Even for the Dead, a Struggle to Find Space in Hong Kong

Abstract: HONG KONG — A small architecture firm in Hong Kong has come up with an unusual proposal for what to do about the worsening shortage of cemetery space in a crowded and expensive city: Build one that can float. The structure conceived by the company, Bread Studio, could hold hundreds of thousands of the boxlike niches that are the final resting places for most people in Hong Kong nowadays. It would float in the sea off the hilly islands and peninsulas that make up Hong Kong and dock only during the twice-yearly festivals when Hong Kong residents descend in large family groups on the city’s cemeteries to pay their respects to the departed. “I realized that cemeteries compete against many other uses for land — but that we’re not using all that water we have here in Hong Kong,” said Paul Mui, a designer at Bread Studio. “So why not build a boat and float it out into the ocean?“ So far, the Floating Eternity project has not advanced much beyond Bread Studio’s drawing board, and it remains to be seen whether a structure of the sort would ever draw serious interest from developers or get the go-ahead from the Hong Kong authorities. Still, even if it is never built, the fact that architects in Hong Kong are thinking so laterally highlights the unusual nature of the city’s property market. Retail space is more expensive to rent in Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world; no offices command higher rents than those in the main financial district, Central. At an average of about $2,670 per square meter, or $248 per square foot per year, office space in the neighborhood’s gleaming skyscrapers will set you back nearly twice as much as in London, according to recent research by the real estate services firm CBRE. Home prices, too, have climbed to their highest levels ever, with a 16 percent rise so far this year alone, despite concerns about the economic slowdown in mainland China. At the luxury end of the market, Swire Properties sold a 628-square-meter, or 6,760-square-foot, apartment in August for 430 million Hong Kong dollars, or $55.5 million. An apartment in the same building, designed by Frank Gehry, was leased for 850,000 dollars per month for a three-year period. “Hong Kong is a very unusual and complex market,” said Paul Louie, an analyst at the Japanese investment bank Nomura. Some of the normal rules of economics, he said, do not come into play in this market, where supply has been unable to match the swelling tide of demand. A unique blend of geography, economics, social preferences and financial policy is at work in the city of 7.1 million. Rapid economic and population growth — Hong Kong now has more than twice as many inhabitants as it did 50 years ago — have created a ravenous appetite for housing and commercial space. The phenomenon in itself is not unique; rapid economic expansion has caused property prices to rise in many developing countries. But in Hong Kong, several factors give it an extra kick. Because Hong Kong’s currency is fixed to the U.S. dollar, interest rates, as in the United States, will remain at ultralow levels until at least mid-2015. Unlike the United States, however, the city has a low jobless rate, at just 3.3 percent, so Hong Kongers have the confidence to buy, despite the clouds hanging over the global economy, said Marcos Chan, a researcher at the real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. Hong Kong’s ties with mainland China have turbocharged the property market even more. The handover from British control in 1997 increased the city’s importance as an entry point for foreign companies doing business with the mainland. It also brought a tremendous influx of money from mainland Chinese, who see Hong Kong as an easy and attractive destination for their savings. Mr. Louie, the Nomura analyst, estimates that 18 percent of property transactions in the city involved mainland Chinese buyers, up from 15 percent three years ago. And, he said, the increase was likely to continue. Retail and commercial property prices, meanwhile, have soared as retailers have rushed to position themselves for mainland Chinese shoppers, whose numbers topped 3.7 million in August — up from only about half a million per month 10 years ago. “You have to remember, Hong Kong is small, with only seven million people,” Mr. Louie said. “Across the border, there are 1.3 billion.” The Hong Kong government has been trying to cool the market since late 2009 through measures like requiring larger down payments for property transactions. Such steps, however, are likely to do no more than ease prices somewhat in the coming months. The fundamental drivers of the market — low interest rates, pent-up demand and cash-rich investors — remain intact, said Edward Farrelly, the head of research for Hong Kong at CBRE. Moreover, there is little the authorities can do in the short term about the other side of the property equation: supply. Much of Hong Kong’s territory — and there are just 1,100 square kilometers, or 425 square miles, of it, an area about one-fortieth the size of Switzerland — is steep and rocky. What little land can be built on is released onto the market only gradually by a government that is unwilling to undermine land prices or encroach on parks and farmland. Property developers have responded by reclaiming land from the sea and building the dazzlingly tall skyscrapers that now epitomize the city. The realms of the dead have seen a similar transformation. Traditional graves, with small, rounded forecourts, are a thing of the past that only the very wealthy can afford. By the 1960s, small plots, tightly crammed into hillsides too steep for commercial development, became common. More recently, so-called columbariums, containing rows upon rows of large pigeonholes for urns, have come to dominate, said Mr. Mui of Bread Studio — but now, space even for such sites has become scarce. Niches, particularly those with views of the sea or other prominent positioning, can cost thousands of dollars. Adding more cemetery space, however, is no simple matter as many Hong Kongers consider it inauspicious to live near sites that recall death. That depresses the value of adjacent homes, ensuring that plans for new cemeteries and hospitals face opposition from local residents and officials. “There are three things that are almost impossible to build in Hong Kong these days,” Mr. Mui said. “Cemeteries, hospitals and landfills.” And so Bread Studio came up with the concept of sending the dead out to sea — surrounded by ample onboard space for visitors. Hong Kongers come out in droves to honor their dead during the Qing Ming and Chung Yeung festivals, so space is an important feature. “This concept would not work anywhere else in the world. But in Hong Kong, you have the land constraints, and you have the cultural traditions,” said Mr. Mui. “What could make more sense?” An added benefit: The offshore setting comes with ideal feng shui — an important consideration in southern Chinese culture.

Hong Kong
Real Estate and Housing (Residential)
Real Estate (Commercial)
Economic Conditions and Trends
Land Use Policies
Cemeteries


When Investors’ Emotions Move the Markets

Abstract: YOU may keep a cool head, dispassionately analyzing corporate results, economic data and emerging business trends to pick investments. But that doesn’t mean that everyone else is just as reasonable. If others act irrationally, markets can be distorted and your returns eroded. Some portfolio managers, adherents of an academic discipline called behavioral finance, say that there is no “if” about it. They contend that investors are driven largely by emotions, the sort so vividly on display in the stock market during the last year. Those emotions cause investors to misjudge the impact of events in systematic ways, the theory goes. Identifying these patterns and trading against them, the managers say, allows them to enhance performance. “Humans are emotional individuals, and that gets exaggerated when it comes to taking risks,” said Christopher Blum, chief investment officer of the U.S. Behavioral Finance Group at J.P. Morgan Funds. “There are errors that investors make. We try to exploit anomalies in valuations and momentum” arising from those errors, he added. Behavioral finance funds in Morgan’s Intrepid and Undiscovered Managers series and in the Highmark, LSV and Allianz Nicholas-Applegate families, among others, often use “quant” or “black box” models. These are software programs that sift through data on thousands of stocks in a quest for those affected by such investor traits as “anchoring” and “herding.” Anchoring occurs when new information about a company’s prospects arrives and analysts are reluctant to alter their forecasts, which would be a tacit acknowledgment that their initial efforts were off the mark. The absorption of changed circumstances is drawn out enough to allow funds that react fairly early to benefit, managers say. “Investors tend to underreact to positive fundamental change,” said Horacio Valeiras, chief investment officer of Nicholas-Applegate Capital Management. The full response to events “comes over time,” he said, as investors abandon “behaviors that are weighing them down.” Herding amounts to investors collectively saying, “I’ll have what he’s having.” A trend develops and newcomers latch onto it, reinforcing it and making it look profitable. That brings in more investors, and the cycle continues until valuations are stretched, often to nonsensical extremes, before snapping back when little money remains to keep it going. The tech bubble in the late 1990s was a notorious example. Another, in reverse, was the overall market collapse last fall and winter. Selling begat selling, and the lower prices went, the more it confirmed — for a while — that selling was the right thing to do. When herding occurs in a market, behavioral finance funds try to profit by recognizing that the valuation extremes are unjustified, and buying or selling accordingly. Although the role of emotion in investment may seem undeniable, especially lately, behavioral finance remains a niche discipline among investment professionals and academics. (Funds in Morgan’s Undiscovered Managers series have “behavioral” in their name, but many others that use behavioral techniques don’t.) The more popular school of thought, the efficient-market theory, is based on the idea that asset pricing is rational and nearly perfectly reflects available economic and corporate information. The main point in favor of efficient markets is the widely observed inability of active portfolio managers to beat market averages. If markets were inefficient, there should be more evidence that investors with certain skills could beat their peers consistently and predictably. Followers of behavioral finance see high volatility and trading volume as confirmation that emotion plays a significant role in markets. If everyone has the same information and understanding, why do markets move at all, except for the few minutes or hours after major news? And what is the point of trading securities at any other time? Will Goetzmann, director of the International Center for Finance at Yale and an authority on behavioral finance, said advocates of efficient markets had begun to concede that there is a sizable psychological component to trading. And a grudging recognition is emerging that there are meaningful differences in talent, he said. “There has been a reversal of this notion that there isn’t any skill out there” among fund managers, Mr. Goetzmann said. “Research is finding that there are managers that have more skill than others and provide risk-adjusted value.” Whether many of those who run behavioral finance funds are among them is questionable. Many have produced results over the last 12 months that are in line with the broad stock market. They have also displayed slightly higher volatility. And as paradoxical as it seems, the comparative performance of these funds tends to diminish during periods of peak emotion. Managers point out that behavioral finance techniques work better when the craziness that distorts markets abates, not while it is in full force. The funds tend to be small, too, and therefore can have high expenses, often close to 2 percent of assets. That erodes returns even in the best of times. Christopher Davis, senior fund analyst at Morningstar, is reserving judgment on behavioral finance funds, which he considers to be undergoing their trial run. But he is generally unimpressed so far. “It’s fair to say that it’s an emerging academic discipline,” he said, “and its application as an investment discipline isn’t all that far along.” It’s not clear what significant advantage can be gained from understanding the mechanisms driving investors’ psyches. Just as someone sitting in a tree does not have to be Isaac Newton to know that falling out of it can hurt, an investor ignorant of the inner workings of his peers’ minds can still recognize the merits of a stock that’s cheap relative to the company’s profits. “The bottom line here is that there’s a fancy theory underlying all these funds, but what they’re doing isn’t all that revolutionary,” Mr. Davis said. “They use quant screens to look for the cheapest stocks, but that’s what fund managers have been doing for a long time.” AND Mr. Davis says that owning one of the funds doesn’t ensure that a shareholder will be immune from the same emotions that trip up others. The best way to take principles of behavioral finance into account may not be to buy a specialty fund, he said, but to bear the principles in mind when making all investment decisions. “Be sure you aren’t falling into any of the behavioral traps,” Mr. Davis advised. “It would be really kind of ironic if you invested in a fund based on behavioral finance and you sold it after the fund had a big loss or added to it after it was up 50 percent.” “It’s hard not to be human,” he added.

Stocks and Bonds
Economic Conditions and Trends
Emotions
Appraisals and Valuation


Executions in Gaza Are a Warning to Spies

Abstract: GAZA CITY — One day after an intelligence coup enabled Israel to kill three top commanders of Hamas’s armed wing, as many as 18 Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel were summarily executed in public on Friday, in what was seen as a warning to the people of the Gaza Strip. Masked gunmen in matching black T-shirts and pants paraded seven of the suspected collaborators, handcuffed and hooded, to their deaths before a boisterous crowd outside a downtown mosque after the Friday Prayer, in a highly theatrical presentation. Photographs showed a pair of militants leaning over a doomed man on his knees against a wall, and masses of men and boys cheering and clamoring for a better view. The Palestinians killed on Friday were not identified, but they were reported to have been arrested on or convicted of charges of collaboration, a crime punishable by death under Palestinian law, before this summer’s bloody battles between Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamist movement that dominates Gaza. Still, the style and timing indicated an intensified Hamas crackdown on those who inform on leaders’ locations. The executions followed Thursday’s Israeli airstrikes that killed the three Hamas commanders and the attempted assassination on Tuesday night of their boss, Mohammed Deif, whose fate remains unknown. “I think this has provoked, and let’s say triggered, this process,” said Hamdi Shaqqura, deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, a Gaza group that has long monitored and condemned such extrajudicial killings. “If you speak to any regular citizen in Gaza, nobody is looking with mercy on these people. Why? Because people are being bombarded. A lot of the blame for bombardment of specific places is being put on collaborators.” Al Majd, a website managed by the Internal Security Service of the Hamas government that ran Gaza until June, warned that future collaborators would be dealt with in the field, not in courthouses, to create deterrence. The executions, the most public and numerous since the simmering Gaza conflict sharply escalated on July 8, occurred on the third consecutive day of heavy rocket and mortar barrages from Gaza to Israel. One mortar shell killed a 4-year-old boy on a kibbutz just outside Gaza, the first child and fourth civilian in Israel to die in the escalation, which has taken the lives of 64 Israeli soldiers and nearly 2,100 Palestinians, about 500 of them children. Assessing the Damage and Destruction in Gaza The damage to Gaza’s infrastructure from the current conflict is already more severe than the destruction caused by either of the last two Gaza wars. The Israeli military said the shell had been fired from a Gaza City school used to shelter Gazans displaced by the fighting. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed in a statement that “Hamas will pay a dear price for this severe terror attack,” and he said his forces “will intensify their activity” until the operation’s objective — restoring quiet — “is achieved.” The Israeli military counted more than 120 rockets fired by 10 p.m. Friday, some sailing as far north as Tel Aviv and its suburbs, and nearly 500 since Tuesday afternoon, when a nine-day cease-fire and Egyptian-brokered talks toward a more durable truce collapsed. Five people were wounded, three by shrapnel from a rocket that exploded in a synagogue in Ashdod, a city not far from Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry said that a father and son had been killed in Qarara, near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, and that two others had died of wounds. More than 40 Gazans were wounded in an evening Israeli strike on a Gaza City home, the ministry said. Image Bloodstains drew onlookers in Gaza City after the execution of those suspected of aiding Israel. Credit Wissam Nassar for The New York Times “We are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip very powerfully and will continue to do so in the coming hours,” Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz, the chief Israeli Army spokesman, said in a television interview Friday night. “Every citizen in the Gaza Strip who has in proximity to him or his home weaponry, we view him to be a legitimate target,” General Almoz said. “We are asking him to leave the area because those targets are going to be attacked in the coming hours and coming days. We are here. We aren’t going to go anywhere until quiet arrives.” The executions on Friday, which followed similar killings of three suspected collaborators reported by Palestinian news agencies on Thursday, echoed killings Hamas carried out during two previous Israeli military operations in Gaza. Gaza’s Interior Ministry, which handles judicial and security matters, declined to address the reported executions. But a statement published on many Palestinian websites — including some affiliated with Hamas — said a “revolutionary court” had been formed “in agreement with the war’s circumstances.” Journalists, human rights workers and a witness said that either nine or 11 people, including two women, were killed Friday morning in a public park and at a bus stop near Al Azhar University in Gaza City, near the central prison where they were believed to have been held. Seven others, hands tied behind their backs, were killed as worshipers exited Al Omari mosque, another witness said, and bystanders used cellphones to photograph the bloodstains that were left on the ground. “There were about 20 masked gunmen in the area,” said the witness at the mosque, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “One of them said loudly that the death sentence is going to be carried out against seven collaborators.” In Gaza, a Pattern of Conflict Similarities and differences in the last three major conflicts between Israel and Hamas. “They did not mention their names,” he added. “They shot them after that, and then the militants left. People were shouting, ‘God is great.’ ” Mr. Shaqqura of the human rights center said his group was investigating reports that five other suspected collaborators were killed more than two weeks ago. The center’s director, Raji Sourani, wrote urgent letters to Palestinian leaders on Friday “demanding that they immediately and decisively intervene to stop such extrajudicial executions,” according to a statement. In an interview, Mr. Shaqqura said: “In the middle of this onslaught on Gaza, we are in need to respect the rule of law and to respect human rights. More than any other time, it’s a challenge for us.” During Israel’s previous Gaza offensive, in 2012, masked gunmen left the bloodied body of Ashraf Ouaida in a traffic circle beneath a billboard showing a Hamas fighter, and hung a poster around his neck that accused him of helping Israel kill 15 Palestinian leaders. A few days later, six more suspected collaborators were killed vigilante-style, and the body of one was dragged through a Gaza City neighborhood by motorcycle. At least a dozen collaborators who escaped Hamas jails during Israel’s invasion of 2008-9 were summarily executed in the street. Collaboration has been considered a heinous crime in Palestinian society since before Israel became a state. During its seven-year rule of Gaza, Hamas vigorously prosecuted and occasionally lynched suspected spies to enforce loyalty. But rights groups that document such cases said the number had sharply fallen from the period from 1987 to 1994, when an estimated 1,000 people were executed as collaborators.

Palestinians
Hamas
Gaza Strip
Israel
Informers
Muhammad Deif
Mohammed Abu Shamalah
Mohammed Barhoum
Raed Al- Attar
Palestinian Center for Human Rights


Kidd, a Floor General Turned Coach, Has Ambitious Plans for the Nets

Abstract: It is summer league time in the N.B.A., when teams gather in Las Vegas and in Orlando, Fla., for a handful of games that allows any number of rookies to get a taste of professional basketball and gives undrafted players a chance to show off their skills. The teams are usually supervised by their top assistant. Some head coaches are in attendance, but they are generally in the stands, observing or maybe just gossiping But when the Nets play their first summer league game Sunday night against the Detroit Pistons in Orlando, Jason Kidd will be on the sideline, getting his first experience as a coach. About six weeks removed from his final N.B.A. game as a player with the Knicks, the 40-year-old Kidd will be using the six-day league to start getting comfortable with the next chapter of his life. Image Jason Kidd, less than two months removed from the N.B.A. as a player, has acknowledged his lack of experience as a coach. “I have a lot to learn, and I’m a sponge right now,” he said. Credit Mike Segar/Reuters Despite having 19 seasons as an N.B.A. player, during which Kidd justly earned a reputation as one of the smartest players in the game, as a point guard who could read the court better than almost anyone, he is frank about his lack of experience as a coach and recently addressed it in an interview. “I don’t know all the answers,” Kidd said. “I have a lot to learn, and I’m a sponge right now.” But Kidd is Kidd, competitive, confident and brimming with ambitious plans to revamp the Nets on offense and defense, drawing especially on lessons he learned while playing for Dallas Mavericks Coach Rick Carlisle, under whom Kidd won his only N.B.A. championship, in 2011. In particular, Kidd is a believer in the power of sharing in basketball — sharing the ball on offense and sharing the responsibility for stopping opponents on defense. As such, he wants to implement a modern defense that makes use of zone principles employed by the league’s top defensive teams. “If you look at the good teams on the defensive side of the ball, they all have team concepts of helping one another,” Kidd said. “I guess you can say zone in Chicago and Indiana.” Image Deron Williams Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times The Pacers’ defensive system provides an especially alluring example for Kidd. Like Pacers center Roy Hibbert, who uses his size to control the inside, the Nets’ Brook Lopez is so tall and long that he can swallow up drives without even jumping. If Lopez is joined in the starting lineup by the newly acquired Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, and by the two other incumbents, Deron Williams and Joe Johnson, the Nets would have a very sizable starting five, perfectly suited for clogging passing and driving lanes. “The principle of helping one another has become really big with the rules now, and that’s kind of what we did in Dallas,” Kidd said. In overhauling the Nets’ sloppy defense, Kidd could have important allies in Garnett and Pierce. Both are excellent communicators and could help teach and explain the zone principles that made Boston one of the league’s toughest defenses to crack for nearly five seasons. In last season’s playoffs, the Bulls routinely scored on the Nets in the first round with basic side screen-and-rolls, a play most teams defend easily. A failure to come up with consistent effort and execution on defense was what primarily kept the Nets from being one of the top teams in the N.B.A. last season. Their offense generally had things figured out when Williams and Lopez were both healthy. Image Brook Lopez Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times That doesn’t mean that Kidd does not want to make changes to how the Nets play when they have the ball. Last season, they often scored by exploiting their stars’ individual abilities, relying on isolation plays to beat weaker opponents. But against more disciplined and athletic defenses, one-on-one play was not enough. Kidd wants to inject more ball movement, and he speaks in reverential tones when discussing how selfless passing opens doors that even the least talented players can stroll through. “When the ball is moving, you don’t want to be the guy where it sticks, so everyone gets involved, everyone has fun,” Kidd said. “I think the beauty of it is it’s hard to guard. Because the ball is moving, you don’t know who is going to get a shot. You can scout it all you want.” Kidd added, “I would love to have a structure where they can just play off each other.” At times last season, the Nets seemed so keen to set up mismatches for their best players that the offense bogged down. With proper ball movement and spacing, Kidd said, “mismatches tend to happen.” “A lot of times you don’t force or seek it out,” he said. One of the great fast-break point guards, Kidd said he would emphasize moving the ball up court more quickly and hunting early scoring opportunities. The Nets played at about the slowest pace in the N.B.A. last year, so no one would expect them to start running like the Denver Nuggets. But playing with pace is different from trying to run fast breaks all the time. Often, simply getting into the offense as quickly as possible and starting the ball movement early, even before the entire offense has arrived, creates mismatches that can be exploited toward the end of the shot clock. Image The Nets will be joined by Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Credit Jason Szenes for The New York Times By virtue of his immense skill and his role as the floor general, Williams will bear responsibility for promoting this more democratic style of play. “For Deron, the biggest thing that I will push, or talk to him about on a daily basis, is being encouraging,” said Kidd. “Put your guys in position to be successful, and if it doesn’t work out, always continue to be positive.” Kidd added: “We have to trust each other. When you do make a pass, sometimes a guy might miss a jump shot. You can’t be upset, because it’s the right play. And the majority of time in this league, if you make the right play, you tend to put yourself in a position to win.” Kidd’s playing career offers convincing support for this belief. Even as his overall game began to deteriorate as he moved into his late 30s, he retained an ability to make other players better. So it was not surprising to hear him enthusiastically promote team basketball. His success may hinge on whether he can effectively get everyone on his team to buy in, on offense and defense.


Police Officer Is Shot and Wounded in Brooklyn

Abstract: A police officer was shot and wounded Thursday night while patrolling the Cypress Hills Houses, a project in East New York, Brooklyn, the police said. The officer, who was not immediately named, was on foot patrol at around 10:54 p.m. when he was shot in the right leg, the police said. The officer was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in stable condition, and his injuries were not considered life-threatening. The shot appeared to have been fired from one of the houses, possibly from a rooftop, the police said. In the immediate aftermath of the episode, it was not clear whether the officer was targeted or was hit by random gunfire.

Attacks on Police
NYPD
East New York Brooklyn


Marian Gaborik Showing Creativity With Kings

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — For the sprightly, dynamic wing Marian Gaborik, so many things can happen in an instant. A long clearing attempt that appears destined for an icing call develops into a centering pass for a goal, a short-handed breakaway becomes a nullified chance, a rigid offense evolves into a fluid attack, and sometimes, a struggling player becomes a difference-maker or vice versa. Last season, Gaborik waived his no-trade clause to leave the Rangers and head to the less storied and less successful Columbus Blue Jackets. After playing 34 games with the Blue Jackets, he was dealt to the Los Angeles Kings on March 5. After a brief adjustment period, Gaborik had notched 10 points in his last 11 games entering Thursday. He joined the Kings in the midst of a seven-game winning streak, and a separate six-game surge ended Monday with a 3-2 home loss to Minnesota, a franchise he still leads in career points. Gaborik’s line accounted for the Los Angeles goals. “Everybody is on the same page; everybody is trusting each other,” Gaborik said after Sunday’s 4-2 victory over Winnipeg. “It is like one big machine. I try to fit into that system and play the right way on both ends of the ice.” Gaborik, 32, has found confidence and chemistry on a line with Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams. Williams said the challenge now was to cultivate synergy between the gifted Gaborik and the workmanlike team play of the Kings, who entered Thursday sixth in the Western Conference playoff race. “He’s got one of the best releases in the game, and he’s one of the fastest players in the game,” said Williams, who added that, on and off the ice, Gaborik endeared himself immediately to his teammates. Kings Coach Darryl Sutter’s approach to the game mirrors his days as a steady, conservative, physical and effortful left wing. That has not prevented Sutter from thriving with game-breaking scorers like Teemu Selanne, who was an All-Star in both full seasons that he played under Sutter in San Jose. “Darryl knows that, offensively, you should be able to do some different stuff than maybe the third or fourth line,” Selanne said. “That’s how it goes; he knows the game very well. Defensively, he wants responsibility and the right things done. It was a fair deal.” Gaborik has contributed offensively in a variety of ways, chasing down stretch passes, moving the puck imaginatively to set up teammates and roofing wrist shots for nifty goals. He has also begun to dispel the criticism that he did not have a commitment to defense and might not fit into Sutter’s straight-line, rough-edge system. “The play I think about was a power play where we turned the puck over — there was a two-on-one the other way,” said defenseman Willie Mitchell, who played with Gaborik for five seasons in Minnesota. “He went and caught the guy in about five strides.” Gaborik has never played in a system that extolled the creativity and skill central to his game. He began his career under the conservative Jacques Lemaire in Minnesota before heading to New York, where the Rangers played John Tortorella’s heavy brand of hockey. During Gaborik’s brief stint in Columbus, the young Jackets forged a lunch-pail identity that left little leeway for offensive risk-taking. “You have Jacques Lemaire for seven or eight years, and then you have Torts, who demands work ethic and accountability — you’re going to be a lot harder worker than one would think and be a lot better defensively,” said Mitchell, who added that he thought Gaborik had been one of the Kings’ better defenders of late. Still, Gaborik’s style of play has not always endeared him to those above him. In Minnesota, Lemaire was critical of Gaborik at times. Tortorella, under whom Gaborik twice topped 40 goals in three seasons while also staying relatively healthy, seemed decreasingly confident in Gaborik in his final year as a Ranger. In Columbus, General Manager Jarmo Kekalainen’s first big move was acquiring Gaborik for roster players, and his second significant deal was jettisoning him for forward depth and draft picks. Kekalainen cited Gaborik’s inability to mesh with the Blue Jackets as motivation to move his marquee acquisition, along with Gaborik’s status as an unrestricted free agent this off-season and two injuries he sustained. After recovering from a sprained knee, Gaborik played only four shifts before he broke his collarbone, which caused him to miss extended action as well as the Olympics. Over all, Gaborik has appeared in 75 or more games in only 5 of his 13 N.H.L. seasons. “Whether you deserve it or not, when you have injuries and when you have a few in a row, you’re going to get labeled,” Williams said. “You’ve got to go out, be consistent and play hard; then you won’t even have to think about it anymore.” The Kings have the lowest goals-against average in the Western Conference in front of their dominant goalie, Jonathan Quick. Since they acquired Gaborik, their even-strength attack and their power play have become more menacing. He plays on a unit with the Kings’ top point producer, Kopitar, and their leading goal scorer, Jeff Carter. “The way he shoots the puck, you can give him the puck in pretty much any spot on the ice, and he’s going to be able to make something out of nothing,” Kopitar said.

Ice hockey
Rangers
Los Angeles Kings
Marian Gaborik
Anze Kopitar
Justin Williams


G.M.’s Consider Changes for Player Safety

Abstract: As N.H.L. general managers gather Monday in Boca Raton, Fla., for their annual meeting, the focus will be on whether to recommend a broadening of Rule 48, the regulation outlawing blindside hits to the head . But the managers will also consider other changes aimed at improving player safety in ice hockey, the team sport with the second-highest rate of concussions after football. New rules installed after the 2004-5 lockout have sped up the game and made it more crowd pleasing, but they have also led to more high-speed collisions. Commissioner Gary Bettman said in January that the slight rise in reported concussions in the N.H.L. this season was mainly the result of accidental contact. “At one point, I went through all the injuries in the league, and there were 124 players out on that given night,” Buffalo Sabres General Manager Darcy Regier said last Friday, adding that a significant number of the absences were due to concussions. One measure under consideration is to change the N.H.L.’s icing rule, which encourages races to the end boards for the puck. If an opposing forward can outskate a defenseman and touch the puck first, the icing is negated — but that has led to harrowing collisions like the one in 2008 that shattered the leg of defenseman Kurtis Foster, sidelining him for 11 months. In collegiate and international play, icing is called the moment the puck crosses the goal line, but N.H.L. general managers want to preserve the excitement of the icing-negating race. The potential solution is “hybrid icing,” in which linesmen make an icing call based on which player reaches the face-off dot first rather than on who touches the puck first. Such a rule, already in place in the developmental United States Hockey League, would largely remove the dangerous end boards from the icing equation. Brian Burke, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ influential general manager, has spoken in favor of restoring permission to defenseman to do some obstructing — what is called a bear hug rule. Such obstruction would theoretically slow forwards, who currently rocket through the neutral zone, looking back over their shoulder for long breakout passes and leave themselves vulnerable to unexpected, concussion-causing collisions. Perhaps the most radical measure under discussion involves calls to widen N.H.L. rinks. “If rinks were only a few feet wider, it would change the angle that forwards receive passes,” said Eric Lindros, whose N.H.L. career was ended by concussions. “They wouldn’t get hit straight on as often, but rather going laterally. And defensemen would have more ice to cover, making it harder for them to deliver big hits.” RICK MARTIN DIES IN CRASH Two weeks after being reunited on the ice in Buffalo, the Sabres’ famed French Connection line lost a member when Rick Martin, a five-time 40-goal scorer, died Sunday in a traffic accident. Martin, 59, was pronounced dead at a Buffalo-area hospital around 1 p.m., shortly after the car he was driving crossed the center line on the road, rolled along the shoulder and struck a utility pole, Capt. Steven Nigrelli of the New York State Police said. Nigrelli said witnesses had spotted Martin driving with his head slumped and eyes closed before the crash, which occurred in Clarence, N.Y. Martin set an N.H.L. rookie record for goal-scoring, with 44 in 1971-72. He played left wing on the French Connection line with center Gilbert Perreault and right wing Rene Robert. (AP) SABRES 6, SENATORS 4 Tyler Ennis scored two goals and Jhonas Enroth made 34 saves to lead Buffalo over visiting Ottawa. Thomas Vanek and Paul Gaustad both had a goal and an assist for the Sabres, who tied the Rangers for seventh place in the East. (AP) KINGS 3, STARS 2 Michal Handzus scored the tie-breaking goal for visiting Los Angeles with 20.8 seconds remaining as the Kings improved to 83 points, 1 more than Dallas in the Western Conference playoff race. (AP) IN OTHER GAMES Lauri Korpikoski scored two goals to lift Phoenix over the Ducks, 5-2 , at Anaheim. Phoenix vaulted Chicago and Dallas in the West to move into a tie with Los Angeles for fourth place. ... Mike Knuble’s overtime goal gave Washington its eighth straight victory, a 4-3 home win over Chicago. The Capitals moved to a point behind Philadelphia for first place in the East. ... Chris Kunitz scored two goals, and host Pittsburgh moved to 3 points off the East lead by topping Edmonton, 5-1. (AP)

Hockey Ice
Accidents and Safety
Concussions
National Hockey League


Bar Exam, the Standard to Become a Lawyer, Comes Under Fire

Abstract: For decades, law school graduates have endured a stressful rite of passage, spending the first 10 weeks after classes end taking cram courses in the arcane details of the law before sitting down for the grueling, days-long bar exam. Those who do not pass cannot practice law, at least in nearly all the states and the District of Columbia that consider the exam the professional standard. But that standard, so long unquestioned, is facing a new round of scrutiny — not just from the test takers but from law school deans and some state legal establishments. Some states, including Arizona, Iowa and New Hampshire, are exploring or have adopted other options, questioning the wisdom of relying on a single written test as the gateway to legal practice. The debate over the exam is not new, but it broke out in the open after the results of last summer’s exam were released in the fall, showing that the 51,005 test takers had the poorest results in nearly a decade. Many law school deans, bristling from criticism that they are replenishing their ranks with less academically qualified students as the number of law school applicants has fallen sharply, began to openly question the mechanics of the bar exam. About 80 law school deans last November jointly asked, for the first time anyone remembers, for details on how test questions were chosen and scored. The situation was already touchy after remarks made the previous month by a top bar exam official, who defended the results as indisputably correct, and then, in what the deans viewed as verbal dynamite, labeled the test takers as “less able” than their predecessors. Indicators “all point to the fact that the group that sat in July 2014 was less able than the group that sat in July 2013,” said Erica Moeser, president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the nonprofit organization in Madison, Wis., that constructs and scores the professional entrance exam. Stephen C. Ferruolo, dean of the University of San Diego School of Law, said that it was the test, not the students. He asked the bar testing agency in December for details about the test to assure that it was fair and reliable. Image More than 3,000 students took the bar exam at a convention center in Tampa, Fla., in 2007. Credit Zach Boyden-Holmes/St. Petersburg Times, via Associated Press Otherwise, he maintained, the exam “is an unpredictable and unacceptable impediment for accessibility to the legal profession.” Ms. Moeser has denied requests for additional information. The exam is an indispensable safeguard against unqualified practitioners, she said in a telephone interview, noting that “it is a basic test of fundamentals” that has “no justification other than protecting the consumer.” But critics have long questioned not only the expense and time devoted to taking the exam but also whether clients benefit from an admissions standard that is largely based on rote memorization. The bar exam “does nothing to measure lawyering skills,” said Kristin Booth Glen, a law professor and former dean of the City University of New York School of Law, which trains public interest lawyers, “and only shores up the guild mentality that there should be a barrier to prevent the legal market from being flooded during times when fewer jobs are available.” All states but one, Wisconsin, require passing the bar exam to become a licensed lawyer, but bar associations in states including Arizona and Iowa have been exploring alternatives. The Iowa State Bar Association proposed an in-state “diploma privilege,” similar to neighboring Wisconsin’s, that would allow graduates of local law schools to skip the bar exam and begin practicing immediately. The bar exam does not test Iowa-specific law, and almost all graduates pass it on the first try anyway, said Guy R. Cook, a personal injury lawyer and former president of the state bar association who headed a commission recommending the changes. Studying for the exam heaps more debt on graduates already mired in law school loans, the commission found, and deters them from practicing in lower-paying rural areas. The Iowa Supreme Court rejected the proposal last year, but asked for recommendations, due at the end of March, for more efficient and economical ways to handle the exam and the admissions process. “Innovation is always hard,” Mr. Cook said of the initial defeat. One reason that change is hard is the differing interests in the legal industry. The state bar controls the admissions process, in part by using the testing tools, which include a lengthy multiple choice test, that they buy from the bar examiners conference. The conference, which has scored the exam since the early 1970s, reported almost $20 million in annual revenue, nearly 85 percent of which came from exam sales, according to its most recent tax filing in June 2013. Outside lawyers and legal academics can earn extra money by helping prepare exam questions. Eliminating or curtailing the current bar exam would give law schools more leeway to create programs and conduct testing that determines who becomes a lawyer. The schools say the exam’s outsize importance forces them to devote more resources, including bar-specific courses, to prepare graduates for the crucial test rather than focusing on legal principles or hands-on law practice. Image Courtney Brooks and John Burwell Garvey, professors at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times At the University of San Diego, Professor Ferruolo said that the academic gap between last year’s test takers and their predecessors was so small that the school was trying to figure out what went wrong so it could help its students more effectively. Last summer, 73 percent of students passed the bar exam, down from 75 percent the previous year. They had admissions scores only one percentage point lower than the previous class, he said. On the other side of the country, Nicholas W. Allard, the dean of Brooklyn Law School, took exception to the testing agency’s hands-off response after the school’s bar passage rate fell nine percentage points last year among graduates with the same law school entry scores as those who took the test in 2013. The testing agency is “tone deaf,” he said, and compared it to Lily Tomlin’s comedic telephone operator Ernestine, who “blithely dismissed any complaints about service saying: ‘We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.’ ” The bar examiners conference, he recently said, “is the phone company of Ernestine’s time — powerful, inscrutable and resistant to change.” State legal establishments, too, have expressed concern that an all-or-nothing test helps narrow the lawyer pipeline. About one-third of states allowed diploma waivers for decades before the bar exam became standard, and some are re-exploring their options. Arizona, for example, has decided to allow students to take the bar exam in their final year of law school so, as with Iowa’s proposal, they will not need to spend as much time and money on test preparation. California tests students enrolled in unaccredited law schools after their first year of studies. Students must pass the “baby bar,” which measures their knowledge in contracts, criminal law and torts, before they can continue their legal education. Last month, the New York City Bar Association urged establishing a committee to explore allowing bar admission based, at least in part, on supervised learning. New Hampshire has such an alternative licensing model. Its University of New Hampshire School of Law allows second- and third-year students to participate in a kind of apprenticeship where they learn basics like taking depositions. Those accepted to the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program create portfolios of their written work and record their oral performances, which are reviewed by state bar examiners after each semester. Those who pass the review can skip the bar exam and go directly into practice. The program, which was supported by the state’s legal community, was not put in place quickly, though, said John B. Garvey, the program’s director. Exploring alternatives began in 1992 and, including several years as a pilot, the program took 17 years to be fully adopted.

Law school
Tests
Lawyers
US states
Arizona
Iowa
New Hampshire


Tigers’ Delmon Young Works on Image After New York Arrest

Abstract: Delmon Young strode to the plate for his first at-bat of the American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium on Saturday night to a conspicuously silent audience. The reception for Young, Detroit’s designated hitter, could have been more vitriolic. But the crowd seemed more focused on matters other than an ugly incident five months ago, and Young struck out on five pitches to barely a murmur. In truth, perhaps most fans just forgot this was Young’s first appearance playing in New York since being arrested on April 27 on a second-degree aggravated harassment charge after a confrontation outside the New York Hilton in which the police said an intoxicated Young shouted anti-Semitic slurs and attacked a group of tourists. Young was ultimately suspended seven games and agreed to anger management counseling and alcohol evaluation. He is due in court in Manhattan on Nov. 7. On Saturday, Young played a pivotal role in Detroit’s 6-4 win, going 3 for 6 with a home run and three runs driven in. His run-scoring double past a diving Nick Swisher in the 12th broke a 4-4 tie. “I’m just trying to have good at-bats,” Young said. “I have a lot of games and at-bats under my belt. Maybe being in here a couple of years in a row has helped.” Before the game, Manager Jim Leyland said the only concern was how the Tigers would fare against the Yankees , not how Young might handle a rowdy response from the crowd. “I don’t pay attention to the other stuff,” Leyland said. “That’s yesterday’s breakfast.” Leyland was certainly pleased to see that Young again had no trouble handling Yankees pitching. He has hit six career postseason home runs — setting a franchise record — and four have come in the last two seasons against the Yankees. “He’s been pretty good on the big stage,” Leyland said. “He seems to hit with confidence here for whatever reason. And he got a huge, huge hit tonight.” The offensive production took some of the glare away from Young’s April incident, which represented another off-field distraction in a career that has not exactly been serene. As a minor leaguer in 2006, while playing for Class AAA Durham, he was suspended for 50 games by the International League for flinging a bat at an umpire in disgust after a called third strike. A year earlier, he had been suspended for three games for bumping an umpire. After his arrest in Manhattan, he issued a statement taking responsibility for his actions. “I take this matter very seriously and assure everyone that I will do everything I can to improve myself as a person and player,” the statement said. He later told reporters that he planned to meet regularly with Jewish groups in the Detroit area in an effort to repair his image. “I’m being branded as a racist and a bigot, and that’s not me,” Young said. “I grew up in a very diverse area and I was raised to always respect everyone around me.” On the field, he has not quite fulfilled the promise he had as a first overall pick by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2003. But the Tigers rely on him as a key contributor in the heart of their order. Batting behind the sluggers Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder, Young hit .267 with 18 home runs and 74 runs batted in during the regular season. As the team’s designated hitter, he has slugging potential and produced well against left-handers this season — batting .308 in 182 at-bats — which made him a nuisance against Andy Pettitte and could again against C. .C. Sabathia in Game 4. He underscored his importance in the order Saturday when his sixth-inning single to right off Pettitte drove in Cabrera and stretched the Tigers’ lead to 2-0. He added a solo homer off the right-hander Derek Lowe in the eighth and then the go-ahead double in the 12th. “He’s a big key for us, particularly against left-handed pitching,” Leyland said. “It would be really good if he steps it up a little bit. He is a run-producer.” The Yankees witnessed that firsthand even before Saturday. Last season, Young hit three home runs and scored four times against them in the divisional series win, including a go-ahead solo homer in the seventh inning of Game 3. He wound up hitting .316 with a 1.170 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, better than any other player in the series. He seems to have picked up right where he left off. “He hit quite a few home runs last year in the postseason,” Leyland said. “And he came up huge tonight.”

Young Delmon
Baseball
Detroit Tigers
Anti-Semitism
New York Yankees
Playoff Games


F.B.I. Director Says ‘Viral Video Effect’ Blunts Police Work

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The director of the F.B.I. reignited the factious debate over a so-called “Ferguson effect” on Wednesday, saying that he believed less aggressive policing was driving an alarming spike in murders in many cities. James Comey, the director, said that while he could offer no statistical proof, he believed after speaking with a number of police officials that a “viral video effect” — with officers wary of confronting suspects for fear of ending up on a video — “could well be at the heart” of a spike in violent crime in some cities. “There’s a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime — the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’” he told reporters. Mr. Comey was wading back into a dispute from last fall that pitted him against some of his bosses at the White House and the Justice Department and one that roiled racial tensions over confrontations between police officers and minorities. He first raised the idea in October that a “chill wind” had deterred aggressive policing. But Obama administration officials distanced themselves from Mr. Comey at the time. They said they had seen no evidence to support the idea of a “Ferguson effect,” named after the 2014 shooting by a police officer of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., which sparked widespread protests. Obama administration officials declined to comment on Wednesday about Mr. Comey’s latest remarks, which were sharper in tone than his previous statements. But some dissenters said he was needlessly stirring up an unproven and divisive notion. “He ought to stick to what he knows,” James O. Pasco Jr., executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said in a telephone interview. The organization has more than 330,000 members. “He’s basically saying that police officers are afraid to do their jobs with absolutely no proof,” Mr. Pasco said. Mr. Comey’s remarks were prompted by a private briefing he received on Wednesday about rising crime rates in more than 40 cities during the first quarter of 2016. He said the new statistics, which have not been made public, showed a significant jump in murder rates in many cities. The numbers rose even more quickly than last year, Mr. Comey said. In 2015, rising murder tallies in Washington, Baltimore, Milwaukee, St. Louis and other cities made national news. Video Since 2014, videos of incidents between white police officers and minorities have prompted changes in procedures. Here is a look at those videos, which include graphic scenes of violence. Credit Credit From Left: Hamilton County Prosecutor, YouTube/Brandon Brooks, YouTube/Texas Department of Public Safety The two cities Mr. Comey singled out in the latest tallies were Las Vegas and Chicago. He said most of the murder victims were either black or Hispanic men, although F.B.I. officials declined to provide specific figures and said the data would likely be released later this week. In Chicago, where violence and police shootings have angered the city, officials say that as of April , murders were up 54 percent from last year, and shootings were up by 70 percent. Mr. Comey said that he could not fully explain the trend or the major differences from one city to the next. “I don’t know what the answer is, but holy cow, do we have a problem,” he said. “It’s a complicated, hard issue, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. A whole lot of people are dying,” he said. He said that the spike in violent crime deserves more national attention from scholars, the media, and the public. “Something is happening,” he said. “A whole lot more people are dying this year than last year, and last year than the year before and I don’t know why for sure.” Asked about his past views on the “Ferguson effect” as a possible explanation, Mr. Comey said he rejected that particular term, but added that he continued to hear from police officials in private conversations that “lots and lots of police officers” are pulling back from aggressive confrontations with the public because of viral videos. He said that the phenomenon “could well be an important factor in this.” More than many of his predecessors at the F.B.I., Mr. Comey has not hesitated to use the prestige of his office to draw attention to difficult and sometimes unpopular issues involving race and crime. Last year, he gave an unusually candid speech at Georgetown University about the tense relationship between police and blacks, saying that minorities are scrutinized more closely than whites because of bias. In the talk, he cited a song from a Broadway musical called “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.” That won him praise from some advocates of minorities, but in the debate over the Ferguson effect, he has angered some minority leaders who say the real problem remains policing in their communities that, if anything, is too aggressive, and far short of passive. One reason for the sharp disagreement is that there is little reliable national data on the topic, even at the F.B.I. The F.B.I. has promised to build a database compiling police shootings and confrontations with members of the public, but Mr. Comey said that project was at least two years from completion. “That does frustrate me,” he said.

James B Comey
Murders and Homicides
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Police
Crime
FBI


Houston Texans at Buffalo Bills Preview

Abstract: Texans (6-5) at Bills (5-6) 1 p.m. Line: Bills by 3 N.F.L. Week 13 scores and highlights Over the last four games, Houston’s defense has performed the way many thought Buffalo’s would when Coach Rex Ryan was hired. The Texans have allowed only 8.8 points a game in a four-game winning streak, and last week held the high-powered New Orleans offense to 6 points. The Bills, despite plenty of talent on both sides of the ball, have been a mess. Their defense, expected to be the biggest strength, is ranked 19th in the N.F.L. with 355.9 yards allowed per game. “I’ve never been in this situation,” Ryan told reporters. “I think the worst I’ve ever been in this league is 11th. I’m not going to press the panic button. But we’ll see. Obviously, we’ve got to improve.” PICK: TEXANS


Survey Shows a High Rate of Asthma at Ground Zero

Abstract: Rescue and recovery workers at ground zero have developed asthma at a rate that is 12 times what would be expected for adults, according to findings released yesterday by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Of nearly 26,000 workers surveyed in 2003 and 2004, 926 reported that they developed asthma for the first time after working at ground zero (a rate of 3.6 percent). In a group that size, under normal conditions, no more than 77 new cases of asthma (0.3 percent) would have been expected, according to the report, which is published in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, a science and health journal. The health department also found that workers who arrived at ground zero on Sept. 11, when the dust cloud and smoke from the fires were thickest and respirator masks were least available, had the highest risk of developing asthma in the aftermath of the disaster. And the rates of new asthma increased the longer workers remained at ground zero, with the risk of developing the disease increasing roughly 3 percent for every 10 days at the site. The study concluded that protective breathing equipment like respirator masks did have “a moderate protective effect” on workers who wore them. “It is reasonable to conclude that the early initiation and consistent use of appropriate respiratory protection may have further prevented additional cases of new-onset asthma,” the report stated. The study was based on telephone interviews with workers who enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry, a large effort by the city and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the effect of 9/11 on health. “This corroborates with other studies to say that the risk of respiratory symptoms in workers was elevated after 9/11,” said Lorna Thorpe, the city health department’s deputy commissioner for the division of epidemiology, and a writer of the study. Ms. Thorpe said the study underscored the importance of every ground zero worker or volunteer enrolling in a monitoring program or seeking expert medical care. The availability of proper respiratory equipment after the twin towers collapsed has been a point of contention between the city and rescue workers, especially firefighters. The standard protective equipment issued to firefighters — masks with small tanks of compressed air — lasted less than a half-hour and then had to be put aside. Some firefighters reported stopping at hardware stores on the way to ground zero to pick up utility dust masks. After the first several days, respiratory gear became more readily available to firefighters and other workers, but city records indicate that compliance with rules for respirator use was spotty through the entire nine months of the cleanup. Just wearing some kind of mask did not guarantee safety. The study showed that asthma rates increased even among workers who reported wearing masks. Surgical masks and paper utility masks commonly sold in hardware stores did little to keep out the toxic dust. More sophisticated masks with replaceable cartridges were effective, but only if used properly. Still, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, health commissioner, said in a statement that the study underscored the need for protective equipment to be readily available in a disaster response. “These findings reflect the critical importance of getting appropriate respiratory protection to all workers as quickly as possible during a disaster, and making every effort to make sure that workers wear them at all times,” Dr. Frieden said. In all, 71,000 people are taking part in the World Trade Center Health Registry. The study released yesterday covered only rescue and recovery workers and did not include office workers, students or downtown residents. The study has some limitations. Workers who developed asthma may have been more likely to enroll in the registry, or may have reported that the disease began after 9/11 if they were unsure about an earlier diagnosis. The registry did not attempt to verify diagnoses by comparing responses with existing medical records. Still, the study is one of the largest and most comprehensive reports linking ground zero dust to respiratory disease. Later this month, the health department is scheduled to release a report on the mental health effects of ground zero based on the registry data. The department is also conducting follow-up interviews with people enrolled in the registry. About 60 percent of the 71,000 people on the list have already been contacted.

World Trade Center (NYC)
Asthma
Medicine and Health
Respiratory Diseases
New York City


Sam Hurd, Bears Receiver, Is Charged in Cocaine Plot

Abstract: CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago Bears receiver Sam Hurd was in federal custody on Thursday, charged with trying to set up a drug-dealing network. He was arrested with a kilogram of cocaine in a sting, the authorities said. Hurd was arrested Wednesday night after meeting with an undercover agent at a Chicago restaurant, according to a criminal complaint that says he was first identified as a potential drug dealer over the summer as the N.F.L. lockout neared an end. Hurd told the agent that he was interested in buying 5 to 10 kilograms of cocaine and 1,000 pounds of marijuana each week to distribute in the Chicago area, the complaint said. He said that he and a co-conspirator distributed about four kilos of cocaine every week, but that their supplier could not keep up with his demands, the complaint alleges. Judge Young Kim said Hurd would need to return to Texas to face the charges. During a hearing Thursday in Chicago federal court, Kim ordered Hurd held pending bond. The hearing will be continued Friday after prosecutors and defense lawyers discuss possible bond. Hurd was handcuffed as marshals led him to the hearing. Brett Greenfield, a defense lawyer, said Thursday that he spoke with prosecutors and expected Hurd to be released Friday. Greenfield said Hurd was ready to “fight the case.” According to the complaint, Hurd agreed to pay $25,000 for each kilogram of cocaine and $450 a pound for the marijuana. The United States attorney in Texas said Hurd faced up to 40 years in prison and a $2 million fine if convicted of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute more than 500 grams, or half a kilogram, of cocaine. Hurd’s agent, Ian Greengross, did not return messages. Coach Lovie Smith said the arrest was a disappointment and a “total surprise,” adding that Hurd was still a member of the Bears for now. Smith said there was no reason to believe Hurd had problems when the Bears signed him before the season. Hurd, 26, played for five seasons with the Dallas Cowboys and is in his first season with the Bears. He has played in 77 games over all, starting six and scoring two touchdowns, while contributing mostly on special teams. He has played in 12 games this year, with eight catches for 109 yards. The Bears agreed to a three-year deal with Hurd reportedly worth up to $5.15 million, including a $1.35 million signing bonus and base pay this season of $685,000. Teammates said Thursday that they were stunned. “It’s a situation that you don’t, I don’t, want anybody to be in, especially a close friend,” said fellow receiver Roy Williams, who also played with Hurd in Dallas.

Football
Drug Abuse and Traffic
Hurd Sam
Chicago Bears
Cocaine and Crack Cocaine
Marijuana
Dallas Cowboys
Chicago (Ill)


Mets’ Jacob deGrom to Stay in Florida With Sick Newborn

Abstract: CLEVELAND — The Mets placed starter Jacob deGrom on family medical leave Saturday because of complications with his newborn son. “I have spoken to him every day,” Manager Terry Collins said. “He’s where you would expect him to be. He’s not sleeping well. We’re certainly rooting for him and Stacey and the baby to hang in there.” DeGrom’s wife, Stacey, gave birth Monday to the couple’s first child, Jaxon Anthony. Asked if the situation was life-threatening, Collins said, “I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that.” Collins said deGrom planned to throw 40 pitches in the bullpen on Sunday in Florida and to throw on Tuesday. Collins said deGrom, who left his first start after six innings with a sore muscle in his back, was physically ready to return but must build up his pitch count again. Logan Verrett will start in his place on Tuesday. Officially, deGrom is on the bereavement and family medical emergency list; a player can stay there for three to seven days. The Mets recalled Eric Campbell, an infielder-outfielder, to take his place on the roster.


Sighs of Relief From Yemen, Mixed With Fears of More Conflict

Abstract: Writing on social networks late Tuesday, Yemeni bloggers and activists in the capital, Sana, expressed relief that the Saudi-led air campaign, Operation Decisive Storm, officially ended after nearly a month at midnight local time. Doubts about what comes next were widespread, however, given the continued strength of Houthi rebels and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and a lack of details about what the new Saudi campaign, Operation Restore Hope, would entail. Breaking - Coalition's SP: "End of OpDecisiveStorm doesn't mean ceasefire" ..what did I just tell ya! #Yemen pic.twitter.com/woYxU03xG6 — Hisham Al-Omeisy (@omeisy) April 21, 2015 Family shedding tears of joy celebrating end of war, bet many in #Yemen too, & I don't have heart to break news of coalition's no ceasefire. — Hisham Al-Omeisy (@omeisy) April 21, 2015 Bitterness at weeks of deadly airstrikes on Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation, by its richest, was amplified by a widely shared tweet from the account of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a billionaire Saudi royal, promising luxury cars for 100 of the Saudi pilots who dropped the bombs. (That update was later removed from the prince’s Twitter account , but not before it had been shared more than 32,000 times.) The uncertainty in Yemen was not assuaged by a televised address from its Saudi-backed president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who spoke from Riaydh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. According to Yemeni viewers, Mr. Hadi offered little reassurance that their long national nightmare was at an end. Many seized on the fact that he read his rambling statement with crooked glasses, and the electricity went off again soon after he finished.

Yemen
Saudi Arabia
Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi
Houthis
Social Media
Bombs
Arab Spring


Cigarette Ads Come Back to British TV

Abstract: LONDON — About 50 years after Britain banned television advertisements for cigarettes, they are back. Except this time they are for the electronic kind. British American Tobacco, one of Europe’s biggest tobacco companies, said it would start showing television ads for its Vype electronic cigarettes in Britain Monday evening. The ads, which will also run online, are made possible by a loophole in the British advertising code written years before e-cigarettes came into widespread use. The television ad shows a woman and a man running through a city at night before jumping in slow-motion through a wall of vapor, a reference to the mist emitted by the popular but debated devices, which deliver nicotine without burning tobacco and produce a vapor, not smoke. The ad slogan is “experience the breakthrough.” Britain banned television ads promoting cigarettes in the 1960s, and a ban on ads for other tobacco products, including cigars, followed in the early 1990s, according to the Advertising Standard Authority in London. The regulator acknowledged that the current rules “were not designed with e-cigarettes in mind” and that it planned to start a consultation process to revise the rules at the end of this month. “There’s a lack of clarity among advertisers but also with consumers and we are aware of concerns that ads for e-cigarettes might be seen as cross-promoting tobacco and cigarettes through the back door,” the spokesman said. Health officials in Europe and elsewhere have yet to decide whether e-cigarettes are to be deemed harmful. They have not been linked to any serious health issues, but have been widely used for only a short time. Critics have said that by appearing similar to cigarettes, they could encourage children to take up smoking and that they should be banned from restaurants and other public spaces. Those in favor of e-cigarettes have campaigned to add them to the official list of ways to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes. In Britain, e-cigarettes are expected to be licensed as medicine beginning in 2016. On television and radio, advertisers in Britain cannot depict products that resemble cigarettes, including any design, color, imagery or logo style that might be associated with a tobacco product, the advertising regulator said. British American Tobacco said it developed an advertising campaign that it deems to “be appropriate and responsible in the absence of clear guidelines on e-cigarette advertising.” The ad states that its Vype e-cigarette product contains nicotine and is for consumers older than 18 years. The company also said it identified, when possible, its target consumers, who are smokers or people who use rival e-cigarette products. Initially available only online, e-cigarettes are now sold in supermarkets, corner shops, gas stations and larger concert venues. The actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Catherine Deneuve, a longtime heavy smoker, have been spotted puffing e-cigarettes. The global e-cigarette market is now valued at an estimated $3 billion, with Britain accounting for about $350 million of that, according to Damian McNeela, an analyst at Panmure Gordon. Regulators and lawmakers around the world are weighing whether to ban or restrict the sale and marketing of the devices as sales grow rapidly. The European Parliament voted Oct. 8 to scrap proposals by health officials to regulate e-cigarettes as a medicinal product, and the United States Food and Drug Administration is expected to soon set marketing and product rules on the devices. Tobacco companies have been investing in e-cigarette products as sales of tobacco cigarettes continue to slide. Larger companies are increasingly taking market share from smaller rivals, which were the first to start selling e-cigarettes. The Altria Group announced its foray into the e-cigarette market through its NuMark subsidiary last year while a rival, Lorillard, bought an e-cigarette maker, Blu eCigs, in 2012. “For the first time in its history, tobacco has a rivaling product,” Mr. McNeela said, but he added that e-cigarettes were far from a finished product because the taste was still different from traditional cigarettes and there were other factors, like how fast the nicotine enters the bloodstream. “The long-term question is whether e-cigarettes pose a real threat to the tobacco industry,” he said. Despite the loophole in advertising, British American Tobacco had to make one compromise with its Vype television ad. Instead of claiming that Vype offers “pure satisfaction for smokers,” as it does in online ads, the television ads say they are “pure satisfaction for vapers."

Smoking
advertising,marketing
British American Tobacco
Regulation and Deregulation
Great Britain
TV


Ed Palermo to Perform at Luna Stage in West Orange

Abstract: FOR the last 15 years, the bandleader and saxophonist Ed Palermo , of West Orange, has been putting a jazzy spin on the music of Frank Zappa at Manhattan nightclubs like Iridium and the Bottom Line , with a band of 18. He does not often perform in New Jersey, even though he lives there: “I’m mainly a New York guy,” he said. But on July 29, as part of “Luna Fusion Fest: The Heart and Soul of Rock and Jazz,” a two-day music festival to be held at Luna Stage in West Orange, Mr. Palermo will play his Zappa-esque repertory locally with eight other players. “This is an offshoot of my big band, a new thing,” said Mr. Palermo, 58. So new, in fact, that the festival, to be held in Luna’s 100-seat main stage space, is the group’s first-ever performance. Eddy’s Chemistry Set, as Mr. Palermo is calling the scaled-down act, will be less horn-heavy, with only three saxophones instead of the 10 horns in his large group. “I’m also going to make the electric violin be the main voice you hear,” he added. “I love the violin as a lead instrument.” In addition to the concert with Mr. Palermo, the event — part of Luna’s mission to “expand the sorts of programming we’re offering,” according to Mona Hennessy, the managing director — will include a performance on July 28 by the Mahavishnu Project , a four-piece band led by Mr. Palermo’s friend Gregg Bendian , of Fair Lawn; the group reinterprets the classic songs of Jeff Beck, John McLaughlin and others. In addition to the evening concerts, the Fusion Fest will offer two free hourlong children’s workshops. “Short Fuse,” on July 28 at 3 p.m., will feature Mr. Bendian, a percussionist; Neil Alexander, a keyboardist who performs with Mr. Bendian; and Leonieke Scheuble, a 10-year-old pianist. And “Sounds Like Fun,” a recording and production seminar with Steve Brown, an audio engineer and sound designer who lives in Montclair, is scheduled for June 29 at 3 p.m. Mr. Brown, who has taught at the Institute of Audio Research in New York, will teach participants to remix classic fusion records. Children will participate during the workshops, “and that, I think, is going to be really intriguing to people,” Ms. Hennessy said. “Then you have these two big concerts by these eclectic artists at night. “I don’t know who’s going to come, or if we’ll get an entirely new audience,” she added. “But it’s certainly a move in a new direction for us.”

Music
West Orange (NJ)
luna stage
Zappa Frank
Palermo Ed


In Silicon Valley, Gossip, Anger and Revenge

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Silicon Valley likes to keep the media on a tight leash. Tech executives expect obedience, if not reverence, from reporters. They dole out information as grudgingly as possible. Sometimes they simply buy a chunk of a publication, a time-honored method of influencing what is deemed fit to write about. Valleywag declined to play the game. It was a gossip sheet for the digital age: abrasive, knowing, cynical, self-promoting, sometimes unfair. It dispensed snark by the truckload, printing things that people knew or surmised but were off the table. It said Google co-founder Larry Page had dated his then-colleague, Marissa Mayer. That the Google chairman Eric Schmidt was a playboy and a scamp . That the Napster co-founder and early Facebook executive Sean Parker’s wedding was seriously over the top . Most notoriously, at least in retrospect, the tech gossip blog said in late 2007 that Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was an early and significant investor in Facebook, was gay . Outing famous people has a long and not particularly respectable history, but Valleywag said it was celebrating Mr. Thiel. The point, as Valleywag’s then-editor Owen Thomas wrote in his post, was that even in Silicon Valley, “a gay investor has no way to fit into the old establishment. That frees him or her to build a different, hopefully better system for identifying and rewarding talented individuals, and unleashing their work on the world.” This was gossip with an attitude, and an agenda. And what it unleashed was Mr. Thiel’s ire. He secretly financed a suit brought by the wrestler Hulk Hogan against Valleywag’s parent, Gawker Media, which has resulted in $140 million in damages. Gawker is appealing. The revelation of Mr. Thiel’s involvement in the suit this week brings the complicated relationship of Silicon Valley and the media once again to the forefront. The technology world is ever more important and richer, with smartphones in everyone’s pocket conveying a stream of news that Silicon Valley not only delivers, but helps shape. At the same time, the tech companies are less transparent about what they do. “Silicon Valley is a closed world and has become more closed at the elite levels,” said Fred Turner, chairman of the department of communication at Stanford. “The gossip that circulates between people doesn’t always leap into the media the way it might in New York. So Americans know the Valley primarily through its advertising, its self-promotion and its products.” Valleywag challenged that, and the Valley — or at least Mr. Thiel — pushed back. “We should not be surprised that they act like entitled industrialists out here, because they are,” Mr. Turner said. Valleywag was born in 2006, an arm of Gawker’s then-expanding empire of blogs, and it died last winter. It had a hiatus or two along the way, with Nick Denton, the Gawker founder, stepping in to write the blog at one point. Its most influential years were in the beginning, especially under Mr. Thomas, who ran the site from 2007 until 2009. “On one hand the reporting was terribly caustic and brutal and on the other it was really thorough and investigative and accurate in a lot of cases,” said Brandee Barker, former head of global communications at Facebook. “I would read a story and think, ‘How on earth did they find this information that is correct?’ Other times I’d read Valleywag and think, ‘This is the most evil and unfair characterization of somebody I’ve ever read in journalism.’” John Cook, executive editor of Gawker Media, who helped put Valleywag to rest last year, said the site “didn’t play the access game.” Mr. Thomas, now business editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, said the goal of Valleywag was to improve the tech community. “Silicon Valley said it had ideals,” he said. “All we asked was that it live up to those ideals. If you’re going to say that you’re a meritocracy, then don’t hire all of your buddies to launch a start-up who all happen to be young white men. Don’t say you’re apolitical when you’re secretly funding anti-immigration measures.” For Mr. Thiel, taking action against Gawker may be a win. Dan Lyons, an author who was briefly a Valleywag writer, said what Mr. Thiel did “sets a scary precedent,” but “my guess is that most people hate Gawker as much as he does, so he probably ends up looking like a hero among his own crowd.” That response was not long in coming. Scott Adams, whose Dilbert cartoon is a satirical look at the modern workplace, wrote on his blog on Wednesday that “this is another example in which I think citizens are taking a more active role in fixing the world when government isn’t the right tool for the job.” Mr. Adams wrote approvingly of Mr. Thiel, “I assume he is acting out of a combination of revenge and a desire to make the world a better place.” Without this week’s news, Valleywag’s legacy would be uncertain. Several Silicon Valley figures asked to comment on Wednesday said they had not read it or did not know it was defunct. Others, like the Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, an occasional Valleywag target, said simply about the site and this week’s events, “I don’t care about any of those people.” The news about Mr. Thiel funding the suit against Gawker broke just as the previous contretemps about Silicon Valley and the media — how Facebook shapes the news that its users see, sparked by a story in Gizmodo, another Gawker property — was dying down. Mr. Thiel, as it happens, is a Facebook board member. Facebook declined to comment on Mr. Thiel. Mr. Thomas, who is himself gay, argues that Valleywag was not really outing Mr. Thiel. “I did discuss his sexuality, but it was known to a wide circle who felt that it was not fit for discussion beyond that circle,” he said. “I don’t believe he was in the closet. He was never hiding it.” However much Valleywag said it admired Mr. Thiel for being “the smartest V.C. in the world,” it took a more disparaging view as well. In one post about Mr. Thiel’s claims of hiring only the best to work at his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, Mr. Thomas wrote, “Oh, really? Take a look at their résumés on LinkedIn. Like so many of this outspokenly harebrained libertarian’s theses, the claim sounds good on paper but doesn’t stand up to inspection.” Mr. Thiel returned the favor, calling Valleywag “the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda.” “It scares everybody,” he said in a 2009 interview with Pe Hub, a private equity publication. “It’s terrible for the Valley, which is supposed to be about people who are willing to think out loud and be different. I think they should be described as terrorists, not as writers or reporters.”

Peter A Thiel
Gawker
Valleywag
Silicon Valley
News media,journalism
Hulk Hogan
Gossip
Science and Technology
Gay and Lesbian LGBT
Blog


Irish Wince as a Budget Proposal Cuts to the Bone

Abstract: DUBLIN — It sits in boarded-up disgrace next to the River Liffey, an abandoned, half-finished hulk. In better days, it was conceived as the new headquarters of the powerful Anglo Irish Bank, a glorious symbol of Ireland ’s great economic boom. But the bank, larded with bad debt and disgraced by allegations of mismanagement, was taken over by the government last winter. The site’s developer went bust this fall. And the ghostly construction project, mired in lawsuits, now stands as a monument to a telling kind of failure, the kind measured by the distance between the heights of a country’s financial hubris and the depths of its fall. Not that anyone here needs any reminding that Ireland, once one of the world’s biggest economic success stories, is now one of the recession’s worst casualties. “A lot of buildings are like this in Dublin,” said Bernadette Rowley, 53, pausing wearily the other day under the shelter of the temporary pedestrian walkway at the site, as rain dripped through its cracks. On Wednesday, the government added to the general misery in this shellshocked city by releasing its harshest budget in generations. The spending plan, 60 billion euros or about $88 billion, cuts 4 billion euros from the country’s ballooning deficit by reducing public sector salaries by 5 to 15 percent and by drastically reducing expenditures on health care, education, welfare benefits and other social programs. Economists applauded the move, saying that Ireland — unlike other crisis-stricken European countries, most notably Greece and Spain — was showing courage in trying to rein in its deficit. European Union rules require countries that use the euro to keep their deficits below 3 percent of gross domestic product. Left unchecked, the government says, Ireland’s would increase to 13.5 percent in 2010. Ireland already cut some benefits, increased some taxes, and reduced public sector salaries in emergency measures in April. If the government’s proposals pass Parliament, it expects to save 15 billion euros or about $22 billion over the next four years. “This process started in 2008, but today is a big moment for Ireland in its efforts to restore stability to its public finances,” Dermot O’Leary, chief economist for Goodbody Stockbrokers in Dublin, said in an interview. “The events of the last two weeks in relation to Dubai and Greece have proved that if you’re a small country with a large deficit, the markets will force you into action by driving up the rates at which you can borrow funds.” Markets are one thing; the reality for actual residents of Ireland is another. A number of them converged outside the Parliament building to protest as the government unveiled its budget. Public sector employees held strikes in November. The national police force has threatened to walk out. It seems impossible to find anyone here who has been left unscathed. Never mind the national deficit, said Leo Lalor, who owns the Bags in the City luggage store in a downtown shopping center: what about his own deficit? Business at his location dropped 15 percent in 2008, he said, and fell 30 percent further in 2009. Last year, Mr. Lalor was the general manager of a luggage company with 42 stores across Ireland. The banks were throwing money around like confetti, he said, until they weren’t. The credit line dried up virtually overnight; the company went bankrupt. In his new job, he makes 30 percent of his old salary. He has been in retail for 30 years, he said, even through the dark days of the 1980s, and has never seen anything like this. As he spoke, crowds thronged the shopping center and “Jingle Bell Rock” played on what seemed to be an eternal loop. Despite the seasonal trappings, the stores looked as if they had bypassed Christmas, moving directly into post-holiday sales. At a Dunnes food store, wine was selling at half price. At Hughes & Hughes, four books were selling for the price of three. Unemployment is at 12.5 percent, nearly triple what it was in 2004. Housing prices, fueled by a construction boom encouraged by the banks and the government, have fallen by 26 percent since their peak two years ago. The country is experiencing deflation , or a decline in price levels. In the short term, this seems like a good thing because people have so much less money to spend, between pay cuts, benefits cuts and the cost of paying mortgages and credit-card bills. In some ways, Ireland is being thrown back into the past. “Anyone over 35 remembers the 1980s,” said Kevin Williams, who was waiting for his wife at the shopping center. That was before the Celtic Tiger, before the geyser of foreign investment, before a population that used to be thrifty began believing that anything was possible, as long as you had a credit card. Mr. Williams, 50, a civil servant in the agriculture department, had an annual salary of 44,000 euros in 2008, or about $65,000 at current exchange rates. In April, the government imposed a pension levy on public sector employees, effectively reducing his salary by 7 percent. Under the new budget, his pay would be cut by some 6 percent more. Public sector employees who earn higher salaries face steeper cuts, including the prime minister, Brian Cowen, whose pay is being reduced by 20 percent. Wednesday’s budget would also impose a carbon tax of 15 euros a ton, or about $22, on fuel. But one bright spot, at least for a population that likes to drink, was the reduction in excise duty on beer and liquor. This is to help stem the trend of people driving to Northern Ireland to buy cheaper alcohol there. In Parliament, Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, contended that the worst was over. “Further corrections will be needed in the coming years, but none as big as today’s,” he said.

Ireland
Economic Conditions and Trends
European Union
Layoffs and Job Reductions


Nine Iraqis Were Mistreated in British Custody, Report Says

Abstract: LONDON — Nine Iraqis who were captured by British soldiers after a 2004 battle during the Iraq war were mistreated, but allegations of murder and torture amounted to “deliberate and calculated lies,” according to an official report released Wednesday. As many as 20 Iraqis were killed and mutilated after a fierce gun battle, according to claims from some of the detainees, their relatives and other Iraqi witnesses, but those allegations were withdrawn this year. The inquiry’s report said many of the claims against the British were prompted by “reckless speculation and ingrained hostility.” Nevertheless, the investigation concluded that the nine Iraqi detainees, while in British custody, were at times subjected to “actual or possible ill treatment.” The findings follow a report released last week by a United States Senate committee, which declared that the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture on terrorism suspects violated American values and produced little or no useful intelligence. The British inquiry found no examples of torture like those described in the Senate report. The lengthy and detailed inquiry focused on one specific situation in 2004. Established in 2009 and led by a senior British judge, it cost more than 24 million pounds, or nearly $38 million. The report cleared the British forces of the worst charges against them and highlighted the context in which the Iraqis were captured, near the small town of Majjar al-Kabir, on the main road linking Basra and Al Amarah in southeastern Iraq. The Iraqis were captured after heavily armed insurgents, including the nine detainees, ambushed the British troops. The Iraqis were “bent on inflicting as much death, injury and damage upon British forces as they could,” the inquiry’s report said. The report painted a picture of intimidation and abuse during the arrival and interrogation of the Iraqi prisoners at Camp Abu Naji on May 14, 2004. The men were strip-searched without adequate privacy, the report said, and they stood naked in the processing tent in front of other soldiers. A blindfolded prisoner would be left standing in a tent before an interrogator would break the silence by drumming his fingers on the table or whistling, the report said. The interrogator would then walk around the detainee in silence, blowing on the back of the detainee’s neck. Finally, he would bang on a table with a metal tent peg to startle the detainee before removing the blindfold. The report also criticized the use of radio static, sleep deprivation and forced medication, and unsatisfactory arrangements for lavatory visits, during which one prisoner might have remained handcuffed. But the inquiry called the allegations of murder and torture “the product of deliberate and calculated lies” by some of those who testified. “Other false allegations were the result of inappropriate and reckless speculation on the part of witnesses,” the report said. Some of the most serious allegations were made by relatives of a 19-year-old detainee, Hamid al-Sweady, who asserted that the British military had killed him after he was captured. The overall inquiry was named after Mr. Sweady.

Iraq War
Great Britain
Detainees
Torture
Senate
Congress
Iraq


With One Swing, Yankees Solve Left-Handed Riddle of Chris Sale

Abstract: On the strength of Carlos Beltran’s three-run homer, the Yankees kept alive their hopes of winning the American League East as they defeated the Chicago White Sox, 3-2, at Yankee Stadium on Thursday. The Toronto Blue Jays had the day off — and so did several Yankees regulars. But Yankees starter Michael Pineda had a solid outing, and the team inflicted enough damage against the White Sox ace Chris Sale to cut the Blue Jays’ lead to three games with 10 left to play. The Yankees lead the A.L. wild-card race by four and a half games. “We were able to get three off a guy who’s one of the best lefties in the game, and our guys did their jobs,” Beltran said. “Right now, we’re focusing on these 10 games and trying to put on a good run.” The Yankees regulars Brett Gardner, Brian McCann, Greg Bird and Didi Gregorius began the day on the bench — a move Manager Joe Girardi said was as much about resting players as it was about countering Sale, a dominant left-hander. “It’s a physical grind, and we still have 11 games to go, a long way to go, and we’ve got to make sure these guys are healthy and productive,” Girardi said before the game. Sale was 3-0 with an 0.79 E.R.A. in five career starts against the Yankees heading into Thursday night. He was the first of three left-handed starters in a row whom the Yankees would be facing, and Girardi said he could rely on his bench and young players, like the rookie second baseman Rob Refsnyder. “When a lefty’s in there, when a lefty’s warming up in the bullpen, you just get ready and prepare,” said Refsnyder, who had not started a game since being called up at the start of the month and singled in his first at-bat. “You’ve got to know your role.” Sale pitched seven solid innings, giving up seven hits, striking out eight and allowing one walk. But in the third inning, Beltran sent a 98-mile-per-hour fastball rocketing over the left-field wall for his 18th homer of the year, and Alex Rodriguez, who had been on first base, notched the 2,000th run of his career. Pineda pitched six strong innings and escaped a bases-loaded jam in the third when he got Trayce Thompson to strike out swinging at a high, tailing 95-m.p.h. fastball. Pineda, who struck out six and walked none, made his only costly mistake in the sixth, when Thompson crushed a solo homer just inside the left-field foul pole to cut the Yankees’ lead to 3-1. Thompson came up with the bases loaded again in the seventh, and he drew a walk from Dellin Betances to make it 3-2. Even with a potential postseason run ahead, Girardi said it was too early to discuss how he might arrange his rotation. He said Masahiro Tanaka, who is recovering from a hamstring strain, could throw in a bullpen session Friday. “I’ll be surprised if he’s not available in the near future, and I’m talking about sometime early next week,” Girardi said. There was a short ceremony before the game in memory of Yogi Berra, who died Tuesday . After a video tribute, the crowd observed a moment of silence, and then Girardi and a group of players placed a wreath in the shape of an “8” behind home plate. “For me personally, I miss him,” Girardi said. “I had a chance to talk to him on Saturday before the game, and you never think it’s going to be the last time you talk to someone.” INSIDE PITCH When the Toronto Blue Jays acquired Troy Tulowitzki and David Price before the trading deadline, it was bad news for the Yankees in most respects. But the Blue Jays’ revival has at least been a boon to the Yankees in one area — their road attendance, which has climbed to 10th in baseball. The Yankees, who in mid-May were last among 30 teams, are averaging 31,275 with three games remaining at Baltimore on the last weekend of the season. The Yankees have played before 16 sellouts on the road this season, six of them in Toronto over the last two months, which drew at least 46,000. The Yankees have led baseball in road attendance in four of the previous five seasons, and their average has not dipped below 33,000 since 2001.


4 Tourists Plead Guilty to Obscenity for Posing Naked on Malaysian Peak

Abstract: HONG KONG — Four Westerners who stripped atop Malaysia’s highest peak pleaded guilty on Friday to public obscenity and were due to be deported, their lawyer said. The four were fined about $1,300 apiece and received three-day jail sentences, which they had already served, said the lawyer, Ronny Cham. They were scheduled to take the first flight Saturday morning out of the city of Kota Kinabalu, he said. They had faced possible jail terms of up to three months. Their case received international attention after some local officials said that by removing their clothes on Mount Kinabalu, which is considered sacred by many who live near it, the foreigners had helped cause a deadly earthquake last week. Eleanor Hawkins, a 24-year-old British woman; Dylan Snel, a 23-year-old Dutch man; and Lindsey Peterson, 23, and his sister Danielle Peterson, 22, of Canada were part of a group who split off from a larger party of trekkers on the mountain last month. They removed their clothes and took photos, despite requests from a guide that they not do so. Their act provoked local anger after the guide reported the episode. But the outrage grew after a magnitude-6.0 earthquake on June 5 that killed 18 people on the mountain. Online, many Malaysians denounced the behavior of the foreign visitors. Some officials in Sabah, the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo where Kinabalu is, said they agreed with local sentiment that the earthquake was linked to the visitors’ display. Six other members of the group were sought by the police but were believed to have left the country. Emil Kaminski, who is believed to be a member of the group that undressed, posted a video online in which he mocked the assertion that their actions had anything to do with the earthquake as foolishly unscientific.

Indecency Obscenity and Profanity
Malaysia
Borneo Indonesia


Spinach Recalled After Positive Test for Salmonella

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 (AP) — A California produce company recalled bagged fresh spinach Wednesday after a sample tested positive for salmonella. There were no immediate reports of illness linked to the tainted spinach, distributed by Metz Fresh of King City, Calif. The recall comes nearly a year after an outbreak of another pathogen, E. coli, in fresh spinach killed 3 people and sickened 200. The recalled spinach was distributed throughout the 48 contiguous states and Canada and sold in both retail and food-service packages. Only a single sample from one of three packing lines tested positive for salmonella, but the company said it moved to recall all the spinach packed that same day as a precaution. The recall covers 10- and 16-ounce bags, as well as 4-pound cartons and cartons that contain four 2.5-pound bags, with the following tracking codes: 12208114, 12208214 and 12208314. Consumers with questions can contact Metz Fresh at (831) 386-1018. Last year’s E. coli outbreak prompted the Food and Drug Administration to warn Americans not to eat fresh bagged spinach. The agency later lifted that warning after tracing the contamination to spinach processed and packed by Natural Selection Foods in San Juan Bautista, Calif. The outbreak led to stricter monitoring procedures by growers and processors and stepped-up inspections by California health officials. Salmonella sickens about 40,000 people a year in the United States and kills about 600. It can cause diarrhea, fever, dehydration, abdominal pain and vomiting. Most cases of salmonella poisoning are caused by undercooked eggs and chicken.

Recalls and Bans of Products
Food Contamination and Poisoning
Salmonella (Bacteria)
E Coli (Bacteria)