” he said. “It’s up to us to show what we’re offering will help farmers improve their return on investment.” Some farmers said the consolidation could even enable prices to fall. Christine Hamilton manages a farm of more than 12,000 acres in Kimball, S.D., growing crops like corn and operating a ranch. She said that if the deal can pass the antitrust screening, then maybe it could actually help farmers. “I understand how companies need to get bigger in order to be competitive,” she said. “As we are in a low part of the cycle, anything that might have a chance of reducing our input prices would be great.”

Mergers and Acquisitions
Bayer
Monsanto
Competition law
Agriculture


Crawford Leads No. 6 Xavier Past Minnesota

Abstract: MILWAUKEE — Minnesota blocked a lot of Xavier shots but did not make enough of its own Friday afternoon and fell to the Musketeers, 65-54, in a first-round N.C.A.A. tournament game in the West Region. Jordan Crawford led Xavier with 28 points but he did much more than score. In addition to his shooting skills, Crawford, a sophomore from Detroit, showed a well-rounded mix of passing, dribbling and rebounding. Xavier, a No. 6 seed, will play either Pittsburgh or Oakland here on Sunday for the right to advance to next week’s Round of 16 in Salt Lake City. No. 11 Minnesota blocked 11 Xavier shots, all but one of them in the first half. Crawford helped finish the Golden Gophers in the final minute after Minnesota cut the lead to 6 points by sinking a 3-pointer from the left side of the floor with 38 seconds remaining. Crawford finished with five rebounds and two assists. At halftime, the score was tied, 26-26, as Lawrence Westbrook led Minnesota with 15 points, including three field goals from 3-point range. The Gophers also had a shot-block advantage of 10-0 at intermission, five of them by Colton Iverson and two by Ralph Sampson III. Crawford, who had 11 points at halftime, showed his artistic qualities early in the second half with a variety of shots that helped put his team up by 7 points. He scooped one with his right hand that kissed the glass on the way down and reversed hands on a layup under pressure during a fast break that ended with Crawford on the floor. The Musketeers increased the lead to 52-44 when Mark Lyons finished with a soft layup after a dazzling spin move on the fast break that drew oohs and aahs from the crowd. Crawford hit a long 3-pointer to put Xavier up by 11 with seven minutes left. It came at the end of a long possession that included much ball movement that ran time off the clock while frustrating the Gophers defense. The Musketeers put a little relish on it minutes later when Terrell Holloway and Crawford ran a give-and-go that Holloway finished with a layup and drawing a foul. When Minnesota threatened a comeback after two Xavier turnovers in the final four minutes, Crawford stole the ball, forcing the frustrated Gophers to commit a foul. A minute later, after Minnesota cut the lead to seven, Crawford calmly rebounded a Gopher miss, dribbled up court and swung a pass to the opposite side of the floor to begin another time-consuming play. Xavier improved its record to 25-8. The Golden Gophers ended their season at 21-14. Xavier has won 9 of its last 10 games.

NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
Xavier University of Ohio
University of Minnesota
Basketball
College Athletics


Red Bulls Demolish New York City in What Has Been a One-Sided Rivalry

Abstract: When Frank Lampard, the decorated English star, jogged onto the field at Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon, he found himself in unexpectedly antagonistic territory. After being sidelined for more than two months at the beginning of the season, he was finally making his debut for New York City F.C. in the 75th minute of their 13th game. His reception was unwelcoming: a chorus of boos from the crowd. It was hardly the worst indignity of the day for the home team. Lampard’s return came in the Red Bulls’ 7-0 rout of New York City. As the local matchup tries to gain footing and luster — headlining Major League Soccer’s rivalry week — it has barely been much of a rivalry at all. The Red Bulls have won all four games between the teams and have outscored N.Y.C.F.C. by 12 goals. Saturday’s victory was embarrassingly easy. The Red Bulls took the lead in the third minute, led by 3-0 at halftime and kept scoring even as they cycled in their reserves. Four goals came on set pieces — another humiliation for New York City. “It was a disaster for us,” David Villa, New York City’s captain, said. The victory held up a mirror to the divergence in team-building between the clubs. The Red Bulls’ roster is composed mostly of players who have spent considerable time in the M.L.S. and includes a significant element of homegrown talent that matriculated through the team’s development academy. Last year, the team posted the best record in the Eastern Conference, and it has moved into the top half of the standings after a slow start to the season. New York City has continued M.L.S.’s penchant for stargazing and big spending. They brought in Andrea Pirlo, Villa and Lampard. In 2015, their inaugural season, they finished eighth in the conference, though until Saturday their approach had brought them better results this season. Lampard has drawn a particularly outsize portion of attention from the fans. He finished the Premier League season in England with Manchester City last year and was injured when he joined New York City. He ended up playing in only 10 of 34 games. When this season began, he sustained a calf injury and with it even more criticism. Earlier in the week, the disclosure of players’ salaries by their union did him no favors, either. It revealed that Lampard had the fifth-highest salary in the league this year, at $6 million. Still, Lampard played down the jeers he received when he entered the game Saturday as little more than dissatisfaction with New York City’s play to that point. “I came in at 5-0; it’s not ideal to come in,” he said, striking a defiant tone. “But I don’t think the fans are aware of the injury I had. If I’m getting booed for being injured, then there’s not much I can do about that. I had a nice injury, which is an eight- to 10-week injury. At the beginning, the doctors thought it was a small injury, which it didn’t turn out to be. I’ve been training morning and afternoon to get fit. People don’t see that. So if they’re going to boo for being injured, then, as I said, there’s not much I can do other than get fit, play, show up and go on the pitch.” New York City’s strong start has given it a cushion against Lampard’s absence. It sits second in the conference, behind Philadelphia, and a point ahead of the Red Bulls. Though Villa and Lampard tried to diminish Saturday’s loss, it has significance. New York City now has a league-worst minus-6 goal differential. The Red Bulls demolished N.Y.C.F.C. quickly. Dax McCarty headed in an out-swinging corner kick from Sacha Kljestan to open the scoring, and the two connected again in the 51st minute. Bradley Wright-Phillips scored two goals as well, including a highlight-worthy bicycle kick in the first half. It was a microcosm of the disparity between the two teams when they have played each other, and it gave the Red Bulls an opportunity to crow again. Their fans were no less vocal. Their supporters chanted “Who’s your daddy?” as the lead grew. When the game ended and an announcement over the loudspeaker declared Villa the star of the match, laughter crackled from the stands. “Not in our wildest dreams,” Red Bulls Coach Jesse Marsch said, “would we have predicted 7-0.”

Soccer
New York City Football Club Soccer Team
New York Red Bulls Soccer Team
Sports injury


Mayor and State Reach Deal on a Schools Chief

Abstract: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg reached a deal Friday to save the tottering candidacy of Cathleen P. Black to be the next chancellor of New York City schools, agreeing to appoint a career educator who started as a classroom teacher to serve as her second in command. As a result, the state education commissioner, David M. Steiner, has agreed to grant Ms. Black, a media executive, the exemption from the normal credentials required by state law for the position, according to a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations. The move was a significant concession by Mr. Bloomberg, who has often resisted efforts from outside City Hall to meddle in his affairs. The mayor’s hand was forced on Tuesday when Dr. Steiner questioned her readiness for the position. Ms. Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, has spent a lifetime in the media business, does not hold any advanced degrees and has had little exposure to public schools. The controversy over Ms. Black, 66, had become a liability for Mr. Bloomberg, and a poll released on Tuesday showed that a majority of New Yorkers did not think Ms. Black was qualified to serve as chancellor. After several days of talks with state officials, Mr. Bloomberg agreed to create the position of chief academic officer to oversee curriculum and testing at the city’s Department of Education. Under the deal, that job would go to Shael Polakow-Suransky, a former principal of a Bronx high school who is a top official at the city’s Department of Education. But exactly how much authority Mr. Polakow-Suransky, 38, will wield is unclear. A job description prepared by the city said he would have “the broadest scope for the exercise of independent initiative and judgment” and listed 25 duties, including many that would normally fall to the head of a school system. But Mr. Polakow-Suransky will still report to Ms. Black, who is accustomed to setting the agenda in the rough-and-tumble world of corporate culture. Ms. Black and Mr. Polakow-Suransky have met several times over the past week to discuss how they will divide authority. Ms. Black is scheduled to take office Jan. 1 after the resignation of the current chancellor, Joel I. Klein. She will oversee the nation’s largest school system, with 1.1 million children, 135,000 employees and 1,600 schools. Natalie Ravitz, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said on Friday, “As an experienced C.E.O., Ms. Black recognized the need to have a senior deputy with specific expertise in academic matters.” Dr. Steiner, who declined to comment on Friday, is expected to announce his approval of a waiver on Monday. On Friday, Mr. Bloomberg submitted a letter making the case for Ms. Black and her new deputy. A mayoral spokesman declined to comment but did not dispute the details of the agreement. Mr. Polakow-Suransky did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the State Board of Regents, who played a central role in brokering the deal, also declined to comment. Referring to the position of chief academic officer earlier in the week, she said, “The issue for us is, ‘Can we create credibility around this position?’ ” The deal reached Friday capped a week of frantic talks between the city and the state. Mr. Bloomberg, who was given control of city schools in 2002, has said that transforming the school system will define his legacy as mayor. Mr. Bloomberg viewed Dr. Steiner’s challenge as a critical test of his authority over the school system. The mayor told people involved in the negotiations that a rejection of Ms. Black would undermine the model of mayoral control and set a dangerous precedent. At one point while the negotiations were under way, Mr. Bloomberg said publicly that the law requiring the schools chancellor to hold education credentials was obsolete and should be abolished. Mr. Bloomberg had initially believed he could build enough public pressure to force Dr. Steiner to approve Ms. Black, according to the person with knowledge of the negotiations. Business executives, former mayors and celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg flooded Dr. Steiner’s offices with messages in support of Ms. Black. But Dr. Steiner remained skeptical, and he said on Tuesday he would consider her appointment only if Mr. Bloomberg installed an educator at her side. The talks with the mayor about that possibility grew more serious after an eight-member panel advising Dr. Steiner on Ms. Black’s qualifications on Tuesday mustered only two votes unconditionally in support of her, unexpectedly throwing the selection process into disarray. Mr. Bloomberg typically loathes intrusions into his management of the city. But throughout the negotiations for the waiver, he showed an unusual willingness to compromise to preserve Ms. Black’s candidacy. To the surprise of his own associates, he held his tongue in public, refusing to challenge Dr. Steiner and the panel that rebuked his choice for chancellor. The reaction to the deal, and to Mr. Polakow-Suransky’s appointment, was mixed on Friday. State Assemblyman Hakeem S. Jeffries, a Democrat who has helped coordinate the opposition to Ms. Black, said he would pursue a legal challenge, arguing that the appointment of a chief academic officer does not compensate for Ms. Black’s lack of educational experience. Sol Stern, an education researcher at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, said he thought that the deal was a victory for Mr. Bloomberg, and that Mr. Polakow-Suransky’s appointment would not be a serious check to Ms. Black’s authority. “He will be treated by the mayor and Black as a gofer,” Mr. Stern, a frequent critic of the mayor, wrote in an e-mail. “This is a farce.” Underscoring the high-stakes nature of Ms. Black’s fate, even the federal secretary of education, Arne Duncan, spoke to both Dr. Steiner and Mr. Bloomberg during the negotiations. On Friday, Mr. Duncan praised the outcome. “Can anyone do this alone? Of course not,” he said. “This is a monumentally tough, complex organization.”

Black Cathleen P
Bloomberg Michael R
Education Department (NYC)
Education (K-12)
New York City
Steiner David M
Polakow-Suransky Shael


Egypt to Charge Officer in Killing of Shaimaa el-Sabbagh

Abstract: CAIRO — Egyptian prosecutors said Tuesday that they were charging a police officer with a type of manslaughter in the shooting of a poet and activist whose killing at a peaceful demonstration made her the latest symbol of police abuse. In a statement, prosecutors said they were charging the officer with “battery causing death” in the killing of Shaimaa el-Sabbagh with a shotgun blast of birdshot. Prosecutors also said that they would charge some of Ms. Sabbagh’s fellow protesters with staging an unauthorized demonstration and threatening the public order, crimes punishable by years in prison under a law passed shortly after the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. The same statement, from the office of Public Prosecutor Hisham Barakat, also appeared to minimize at least two other allegations of police misconduct that had turned into national scandals, suggesting that the authorities might be trying to close the books on several embarrassing cases as a newly appointed interior minister, Magdy Abdel Gaffar, takes office. The most notorious case was the killing of Ms. Sabbagh, 31, who was photographed dying in the arms of another activist at a march to lay flowers in Tahrir Square on Jan. 24, a day before the anniversary of the Arab Spring revolt here. She was a sympathetic victim: the mother of a 5-year-old boy, an accomplished poet and a leader in a secular party broadly supportive of the current government. The images of her blood-streaked face resonated so widely that even President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi joined the public calls for an inquiry. Prosecutors then issued a gag order banning news organizations from reporting on her killing until Tuesday’s statement, which did not name the police officer charged. In a statement, Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, noted that under current Egyptian law, a manslaughter charge involving the killing of a demonstrator carried a similar prison term to charges against participants in an unauthorized demonstration, suggesting “a false and worrying equivalence between a peaceful protest and a fatal shooting.” Karim Ennarah, a researcher who tracks the criminal justice system for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the charges in the killing of Ms. Sabbagh were a good development toward police accountability. He noted, however, that other police officers had sometimes faced criminal charges after public outcries in high-profile abuse cases, and in the end they were very rarely convicted. The prosecutor’s actions in the other two cases, he said, were “a shame.” One was the death of Mohamed el-Gindy, a 28-year-old protester who was found unconscious in the street in early 2013 after he had given a television interview criticizing police brutality and mocking Mr. Morsi. Video Videos captured the final moments of the Egyptian activist Shaimaa al-Sabbagh’s life before and after she was shot by the police during a peaceful protest in Cairo on Jan. 24. Credit Credit Emad El-Gebaly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In the statement, prosecutors said they had concluded that Mr. Gindy had been killed by an unidentified vehicle. The statement said a panel of five doctors had concluded that Mr. Gindy’s injuries “followed the pattern of those caused by car accidents” and “could not have possibly been caused by physical torture.” Mr. Gindy’s family and political allies accused the police of killing him. In an investigation by The New York Times, an ambulance driver who found him and two doctors who had examined his body all said that his injuries were inconsistent with a car accident. The doctors said independently that the injuries appeared to have come from his head being slammed against a floor or a wall. The prosecutors also said they were bringing criminal charges against a witness who said he had seen Mr. Gindy tortured inside a police camp. The witness was charged with spreading false rumors, prosecutors said. The third case involved the death of soccer fans who were killed by asphyxiation in a stampede outside a Cairo stadium last month. Witnesses said the stampede had been set off when the police fired tear gas and birdshot into a narrow pen where the fans had been jammed waiting for a chance to enter the stadium, and photographs and video appeared to confirm their account. No evidence has emerged of any clash with the police, who were on the other side of a chain-link barrier. Yet in the aftermath of the stampede, prosecutors quickly began pinning the blame on leaders of a group of hard-core fans known as the Ultras White Knights. In the statement on Tuesday, prosecutors said that members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that backed Mr. Morsi, had conspired with the Ultras White Knights to cause a riot. Armed with “funds and explosive materials” provided by the Brotherhood, the prosecutors said, a “mob” of fans had “chanted slogans against the government,” launched fireworks at the police, injured several police officers, burned police cars and vandalized property, “prompting security forces to fire tear-gas canisters to disperse them.” “This resulted in a state of chaos and congestion among supporters trying to enter the stadium, causing pushing and shoving and culminating in the death of several and injury of others,” the prosecutors said, adding that they had charged 16 defendants with “thuggery including murder” and other crimes. Mr. Ennarah, the researcher, called the charges against the fans “a complete sham,” noting that there was no evidence of any clash with the police before tear gas prompted the stampede and suffocations.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Modesto Cartagena, Hero of Korea, Is Dead at 87

Abstract: Modesto Cartagena, who was cited for heroism in the Korean War while fighting in an Army regiment composed almost entirely of soldiers from Puerto Rico and acclaimed for its bravery, died Tuesday at his home in Guayama, P.R. He was 87. The cause was a heart attack, said his son Modesto Jr. In September 1950, the 65th Infantry Regiment arrived at the South Korean port of Pusan. Over the next three years the regiment fought in nine major battles, including a blocking maneuver that helped Marines complete a fighting retreat from the Chinese Communist onslaught at the Chosin Reservoir in December 1950. The Puerto Rican soldiers surmounted not only the Communist enemy but also prejudicial attitudes. Brig. Gen. William Harris, the regiment’s commander during the early stages of the Korean War, was quoted by The Denver Post as having written after the war that he was reluctant to take the post because the Puerto Rican troops were disparaged in the military as a “rum and Coca-Cola outfit.” But, he continued, he came to view them as “the best damn soldiers in that war.” More than 3,800 members of the regiment were killed or wounded in Korea. Sergeant Cartagena, a member of the regiment’s First Battalion, received the Distinguished Service Cross , the Army’s highest award for valor after the Medal of Honor, for “extraordinary heroism” in a single-handed assault that enabled his company to seize a hill near Yonchon, South Korea, on April 19, 1951. Sergeant Cartagena had charged ahead of his men, who were pinned down by a “well-entrenched and fanatically determined hostile force,” as his citation put it. His rifle was shot away from him and he was wounded by enemy grenades, but he dispatched five Communist emplacements by tossing grenades at them. A native of Cayey, P.R., Mr. Cartagena was born on July 22, 1922. He fought in Europe during World War II, and besides the Distinguished Service Cross was awarded Silver and Bronze Stars in both World War II and Korea. In addition to Modesto Cartagena Jr., he is survived by his sons Luis, Fernando and Vitin; his daughters, Sara and Wilma; his sisters, Maria and Virginia; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His wife, Sara, died in 1995. The 65th Infantry Regiment became known as the Borinqueneers, the term derived from an Indian word for Puerto Rico denoting “land of the brave lord.” Its history was related in the 2007 television documentary “The Borinqueneers,” produced, directed and written by Noemi Figueroa Soulet. On the 50th anniversary of the regiment’s arrival in Korea, Louis Caldera, the secretary of the Army, unveiled a plaque in its honor at Arlington National Cemetery. Mr. Cartagena attended in his old dress uniform, with its stripes denoting a sergeant first class. “I’m just sorry that I’m too old to go to Afghanistan to fight,” he told The El Paso Times in 2002. “I’d do it all over again if I could.”

Defense and Military Forces
Discrimination
Deaths (Obituaries)
Cartagena Modesto
Korean War
Hispanic-Americans
Puerto Ricans


Wild Shut Out Devils

Abstract: Josh Harding stopped 19 shots for his second shutout of the season, and the Wild beat the Devils, 4-0, in Minnesota. In other games, the Dallas Stars skated to a 4-3 shootout victory over the host Ottawa Senators, and the visiting Calgary Flames beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 3-2, in overtime.

Ice hockey
Minnesota Wild
Devils
Dallas Stars
Chicago Blackhawks
Ottawa Senators
Calgary Flames


Crisis in Ukraine Drags Economy in Germany

Abstract: The eurozone’s flatlining economy took another hit on Monday when data showed German business sentiment sagging for the fourth consecutive month. Chancellor Angela Merkel attributed some of her own country’s decline in the second quarter to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, over which tit-for-tat sanctions threaten trade. The Munich-based Ifo, a research firm, echoed some of those sentiments as it reported its business climate index, based on a monthly survey of some 7,000 companies, fell to a worse-than-expected 106.3 from 108, the lowest level in more than a year. The findings agreed with data earlier in the month on the second-quarter contraction in Germany, the bloc’s biggest economy. Klaus Wohlrabe, an Ifo economist, said his institute expected growth in Germany to be “close to zero” in the third quarter.

Germany
Ukraine
Russia
Economy
Embargoes Sanctions
Angela Merkel


Chapecoense Grief: ‘I Just Want to Go Back to Yesterday’

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — The crash in Colombia of the chartered plane carrying the Brazilian soccer club Chapecoense, the scrappy upstart team from a humdrum industrial city, crushed the hopes of one of the most remarkable success stories of Brazilian soccer in recent memory. As recently as 2009, Chapecoense was playing in the obscurity of Brazil’s fourth division, making few ripples even in its own nation’s vast soccer conversation. But a stunning climb up the ranks in recent years had placed them near the pinnacle of Brazilian soccer, challenging titans in a national sporting scene plagued by graft scandals , mismanagement and lingering dismay over the debacle of the national team’s loss to Germany at the 2014 World Cup. In southern Brazil, the team was the pride of Chapecó, a staid city of 210,000 known for its food processing plants. Fans attributed Chapecoense’s ascent to prudent, transparent management, involving cooperation with local business leaders who helped pull the team out of a financial crisis over the past decade. “Lots of football clubs in Brazil have problems in the way they are run, with corruption and bad management practices, but Chapecoense is different,” said Roberto Panarotto, 44, a professor of media studies in Chapecó who lost a childhood friend in the crash, Chinho di Domenico, a member of the coaching staff. “This is a relatively small city, so everyone knows somebody who on the plane,” Panarotto said by telephone. “Everybody is shocked, and nobody really knows how to react. Nothing like this has ever happened here.” While famed Brazilian teams like Fluminense, Corinthians and Pelé’s old team, Santos, were founded around the start of the 20th century, Chapecoense only came to life in 1973. Playing in Chapecó, 650 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro, the team became a challenger to the more venerable Figueirense in the state of Santa Catarina. Chapecoense joined the top division of Brazilian soccer in 2014, and was a creditable 15th place in its first season there. This season, the club was ninth at the time of the crash, with one week to go in Brazil’s league season. The team also qualified for the Copa Sudamericana, South America’s second most important club competition. In its debut in the tournament last year, Chapecoense surprised by advancing to the quarterfinals. This year the team topped that, spectacularly. Beginning in August, Chapecoense knocked off a Brazilian rival Vitória, and then Independiente of Argentina, Junior of Colombia and San Lorenzo of Argentina, the team favored by Pope Francis, to make the final against Atlético Nacional of Colombia. In the moments after clinching its place in the final last week, the team celebrated with staff members in its locker room; after the crash, the team posted the video on its Twitter account in tribute to the players who died. The team accomplished much without relying on the big-name stars that have long been Brazil’s most famed soccer export. Its top scorer, Bruno Rangel, was a 34-year-old journeyman with more than a dozen stops on his résumé. The team captain Cleber Santana, 35, had plied his trade all over Brazil, but also in Spain with Atlético Madrid. The final of the Copa Sudamericana was to be held over two legs, first in Medellín, Colombia, and then back in Brazil in the southern city of Curitiba. The matches were to have been the biggest in Chapecoense’s history by a long way. Jéssica Canofre, 21, an engineering student in Chapecó, said that people in the city had been scrambling to get to Curitiba for the game. “All the buses had been booked, there were none left,” she said by telephone, weeping as she described the sense of dismay on Tuesday in Chapecó. “The city is paralyzed, everything has completely stopped, classes have been cancelled, everything” she added. “Everyone was mobilized behind the team and so happy. I just want to go back to yesterday.” The pride that many in Chapecó feel in connection with their team stands in contrast to the disdain many Brazilians express when it comes to other facets of Brazilian soccer. Stadiums built or upgraded for the World Cup are now the focus of corruption investigations over reports of bribes paid by contractors to politicians. José Maria Marin, the former president of Brazil’s soccer federation, was arrested in Switzerland on corruption charges related to his involvement with soccer’s worldwide governing body, FIFA, and is now under house arrest at Trump Tower in Manhattan. In 2015, the United States Department of Justice also indicted Marco Polo Del Nero, the current president of the federation, on an array of corruption charges as part of the FIFA case. Still, Del Nero defiantly returned to — and remains in — his post. Delfim Peixoto, a rival seeking to unseat him, was among the officials traveling with Chapecoense who died in the crash. Peixoto, a former federal legislator who was from Santa Catarina State, was a vice president representing southern Brazil in the national soccer federation. The accident came at a time when many Brazilian fans were reveling in Chapecoense’s performance. Different from past South American tournaments in which some Brazilian fans actively rooted against prominent Brazilian teams like Flamengo or Corinthians because of simmering home city rivalries, Chapecoense seemed to unite Brazilians who admired the club’s sudden emergence as a regional contender. “I’ve never seen or felt anything like this in 46 years of journalism,” said Juca Kfouri, 66, one of Brazil’s most eminent soccer columnists. “At times like this, the shock is so intense that it’s nearly impossible to remain calm.” Just a decade ago, Chapecoense was mired in debt, a situation common at many Brazilian soccer teams, and its directors reportedly considered shutting down the club. But a group of business leaders in Chapecó came together to bail out the team, installing new management. The turnaround worked to the point where Chapecoense became known for frequently paying its players in advance, in addition to coveted bonuses. Investments in training facilities also paid off, with the team’s improving fortunes luring a solid fan base in a national soccer scene marked by dismal stadium attendance in many cities. Echoing Chapecoense’s ascent, the fortunes of Brazil’s national team have also been on the rise; the country won the gold medal at last summer’s Rio Olympics. And with a new coach at the helm, Adenor Leonardo Bacchi — better known as Tite — the team currently leads in South American qualifying for the 2018 World Cup. But the crash of Chapecoense’s plane has cast a pall over the improving mood. “In a country where so many think they are giants, Chapecoense knew their size and how much they could grow,” said André Rocha, a prominent writer on Brazilian soccer. He called the team “a moral example.”

Soccer
Plane Crash
Brazil
Chapecoense de Brasil


Derby-Caliber Gelding Has Connections Dreaming of the Preakness Instead

Abstract: Jason Servis watched with pride when John, his brother and fellow thoroughbred trainer, sent Smarty Jones to victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes in 2004. But his joy turned to sadness when the long-shot Birdstone upset Smarty Jones’s Triple Crown bid by one length in the Belmont Stakes. Sadness turned to dismay when the colt never ran again. Smarty Jones was retired less than two months after his lone defeat closed a brilliant but fleeting nine-race career. The colt was said to have “chronic bruising of the bottom of the cannon bone in all four fetlock joints.” That wrenching swing of emotions stays with Jason Servis as he prepares to run Sunny Ridge on Saturday at Aqueduct Racetrack in the Gotham Stakes, a significant Kentucky Derby prep race on the New York circuit. Sunny Ridge prevailed by three-quarters of a length in the Withers Stakes, the previous prep at Aqueduct. He ranks eighth with 18 points in the system used by Churchill Downs to determine a Derby field capped at 20 starters. Yet Sunny Ridge’s greatest obstacle to reaching the crowded Derby starting gate on May 7 may be Servis and Dennis Drazin, his breeder and owner. Although they emphasize that their plan can change, their uncommon strategy calls for them to skip the Derby in order to target the Preakness, the middle leg of the Triple Crown, and the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J., on July 31. Image John Servis with Smarty Jones, who had to be retired after a brilliant but fleeting nine-race career. Credit Julie Jacobson/Associated Press “I know from my experience,” Servis said, “if I am not careful, I won’t have a horse left.” Drazin is a lawyer who has a long association with racing’s uphill battle in his home state of New Jersey. He supports Servis’s desire to take a long view with a horse that is without breeding value because he is a gelded New Jersey-bred. “If I had Derby fever,” Drazin said, “it would be only for my ego and not looking at the right thing to do.” Sunny Ridge, sired by the 1994 Horse of the Year, Holy Bull, gained prominence when he won the Sapling Stakes by two and a quarter lengths at Monmouth in September. He stamped himself as a Derby prospect with strong efforts over wet surfaces when he placed second to Greenpointcrusader in the Grade I Champagne Stakes in October at Belmont Park and missed overtaking the well regarded Exaggerator by a neck in the Delta Downs Jackpot on Nov. 21 in Vinton, La. Sunny Ridge produced a polished effort on a fast track at Aqueduct when the gray-roan gelding made his 3-year-old debut in the Withers and easily dispatched Vorticity by three-quarters of a length for jockey Manuel Franco. As impressive as that performance was, Servis and Drazin are keenly aware of the undefeated 3-year-olds Nyquist and Mohaymen. “I don’t know if he’s Nyquist,” Servis said of Sunny Ridge. “I don’t know if he’s that type.” Nyquist, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and the 2-year-old champion, extended his record to 6 for 6 when he fended off Exaggerator by one and a half lengths in the Grade II San Vicente Stakes at Santa Anita Park on Feb. 15 in the first of two scheduled Derby preps for the West Coast star. Mohaymen, rated the top 3-year-old in the East, swept Florida’s first two preps with rousing victories in the Holy Bull Stakes and the Fountain of Youth Stakes to make him 5 for 5. For many owners and breeders, the Derby dream is limited to having a horse good enough to start in the signature race on the first Saturday in May. Not Drazin. “The average person on the street seems to judge you by ‘Did you have a horse run in the Derby?’ That’s important to everybody else, but it’s not that important to me,” Drazin said. “I don’t want to put a horse in the Derby who I don’t think will win it, even though he could probably hit the board.” Drazin, who was born in Rumson, N.J., is a former chairman of the New Jersey Racing Commission. He is a top adviser to the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, which leases Monmouth Park. Servis, 59, worked as an exercise rider before he became a trainer in 2001. He gained much of his knowledge from being on the backs of sore horses and has built a reputation for turning around problematic thoroughbreds. He sent Tightend Touchdown, a horse he claimed for $35,000, to a runner-up finish in the 2013 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, his most significant result. He believes a key to success is his willingness to provide his horses with ample time between starts, a philosophy counter to the Triple Crown’s grind of three races in five weeks. Speaking about his brother, John Servis said: “He’s all about the horse, and he thinks longevity-wise. If he can have a super horse for the next few years, the Derby is not going to be on his bucket list.”


U.S. Struggles to Tutor Iraqis in Rule of Law

Abstract: BAGHDAD — A mob had gathered by the time the F.B.I. agents arrived at the house where an assassin’s bomb killed nine people last year, narrowly missing a deputy prime minister. Fearing their own lives might be at risk, the agents gave themselves no more than 30 minutes to collect evidence. As agents worked inside the house, an Iraqi police commander outside ordered the arrest of a man on the fringe of the crowd, according to American agents who were at the scene. The man later confessed to complicity in the attack. The case, if it could be called that, was quickly closed. But it was never really clear to American investigators whether the man was actually guilty, or whether the Iraqi police coerced his confession. As an attempt at Iraqi-American cooperation in law enforcement, the investigators said, the episode was clearly disappointing. The attempted assassination of the deputy prime minister, Salam al-Zubaie, in March, is just one of many episodes American law enforcement agents recounted as they described their often frustrating efforts to bring the rule of law to Iraq . In other examples, a suspect arrested after a brazen, deadly armed robbery managed to escape, and officials implicated in the abuse of prisoners have gone unpunished. Investigators cannot easily visit crime scenes, and judges live in fear and hiding. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, in a visit this week to Iraq, claimed “significant progress” in strengthening law enforcement here. He said the United States would “continue to pursue ways to help the Iraqi people to achieve a stable and transparent government.” At the heart of the effort is an Iraqi-American unit called the Major Crimes Task Force, meant as the nucleus of a professional investigative agency. It has investigated bombings, killings, torture cases and corruption, including the notorious Iraqi prison known as Site 4, where Shiite guards had savagely abused mostly Sunni detainees. Many of the cases are politically volatile referrals from the Iraqi government, focusing on sectarian violence in a country whose criminal justice system has been riddled by dysfunction and corruption. The group has opened a widening investigation into a smuggling ring trafficking in antiquities dug from Iraq’s archaeologically significant sites. In a case pointing toward complicity of Iraqi officials in the sale of hundreds of irreplaceable artifacts, one American police officer worked under cover, posing as a buyer. Even as American investigators assert that the cases have built the Iraqis’ experience, professional skill and credibility, they acknowledge that many of the inquiries have yielded mixed results. James H. Davis, who until recently was the F.B.I.’s legal attaché in Baghdad, said that American investigators were frustrated by the problems that they encountered. But he said the task force was gaining a reputation for integrity and could become a model for a different Iraqi approach in the future. “I think there is a feeling within the Iraqi government, the State Department and our military that when something happens, the task force is a group you can turn to and know that the investigative work is going to be done properly and fairly, free of sectarian influences,” he said. Thomas V. Fuentes, chief of international operations at the F.B.I., said the bureau had partnerships in other countries, but “Iraq is the only place we are doing it in war zone, where there is such extreme violence and the people who are doing it are taking such extreme risks to themselves and their families.” “When policing takes the place of soldiering as the primary method of guaranteeing the rule of law, we’ll know we’re succeeding in Iraq,” Mr. Fuentes said. So far, an Iraqi in uniform is not necessarily a comforting sight. Last year, a group of uniformed Iraqi special operations officers stormed the offices of Iraqna, the country’s major cellphone company, in a robbery. In the course of it, the officers terrorized employees and shot dead a company guard. The task force investigated. Agents noticed on a surveillance video an unusual scene reflected in the bulletproof glass inside the office. The tape was sent to the F.B.I. lab in Quantico, Va., where an enhanced version clearly showed a group of police officers dragging the guard outside, where he was shot. A police commander who was the son of an influential army general was identified from the video. He was arrested and charged with the crime, but later escaped, almost certainly aided by inside help. Iraqis on the task force are under constant threat. A brother of one Iraqi investigator has been killed. Another investigator has been wounded. Their cars have been burned. Still, most of them live outside the Green Zone, relying on their own resources for security. Some move from house to house to avoid being targets. The unit is led by the F.B.I., and its investigators also include agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Drug Enforcement Administration, serving in Iraq on three-month rotations from their offices in cities like San Antonio, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Iraqi investigators on the team are hand-picked by top officials at their parent police agencies in the Interior Ministry. The American authorities subject the candidates to intensive interviews, including a final polygraph examination intended to weed out possible double agents. Working inside the relative safety of the Green Zone, guarded by its own heavily armed security force, the team occupies squad rooms lighted with computer screens. On the walls are poster-size sheets of paper on which are scrawled, in English and Arabic, words familiar to the police the world over: who, what, why, where and when. In its biggest cases the task force works with a single investigative judge, a court officer who in the Iraqi legal system functions as a prosecutor and a magistrate combined. The judge has signed dozens of arrest warrants, including some against powerful officials in the government. In a country where three dozen judges have been killed in the last five years, American officials said the judge had been a courageous and valuable ally. But his life has been threatened. Along with his wife and children, he has moved to guarded living quarters. “These cases are dangerous because 70 percent of them involve militias or powerful people in the government,” said the judge, who spoke only on the condition that his name be withheld. “We are all in some danger. I don’t think about it, but I don’t go out anymore.” In Iraq, civil institutions of law have only a tenuous foothold. In determining guilt or innocence, Iraqi judges have been accustomed to concentrating on whether a defendant has confessed — an emphasis that American officials said encouraged abusive interrogations. Mr. Davis, the former F.B.I. legal attaché in Baghdad, said the task force allowed only nonconfrontational interview techniques used in the United States. Iraqi courts are only slowly accepting some of the staple techniques of American law enforcement, like forensic evidence. In one case, American officials said, a judge dismissed DNA evidence as unbelievable. In a bomb case, agents said their Iraqi counterparts marveled as they identified a possible suspect from a fingerprint taken from a shred of skin found at a crime scene. American investigators may not venture outside the Green Zone unless they are accompanied by convoys of heavily armed escorts. Short of launching military-style operations, they have found it nearly impossible to get into neighborhoods where witnesses and suspects live. The task force evolved from F.B.I. investigative and training efforts that began shortly after the American-led invasion almost five years ago. At first operating only in an advisory role, the agents on the task force now engage directly in investigative work, helping to teach their methods to Iraqi investigators. But solving crimes has not always meant that defendants have been brought to justice in Iraqi courts. The inquiry into the abuses at Site 4 are a case in point. It followed longstanding complaints by human rights groups and uncovered systematic and severe abuse — one photograph taken by the F.B.I. showed a ceiling hook from which detainees were hung and savagely beaten. Inmates were shoved out of the prison’s gates, apparently into the hands of death squads. Their bodies were recovered days later far from the detention center. Task force investigators interviewed surviving detainees and the victims’ families, and succeeded in turning some guards into cooperating witnesses. Lower-level employees implicated superiors in what emerged as a grisly pattern of abuse. The case appeared to break open in late 2006 when the Interior Ministry announced human rights charges against 57 officials, including senior prison officers. “We limited this torturing and beating of prisoners,” said an Iraqi investigator who took part in the inquiry. “The situation is now these officers know somebody is watching them.” But the aftermath of the inquiry has been disappointing. Only three people have been arrested, and one senior commander at the prison has received legal immunity from the Interior Ministry, placing him beyond the reach of Iraqi courts. Human rights groups have said the failure to bring suspects to trial has reinforced a different message: that the Iraqi government still lacks the will to crack down on its own security forces.

Iraq
Courts
Police
Prisons and Prisoners
Freedom and Human Rights
Federal Bureau of Investigation
rule of law


Kalashnikov, Maker of AK-47, Looks to Rebrand

Abstract: MOSCOW — A shipment of Kalashnikov rifles, popularly known as AK-47s, was destined for the United States when it was stopped and quickly rerouted to Venezuela. Washington had just slapped Moscow with sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, and the Russian gun maker Kalashnikov Kontsern suddenly found one of its biggest markets off limits. Without access to the ready buyers among American weapons enthusiasts, Kalashnikov had to change its strategy, an increasingly common challenge for Russian companies after the imposition of sanctions. In the two years that followed, Kalashnikov diversified into new product lines, slashed jobs and made over its brand. And the rifle — long the weapon of choice for militaries and militant groups and the world’s most widely used firearm — was pitched instead to hobbyists and hunters in Russia. That new strategy appears to be yielding results. As Kalashnikov steps into the void left by American competitors in its home market, it is on track to turn a profit this year, bolstered in part by a weaker currency. “They started paying attention to clients,” said Dmitry S. Balyasov, a lawyer and shooting enthusiast who was patronizing a firing range outside of Moscow. “They have a contemporary style for selling a product,” Mr. Balyasov said, clutching a legal, civilian version of the weapon. How the AK-47 and AR-15 Evolved Into Rifles of Choice for Mass Shootings The weapons, ready amplifiers of rage, allow a few people to kill scores and menace hundreds, and fight head-to-head against modern soldiers and police forces. For the company behind the 70-year-old weapon, the shift from serving conflict to serving consumers has been stark. The company owns the original license to Kalashnikov-pattern rifles, colloquially known as AK-47s — a name derived from the Russian word for automatic and the surname of the inventor, Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, as well as the year the prototype appeared. In the Soviet era, Kalashnikov’s main rifle factory, called the Izhevsk Machine Works, was a state-owned military enterprise that stamped out guns in tremendous quantities with sales an afterthought. Kalashnikov-pattern rifles are ubiquitous in conflict zones. More than 100 million have been sold, including the countless knockoffs the rifle has inspired from China and elsewhere. The chunky guns, with their oversize banana clips, are legendarily rugged, and can remain in armories for decades, limiting sales of new weapons. With the military market largely saturated, Kalashnikov became increasingly dependent on civilian weapons sales. The civilian versions shoot only once with each trigger squeeze, with no option to switch to full automatic as in the military rifle. Before the sanctions, Kalashnikov’s plan for expansion focused on the United States, where gun ownership laws are more lenient than in many other countries. Though Russian weapons make up a tiny piece of the United States market, sales of its civilian rifles and shotguns branded as Saiga and Baikal increased at a faster pace than the overall market. By 2013, the United States accounted for about 40 percent of the company’s total gun sales, roughly equivalent to the volume bought by the Russian military, where every soldier is equipped with one. American sanctions slammed the door on the expansion plan. The sanctions in mid 2014 took direct aim at Rostec, the state-owned military industrial conglomerate that holds a 51 percent stake in Kalashnikov. Image Russian soldiers march in a Victory Day parade on Red Square May 9. Credit Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press They forced the gun maker to take a hard look at its business. “We are moving from iron to intellect,” said Vasily Brovko, the director of strategy and communications for Rostec. It thinned its ranks of middle managers at the Izhevsk factory in 2015, and diversified this year by buying companies that make motorboats and surveillance drones. While Kalashnikov does not break out sales receipts from its various divisions, it intends for firearms and clothing to make up about 80 percent of earnings by 2020, with motorboat and drone sales accounting for the rest. A Kalashnikov-brand clothing line is being unveiled in September, and the company plans to open 60 retail stores in Russia by the end of the year, selling clothes and rifles. It also introduced a marketing campaign, with a new logo — a stylized letter K, with a curved ammunition magazine as one of the arms — and a slogan, “Kalashnikov: Real. Reliable.” “Kalashnikov is a global brand,” Vladimir Dmitriev, the company’s chief of marketing, said, likening Kalashnikov to Ferrari or Caterpillar, companies that sell clothing as a sideline to capitalize on brand recognition. “We are certainly justified in thinking that clothes and souvenirs with our symbols will be in demand, as much as our primary products.” In Russia, Kalashnikov must navigate a different environment than in the United States. Russian consumers can buy a long-barreled firearm only with a police permit. Potential buyers must have no criminal record, a diploma from a gun safety course and a medical certificate that clears them of any mental illness. With few exceptions, civilians are not allowed to own pistols. Kalashnikov is playing to patriotic ideals. As part of a marketing effort, the company erected a stand festooned with balloons promoting the rifle in Moscow’s Gorky Park on May 9, Victory Day, the holiday commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. The type of display — one associating itself with the Russian government and army — is a contrast to the United States, where antigovernment sentiment is strong among the gun-buying public. The company is showing signs of improvement. It says it expects to report a profit of 2.1 billion rubles, or about $33 million, when 2015 results are published this month, compared with a loss of 340 million rubles in 2014. It now sells fewer guns, but makes more money on each. Image A Kalashnikov worker handed out branded flags at a Victory Day event. Credit James Hill for The New York Times But the biggest boost for Kalashnikov comes from factors beyond its control. Russia is a major oil exporter, and weak crude prices coupled with the sanctions helped cut the value of its currency. With most of its costs priced in rubles, Kalashnikov products became far more competitive with imported firearms. “We are talking about the reversal of the Dutch disease, which Russia has been suffering,” Vladimir Osakovsky, chief economist for Russia at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said. Dutch disease refers to the impact energy prices tend to have on an oil-producing country’s currency, pushing it higher and hurting domestic companies by making their exports look comparatively expensive. Whether the growth is sustainable or the product of favorable currency winds will depend on Kalashnikov’s ground campaign. As part its broad new marketing effort, the company now sends representatives to gun stores across Russia to promote its products. At the Hunting Club gun shop in Moscow’s suburbs, Kalashnikov has provided two window displays exclusively for its rifles, and racks and shelves to sell branded T-shirts and shoulder patches. “The idea is to surround the customer with the brand, so he is not tempted to spend money anywhere else,” Mr. Brovko, the Rostec strategist, said. With the help of the currency tailwinds, demand for Kalashnikov’s shotguns and rifles at the shop has outpaced that for guns made by its rivals, like Beretta of Italy, Sauer of Germany and Winchester of the United States, according to Aleksei V. Lapshin, the owner of the Hunting Club. Customers have also been pleased with the range of special options, including different materials for the rifle exterior, he said. “It’s a very modern approach,” he said. “Some people want black plastic, some people want beechwood, some people want walnut.” “No two comrades have the same taste.”

Kalashnikov Concern
Russia
Guns
International trade
Embargoes Sanctions
advertising,marketing
Arms Trade


Dufner Leads the Nelson

Abstract: Jason Dufner shot a one-under-par 69, enough to keep a one-stroke lead heading into the final round of the Byron Nelson Championship in Irving, Tex., ahead of Jason Day, J. J. Henry and Dicky Pride. ¶ Graeme McDowell held his nerve against Sergio García to squeeze into the semifinals of the World Match Play Championship in Casares, Spain. McDowell made his par putt on the first extra hole from 5 feet, but García’s putt slid by the cup from even closer range. McDowell will next play Rafael Cabrera-Bello, who rallied to win, 3 and 1, against Álvaro Quirós. The other semifinal will pit Nicolas Colsaerts against Paul Lawrie.

Golf
Dufner Jason
Byron Nelson Championship


With 7 Children, Money’s Tight but Motivation’s Strong

Abstract: One day almost four years ago, Genesis McBride was watching television in her Brooklyn apartment when the phone rang. It was a caseworker from New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services. There was an emergency. “Immediately I’m like, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” Ms. McBride said. She had been caring for a foster daughter, Evangeline, and the girl’s four siblings had been living with another foster family. But now the family had become unfit to keep them, and the agency was asking for her help. “They asked me, ‘Can you take them?’ ” Ms. McBride, 29, said, reliving the moment in 2009 that changed her life. “In my mind I’m like: ‘Can I do this? Can I care for five children?’ And I just said: ‘Yes. I’ll take them. It’s my family.’ ” Evangeline, now 5, has three brothers, Nehemiah, 9, Maurice, 7, and Justin, also 5; and one sister, Savannah, 11. Their mother is unable to care for them; and their father is in prison. Ms. McBride, the children’s great-aunt, took in Evangeline at birth because the siblings’ foster family was unable to care for another child. “When Evangeline was born, I had the space to take anybody,” she said, “but the agency didn’t want to uproot Savannah, Nehemiah and Maurice from their foster family.” Hours after agreeing to take in the siblings, Ms. McBride became a mother to five children. They moved in that March evening and have been living with her ever since. She has adopted the three oldest children and has plans to do the same for the other two. The children adapted quickly to living with her, Ms. McBride said. “They never came at me like, ‘No, you’re not my mom,’ ” she said. “Every day they say, ‘I love you, Mommy.’ ” Ms. McBride has received help from her family, including her mother, who was a foster parent. “I don’t think it’s easy,” Ms. McBride said. “Everything is big. Food shopping is big. You’ve got to do it big.” But “big” also means big bills. Ms. McBride has struggled financially to care for her brood. By 2010, she was working in a bakery and was about to become certified as a home health aide when she received more life-altering news. Feeling more tired than usual, she took a pregnancy test and found out that she was expecting. “I was, like, hold on; this thing’s 99 cents,” she said, jokingly. “I went to the doctor. They took blood. I was pregnant.” A sonogram showed that she was having twin girls, whom she delivered in October that year. She named them Harmony and Melody. “In my mind there was no way in the world that I can’t deal with my own children if I can deal with everybody else’s,” she said. “There wasn’t even a question what I would do.” Now a mother of seven, she found she could not continue to work outside the home. Ms. McBride relies on about $1,200 a month in public assistance and food stamps, and $2,000 in foster care stipends from the Administration for Children’s Services. The monthly rent on her three-bedroom apartment in Brownsville is $1,500, and after she pays heat, electricity and other household bills, money is tight. She receives no financial help from her twins’ father, she said. But Ms. McBride makes things work. “I’m proud of myself,” she said. “When I was younger, I had no patience. I never thought I was having kids. Now, look! Seven kids. I’m motivated, and I love our family.” A few days before Christmas, Ms. McBride received an unexpected call from Brooklyn Community Services , one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. She had been working with the agency’s Homemaker Services program since her twins were born. The agency had a surprise: With a $500 grant from the fund, she would be able to give the children gifts. Recalling the unexpected help at home one day recently, she said giddily: “We got coats. We bought toys. We got dolls. We got teddy bears. “I was very thankful.” The time came to pick up the four oldest children from school. When Ms. McBride arrived, they climbed into the car and settled in. “Seat belts! Let’s go!” Ms. McBride said. Then she asked how everyone’s day had been. “Good!” several little voices chimed in, as if in practiced chorus. Once everyone was home, Evangeline opened up a notebook and started her homework. Her task was to come up with a list of words beginning with the letter M. Smiling, she showed Ms. McBride what she had done as she read aloud: “Melody! Mommy! McBride....” She paused and looked up, in thought. “And Maurice!”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Philanthropy
Brooklyn Community Services


García’s Racial Joke Shows Need for Truce With Tiger Woods

Abstract: It figures that a miscommunication is at the root of the ratcheting discord between Sergio García and Tiger Woods. In terms of personality, Woods is from Mars, and García is from Venus. If the PGA Tour’s commissioner, Tim Finchem, cannot help them mediate their differences, maybe the relationship counselor John Gray is available. Golf needs rivalries, but García versus Woods, pleasantly on track in the beginning, has veered out of bounds. The acrimony became the third party in their pairing during the third round of the Players Championship, when, because of a lack of communication, Woods pulled a club from his bag in the trees, drawing enthusiastic cheers from fans as García was hitting from the fairway. The hostility continued through the weekend, with both players making snippy comments. It was one thing for Woods to call García “a whiner” and for García to retort: “He’s probably right. But that’s also probably the first thing he’s told you guys that’s true in 15 years.” But after Tuesday’s events, a truce needs to be called, effective immediately, or better yet, yesterday. During a European Tour gala dinner Tuesday night, García was asked in jest if he would be inviting Woods to dinner during the United States Open next month. “We’ll have him ’round every night,” García said, according to multiple reports. “We will serve fried chicken.” The remark was reminiscent of the racially insensitive comments made by Fuzzy Zoeller at the 1997 Masters, when a 21-year-old Woods became the event’s youngest winner. “You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year,” Zoeller said, referring to the champions dinner, for which the previous year’s winner plans the menu. “Got it?” Zoeller started to walk away but then stopped and added, “Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.” García was 17 in 1997 and a rising star in his native Spain. That year he became the first amateur to win the Catalonian Open, an event in Spain. He could be forgiven for saying that he was not aware of Zoeller’s comments and that Zoeller paid for them dearly with the loss of two sponsors, Kmart and Dunlop. (In a statement Wednesday, García’s equipment sponsor, TaylorMade-Adidas, described his remark as offensive and said that it believed García was sincerely contrite and that it was reviewing the matter.) But García has to be aware of Spain’s checkered history in race relations in sports. In 2004, the coach of the Spanish national soccer team, Luis Aragonés, was caught on video making a racially offensive remark about Thierry Henry, a black player from France. In 2008, the Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, who is black, received death threats on a Spanish Web site, and the following year, at the Spanish Grand Prix, fans showed up in blackface. In 2008, members of Spain’s Olympic men’s basketball team posed for a photo using their index fingers to slant their eyes before leaving for Beijing, site of the Games. Realizing almost immediately the negative impact of his words, García issued a statement of apology, and he held a news conference Wednesday in which he again appeared contrite. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone,” García said at Wentworth in England, site of this week’s BMW PGA Championship. “I obviously was caught off guard by the question, but don’t get me wrong: I understand that my answer was totally stupid and out of place, and I can’t say sorry enough about that.” He said he had reached out to Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg, to apologize. “I want to apologize to Tiger and anybody I could have offended by the comment I made and just say I feel sick about it,” García said. “I’m truly, truly sorry and hope we can kind of settle things down and hopefully move on.” Woods responded on Twitter on Wednesday morning. “The comment that was made wasn’t silly,” he wrote in a series of Twitter messages. “It was wrong, hurtful and clearly inappropriate. I’m confident that there is real regret that the remark was made. The Players ended nearly two weeks ago and it’s long past time to move on and talk about golf.” It probably was too much to ask that the two interact civilly, even as adversaries. García, 33, is an emotional tripwire, with anything — a gust of wind; a mentor’s glance; an own goal by his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid — capable of sending him into a mental state. His thoughts travel from his heart to his lips without passing through his head. He feels; ergo, he is. Woods, 37, is an emotional sphinx, saving his expressiveness for when he has a wayward shot in the air or a birdie putt tracking to the pin. His thoughts travel from his heart to his head, where they are stripped down and sanitized before leaving his mouth. Early in his professional career, Woods told a few off-color jokes in front of a reporter, who included them in an article. It was an unguarded moment that Woods has disciplined himself to avoid repeating. On Monday, Woods was asked if he would consider contacting García to hash out their differences, a question similar in tone to the one that García was asked the next day. His answer: “No.” García has become popular in part because he speaks from the heart. His challenge moving forward will be to prove with his deeds that his words Tuesday night carried no deeper meaning.

Golf
Tiger Woods
Sergio Garcia
Fuzzy Zoeller
PGA Tour