Hubig’s Pies Bakery in New Orleans Falls to Fire

Abstract: The Hubig’s Pies bakery, a New Orleans icon of guilty pleasure, was destroyed in a fire early Friday. The company, which has fed New Orleanians since the 1920s, had come back from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina . Now Hubig’s is being tested by flames as well. Its humble little sugar-glazed fried pies, prepared with lard for a flaky, hearty crust and filled with fruit, coconut, chocolate or — during the fall — intoxicating fresh Acadiana yams, are a part of the city’s sweet soul. They do not necessarily appeal to a sophisticated outsider’s palate, said Brett Anderson, the restaurant critic for The Times-Picayune. “If you’re some kind of serious food connoisseur, it’s not really self-evident why you should appreciate it when you’re eating it,” said Mr. Anderson, who was raised in Minnesota. “I’ve learned to love Hubig’s pies.” The local love for Hubig’s, he said, is “part of the code” of living in New Orleans, which treasures fancy restaurants like Galatoire’s and po’ boy sandwich joints. “They love Hubig’s pies as much as they love bananas Foster,” he said. It’s the catholic embrace of high and low, and a sensibility that says too much ain’t enough. Most of all, it’s a love of tradition in a place with hundreds of years of history and a long history of loss. These are, then, more than pies. Four months after Hurricane Katrina, when the Hubig’s trucks started making deliveries again and the little packages with their images of “Savory Simon” in his extravagant toque began showing up in stores, it was cause for celebration . The pies are so closely associated with the city, its suffering and its renewal that in the first episode of “Treme,” the studiedly precise HBO series set in New Orleans, a restaurateur whose kitchen cannot come up with any of the desserts on the menu pulls a Hubig’s pie out of her purse and gets the chef to fancy it up for a customer. (Locals carped that the bakery had not reopened at the time portrayed in the episode, stretching the boundaries of accuracy, if not shelf life.) The bakery sat in converted stables on Dauphine Street on a quiet block in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood. The Fire Department said the blaze began in the center of the building, “in an area called the fry room, and spread quickly.” Thirty-two fire trucks responded to the blaze. Charles Parent, the fire chief, recalled in an interview with the television station WDSU that the company gave unsold pies to firefighters and police officers in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, and so they felt the loss keenly. “Our guys put this out with their tears,” he said. No one was injured in the fire, and that was the most important thing, said Lamar Bowman, the company’s president. Mr. Bowman said he had received calls of condolence and support from across the nation, and he pledged that this latest setback would not be the end of Hubig’s. “We made it back from Katrina, so it’s our intention to rebuild and come back from this also,” he said. “We’ll start from the beginning and make it bigger and better.” For now, New Orleans is without its little pies. Hubig’s fans sought out their treats in every gas station and supermarket where they are sold. “We opened up at 6, and I would say they were gone by a quarter of 7,” said John Serpas, manager of the Harrison Grocery in the Lakeview neighborhood. The woman who bought the last two pies, he said, took the box, with the legend “A New Orleans Tradition.” She said, “This might be worth some money later in life.”

Hubig's Pies (New Orleans Bakery)
New Orleans (La)
Bakeries and Baked Products
Fires and Firefighters
Hurricane Katrina


Gentler Words About Charter Schools From de Blasio

Abstract: It was perhaps fitting that Mayor Bill de Blasio found himself Sunday at Riverside Church, the neo-Gothic landmark in Morningside Heights: The church was long a cathedral of antiwar sentiment, and the mayor was looking to make peace. For weeks, Mr. de Blasio had been locked in a battle with advocates of charter schools, who were denouncing him around the clock in a $3.6 million advertising blitz. The results were beginning to show: His education agenda seemed rudderless, and his popularity in polls was slipping. So on Sunday, Mr. de Blasio struck a conciliatory tone, acknowledging missteps and emphasizing common ground. He quoted a theologian, Paul Tillich, saying, “The noise of these shallow waters prevents us from listening to the sounds out of the depth.” Charter schools and their backers represent perhaps the most formidable political threat to Mr. de Blasio’s young administration, and the mayor has taken notice. In recent weeks, he has spoken about the need to educate all children, regardless of the type of school they attend. And in private, he has phoned titans of Wall Street and philanthropy, explaining that he does not want to “destroy” charter schools, according to several business executives who spoke with Mr. de Blasio. For a mayor who won election by denouncing the excesses of business and speaking passionately of the need to bridge the gap between rich and poor, the conversations have been awkward. But increasingly, Mr. de Blasio seems determined to move beyond what he sees as a perilous distraction and to avoid the wrath of a well-financed charter-school movement. “There’s a desire on the part of the business community to work with the mayor,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a coalition of business leaders. “The question that has been raised is whether that’s mutual.” Charter school leaders have seized on a key vulnerability. While black and Latino residents overwhelmingly backed Mr. de Blasio in last year’s election, many also embrace the cause of charter schools, which operate primarily in low-income neighborhoods. Families for Excellent Schools, a charter school advocacy group, began running advertisements last month attacking Mr. de Blasio for his decision to deny public space to three charter schools run by Success Academy Charter Schools, a high-performing network. In defending his decision, the mayor said he worried about losing space for special education programs, and he expressed concern about having elementary school students attend classes on high school campuses. He also allowed almost every other charter school to continue using public school space, and more recently, has promised to find space at another site for one of the three Success schools, an existing school that wants to add older grades. In one ad, the smiling faces of the school’s students zoom across the screen and then begin to disappear. “They love their school and all the opportunities it brings,” a narrator says. “But Mayor Bill de Blasio just announced he is closing their school, taking away their hopes and dreams.” Image Mayor Bill de Blasio with his wife, Chirlane McCray, former Mayor David N. Dinkins and Representative Charles B. Rangel. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times In another, a parent named Maria offers a direct message to Mr. de Blasio: “You’re not thinking about the people that you’re hurting.” The campaign seems to have taken a toll on the mayor’s popularity, and his aides have acknowledged as much. A poll by Quinnipiac University last week showed that 38 percent of voters approved of Mr. de Blasio’s handling of New York City schools, while 49 percent disapproved. The poll last week showed that 45 percent of voters approved of the new mayor, down from 53 percent two months ago. Longtime supporters of charter schools, including the Walton Family Foundation and the hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, are helping finance the ad campaign, according to an individual involved in the effort. In recent days, Mr. de Blasio has aggressively reached out to Wall Street financiers, including Mr. Tudor Jones, in hopes of easing tensions and ending the ads, which are running dozens of times a day. He also has spoken with Daniel S. Loeb, chairman of the board of Success Academy and Jonathan D. Gray, chairman of the board of Harlem Village Academies, another charter network. In those conversations, Mr. de Blasio has sought to tamp down concerns that he holds a grudge against Wall Street or wealthy individuals, according to a banker who spoke with Mr. de Blasio but declined to be identified for fear of harming his relationship with the mayor. The reception was mixed. Some of those the mayor called said they walked away from the conversations reassured about Mr. de Blasio’s commitment to charter schools. But some said they were still concerned about his educational vision, including his plan to charge rent to charter schools, and others said their critiques of Mr. de Blasio extended beyond charter schools and included his support for raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for prekindergarten and after-school programs. Phil Walzak, the mayor’s press secretary, said the conversations were part of a broader effort by Mr. de Blasio to unite community leaders, philanthropists and educators around his vision for the city. “These outreach efforts underscore the mayor’s commitment to uniting people and working together to ensure every child in New York City receives a great education,” he said in a statement. Many charter school leaders, accustomed to favorable treatment under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, fear that Mr. de Blasio will hinder their growth in New York. Charter schools are publicly financed but privately run, and are typically not unionized. Mr. Bloomberg gave charter schools free space in public school buildings, a policy Mr. de Blasio has criticized as squeezing out traditional schools. Eva S. Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman who runs the Success Academy network, raised several million dollars for advocacy efforts in anticipation of Mr. de Blasio’s tenure, according to a person familiar with her efforts. Mr. de Blasio had singled out Ms. Moskowitz during the campaign, saying, “She has to stop being tolerated, enabled, supported.” Kevin Hall, a Success Academy board member and president of the Charter School Growth Fund, said it had become necessary for educators to plan robust political efforts. “In some ways these guys have gotten pulled into being in the advocacy realm because the world kind of changed around them,” he said. “People are trying to figure out now, how do we mobilize our families and others to better tell our story than we have?” The attacks on Mr. de Blasio have created divisions within the charter school community. A small coalition of charter school leaders has distanced itself from the recent advertising campaign in hopes of building better relations with City Hall. The group released a statement on Sunday praising the mayor’s speech. “We share a belief that our city needs a high-quality charter sector that collaborates with district schools,” the group said. For all his talk of camaraderie on Sunday, Mr. de Blasio made clear that he would not swerve from his underlying agenda: focusing attention and resources on traditional public schools, by expanding access to prekindergarten and after-school programs. “The answer is not to save a few of our children only,” he said. “The answer is not to find an escape route that some can follow and others can’t. The answer is to fix the entire system.”

NYC
Bill de Blasio
K-12 Education
Charter school


Firehouse Loses a Spotted Symbol of Healing

Abstract: On Sept. 11, 2001, seven members of Ladder Company 20 on Lafayette Street in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan were killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center, about a mile and a half away, along with seven members of Squad 18, which shared the firehouse at the time with the ladder company. A few weeks later, during the period of mourning that followed, a purebred Dalmatian puppy showed up at the company’s doorstep. The dog, a gift from two deputies with the Monroe County sheriff’s department in upstate New York, was given the name Twenty, after the ladder company. Twenty immediately loved the fire truck, a classic Seagrave hook-and-ladder, and began accompanying the firefighters on all their calls, from raging blazes to false alarms. “For 10 years, she never missed a run,” said Mike Toal, 60, who had been a senior chauffeur at Ladder 20 and often drove the truck. The dog also went with the firefighters to events held for fallen members and provided sorely needed moments of cheer and humor on a daily basis, Mr. Toal said. “We were burying guys left and right at that time,” Mr. Toal said. “She came with us to a lot of burials and funerals.” Even after retiring about five years ago, Mr. Toal would return every month, with dog biscuits, to visit Twenty. He was among the many current and retired firefighters who went to the firehouse this week to spend time with the aging and ailing dog before she died on Tuesday. “There were 20 guys in the kitchen crying” as a veterinarian prepared to euthanize Twenty, who was 14, in the firehouse, he said. It was too much even for the most hardened members of the Fire Department, recalled Lt. Gary Iorio, who worked at Ladder 20 for 10 years and was present in Twenty’s last hours. “I’ve been through a lot of stuff, and here I’m crying over a dog, but you couldn’t help it — she was part of the place,” he said. The tradition of a Dalmatian as the iconic New York City fire dog stretches back to the 1800s, when fire vehicles were pulled by horses, which often had a good rapport with Dalmatians. One prominent Dalmatian was Hooper, of Engine 211/Ladder 119 in Brooklyn. Hooper became the title character in a 1993 children’s book, “Firehouse Dog.” But as modern Fire Department regulations, work schedules and other logistics have made keeping a firehouse pet less viable, Twenty’s presence stood out. Image In addition to living among the firefighters, she also joined them on their calls. Credit Kevin Harber The department announced the dog’s death by issuing a photograph and a quote, which quickly gained traction on social media and was picked up by many news outlets. Twenty was a classic fire dog. She slept and ate with the firefighters and went with them on all their calls. “She jumped up into the rig for every run,” Mr. Toal said. “She had her own seat and her own window. If anyone else tried to sit in it, they got covered in dog hair.” “I think everyone got a kick out of this dog looking out the window,” he said. Her barking added to the cacophony as the truck weaved through crowded, noisy city streets, Lieutenant Iorio said. “She’d be barking her head off — it was almost like ‘The Little Rascals,’ ” recalled Lieutenant Iorio, who said Twenty became a spotted symbol of healing for the firefighters and a local celebrity in the bustling, tourist-filled neighborhood. “She calmed you, she brought a certain peace to you,” he said. “She was a focal point of stress relief. “There was a time after 9/11 when the firehouse was like being in a tomb,” Lieutenant Iorio said. “You couldn’t get back to normal, and the dog helped with that.” Twenty arrived right after a funeral for a firefighter killed at the World Trade Center. Mr. Toal still had tears in his eyes when he answered the door that day in November 2001 to find the two deputies from Monroe County holding Twenty. Mr. Toal had already spent 20 years at the firehouse by 2001 and lost close friends on Sept. 11, including Capt. John Fischer, who died while leading a group of firefighters from Ladder 20 trying to rescue people inside the north tower. Ladder 20 was one of the first groups of firefighters to respond to the terror attack, and the 14 fallen members from the two squads sharing the NoLIta firehouse at the time who were killed that day was an inordinately high number of the 343 firefighters who died in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Toal grew close to the dog, who would often sleep with him in the firehouse’s bunk room. She liked the rhythms of the firehouse and would jump up as soon as she heard the emergency tones signaling a run. Once at the scene of a fire, Twenty would remain in the truck while the firefighters did their work. “The tones would go off, and she’d start barking and running around,” Lieutenant Iorio recalled. “Mike would open up the jump seat door and she’d jump up in there. You wouldn’t think a dog would want to go, but she got energized from it.” Mr. Toal said Twenty ate the same food as the firefighters. “When word would come over the intercom that chow was on, she’d be the first one in the kitchen,” he said. Firehouse members decided to have Twenty cremated so that her ashes could be placed near a memorial in the firehouse that holds official department plaques commemorating firefighters who died in the line of duty. “I liked her more than most people I worked with,” Mr. Toal said. “She had 25 fathers,” he said, referring to the number of firefighters working in the firehouse. “She was family. She liked being in the firehouse. She liked firemen.”

Fires
Fire Department NYC
Dog
9/11,Sept 11
NYC


On Gossage’s Plaque, a Yankee Cap

Abstract: Rich Gossage will wear a Yankees cap when he enters the Baseball Hall of Fame. The announcement was made at a news conference in New York on Wednesday, one day after Gossage was the only player elected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in the 2008 class. “Going to play for the Yankees was an out-of-body experience,” said Gossage, who was known as Goose. “Putting on the pinstripes, I put so much pressure on myself.” The Hall of Fame determines which caps players wear on their plaques. Gossage will be the 25th Yankees player inducted, the most among major league teams, according to the Hall. Gossage played all or a part of seven seasons with the Yankees, leading the American League in saves twice and helping the Yankees win the 1978 World Series. Gossage said Wednesday that he would have considered using steroids to help his career if given the opportunity. “Chances are I probably would have done it, too,” said Gossage, who added that his competitive drive and free spirit, along with the possibility of extending his career and earning more money, might have led him to use performance enhancers. But Gossage continued to encourage players who have taken banned drugs to confess to protect the integrity of the game. “The best thing that could happen in the sport is these guys come clean and life will go on and we will get this behind us as far as baseball is concerned,” Gossage said.

Gossage Richard (Goose) (1951- )
New York Yankees
Baseball Hall of Fame
Baseball
Athletics and Sports


Tour de France 2014: Vincenzo Nibali Displays Dominance in Final Mountain Stage

Abstract: ARGELÈS-GAZOST, France — Alexander Vinokourov, the manager of Vincenzo Nibali’s Astana team, said Nibali used Thursday’s final mountain stage of the Tour de France to show that he was the “padrone,” or boss, of the cycling world. Nibali did more than that. Only illness, accident or profound bad luck are likely to prevent him from winning the 101st Tour de France on Sunday. No serious challenge to Nibali’s hold on the yellow jersey emerged as the mountain stages came to a close with a difficult, hot stage in the Pyrenees. It was the fourth stage win of this year’s Tour for Nibali, an Italian. Three have come in the mountains. The last overall winner to win four non-time-trial stages in a single Tour was the Belgian Eddy Merckx — 40 years ago. All of Nibali’s remaining challengers are too far behind to overtake him Saturday during the Tour’s only time trial, an individual race against the stopwatch. The other two remaining stages are flat, similarly eliminating the prospect of an upset. Nibali, 29, was careful not to overtly declare himself the overall winner while nevertheless acknowledging that was the case. “I’m very happy with this stage win, and certainly I’ve accumulated a healthy advantage, so I can remain calm for the next stages and Saturday’s time trial,” he said. To drive home his domination, Nibali joined the American Chris Horner in an attack on the final climb of the Tour, the road up to the Hautacam ski area near Argelès-Gazost. Nibali sat on the rear wheel of the bike of Horner, who won the Vuelta a España last year at the age of 41 . REPLAY With an eye on today’s events, looking anew at historical sports photographs from The New York Times. Nibali said later that he was concerned that Mikel Nieve, a Spanish rider with the Sky team, who was up the road as the lone survivor of a prolonged breakaway, might have gained too much time. But given that Nieve had started the morning more than 36 minutes behind Nibali, Vinokourov’s analysis of Nibali had a truer ring. After looking backward at the modest gap they had gained from the key group of riders, Nibali swiftly rode past Horner. The climb to the spartan resort, often featured in the race, is rated off the scale by the Tour organization for difficulty, as was the day’s other major ascent, the Col du Tourmalet . Not long after leaving Horner behind, Nibali zipped past Nieve without as much as a glance. Nieve was trying to salvage some kind of a result for Sky, which had a disastrous Tour de France after winning it the two previous years. There was only one point on the final climb when Nibali did not seem to be in control. His elbow bumped a young woman who was using her smartphone. Nibali emerged unscathed, but the woman’s phone crashed to the ground. Down the road, Alejandro Valverde, the Spanish leader of Movistar, was left behind as several riders, including the American Tejay van Garderen, attacked. They could gain only leftovers: either podium places or points in the mountain climbing competition. Thibaut Pinot did not cross the line until 1 minute 10 seconds after Nibali. Pinot, of FDJ.com, is one of a contingent of French riders who have enjoyed an unusually successful Tour. His result put him in second place over all, 7:10 behind Nibali. Rafal Majka, a Polish climber who was a last-minute selection of the Tinkoff-Saxo team, rolled in third. That left him with enough climber points to take the best climber’s spot away from Nibali. Image Nibali was happy with his position. “I can remain calm for the next stages,” he said. Credit Christophe Ena/Associated Press Majka made no attempt to disguise his delight about becoming the king of the mountains, which comes with a polka dot jersey. “My first Tour I have the jersey and two stage wins,” he said. “I’m very happy that I have my jersey.” The early coronation of Nibali, or anyone else, was not the Tour organizers’ plan for this year. They left the time trial for the second-to-last day in the hopes of a last-minute result. (Sunday’s stage to Paris is largely ceremonial except for the sprinters.) Before the race began, it seemed likely that a time-trial showdown would involve Alberto Contador and Chris Froome, the defending champion. But both abandoned the race earlier because of crash-related injuries . Oleg Tinkov, the owner of Contador’s Tinkoff-Saxo team, had suggested that Nibali, who has also won the grand tours of Italy and Spain, was winning by default. But several strong performances at the Tour by Nibali, particularly Thursday, meant that Tinkov held a minority opinion. Nibali rejected the idea that he was emulating the style of the disgraced Lance Armstrong by imposing himself as the boss no rider dare cross. “I’m very different than Lance,” said Nibali, whose news conference manner is certainly far less combative than Armstrong’s. “I haven’t done one huge performance. I got 30 seconds here, 40 seconds there.” But with three days left in the Tour, those 30 seconds here and 40 seconds there have added up to a seemingly insurmountable lead.

Biking
Vincenzo Nibali
Chris Horner
Tour de France


Rangers Beat Hurricanes for Sixth Straight Win

Abstract: Three goals in three minutes in the third period Friday night gave the Rangers a 5-1 win — their sixth straight victory — over Carolina at Madison Square Garden. Dan Girardi broke a 1-1 tie with a power-play goal off a clever cross-ice pass by Brad Richards at 10 minutes 47 seconds of the third. “My job is to find the seam, throw off the opponent and be there for the pass,” Girardi said. “But Brad’s an amazing player, and that was a great pass.” Nine seconds later, Brandon Dubinsky scored his first goal of the season when he went to the net and converted a feed from Ryan Callahan. “A big relief,” Dubinsky said. “You can’t ask for more than the puck on your stick and an open net, especially when you’re in dire need of a goal.” The Rangers’ late-game breakout continued when Callahan scored amid a pile around the Carolina crease at 13:47. The Garden crowd came to life early when Sean Avery opened the scoring. Defenseman Jeff Woywitka blocked a Carolina shot and chipped the puck off the boards and down the ice. When the Hurricanes’ Bryan Allen whiffed on a clearing attempt, Avery controlled the puck, eluded Jamie McBain and fired his shot over Cam Ward at 9:43 of the first period. After averaging five minutes of playing time in his first three games, Avery had his first goal this season. The Rangers, who received a late goal from Richards and 34 saves by Henrik Lundqvist , are 9-3-3. “We’re sticking to our game plan and doing a good job with puck possession,” Callahan said. The six-game winning streak is the Rangers’ longest since October 2009. “We can’t take our foot off the pedal,” Dubinsky said. Carolina Coach Paul Maurice caused a stir before the game with a remark about the concussion sustained by Marc Staal, the Rangers defenseman and younger brother of Eric Staal, a Hurricanes forward. Marc Staal has not played this season because he is still feeling symptoms of the concussion he sustained on Feb. 22 at Carolina when Eric Staal leveled him with a check. “It was a clean hit,” Maurice said. “His brother came back and played.” Marc Staal missed three games after the hit but returned to the lineup after the team cleared him to play. He then sat out two games in mid-March with what the Rangers later said were concussion symptoms. The Rangers said there were no updates on Staal, who has not practiced with his teammates since training camp. Although the Rangers did not seek retribution on Eric Staal, the Garden crowd booed him every time he touched the puck. The noise, however, paled when compared with the cheers when Avery scored his goal and the Rangers burst into the lead in the third. CAPITALS 3, DEVILS 1 Jason Chimera’s short-handed goal broke a 1-1 tie 2:27 into the third period as Washington won in Newark, ending the Devils’ three-game winning streak. (AP) PENGUINS 3, STARS 1 James Neal of host Pittsburgh scored two power-play goals against Dallas, which traded him nine months ago. Matt Cooke scored on a penalty shot in the third period, helping to end the Stars’ four-game winning streak. (AP) SABRES 5, SENATORS 1 Jhonas Enroth made 36 saves, and Derek Roy had a goal and two assists in host Buffalo’s fourth straight victory after a 1-4 stretch. (AP) RED WINGS 3, OILERS 0 Detroit’s Jimmy Howard made 24 saves for his second shutout this week. Visiting Edmonton, leading the Northwest Division, was shut out for the first time. (AP) BLACKHAWKS 4, FLAMES 1 Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook, host Chicago’s top two defensemen, scored their first goals of the season. (AP)

Hockey Ice
New York Rangers
Carolina Hurricanes
Avery Sean
Lundqvist Henrik


Gristedes, a Familiar New York Supermarket Brand, Dwindles

Abstract: On a recent afternoon at the Gristedes supermarket on a corner of Greenwich Village, the “Welcome to Your Gristedes” sign listing store hours and services was missing many letters, including the “c” in “service.” The seven aisles were not fully stocked, the juice section was half empty. The linoleum floor in front of the brown-and-serve sausages case had a gash the size of a basketball. There was only one customer, a white-haired woman pushing a shopping cart with effort. Nathan Rodriguez, the manager of the store, at Hudson and Bank Streets, said sales had been declining “little by little for about a year.” He expressed no surprise that it was one of the stores that management was considering closing. “Happens all the time,” said Mr. Rodriguez, 55. Indeed, the number of Gristedes stores has dropped from 78 a decade ago to 39 today (35 stores are in Manhattan), as a once familiar New York City name continues to recede. Most recently, the Gristedes at Central Park West and 62nd Street shut. Lawrence Sarf, the president of F & D Reports, a retail consulting company in Great Neck, N.Y., that follows the supermarket business, said in an interview that Gristedes would probably eventually shrink to 25 stores. Yet John Catsimatidis, chairman of Gristedes Supermarkets Inc., has a surprising message: he has no intention of leaving the supermarket business. The reason is oil. Mr. Catsimatidis is also the sole owner and chief executive of the Red Apple Group, of which Gristedes is a part. It has interests in real estate, aviation and United Refining, a petroleum facility in Warren, Pa., that provides gasoline for nearly 400 gas stations and, as Mr. Catsimatidis puts it, meets “petroleum needs for between Buffalo and Pittsburgh.” Of the privately owned Red Apple’s $3.7 billion in annual revenue, only $250 million, or less than 7 percent, comes from Gristedes, which is all of its supermarket business. “If Gristedes had to live on its own,” Mr. Catsimatidis said, “it would be very hard. But Red Apple Group is a very strong entity.” Mr. Catsimatidis, 59, got his start in business when, at 22, he bought his first Red Apple supermarket, at 87th Street and Broadway, with money he borrowed from his father. By 1986, his company was big enough to buy 36 Gristedes Brothers Supermarkets, making it the largest chain in the city, with 75 stores. “The problem in New York City is you’re going to be left with no supermarkets” because of the rise in basic costs, like rent, he said. Gourmet stores can simply charge more, he said, but traditional markets get excoriated for price increases. “Shopping at Whole Foods goes hand in hand with paying $7,000 rent for a two-bedroom apartment.” D’Agostino, Morton Williams Associated Markets, Food City Markets, C-Town, Pioneer and Food Emporium have all trimmed stores, and A.&P. left altogether. Competition is keen. Gourmet stores like Balducci’s, Citarella, Fairway and Whole Foods steal away well-heeled customers, and new stores like Trader Joe’s attract specialty shoppers. Even drug stores and delicatessens carry supermarket products like cereal and paper towels. And online grocery services, like Fresh Direct, have peeled away yet more shoppers. Rising rents, especially in the most prosperous neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, cut already thin profits at traditional supermarkets. Mr. Sarf, the retail consultant, said the monthly rent at a supermarket in Gramercy Park recently quadrupled, to $120 a square foot from $30. Supermarket profits 10 years ago, before the real-estate boom, were high, Mr. Catsimatidis said, exceeding 10 cents on the dollar. Now, profits are down to 3 or 4 cents on the dollar. “People complain supermarkets are too expensive,” Mr. Catsimatidis said. “You have to laugh. We’re not making the bottom line, and people complain we’re too expensive.” The ideal size for a city supermarket like Gristedes, he said, is 9,000 to 12,000 square feet, big enough to have wide selection but not so big as to have a crippling rent bill. (Gristedes stores range from about 4,000 to about 20,000 square feet.) The recently shuttered Central Park West store was 3,200 square feet, too small in Mr. Catsimatidis’s view. When it closed on Aug. 3, several New York Times readers posted critical comments on the City Room blog ( nytimes.com/cityroom ). A reader using the name Amy wrote on Aug. 6: “All Gristedes are overpriced and disgusting. Does anyone really care that they’re closing?” Asked to respond, Mr. Catsimatidis said: “Do we give up the location or do we charge more for the product? Sometimes you give up the location.” As for the Gristedes store at Hudson and Bank Streets, Howard Buck, a retired real estate investor who said he has shopped there for decades, said he would miss the store. “If this closes, it’ll be another restaurant,” Mr. Buck said, theatrically rolling his eyes. “That’s exactly what this neighborhood needs.”

Supermarkets
Shutdowns (Institutional)
Retail Stores and Trade
New York City
Red Apple Group
Manhattan (NYC)
Gristedes Supermarkets Inc.


Drug Giant Faced a Reckoning as China Took Aim at Bribery

Abstract: SHANGHAI — Peter Humphrey was in the bathroom of his Shanghai apartment when the police kicked the door off its hinges and knocked him to the ground. Nearly two dozen officers stormed his home. They confiscated files, laptops and hard drives related to his work as a corporate investigator. Mr. Humphrey and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, were taken to Building 803, a notoriously bleak criminal investigation center normally reserved for human smugglers, drug traffickers and political activists. Sleep-deprived and hungry, he was transferred later that day to a detention house, placed in a cage and strapped to an iron chair. Outside, three officers sat on a podium and demanded answers. Mr. Humphrey knew the reason for the harsh interrogation. He and Ms. Yu had been working for GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical maker under investigation in China for fraud and bribery. The Glaxo case, which resulted in record penalties of nearly $500 million and a string of guilty pleas by executives, upended the power dynamic in China, unveiling an increasingly assertive government determined to tighten its grip over multinationals. In the three years since the arrests, the Chinese government, under President Xi Jinping, has unleashed the full force of the country’s authoritarian system, as part of a broader agenda of economic nationalism. Driven by the quest for profits, many multinationals pushed the limits in China, lulled into a sense of complacency by lax officials who eagerly welcomed overseas money. Glaxo took it to the extreme, allowing corruption to fester. When bribery accusations surfaced, the company followed the old playbook, missing the seismic changes reshaping the Chinese market. Rather than fess up, Glaxo tried to play down the issues and discredit its accusers — figuring officials wouldn’t pay attention. Along the way, there were bribes of iPads, a mysterious sex tape and the corporate investigator, who gave his operations secret code names. The company’s missteps are laid bare in emails, confidential corporate documents and other evidence obtained by The New York Times, as well as in interviews with dozens of executives, regulators and lawyers involved in the case. The aftershocks of the Glaxo case are still rippling through China. The authorities have unleashed a wave of investigations, putting global companies on the defensive. The government has intensified its scrutiny of Microsoft on antitrust matters this year, demanding more details about its business in China. And just two weeks ago, the authorities detained a group of China-based employees, including several Australian citizens, working for the Australian casino operator Crown Resorts, on suspicion of gambling-related crimes. Companies are racing to find new strategies and avoid getting locked out of China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States. Disney and Qualcomm are currying favor with Chinese leaders . Apple redid its taxes in China after getting fined. Some multinationals are training employees in how to deal with raids. The crackdown has prompted a complete rethinking for Glaxo — and for much of the pharmaceutical industry. To appease the government, drug makers have promised to lower prices and overhaul sales practices. “For a long time, there’d been this policy of going easy on foreign enterprises,” said Jerome A. Cohen, a longtime legal adviser to Western companies. “The government didn’t want to cause embarrassment or give outsiders the impression that China is plagued with corruption. But they’re not thinking like that anymore.” The Glaxo case was fueled by missed clues, poor communication and a willful avoidance of the facts. For more than a year, the drug maker brushed aside repeated warnings from a whistle-blower about systemic fraud and corruption in its China operations. The company’s internal controls were not robust enough to prevent the fraud, or even to find it. Internally, the whistle-blower allegations were dismissed as a “smear campaign,” according to a confidential company report obtained by The Times. Glaxo just wanted to make its problems go away. It offered bribes to regulators. It retaliated against the suspected whistle-blower. It hired Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu to dig into the woman’s background, family and government ties, as a way to discredit her. And Glaxo may even have gone after the wrong person, documents and emails obtained by The Times suggest. Image Yu Yingzeng inside a police vehicle in Shanghai in August 2014. She and her husband, Mr. Humphrey, worked together and were arrested together. Credit Aly Song/Reuters None of it mattered. The allegations were true. Prosecutors charged the global drug giant with giving kickbacks to doctors and hospital workers who prescribed its medicines. In 2014 Glaxo paid a nearly $500 million fine, at the time the largest ever in China for a multinational. Five senior executives in China pleaded guilty, including the head of Glaxo’s Chinese operations, a British national, in a rare prosecution of a Western executive. With Glaxo embroiled in scandal, sales plummeted in China, the company’s fastest-growing market. Glaxo has declined multiple requests for comment, referring instead to earlier statements. Glaxo “fully accepts the facts and evidence of the investigation, and the verdict of the Chinese judicial authorities,” one statement read. “GSK P.L.C. sincerely apologizes to the Chinese patients, doctors and hospitals, and to the Chinese government and the Chinese people.” Mr. Humphrey and Ms. Yu, both in their late 50s at the time of their arrests, were punished too. The couple spent two years in prison for illegally obtaining government records on individuals. Mr. Humphrey was crowded into a cell with a dozen other inmates. There were no beds or other furniture, just an open toilet and a neon light overhead. During his incarceration, Mr. Humphrey said, he suffered back pain, a hernia and a prostate problem that was later diagnosed as cancer. “I was in a state of complete shock and breakdown,” said Mr. Humphrey, who was released along with his wife in July 2015. “I was physically broken down and mentally blown away. I didn’t sleep for 45 days.” Image About seven weeks after Peter Humphrey was arrested in China, he and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, appeared on China Central Television. They spent about two years in prison. A Whistle-Blower Emerges An anonymous 5,200-word email in January 2013 to the Glaxo board laid out a detailed map to a fraud in the Chinese operations. Written in perfect English, the email was organized like a corporate memo. Under the header “Conference Trip Vacations for Doctors,” the whistle-blower wrote that medical professionals received all-expenses-paid trips under the guise of attending international conferences. The company covered the costs of airline tickets and hotel rooms, and handed out cash for meals and sightseeing excursions. In a section labeled “GSK Falsified Its Books and Records to Conceal Its Illegal Marketing Practices in China,” the email explained how Glaxo was pitching drugs for unapproved uses. As an example, the whistle-blower said the drug Lamictal had been aggressively promoted as a treatment for bipolar disorder, even though it had been approved in China only for epilepsy. Glaxo “almost killed one patient by illegally marketing its drug Lamictal,” said the email, which was obtained by The Times. “GSK China bought the patient’s silence for $9,000.” The email was one of nearly two dozen that the whistle-blower sent over the course of 17 months to Chinese regulators, Glaxo executives and the company’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers. When the authorities pressed Glaxo, the company was dismissive. It failed to properly investigate the allegations. It didn’t beef up its internal controls. And it didn’t change its marketing practices. The decision was calculated. In the decades since China began opening its economy, most multinationals had avoided scrutiny over bribery. China needed overseas companies to help develop its economy, by setting up manufacturing operations and creating jobs. The authorities were reluctant to jeopardize investment, so they took a softer approach to enforcement. When companies did run into trouble, fines were tiny. The rare cases tended to be colored by politics. Seven years ago, the Chinese authorities detained executives from the global mining giant Rio Tinto on suspicion of stealing state secrets. The charges were eventually downgraded to bribery and theft of commercial secrets, and the company avoided punishment. By the time Glaxo’s fraud bubbled to the surface, China had changed. Over the last decade, China has emerged as an economic powerhouse, but it took off even more as the rest of the world slowed after the financial crisis. That gave China the upper hand with overseas companies, which were increasingly dependent on profits from the country’s growing consumer base. The economic might coincided with the Communist Party’s increasingly nationalistic stance. The authorities in China, already undertaking a severe crackdown on Chinese companies, wanted to show that, like American regulators, they could also penalize and sanction global companies. And it was no secret that big drug makers were violating the law in China. Years earlier, the consulting firm Deloitte warned about rampant corruption in China’s pharmaceutical market. As Deloitte found, doctors and health care workers were poorly compensated, so they could easily be induced to write more prescriptions with offers of cash, gifts, vacations and other benefits. Big drug makers, eager for growth, willingly obliged. “The remarkable thing is that China is a more hospitable environment to this type of corruption, because it’s a market where doctors and hospitals are heavily reliant on drug sales,” said Dali Yang, who teaches at the University of Chicago and has studied the industry. “They were like fish swimming in water.” American investigators had punished several major drug companies for such behavior abroad. In 2012, Eli Lilly agreed to pay $29 million, and Pfizer $45 million, to settle allegations that included employees’ bribing doctors in China. In settling the cases, neither company admitted or denied the allegations. That summer, Glaxo agreed to pay $3 billion in fines and pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the United States for marketing antidepressants for unapproved uses, failing to report safety data on a diabetes drug and paying kickbacks. The case was built off tips from several whistle-blowers. After that, Glaxo’s chief executive, Andrew Witty, pledged, “We’re determined this is never going to happen again.” But it did — in China. Image Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, right, speaking to Andrew Witty, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, during a visit in March 2012 to one of the company’s plants in Ulverston, northern England. Credit James Glossop/Reuters Redirecting Bribes In early 2013, Glaxo realized it couldn’t ignore the problems. The authorities were asking questions. The whistle-blower continued to send emails. So the company tried another common gambit in China: bribing officials. The company set up a special “crisis management” team in China and began offering money and gifts to regulators. That strategy had worked in the past. A company, often using a middleman, would try to soothe officials and regulators, offering gifts and favors. One government agency had received multiple emails from the whistle-blower, and Glaxo targeted multiple branches of the agency, according to state media reports. One executive tried to cozy up to a Shanghai investigator with an iPad and a dinner totaling $1,200, another Glaxo employee said in a statement to the police. When that executive asked for money to bribe the Beijing branch, Mark Reilly, the head of the company’s Chinese operations, gave the “go ahead.” Another executive with Glaxo’s Chinese operations bribed regulators to focus on “unequal competition,” rather than a more punitive investigation into “commercial bribery.” The goal, that executive admitted in a statement, was to limit any potential fine to about $50,000. It didn’t work. As pressure mounted, the case took a bizarre turn, setting Glaxo on a collision course with the government. In March 2013, Glaxo’s chief executive and five other senior executives in the company’s London headquarters received an anonymous email with a media file. In it, a grainy video showed Mr. Reilly, the executive in China, engaged in a sexual act with a young Chinese woman. The attached email alleged that Mr. Reilly, a British national who had helped manage the company’s China operation for four years, was complicit in a bribery scheme tied to a travel agency called China Comfort Travel, or C.C.T. According to the email, Glaxo funneled money through the travel agency to pay off doctors. The travel agency also supplied Mr. Reilly with women, as a way to secure that business. “In order to acquire more business, C.C.T. bribed Mark Reilly, the general manager of GSK (China) with sex,” the email said. “Mark Reilly accepted this bribery and made C.C.T. get the maximized benefits in return.” Glaxo later discovered that the video had been shot clandestinely, in the bedroom of Mr. Reilly’s apartment in Shanghai. Analysts working for the company said it had been edited to disguise the location. Glaxo executives in London were shocked. They deemed the video a serious breach of privacy, involving a possible break-in at the home of a senior executive in China. Mr. Reilly moved to a more secure residence. Project Scorpion Like many global companies, Glaxo has a code of conduct that encourages employees to report fraud or wrongdoing without fear of retaliation by the company. In many countries, including China, the rights of whistle-blowers are protected by law. Glaxo didn’t seem to care. By the time the video surfaced, Glaxo already had its suspicions about the identity of the whistle-blower. Months earlier, the company had fired Vivian Shi, a 47-year-old executive handling government affairs in Glaxo’s Shanghai office. The official reason for Ms. Shi’s firing was falsifying travel expenses. In fact, she was dismissed because the company believed she was the whistle-blower, according to confidential corporate documents obtained by The Times. Ms. Shi did not return multiple calls for comment. After receiving the video, Glaxo took more aggressive action, seeking to discredit Ms. Shi, who had already left the company. At that point, in the spring of 2013, the company turned to Mr. Humphrey, the investigator. He ran ChinaWhys, a small risk consultancy firm that advised global companies like Dell and Dow Chemical. His firm was engaged in what he called “discreet investigations,” helping multinationals cope with difficult situations like counterfeiting and embezzlement. Short in stature, with a shock of white hair, Mr. Humphrey portrayed himself as a kind of modern-day Sherlock Holmes. “He likes a good adventure and likes solving cases,” said his friend Stuart Lindley, who runs a financial services company in China. “But he was definitely aware that some of that stuff was risky.” In April 2013, Mr. Reilly met with Mr. Humphrey at Glaxo’s glass office tower near People’s Square in central Shanghai. According to meeting notes obtained by The Times, they discussed the emails, the sex video and Ms. Shi, the suspected whistle-blower. Mr. Reilly told the investigator that she held a grudge against Glaxo. At the meeting, Mr. Reilly asked the investigator to look into the break-in at his apartment. But he made clear that he also wanted to assess what power and influence Ms. Shi might have with the government. Legal experts say Mr. Reilly should not have been put in charge. “The executive so accused has an obvious conflict of interest in overseeing such an investigation,” said John Coates, a Harvard Law School professor. “Even if the executive were entirely innocent of the whistle-blower’s charge, giving that same executive the role of investigating the whistle-blower smacks of retaliation.” Efforts to reach Mr. Reilly, who has since left the company, were unsuccessful. Using the code name Project Scorpion, Mr. Humphrey and his staff spent the next six weeks working undercover, gathering evidence. They visited Lanson Place, the upscale apartment complex where Mr. Reilly lived when the sex tape was made. They created a dossier on the suspected whistle-blower, searching for motives and ties to high-ranking officials or regulators. They interviewed former co-workers, scrutinized her résumé and scoured the web for information about her father, a former health official. Glaxo may have crossed a line in this regard, putting the company more sharply in the government’s sights. As part of the investigation, Mr. Humphrey turned to a Chinese detective to acquire a copy of Ms. Shi’s household registration record, or hukou. The official document contained information about her husband and daughter. The authorities had warned private detectives about acquiring confidential government documents. “This type of household information is supposed to be private,” said John Huang, a former government official who is now managing partner at McDermott, Will & Emery in Shanghai. “But people were buying and selling it.” Glaxo got little payoff from the investigation. On June 6, 2013, Mr. Humphrey delivered a 39-page report to Glaxo that said Ms. Shi was probably the whistle-blower and even had a “track record of staging similar attacks” at a previous job. But the report included no evidence linking her to the emails or the sex video, according to a draft obtained by The Times. Glaxo’s strategy of bribery and discrediting ultimately failed. With the Chinese government in the midst of a crackdown on corruption, the police carried out a series of raids on June 27, 2013. They seized files and laptops from multiple Glaxo offices and interrogated dozens of employees. In Shanghai, four senior executives were detained. Investigators also raided the offices of several travel agencies that had worked closely with Glaxo, including China Comfort Travel. A week later, the police stormed Mr. Humphrey’s apartment in Shanghai. He and his wife were charged with violating privacy laws. Mr. Humphrey declined to comment on the specifics of the Glaxo case. His son defended his work, saying Glaxo engaged him “under false pretenses.” “My father is an honorable and law-abiding man,” said the son, Harvard Humphrey. When prosecutors announced the case against Glaxo in July 2013, several weeks after arrests began, their allegations closely mirrored those of the whistle-blower. They described an elaborate scheme to bribe doctors and workers at government-owned hospitals using cash that had been funneled through a network of 700 travel agencies and consulting firms. “It’s like a criminal organization: There’s always a boss, and in this case GSK is the boss,” said Gao Feng, one of the lead investigators. Glaxo said little about the developments until July 15, when several high-ranking executives confessed from prison on state-run television. After that, the company capitulated, issuing a blanket statement for its misdeeds: “These allegations are shameful and we regret this has occurred.” Cleaning Up Corruption Image In this screenshot, Mark Reilly, center, the head of Glaxo’s operations in China, was escorted by the police to the courtroom to hear his sentence in September 2014 at the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court in the Hunan Province in central China. Credit Imaginechina Dressed in a dark suit and a blue tie, Mr. Reilly, the Glaxo executive, was led in handcuffs into a small courtroom in the city of Changsha, in central China, in September 2014. With security guards behind him, he stood alongside four other senior Glaxo executives as a judge read the charges. “The defendant company GSKCI is guilty of bribing nongovernment personnel and will be fined 3 billion yuan,” the judge, Wu Jixiang, said sternly, referring to Glaxo’s Chinese name. The company and the executives, having confessed, were given relatively light sentences, the court said. Mark Reilly was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to be expelled from China. After handing down that sentence, the judge turned to Mr. Reilly. “Do you obey the court’s verdict? Do you appeal?” he asked. Mr. Reilly said that he would not challenge the verdict. Because he was swiftly deported, he will not serve prison time in China. Glaxo is still trying to clean up the mess. In China, Glaxo has promised to overhaul its operations and has put in place stricter compliance procedures. The company has changed the way its sales force is compensated and has eliminated the use of outside travel agencies. Glaxo has also tightened oversight of expenses and cash advances, areas central to the case. Employees must now send in photographs of the guests and food, to verify that the meetings took place. And in August 2015, Glaxo tried to make amends by rehiring Ms. Shi, an acknowledgment that the company had erred in firing an employee suspected of being a whistle-blower. But the decision also hinted at a more troubling admission — that Glaxo had targeted the wrong person. There are indications that Ms. Shi was not the whistle-blower, and that there may have been more than one person. The emails sent to regulators were written in fluent English and came mostly from a Gmail account. The email with the sex video came from a local Chinese account and was written in poor English. The only similarity was the anonymity. The Times sent emails to both accounts and got a response from just one, the person who had written the detailed emails to the Chinese authorities and Glaxo. “You have reached who you are looking for,” the person replied. In a series of exchanges, the author denied being Ms. Shi, acting in concert with her or sending the video. The person said Glaxo had erroneously blamed Ms. Shi for the emails and never found the actual whistle-blower. The Times was unable to verify the identity of the person, who described working in Shanghai but declined to come forward for fear of retribution. “I didn’t reveal to GSK personnel that I was the whistle-blower because doing so would have placed me in potential physical jeopardy,” the whistle-blower wrote in an email to The Times. “You understand that criminals — you know that they were convicted later in Chinese courts — were in charge of GSK China at that time, and I truly believe that they would have harmed me in some fashion had they discovered my identity. ”

China
GlaxoSmithKline
Bribery and Kickbacks
Fraud
Whistleblower
Fines
Peter Humphrey
Mark Reilly
Vivian Shi
ChinaWhys


When It Rains (or Snows), It Pours for Presque Isle

Abstract: The University of Maine at Presque Isle baseball team, which routinely plays its entire season away from home, has been put in some unusual circumstances on the road. There was, for example, the time it played four games in one day against two Boston-area teams. “We played the first game against Gordon College and then two more against Fisher College,” said Presque Isle’s Dave deKay, who made back-to-back pitching starts that day. “We were pretty tired after losing for the third time, but we had almost won that game, so we were all pumped up to win one before we left. “And we did play well in the fourth game. It was in extra innings when the stadium lights shut off. They were on an automatic timer, and no one knew how to get them back on. The game ended in a tie. We were 0-3-1 on the day.” Last season, when 197 inches of snow fell on the Presque Isle campus, ruining any chance the team had of playing a home game, 12 away games were also rained or snowed out. “We rescheduled those games, and the rescheduled games got rained out,” Leo Saucier, the team’s coach, said. “So as far as we were concerned, our season ended with a 5-19 record.” But Saucier said the N.C.A.A.’s Division III has a regulation that baseball teams must play a minimum of 25 games to keep their membership status in good standing. Saucier said the university asked for an exemption and it was denied. “It was the middle of May, school was out and my players had been home for two weeks,” Saucier said. But Fisher College had heard about Presque Isle’s quandary and offered to help. A 25th game was scheduled, if Saucier could get a team to the Boston area. He got nine players to agree to play, loaded a 12-person university van with equipment and headed down the road. Fortunately, nearly all his players lived in Maine, and they met him all along the highway as he headed south. The van made stops in Houlton, Millinocket, Old Town and Auburn, then picked up a another player in Portland where they stayed for the night. But Saucier was still short a player. The next morning, he reversed direction, driving north for two hours back to Bangor to get a ninth player and then three hours south to get to the Boston area in time for the scheduled game. “We had all kinds of guys playing out of position, but we actually played pretty well,” catcher Seth Dorr said. “But we lost.” The van, coach and players returned to Maine that evening.

College Athletics
Baseball
University of Maine


Goldman Relents, but Not Chase

Abstract: Goldman Sachs knows when to fold its hand. The bank announced on Wednesday that it would pay $1.1 billion to buy back warrants that it issued to the Treasury last October, at the height of the crisis — a figure that represents a full price. Goldman originally offered about $650 million, but said it accepted the Treasury’s price rather than haggle. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase , is taking a less acquiescent tack. But then, JPMorgan isn’t under quite the same politically charged spotlight as Goldman, led by Lloyd C. Blankfein. Goldman turned in robust second-quarter earnings on the back of government support for financial firms and markets. The bank is on track to pay giant year-end bonuses. Its success has brought renewed criticism — on the heels of recently aired conspiracy theories and a charge, in Rolling Stone, that the firm is like a “vampire squid,” sucking up money wherever it can find it. Mr. Blankfein has already sounded humble notes. Avoiding horse-trading over the warrant buyback is another move that may help soothe political and popular indignation. Goldman even said that, when the interest it paid before repaying the Treasury’s $10 billion of actual investment under the Troubled Asset Relief Program is combined with the warrant payment, taxpayers earned an annualized 23 percent return on their investment — conveniently the same as its return on equity in its blowout second quarter. The amount paid by Goldman for the warrants was shy of a theoretical option value, but a discount for the illiquidity of the unusual 10-year instruments is legitimate. Pluris Valuation Advisors reckons Goldman paid something close to a fair market price. The figure was also 17 percent above the most recent best estimate of the warrants’ value, produced by the Congressional Oversight Panel. Mr. Dimon, by contrast, recently refused to buy his bank’s warrants back at Treasury’s valuation, instead proposing — as was his right — that the warrants be auctioned. JPMorgan has arguably weathered the crisis better than any of its rivals, barring Goldman. Mr. Dimon may be right that the Treasury is overvaluing JPMorgan’s warrants — but Mr. Blankfein’s move could still make him appear churlish by comparison. Mr. Dimon, though, knows that Goldman, with its record accruals for employee pay and its influential alumni network, is first in line for any backlash, justified or not. For now at least, he can afford to be less eager than Mr. Blankfein to roll over. More Scrutiny Ahead President Obama is clearly not out to make friends on Wall Street. His plan to regulate the $590 trillion market for unlisted, or over-the-counter, derivatives calls for more scrutiny of big dealers like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. But more potentially damaging for these firms is its call for most O.T.C. derivatives to be traded on exchanges. The administration will introduce legislation next week to bring derivatives dealers — even currently unregulated or lightly regulated entities, like precrisis A.I.G. Financial Products — under stronger regulatory authority. Obama’s plan would require uniform reporting, capital and margin requirements for all firms that trade in these instruments, which include credit-default swaps , equity derivatives and long-established products like interest rate swaps. This makes a lot of sense, and is a better approach than trying to scrutinize fast-changing individual products. After all, stricter capital and margin standards might have headed off the debacles at A.I.G. Financial Products and the monoline insurance companies, which sold credit derivatives without adequate capital to back them up. Dealers won’t like the new standards and scrutiny, but in private bankers acknowledge they knew it was coming. Most are still adamantly opposed to the idea that all standardized contracts be traded on exchanges. Originally, the administration only called for these instruments to be cleared through central clearing houses, rather than bilaterally, to spread the pain if a big dealer like Lehman or A.I.G. were to fail in the future. The industry acquiesced. But bankers fear that forcing most derivatives to be traded on exchanges would provide a degree of price transparency that will gut their often outsized profits. They could be right. And their loss might be great news for their clients — and for exchange operators like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and IntercontinentalExchange, which are likely to get the business. But the plan has to survive Wall Street’s promised lobbying blitz first.

Goldman Sachs Group
Morgan J P Chase & Co


Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan Is Announced

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama forced Chrysler into federal bankruptcy protection on Thursday so it could pursue a lifesaving alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat , in yet another extraordinary intervention into private industry by the federal government. Flanked by his automobile task force of cabinet secretaries and business advisers in the White House’s grand entranceway, Mr. Obama announced a plan that would allow the United Automobile Workers , through their retirement plan, to take control of Chrysler, with Fiat and the United States as junior partners. The government would lend about $8 billion more to the company, on top of the $4 billion it had already provided. The arrangement came after an intensive round of White House-sponsored negotiations among the Treasury Department , the union and Chrysler’s executives and creditors. After working through the night, a small group of debtholders balked at Mr. Obama’s final terms, leading the president to decide that bankruptcy could not be averted. It was a stark moment, and one unseen in modern times, as the fledgling president deepened his involvement in a struggling but iconic American company. Chrysler, which Mr. Obama called “a pillar” of the industrial economy, invented the minivan and owns the Jeep brand. With Thursday’s filing, Chrysler became the first major American automaker to seek bankruptcy protection since Studebaker did so in 1933. It was a humbling moment for the nation’s third-largest automaker, which recovered strongly after a near bankruptcy in 1979 with help from the Carter administration before entering its latest, dangerously fallow period under the ownership of the German auto company Daimler-Benz and, as of 2007, Cerberus Capital Management . Bringing to bear his White House megaphone on Thursday, Mr. Obama laid out the terms of a deal that he said would save well over 35,000 jobs. And with a hint of anger, he railed against the holdout lenders, now effectively a hostile group of business partners, whom he called “speculators.” “They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none,” Mr. Obama said of the creditors, among them several hedge funds and boutique investment funds. “I don’t stand with them.” As the most visible investor in the newly formed Chrysler, Mr. Obama also donned his presidential sales cap, emphasizing that Chrysler’s warranties would now be backed by the United States government — addressing a potential concern for those in the market for a new car. “If you are considering buying a car, I hope it will be an American car,” he said. “I want to remind you that if you decide to buy a Chrysler, your warranty will be safe.” The crisis in the auto industry has presented an early test for Mr. Obama, who has had to wrestle with the limits of federal involvement in private industry as few presidents have since the Great Depression . Save for crucial moments of decision, officials said he left the automotive task force he formed in February to work through sticking points with the participants, with its main leaders, the financiers Ron Bloom and Steven Rattner , handling the late-night phone calls. Mr. Rattner and Mr. Bloom both have experience with corporate turnarounds and were able to wring critical concessions from the U.A.W. The union, for example, agreed to accept company stock for 50 percent of what Chrysler owes its retiree health care fund. Most of the major debtholders, led by JPMorgan Chase , agreed to write down the debt owed to them by more than two-thirds. That put the onus on the remaining holdouts — including units of OppenheimerFunds, Xerion Capital Fund of Perella Weinberg Partners and Stairway Capital Management — which argued they were falling victim to the willingness of their big banking partners in Chrysler to play nice with a government that had helped bail them out as well. Perella Weinberg decided late Thursday that it would accept the government’s terms. Administration officials said the holdouts’ position left them no option but to force Chrysler into bankruptcy. The hope now is that Chrysler will come out of bankruptcy quickly, perhaps as soon as late June, and serve as a model for General Motors , which has to produce its own lifesaving plan in the next 30 days. But court documents filed by Chrysler in New York on Thursday showed that Chrysler’s re-emergence from bankruptcy could take until Aug. 28, or four months from now. Bankruptcy always contains some element of unpredictability, and the minority of debtholders who oppose the new arrangement could argue in court that the company is worth more to them in liquidation. But administration officials said they believed that it was highly unlikely that a bankruptcy court judge would side with the minority when those holding 70 percent of the debt had signed off on the arrangement. Chrysler said its factories would go mostly idle starting Monday, and remain so for the bulk of the process. Auto workers will receive about 80 percent of their base pay during the shutdown. The Treasury is providing $3.3 billion in so-called debtor-in-possession financing, and administration officials said during a conference call with reporters that no jobs would be lost during the bankruptcy. Any future cuts, they said, would be decided by the new company’s board — which is to include representatives appointed by the union, the administration and the government of Canada , which also lent money — and the successor to the Chrysler chief executive, Robert L. Nardelli , who said he would leave the company at the bankruptcy’s end. In Auburn Hills, Mich., groups of Chrysler workers watched the president’s speech on television Thursday at the Red Ox Tavern on their lunch break. While they welcomed Mr. Obama’s endorsement of Chrysler’s future, they worried about the stigma associated with bankruptcy. “It seems like an ugly word — bankruptcy,” said Christopher Whiteman, an engineering supervisor at the company. “It puts a lot of doubt in people’s minds.” That sort of trepidation is common in politically important Michigan , which is bracing itself for General Motors to submit its restructuring plans some 30 days from now.

Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis


Canada: Role Against ISIS to Grow

Abstract: Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Parliament on Tuesday to extend and expand the country’s military mission against Islamic State militants by another year. Canada’s involvement in the operation, which began last October, was scheduled to last just six months and has consisted of airstrikes against the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in Iraq and the use of troops for training and support in Iraq. Mr. Harper said that he wanted to extend the air force’s role to include strikes on targets in Syria. Opposition lawmakers say that Mr. Harper did not fully reveal the extent of the ground troops’ role last year. The criticism increased this month after Kurdish forces mistakenly killed a Canadian military adviser in Iraq. Opposition leaders said that they did not support the extension, but Mr. Harper’s Conservatives hold a majority in the House of Commons.

Canada
Stephen J Harper
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Iraq
Syria
Terrorism


Thomas and Knicks Savor One Victory for All It’s Worth

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y., Nov. 25 — Isiah Thomas blew past Fred Jones for a layup, hit a jumper over Jared Jeffries and made a left-handed runner over Nate Robinson. Thomas chuckled throughout it all, projecting the image of a man who had just had a great burden lifted from his psyche. “Whenever you get a chance and an opportunity to have a little fun, you do that,” Thomas, the Knicks’ coach , said Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his team ended an eight-game losing streak. The shooting competition followed an off-day practice. Laughter echoed across the gym. A casual observer might say that they all looked remarkably at ease. A cynic might say that Thomas was playing to his audience, which included a television camera and several reporters. Thomas, who rarely shoots with his players, offered another motive: “I ate a lot of turkey over Thanksgiving, and I haven’t had a chance to exercise.” To be sure, Thomas had also not had a chance to relax in some time. But the Knicks’ 85-78 victory against the Chicago Bulls on Saturday provided a little breathing room, and he took it. What comes next is anyone’s guess. If the Knicks (3-9) can upend the powerful Utah Jazz (10-4) on Monday night at Madison Square Garden, the good feelings might last a few days. A bad loss would revive the boos, the “Fire Isiah” chants and the sense that the franchise is on the verge of an implosion. “It’s definitely a little lighter,” Jamal Crawford said of the atmosphere, “but we can’t take it out of context; it’s just one win. We’ve got to continue to build on that.” To that end, the Knicks are drawing confidence from the way they won — with aggressive perimeter defense that held the Bulls’ star guards, Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich, to 9-for-35 shooting. Gordon has repeatedly destroyed the Knicks at the Garden, but he scored only 13 points Saturday. Stephon Marbury was the one dogging Gordon for most of the afternoon. The Knicks’ losing streak began with Thomas’s calling out Marbury for his poor defense, which led to a benching, which led to Marbury’s abandoning the team for a day, creating another layer of turmoil. But on Saturday, Marbury looked like the leader and defender that Thomas had demanded. He had 19 points, including a key jumper down the stretch, 4 assists, 6 rebounds and no turnovers in 38 minutes. “I thought he was great yesterday,” Thomas said, adding, “We want that every night.” Marbury and Thomas seem to have settled their differences for now, which bodes well for the Knicks. Their team chemistry is fragile enough without Marbury and Thomas openly feuding. The tension — and the reverberations from Marbury’s benching — seemed to play a significant role in the Knicks’ losing streak, although Thomas noted that there were other factors. Zach Randolph missed three of the eight games after the death of his grandmother. Quentin Richardson injured his shooting elbow, which still has not healed. Renaldo Balkman and Jeffries also missed games because of injuries. “So we really lost our rhythm, and we really got depleted there for a second,” Thomas said. “But I think we’re on the right track again.” When pressed, Thomas conceded that his rift with Marbury was also “part of it.” Crawford said the controversy’s effect on the team “was something that didn’t go away easy.” “But we dealt with it and we moved on,” he said. Thomas and Marbury have always expressed great personal affection for each other, although the relationship has clearly changed since Thomas moved to the bench last year. “We’re fine,” said Marbury, who, when asked, said he still wanted Thomas as his coach. “Yeah, I mean, why wouldn’t I?” “If he stays, that’s Mr. Dolan’s decision,” Marbury said, referring to James L. Dolan, the Garden chairman. “If he lets him leave, like I said, it’s a business, that’s up to him. It’s not up to me and how I feel about it.” Thomas said the depth of his friendship with Marbury had been overstated by the news media. In fact, he said, he has been harder on Marbury than on any other player, because of the importance of the point guard position. “I love all my players, and I have a great relationship with every single player on the team,” Thomas said. “I have no favorites. And you guys sometimes have painted the picture that there is a favorite. But if you’re suggesting that Marbury is my favorite, then Marbury probably would say the way that I treat him, he doesn’t want to be the favorite.”

Basketball
New York Knicks
Utah Jazz
Chicago Bulls
Thomas Isiah


Oklahoma: Abortion Curbs Become Law

Abstract: Gov. Mary Fallin on Wednesday signed a bill that requires abortion clinics to have a physician with admitting privileges at a nearby hospital present when an abortion is performed. The bill also requires the Oklahoma Board of Health to establish standards regarding equipment and supplies that might be needed in a medical emergency. The bill’s author, State Representative Randy Grau, said it would require abortion clinics to be equipped and staffed to deal with a medical emergency. A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood said that the bill would severely restrict access to safe, legal abortion in the state and that it included other medically unnecessary requirements for abortion providers.

Oklahoma
Abortion
Legislation
Mary Fallin
Doctor
Hospital
Randy Grau


Kansas’ Fortunes Built on Morris Twins

Abstract: SAN ANTONIO — Their mother said Marcus and Markieff Morris were fraternal twins. Good luck finding any that are more identical. The 21-year-old junior forwards for the Kansas Jayhawks — sometimes called by the pseudo-plural Morii — are difficult to tell apart. They are even more difficult to separate. They have the same tattoo designs in the same places. They have identical haircuts and facial hair. They live together, drive the same car, have the same class schedule, like the same music. When one gets food, he gets the same thing for the other without asking. They even wait for each other before taking postpractice showers. And neither can come up with anything different about the other. “We are one,” said Markieff, often called Keef. “We’re the same exact person.” That person — both of them — may hold the key to the rest of the N.C.A.A. tournament. The Morris twins, Kansas’ leading scorers and rebounders, are the foundation on which the team’s title hopes are built. Kansas is the only top-seeded team left in the tournament. Facing No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth on Sunday for a berth in the Final Four, the Jayhawks are the overall favorite. And those who have not yet seen the Morris twins may soon be seeing double. “They don’t do anything without the other,” their teammate Tyshawn Taylor said. “It’s so weird.” The only time they are usually apart, they said, is when they sleep — in different rooms in the same apartment. Asked to name something — anything — that they do not have in common, Markieff thought for a while. “He eats yams,” he finally said. “I don’t eat that.” And although their wardrobes are alike, they do not dress the same. “No,” Markieff said with a hint of exasperation. “We’re 21 years old.” Teammates cannot always tell them apart when they are not wearing jersey numbers — 21 for Markieff, 22 for Marcus. Some said that Marcus’s head was smaller. Markieff, because of a scrimmage collision last summer, now has a little white scar in the trough below his nose. His voice may be a tad deeper. They have identical close-cropped haircuts and trimmed beards, but Marcus — in the only nod to individuality — usually shaves a gap in his sideburns. “We’ve been together since Day 1,” Marcus said. “He’s been on this Earth seven minutes before me, and since then, we’ve always been together. You do the math. Twenty-one years, seven days a week, 365 days a year — how many minutes in a day? Whatever that is, we’ve been together. When you’ve been with somebody that long, your relationship has to be perfect. We don’t have any choice but to be perfect. That’s how we are.” Where they differ, if only a little, is on the basketball court. Listed at 6 feet 9 inches, Marcus is about an inch shorter and has broader all-around skills. He leads Kansas in scoring, at 17.1 points a game, and averages 7.4 rebounds. “He’s the most complete player I’ve ever coached,” Coach Bill Self said on the eve of the tournament. “He can do more things on the basketball court than anybody I’ve ever been around. He’s 6-8. He can post. He can score over the shoulder. He can face. He can drive it. He’s a great passer. He can stretch it. He can slide. I mean, he is a complete basketball player. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s near as good as Wayne Simien at scoring or somebody else at rebounding, but he can do a lot of things.” Markieff, listed at 6-10, is similar, but tends to play closer to the basket. He averages 13.6 points and leads Kansas in rebounding, at 8.2 a game. But he is also one of the team’s better 3-point shooters, making 42.1 percent. “Keef is different,” Self said. “He’s a low-post presence. He doesn’t have the perimeter skill set that Marcus has. But he can stretch it, and he’s a great passer like Marcus. He just doesn’t put it down as well. He’s not far behind. Everybody talks about Marcus, but Keef’s improvement has probably been more rapid from last year to this year.” On Saturday, both said that they had made no decision about whether they would leave Kansas after this year to turn professional. But just the thought of it, of being drafted by different teams in different cities as happened to Stanford’s celebrated Lopez twins several years ago, makes them pause. They have never been apart for more than two days. “We’re definitely not ready for that to happen,” Markieff said, adding that it would probably play a role in whether the two returned for their senior seasons. The Morris twins were raised in north Philadelphia by a single mother and full-time nurse, Angel Morris. When the boys came to Kansas — changing their mind after initially saying they would play for Memphis — she moved with them. She lives in a nearby apartment, fixes them their favorite meals and has become a sort of team mother for the Jayhawks. She declined to be interviewed for this article. Her sons cannot fully explain what makes them so close. They just are. It has drawn the awe of teammates who cannot fathom having someone by their side at all times — especially someone identical in every conceivable way. “Everything they do has to remind one another of the other person,” guard Tyrel Reed said. “I don’t know how they do it.” On Thursday, the Morris twins sat side by side in the locker room, similarly leaning back on folding chairs. They explained that they long ago chose to like different sports teams, simply to keep things interesting. That is why Marcus likes the Philadelphia Eagles and Markieff likes the Dallas Cowboys. But, inherently, everything seems to be wired the same way. “It’s unbelievable how you can ask me a question, and he’ll have the same answer,” Markieff said. “Let me give you an example. Yesterday, we were taking pictures with a baby. I wasn’t paying attention, and he picked the baby up. The baby was looking at him, and he was like, ‘What?’ Five minutes later, I picked the baby up, and the baby looked at me, and I said, ‘What?’ And my teammates were like, ‘You just said the same, exact thing.’ ” At one point, Markieff tapped his brother on the knee. “What’s different about us?” he asked. “I don’t know,” Marcus said. “Our sideburns?” All he knew for sure was that there was nobody else like them. “We’re one of a kind,” he said.

Basketball
NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
University of Kansas
Self Bill
Morris Markieff
Morris Marcus
Twins
College Athletics
Basketball (College)
NCAA Basketball Championships (Men)


Parker Gets All-Star Nod and Needed Validation

Abstract: Tony Parker worked the red carpet two weeks ago and appeared on "Oprah" this week with his companion, the actress Eva Longoria. He is a budding rapper in France, his home country, and has won two N.B.A. championships in his first four seasons as the San Antonio Spurs' point guard. But something was missing from his sudden success and celebrity. At age 23, Parker sought validation that he belonged among the league's elite. Oprah Winfrey might not have been interested in Parker's points in the paint, but the N.B.A. coaches recognized his burgeoning talent yesterday, voting him to the Western Conference All-Star team for the first time. Parker beamed while taking congratulatory cellphone calls over a cup of tea at the Four Seasons in Manhattan as the Spurs rested before tonight's game against the Nets. He was ready to celebrate the achievement of a goal he set during last year's All-Star Weekend. He was in Las Vegas, where he was feeling left out and losing money at the casinos. "I was hurt, deep inside," Parker said. "I never talk about it because I was kind of sad because the whole coaching staff went and I was the only one of the big three left out." His teammates Tim Duncan and Manu Ginóbili were on the All-Star team. "I wanted to make sure this year that I played well enough that there was no discussion," Parker added. "They had to take me." Fans voted Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash as starters for the All-Star Game on Feb. 19 in Houston, and Parker's 19.7 points and 5.9 assists made him an obvious choice to be a reserve. Parker is second in the league with a .551 field-goal percentage, boosted by his signature teardrop layup. He averages 12.2 points in the paint, sixth best in the league, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. With Duncan and Ginóbili struggling with injuries, Parker's consistency has kept the Spurs (38-10) in the hunt for the top spot in the West. "He's having a phenomenal year," Nets Coach Lawrence Frank said Wednesday. Although every scouting report says the 6-foot-2 Parker will penetrate, "he's still able to do it," Frank said. "He's lightning quick." Parker's determination and cleverness in driving to the basket despite the obstacles provide a window into his N.B.A. career. After winning two titles, Parker still wanted to prove his value to the Spurs. Last summer, they hired a shooting coach, Chip Engelland, and sent him to Paris to work on Parker's outside shot. "He told me the Spurs had some concern whether I would still improve or stay the same player and if I was hungry enough," Parker said, adding that they were worried that dating Longoria would hurt his motivation. "I told Chip right away that I'm ready to work because I want to get to that next level," Parker recalled saying. "I want to go to the All-Star Game. The championship is great, but I want recognition, too, as a basketball player." General Manager R. C. Buford was not surprised that Parker got that recognition yesterday. "It's an indication of the hard work and time that he's put in to improve his game," Buford said by telephone. "For someone who's had the early success he's had, he's not resting on what he's accomplished. This kid has left us no reason to doubt his resolve at any time." Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich was unavailable yesterday. But Parker said: "Pop told me: 'You deserve it, you worked hard. But it's just the beginning. You can be the best point guard in the league.' " Parker listed John Stockton, Steve Nash and Jason Kidd as standard-bearers. That did not make it any easier in 2003, when the Spurs recruited Kidd, who was then a free agent. They wanted Parker and Kidd to play together. "I saw it slowing down my improvement as a point guard," Parker said. "There was no way; I would have to be traded." Kidd stayed with the Nets, and the Spurs extended Parker's contract for six years and $66 million. "If you're Jason Kidd, why don't you want to come to San Antonio Spurs?" Parker said. "They're going to give you $120 million for to play with Tim Duncan. I'd sign right away. Seriously, I'm surprised Jason didn't come. I'm sure he's regretting it now." Parker said he was grateful for the Spurs' faith in him and for his life in San Antonio. He has been dating Longoria for a year and a half. They met in the Spurs' locker room, where she visited with her father after a game. "She's been great, helping me understand my life and bringing the best out of me," Parker said. "When you date a girl like that, it's a lot of responsibility and making sure she's happy. She's worth it." Popovich has allowed Longoria on the team plane for some trips and allowed Parker to surprise her at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 29, an off-day. That is a testament to the trust Parker and Popovich have developed, Buford said. "I just think it's part of his maturation," Buford said. "Eva's been very supportive of him, and she has not been a distraction to him." If anything, Parker's outside interests have allowed him a break from thinking nonstop about basketball. At All-Star Weekend, Parker will unveil five songs from his album, due in September, and perform with the rappers Fabolous and Booba. The three collaborated on one song, "Top of the Game." Now Parker can say he belongs there.

SAN ANTONIO SPURS
PARKER TONY
ALL-STAR GAMES
BASKETBALL


San Jose Police Officer Is Shot to Death

Abstract: SAN JOSE, Calif. — A man who shot and killed a Northern California police officer responding to a call that he was threatening to commit suicide was found dead on his apartment balcony early Wednesday. A San Jose police spokesman, Albert Morales, said that the gunman, Scott Dunham, 57, had killed Officer Michael Johnson, a 14-year veteran. Officer Johnson and other officers were met with gunfire Tuesday evening as they approached Mr. Dunham’s apartment building, the police said. Mr. Dunham was found dead at 3:20 a.m. Wednesday with at least one gunshot wound. It was unclear if he killed himself or died when officers returned fire. After Officer Johnson was shot, officers searched the area and evacuated nearby homes. Officers and equipment, including armored vehicles and a helicopter, were summoned from neighboring police agencies, including the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, the Santa Clara and Sunnyvale police, and the California Highway Patrol, The San Jose Mercury News reported . Residents were advised to stay inside as the search intensified, but dozens of people gathered near the scene, watching as police helicopters circled overhead. Condolences from police departments throughout California began pouring in on Twitter late on Tuesday. The last San Jose police officer killed in the line of duty was Officer Jeffrey Fontana , a rookie who was shot during a vehicle stop in South San Jose on Oct. 28, 2001.

Attacks on Police
San Jose CA
Murders and Homicides
Michael Johnson


Stateside, Kicking and Screaming at the Football Factory

Abstract: Roger Smith, a bleary soccer fan, was still waking up as he sipped his Guinness, squinting through the darkness at the television. Others in the basement bar drank stronger stuff, washing down heavy breakfast sandwiches. The grotto reverberated like a tuning fork when a ball whistled into the net, jolting Mr. Smith alert, before the room returned to its reverent silence. Caffeine may have better suited him. It was not much past 7:30 a.m. last Saturday in the Football Factory , which occupies the basement of a Midtown Manhattan sports bar called Legends. But fans gathered in this subterranean establishment to watch a bitter rivalry between two lower-division English teams — Ipswich vs. Norwich — that very few sports bars outside the east coast of England would bother showing. Mr. Smith, a 67-year-old on vacation from Norwich, said he might have flown back home had he not found the game. His son, Luke, was as fanatical: “I’d sit in a dungeon to watch a Norwich game.” The Football Factory may seem little more than a cavern filled with glowing televisions, boiler room-like plumbing, framed jerseys and the drone of victory chants, but it is among New York City’s premier houses of soccer worship. Before the World Cup became another populist excuse for Americans to drink before lunchtime, the Football Factory served the city’s expatriates and American converts. The space is partitioned into three zones so opposing fans can watch bigger games among comrades without fear of conflict. Twenty screens show games from around the world, including major events like the Champions League final (on June 6, for which 500 people are expected to show), and the decidedly obscure, like Plymouth Argyle vs. Wycombe Wanderers, which was relegated that Saturday to a lone TV, drawing an audience of four Plymouth businessmen. The Factory prides itself on showing as many games as possible, and will open at 4 a.m. if there’s a good match being played in Japan. “It’s easy to show the big game,” said Jack Keane, the Factory’s owner, who was appalled by soccer’s reputation in America when he moved to New York from Ireland in 1993. “What killed me was how little respect they had for the game,” he said. “I wanted a place where we wouldn’t be shoved into a corner.” He opened the Factory five years ago, and some customers followed him from Nevada Smiths in the East Village, where he had already introduced a devoted culture of spectator soccer. “I was the first to say: Only football, all the time.” If Ipswich fans attended last weekend, they didn’t announce themselves. The rivalry between the two teams is vitriolic, and the New York Canaries, a Norwich supporters club, presided. One member, James Copland, described Ipswich as a “dump,” and when asked if Ipswichians would dispute the assessment, he pondered seriously: “Well, they can barely speak English, so ...” Glenn Hambling, a police officer from Norwich, refused to say the enemy’s name aloud. Even Mr. Smith, vacationing from Norwich, couldn’t refrain. “With all due respect, Ipswich is pretty scummy,” he said. His son added that commuters relish booing Ipswich from trains. The match was over by 9 a.m., a 1-1 draw. Over the weekend the teams play a second leg, determining who advances to the final. “We would fly back,” he said, “but instead we’ll be here, watching it in the dark.”

Football Factory
bars,nightclubs
Midtown Area Manhattan
Soccer
Sports


Royals Re-Sign Chen

Abstract: The left-hander Bruce Chen has agreed to a one-year, $4.25 million contract to return to the Kansas City Royals, where he has spent the past five seasons. Chen became a free agent after last season, but he made it clear that he wanted to return to the Royals. He will do so on a deal that pays $3.25 million this season with a mutual option at $5.5 million for 2015 with a $1 million buyout. The deal is subject to a physical. Chen, 36, went 9-4 last season with a 3.27 earned run average while making 15 starts and 19 appearances out of the bullpen.


Gaza: Israeli Airstrikes Kill Palestinian Militants

Abstract: Two Palestinian militants were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza on Monday as they fired rockets and mortar shells at Israeli troops, according to Palestinian officials and the Israeli military. Gazan officials said that the Israeli forces had crossed the border into Gaza. One of the militants was a member of Hamas , the Islamic group that governs Gaza; the other was from the Popular Resistance Committees, a group aligned with Hamas.

Defense and Military Forces
Palestinians
Hamas
Gaza Strip


U.S. Tells U.N. Panel of Steps to Revise Interrogation Policy

Abstract: The Obama administration told a United Nations panel in Geneva on Wednesday that the United States had tortured terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks but that it had since taken steps to prevent any future use of unlawful, coercive interrogation techniques. “The United States is proud of its record as a leader in respecting, promoting and defending human rights and the rule of law, both at home and around the world,” Mary McLeod, the acting legal adviser to the State Department, told the panel. “But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we regrettably did not always live up to our values.” President Obama has previously said the United States used torture during the Bush administration, but the presentation before the United Nations panel amounted to the government’s most formal acknowledgment of that fact before the international community. Tom Malinowski, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, told the panel, “A little more than 10 years ago, our government was employing interrogation methods that, as President Obama has said, any fair-minded person would believe were torture.” Ms. McLeod added, “As President Obama has acknowledged, we crossed the line, and we take responsibility for that.” The panel they addressed monitors compliance with the United Nations Convention Against Torture . In her testimony, she formally introduced a new position by the United States government on whether a provision of that treaty, which bars “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” imposes legal obligations on its conduct abroad. The George W. Bush administration contended that it applied only on American soil. But the Obama administration, after an internal debate , told the United Nations that it applied abroad where the United States had governing authority. Those places include the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as American-flagged ships and aircraft, Ms. McLeod said. The State Department, which had proposed changing the Bush-era position on the scope of the cruelty ban, faced resistance from military and intelligence lawyers, who raised unspecified operational concerns. Administration officials have described the debate as a technical legal matter about unintended consequences and said no one was proposing the use of cruelty or torture in interrogations, which is banned under American law. In its presentation Wednesday, the Obama administration stopped short of saying that the treaty also barred cruelty in overseas prisons where the United States had a detainee in its effective control but was not a governing authority. Such places appeared to include former secret prisons where the Central Intelligence Agency tortured suspects during the Bush administration and detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan during wars there. Still, the American officials stressed that domestic statutes and an executive order issued by Mr. Obama filled any gaps. Ms. McLeod and Mr. Malinowski said that there was no place the United States considered itself free to use torture or cruelty. “We believe that torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment are forbidden in all places, at all times, with no exceptions,” Mr. Malinowski said. “The legal and moral argument against torture would be dispositive under any circumstances. It would not matter to that argument if torture were effective; our experience also taught that it is not.” After the opening presentation by the American officials, several members of the panel posed questions. Among them, Alessio Bruni of Italy asked why an appendix to the United States Army Field Manual on interrogation permitted limiting a detainee to four hours of sleep a night as part of a special procedure for separating captives to prevent them from communicating. Mr. Bruni noted that four hours of sleep, especially over an extended period, was “definitely insufficient for a majority of people” and could be a “form of ill treatment.” He asked what the military’s justification was since the amount of sleep one received appeared to be unrelated to communication. Both Mr. Bruni and Jens Modvig of Denmark also pressed the delegation to discuss how the military’s practice of force-feeding detainees at Guantánamo, who are on a prolonged hunger strike, squares with its obligations under the cruel treatment ban, now that the United States has accepted that it applies there. The American delegation will return to the committee on Thursday to answer those and other questions.

Torture
UN
Detainees
9/11,Sept 11
US Military
State Department
Human Rights
Terrorism
US Foreign Policy