Mattingly Gives Dodgers An Earful Over His Status

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Through all the turbulent years in New York, Don Mattingly carved a reputation as an elegant player who carried himself with an earnestness that did not betray his small-town Indiana roots. That portrait, like the nickname that accompanied it, Donnie Baseball, seemed apt. Mattingly has carried himself much the same way during his tenure as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ manager, from the turmoil of the former owner Frank McCourt’s reign to the spike in salaries and expectations under a new, deep-pocketed ownership group fronted by Magic Johnson and run by the team’s president, Stan Kasten. At every turn, even when it appeared Mattingly’s firing was imminent this season, there was little change in his demeanor. So it was stunning Monday when Mattingly revealed a new persona: Donnie Hardball. Mattingly, doing little to mask his disappointment over having to endure what he thought was a lame-duck season, said at a news conference that his tenuous status undermined his authority with the players, and he suggested that he would not return unless he had a new contract that adequately reflected the Dodgers’ faith in him. The Dodgers fell two victories shy of reaching the World Series — the closest they have come since 1988 — but Mattingly, speaking in an even and direct tone, called it a “frustrating, tough year” and made it clear he would not want to manage the team again in a final year of his contract. “When you’re put in this position, the organization basically says we don’t know if you can manage or not,” said Mattingly, who is 260-225 in three seasons as the Dodgers’ manager. “I’ve always said I like being here, but I don’t want to be anywhere that you’re not wanted. I don’t know how everybody feels. I know where I am, how I feel about confidence in myself. If people don’t feel the same way, then that’s the way it is.” It was widely reported last week during the National League Championship Series, which the Cardinals won in six games, that the team would exercise the $1.4 million option on Mattingly’s contract for next season. But Mattingly said Monday the option vested when the Dodgers beat Atlanta in a division series. If Mattingly does not return, he may have some attractive options. The Detroit Tigers, the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago Cubs have managerial vacancies, and each is close to his home in Evansville, Ind. Mattingly’s disappointment stemmed from spring training when he asked the Dodgers to pick up the 2014 option, but Kasten declined. That decision, Mattingly said, left him more open to second-guessing in a clubhouse filled with many established stars. One such example came in Game 1 of the N.L.C.S., when Mattingly replaced Adrian Gonzalez with pinch-runner Dee Gordon in the eighth inning of a tie game. When the Cardinals won in 13 innings, they were able to pitch to a lineup that did not include Gonzalez in the cleanup spot. “With a club like this, you come in basically as a lame duck,” Mattingly said. “With the guys that you have, it puts you in a tough spot in the clubhouse, so we dealt with that all year long. And really what it does, it puts me in a spot where everything I do is questioned because I’m basically trying out or auditioning to say: can you manage or can you not manage? To me, three years in, you either know or don’t know.” Pressed repeatedly, Mattingly declined to go into more detail about what he wanted in a new contract; what he wanted to hear from Kasten, Johnson or Mark Walter, who heads the ownership group; or whether he would walk away. It was clear that he had the support of General Manager Ned Colletti, who hired him when McCourt owned the team. The Dodgers were in last place in the N.L. West on June 21, nine and a half games out of first. They won 42 of their next 50 games and won the division handily. “I have a lot of respect for this guy,” Colletti said. “He kept it steady through a tough period of time. I’ve been a supporter of his from the day he walked through here as a hitting coach.” Mattingly said he wanted the entire coaching staff back and said there needed to be a plan for Yasiel Puig, a dynamic and often polarizing outfielder, which would emphasize the importance of details. Also on the table is a long-term deal for pitcher Clayton Kershaw; a decision whether to pick up the option on second baseman Mark Ellis, whose range is not what it once was; and whether the Dodgers will have to replace reliever Brian Wilson, a free agent who covets a closer’s job. Those discussions will begin in the coming days. As Mattingly left Dodger Stadium on Monday, he did not appear terribly concerned. He smiled and laughed as he headed toward the elevator, expressing excitement about his son Preston’s college basketball career. He seemed to be adhering to what he had earlier said was the biggest lesson learned from this season. “Basically just stick to your beliefs,” he said. “I got rewarded this year in a big way.”


Justice Not Served: Inmate Buses Grounded by Correction Officers

Abstract: All day Monday, Jose Camillo sat in the criminal courthouse on Staten Island waiting for his 17-year-old son, Joseph, to go before a judge. Late in the day, he heard why Joseph had not appeared: The correction officers had refused to leave Rikers Island with the people who were due in court. “We heard that there was a union action because the buses were unsafe,” Mr. Camillo said, “that the drivers were proving a point that they didn’t want to risk prisoners’ lives.” A carpenter for the city and a union member, Mr. Camillo said he believed it would have been a principled reason for the action. “But it wasn’t about that,” Mr. Camillo said. “It was a ruse.” In fact, on Monday morning, the correction officers brought the criminal justice system in the city to a near halt. Why? Here’s one highly suspicious circumstance. A man being held on Rikers Island was due in the Bronx courthouse that morning to testify at the trial of two correction officers accused of beating him up and lying about it. The inmate has yet to get on the witness stand and give the first syllable of testimony. As it happens, the officers on trial in the Bronx were members of the transportation group at Rikers, the corps of officers who deliver detainees from the city jails to the courthouses. That morning, their fellow transportation officers reported that not a single bus in the jailhouse fleet of about 60 was working properly. Many of the buses had been bought within the last year or two, and most were no more than five years old. They all have regular maintenance schedules. After the buses were checked out by mechanics and cleared to go back on the road, the drivers reported still other problems. The same thing happened on Tuesday morning. The judge hearing evidence at the trial of the correction officers adjourned the case for two weeks. The buses started rolling again. Mr. Camillo was aghast. “They were trying to prevent someone from testifying against them,” he said. It certainly looks that way, although Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Thursday that he was not sure if it had been an effort to intimidate the witness. He promised to bring disciplinary action against the officers involved in the bus shutdown, and said he would seek a court order against the union representing the correction officers. He blamed its president, Norman Seabrook, for ordering the action. The union leader had denied people their right to a day in court, the mayor said, and squandered public resources for two days. Mr. Seabrook, the only union leader to support Mr. Bloomberg during his 2001 campaign and a member of the transition committee after that election, did not respond to a request for comment on the angry words from his former ally. The Legal Aid Society, which represents most indigent people in criminal court, is considering bringing a suit against the city, said Steve Banks, the chief attorney for the organization. “There are heartbreaking stories of clients who would have been released, who suffered real harm,” Mr. Banks said. An 18-year-old Brooklyn man who was arrested last week for assaulting his sister in a fight was due in court to plead guilty to disorderly conduct and go home, said Lucy Stroup, a lawyer with Legal Aid. “His mother was in court all day waiting,” she said. Another man who missed a court date was a 19-year-old from Queens with schizophrenia, who has had about a dozen hospitalizations for his illness, said John Kalinowski, his Legal Aid lawyer. The man would have been released to a hospital. For Jose Camillo, there was a special anxiety attached to the long wait for his son. Joseph, he said, had developed a serious pill habit a few years ago, began shoplifting and was recently committing burglaries while people were asleep. Mr. Camillo said he had been trying, without success, to get his son into a drug-treatment program. Then Joseph was arrested. “It’s actually the best thing that could happen to him,” Mr. Camillo said. “He was mandated to go for treatment.” On his court date, he was to plead guilty to the felonies, and then be driven by his father to a residential treatment program near Albany. If he completed it successfully and stayed sober, his record would be cleaned. Such slots can vanish if they are not claimed. Mr. Camillo fretted that Joseph had lost a chance to reclaim his life. Late on Tuesday, Joseph got to court, and Mr. Camillo drove his son three hours to the program. “I hadn’t felt as close to him in a long time,” he said. As for the shutdown of the buses, Mr. Camillo had one word: “Horrific.”

Bus
Security guard
Rikers
NYC
Mike Bloomberg


As Downloads Take Over, a Turning Point for the Video Game Industry

Abstract: SEATTLE — This holiday season could be remembered as a digital watershed for the games business, the moment when the old way of selling video games — on discs in boxes — finally gave way to downloads. The industry has been pointed in this direction for years. But the signs of a sharp turning point have piled up in the last month, as new data points have painted conflicting pictures of the game industry. On one hand, recent market research shows that physical game sales declined in November, and GameStop , a leading retailer, reported disappointing earnings that made its stock tumble. On the other, game companies swear that things are going great. Big titles are setting sales records, and Sony , the leading maker of game consoles, says the latest PlayStation has been selling at a faster clip than any previous generation of the hardware. Why the disparity? A number of factors are at play, but none as significant as the industry’s march toward a future of games downloaded over the Internet rather than bought in stores, analysts said. All mobile games are delivered over the Internet, as are nearly all PC games. But the transition for console games — the biggest segment of the business — has been far slower. Large game files could take hours to download and quickly fill a console’s hard drive. Now, faster broadband speeds and the bigger hard drives in the latest generation of consoles are reducing those obstructions. “It finally feels like the inevitable is becoming the inevitable,” said Evan Wilson, an analyst who follows the game industry for Pacific Crest Securities. “It feels like this is the holiday season where it’s finally having a big impact.” Electronic Arts , the big games publisher behind Madden and Need for Speed, says about 20 percent of its new console games are now downloaded, compared with around 10 to 15 percent last year. For other publishers, the number may be 25 percent or more. As a result, it is becoming harder to judge the health of the industry based on sales of physical game discs. NPD Group, a research firm that tracks retail sales in the United States, showed a 7 percent decline in November game sales from the same month a year ago. Mr. Wilson of Pacific Crest characterized the figures in the title of a research report: “Shockingly Bad NPD Data Shows Big Physical Challenges.” A couple of weeks earlier, there was similarly grim news from GameStop, the big specialty retailer, which blamed a disappointing earnings report for the period ending Oct. 31 on weak new game software and hardware sales. Executives at GameStop caused a further stir when they said one of the most anticipated games of the season, Star Wars: Battlefront, had missed their internal sales forecasts during the quarter. The stock of Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher, fell 5 percent the day of the remarks. The numbers were particularly striking because if game sales are ever going to grow, the time is now. The biggest games of the year have just landed on store shelves — including Fallout 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and Star Wars: Battlefront — and demand for them is running high among holiday gift buyers. What is more, the industry is in the sweet spot of the hardware cycle, when the latest consoles from Sony and Microsoft are in plentiful supply and their prices have come down, and game publishers are cranking out titles that better exploit their capabilities. Sony, for one, says its console sales have never been better. The company reported that it sold 30.2 million PlayStation 4s worldwide as of late November, just days after the second anniversary of the product. By comparison, it took around two years and two months for Sony to ship about 30 million PlayStation 2s — the previous high-water mark for Sony in the game business. One factor in NPD’s declining game sales is that the research firm does not include games that are bundled with consoles — an increasingly popular option for buying the machines — in its software sales data. But a much bigger reason is that it does not include digital downloads of games in its monthly tallies of the industry. Liam Callahan, an analyst at NPD, said the firm includes digital sales in a game report that comes out every quarter. For the first nine months of the year, game spending on physical formats was flat compared with the same period in 2014. When digital sales were included, there was an 8 percent increase, he said. “It’s clear digital downloading is becoming a bigger deal,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. After GameStop’s comments about Star Wars: Battlefront rattled investors, a senior executive at Electronic Arts, Peter Moore, said at a conference that there was “no weakness that is perceptible yet in the title.” He reiterated the company’s previous projection that it would sell 13 million copies of the game during its fiscal year. The bigger threat appears to be for retailers that fail to adjust to the changing market. The list of retailers that have been vaporized by the Internet is long, including Blockbuster in movies, Tower Records in music and Virgin Megastores in both. GameStop has increased its own presence in Internet-delivered games, but those changes have not moved the needle much. The company’s digital revenue in its last quarter amounted to less than 2 percent of its total revenue. There are limits to how much the company can sell digitally, though, since Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo operate the online portals from which the games are downloaded. GameStop has tried to diversify beyond video games by acquiring one retail chain that offers wireless products and another that sells and repairs Apple devices. Joey Mooring, a spokesman for GameStop, said the company’s in-store staff members provide guidance for customers. And through its trade-in program for used games, customers can get credits toward the purchase of new games. “Customers cannot access that expertise downloading a game, nor can they trade in a digital game for currency that can be applied to the purchase of their next game,” Mr. Mooring said in an email. Eric Lempel, senior vice president for marketing at Sony’s American games division, agreed with the idea that many gamers want to talk to store staff members before making a purchase. The convenience of downloading a game directly to a console is appealing too, though. “A lot of people are finding it easier to buy online,” Mr. Lempel said. “It’s open 24 hours a day.”

Computer and Video Games
E Commerce
PlayStation 4
Sony
Microsoft
GameStop
Electronic Arts


Big Investment Made in Lender

Abstract: SEATTLE (AP) — Washington Mutual , hit hard by rising delinquencies and defaults on mortgages, said Tuesday that it would receive $7 billion in new capital from an investment group led by the private equity firm TPG, but would post a wider-than-expected loss for the first quarter. The savings and loan, based here, said it would lose $1.1 billion and take a provision for loan losses of $3.5 billion, $1.5 billion more than previously expected. Wall Street had forecast a loss of $344.3 million. Washington Mutual also said it would get out of wholesale lending, close remaining stand-alone home loan centers, cut its dividend and lay off 3,000 workers. It will sell equity securities to an investment fund managed by TPG Capital and to other investors. The founding partner of TPG, previously the Texas Pacific Group, is David Bonderman. Mr. Bonderman, a former Washington Mutual director, will rejoin the board.

Washington Mutual Inc
TPG Capital
Stocks and Bonds
Wall Street (NYC)


Buffett Is Named as a Witness in the Fraud Trial of 5 Insurance Executives

Abstract: Federal prosecutors are expected to call Warren E. Buffett , the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, to testify in the trial of five senior insurance executives accused of helping the American International Group manipulate its finances through $500 million in fraudulent transactions, according to court papers filed yesterday. The former executives — four from the General Re Corporation, part of Berkshire Hathaway, and one from A.I.G. — were indicted in 2006 on charges of fraud, conspiracy and lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with what the government has called a scheme to inflate A.I.G.’s reserves. In court papers filed yesterday, federal prosecutors said for the first time that Mr. Buffett was on the witness list. Mr. Buffett has said that he did not know the deals were improper; he has not been charged. The defendants from Gen Re are Ronald E. Ferguson, the former chief executive; Elizabeth A. Monrad, the former chief financial officer; Robert Graham, the former assistant general counsel; and Christopher P. Garand, a senior vice president who was chief underwriter. The A.I.G. defendant is Christopher M. Milton, who oversaw reinsurance activities. The case involves complex reinsurance deals intended to bolster balance sheets. Two other crucial prosecution witnesses are John Houldsworth, the former chief executive of Cologne Re Dublin, a subsidiary of Gen Re, and Richard Napier, a former senior vice president for Gen Re who oversaw its relationship with A.I.G. Both men pleaded guilty to charges in 2005 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Opening arguments are scheduled for Jan. 7 in Federal District Court in Hartford. Jury selection began yesterday. The indictments of the five executives followed the resignation in 2005 of A.I.G.’s chairman, Maurice R. Greenberg, who was forced out after nearly four decades, amid concerns about possible accounting irregularities. In 2006, A.I.G. agreed to pay $1.64 billion to settle civil claims with federal and New York State authorities that it had engaged in deceptive accounting and bid-rigging. The trial could bring to light what Mr. Greenberg, a titan of the insurance world, knew about the reinsurance transactions in question. The S.E.C. has been conducting a civil investigation of Mr. Greenberg for at least two years but has not filed a lawsuit. “He thought they were legitimate,” a lawyer for Mr. Greenberg, Robert G. Morvillo, said. “At no time did anyone ever bring any facts to his attention that would lead him to believe that something was wrong with the transactions.” Mr. Buffett said in the past that he was generally aware of the transactions but was unaware that they had been structured improperly or used improperly. He has cooperated with regulators and prosecutors. But a lawyer for Ms. Monrad said at an early court hearing that Mr. Buffett knew the details of the transactions. According to a transcript of a hearing on Oct. 10, the lawyer, Reid H. Weingarten, said: “The evidence is beyond dispute that he knew about the transaction. He certainly didn’t stop it.” According to the transcript, Mr. Weingarten later said that defense lawyers “have an e-mail that says Buffett’s on board” with the transactions. Mr. Weingarten did not return calls for comment. Ronald L. Olson, Mr. Buffett’s lawyer, declined to comment yesterday. Mr. Olson is on the board of Berkshire Hathaway. The case may contain a twist for Mr. Buffett. If the government decides not to call him as a witness, defense lawyers might do so, according to people briefed on the matter. The trial centers on accusations that in late 2000 and early 2001, A.I.G., at the urging of Mr. Greenberg, devised a plan with Gen Re to artificially inflate A.I.G.’s balance sheet. The plan, according to prosecutors, involved A.I.G.’s working with Mr. Ferguson of Gen Re and others to transfer $500 million in Gen Re reserves to A.I.G. Prosecutors contend that A.I.G. entered into the illegal transactions because it was worried about criticism by analysts that its reserves were too low, and how that would affect the share price. Reserves are used to pay out claims, and are a closely watched indicator of an insurer’s health. Reserves are a liability, but under insurance accounting rules, an insurer with more reserves than it needs can put the excess into its earnings. Prosecutors contend that the transactions were shams because they did not involve any real transfer of risk to A.I.G. That is because Gen Re also transferred to A.I.G. $500 million in paid premiums. In the end, prosecutors contend that A.I.G. used the transactions to inflate its reserves artificially in late 2000 and early 2001 by $500 million. Prosecutors also intend to use as evidence taped telephone conversations involving some of the defendants, including Mr. Ferguson, according to court papers filed last month. A lawyer for Mr. Ferguson, Clifford Schoenberg, declined to comment yesterday. The trial could also spotlight the role of Wall Street equity analysts who cover A.I.G. and whether they were potentially misled by the company. Several prominent Wall Street analysts are on the government’s witness list, while defense lawyers have put on their exhibits list previously issued reports filed by some analysts.

Suits and Litigation
Berkshire Hathaway Incorporated
American International Group
Buffett Warren E
Decisions and Verdicts
Executives and Management


2015 N.B.A. Draft: Kristaps Porzingis Is a Big Project for the Rebuilding Knicks

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Phil Jackson has been adamant about wanting to do things his way as president of the Knicks. So when it came to the N.B.A draft and his first opportunity to make a first-round selection, he maintained that he was not going to be swayed by public opinion or television draftniks or the potential reaction of the team’s long-suffering fans. On Thursday night, the Knicks selected Kristaps Porzingis, a 7-foot-1 forward from Latvia who was an unknown — at least to everyone but the most plugged-in observers of European talent — until about a month ago. And while the pick was roundly booed by Knicks fans in attendance at Barclays Center, Jackson said it was to be expected, not that he cared. “I think our fans are going to like him,” Jackson said at the team’s training complex. “The reaction of the crowd is what you anticipate in New York, and he’s aware of it.” The Knicks later traded Tim Hardaway Jr. to the Atlanta Hawks for Jerian Grant, a point guard from Notre Dame who was selected 19th over all. Hardaway, a first-round pick of the Knicks in 2013, struggled in two seasons, especially on defense. Image Kristaps Porzingis after being selected fourth overall by the Knicks in the N.B.A. draft at Barclays Center on Thursday. Credit Elsa/Getty Images Porzingis, 19, who spent the past three seasons with Cajasol Sevilla of Spain’s ACB League, has unusual gifts — Jackson said Porzingis was capable of shooting with ease from 25 feet — but will need time to develop and adapt to the physical nature of the N.B.A. He is tall, skinny and rangy. At a recent workout, he weighed 233 pounds and had a 38-inch vertical leap. “This young man is an eye-opening athlete,” Jackson said, adding. “We felt the risk/rewards were the greatest with this guy, perhaps, than the whole lottery.” Jackson added: “Our coaching staff’s concern is, obviously, with any young player, how are they going to defend? And we understand that. And that’s a question we have about this young man: How’s he going to fit out on the court and defend? I think he’s going to have an offensive ability to play, but defensively he’s got to learn.” The Knicks, who set a franchise record by losing 65 games last season, entered the draft with just five players under contract, including Carmelo Anthony, who has four years remaining on his deal. But the roster has more holes than a pasta strainer, and even Jackson expressed skepticism that Porzingis could make an immediate impact. Image Porzingis, 19, is a 7-foot-1 forward from Latvia who has spent recent seasons in the Spanish league. Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times “We know it’s going to be a maturation process,” Jackson said. While Jackson has said that he plans to bring back several other players from last season’s roster, the Knicks’ selection of Porzingis and their shipping of Hardaway to Atlanta signified the start of what many expect to be a major overhaul this summer. Grant, 22, was a four-year starter at Notre Dame, where he became the first player in team history to accumulate more than 1,700 points, 600 assists, 150 steals and 30 blocks. Last season, he averaged 14.6 points and 5.8 rebounds and helped lead the Fighting Irish to the regional finals of the N.C.A.A. tournament. The Knicks have an experienced point guard in Jose Calderon, but he has struggled with injuries and is 33. Grant should provide security at the position. The Knicks will approach the start of free agency July 1 with more than $26 million to spend under the salary cap. Image The Knicks acquired Notre Dame guard Jerian Grant, left, from the Hawks for Tim Hardaway Jr. Credit Bob Leverone/Associated Press After Jackson and other members of the team’s front office traveled to Las Vegas this month to watch Porzingis go through drills, Porzingis made the trip here last week for an individual workout with the staff. The Knicks, Jackson said, held workouts for about 30 prospects and scouted nearly 70 in all. “Whatever Carmelo wants me to do, I will do that out on the court just to prove that I’m worthy enough to be on the court with him,” Porzingis said. With Cajasol Sevilla last season, Porzingis averaged 10.7 points and 4.7 rebounds in 21.7 minutes a game. He shot 47.4 percent from the field and 32 percent from 3-point range. In 16 Eurocup games, with the stakes considerably higher, he shot 45.9 percent from the 3-point line. “We like to see guys who can catch the ball and shoot,” Jackson said, “and have decisive abilities to read the defense and react to it.” It was not a popular pick among Knicks fans. ESPN trained one of its cameras on a boy who was visibly sobbing. Regardless, Porzingis wore a maroon jacket and a broad smile when he loped onto the stage to shake Commissioner Adam Silver’s hand. He later posed for photographs. “I have to do everything that’s in my hands to turn those booing fans into clapping fans,” Porzingis said. “I want to be a part of this organization, and I know the fans are a little harsh sometimes. But that’s how it is here in New York, and I’m ready for it.” Jackson was hired in March 2014 and tasked with turning around the franchise, and his first draft, a year ago, was uneventful because the Knicks had long ago traded away their first-round pick. So Thursday’s event was his first significant opportunity to begin to reshape the team through the draft. Jackson said that he had considered draft-night trade proposals from other teams but that many of them were contingent on the three selections made ahead of the Knicks. The Knicks wound up passing on Emmanuel Mudiay, a combination guard who went to the Denver Nuggets, and Justise Winslow, a swingman who went to the Miami Heat. Jackson said that Porzingis “fits very well into what we want to run here.”

Basketball
Phil Jackson
Kristaps Porzingis
Sports Drafts and Recruits
NBA
Knicks


Bryan Brothers Upset in Australian Open

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — The top-seeded American team of Bob and Mike Bryan fell with surprising speed, 7-6 (9), 6-4 in 78 minutes, in the third round of men’s doubles to an unheralded pair, Eric Butorac of Boston and Raven Klaasen of Cape Town. The upset eliminated the defending champions and the most successful team in men’s tennis. The Bryans have 15 titles in the four major championships, and they have reached the final here nine times in the last 10 years. An omen of what they faced came in the first game of the match, when Butorac and Klaasen broke Bob Bryan’s serve to take the lead. The seesaw battle moved into the final moments of the first set, with the Bryans holding a 4-0 lead in the tiebreaker. But their opponents began to rally. The Bryans led again at 5-4, when the teams exchanged a series of 19 shots in a crowd-pleasing shootout. “I had a swing volley that I kind of got rid of, then the point got pretty crazy,” Bob Bryan said. “We had our chances. We hit some low shots, and then a guy got a line on a volley.” “I think I hit the last shot,” said Klaasen, chuckling with Butorac about the evident confusion as the two teams tried to reconstruct the point that proved to be the key. “They’re the best in the business,” Butorac said. “We were just trying to find a balance, to just be aggressive but also just knowing our game was good enough to win. And today, we were able to really pull through.” Bob Bryan ascribed the defeat in part to a rising level of competitiveness in world doubles play. “Everyone’s prepared, everyone’s in the gym, everyone’s got a coach,” he said. “I look at 16 teams that could potentially hold this trophy.” Mike Bryan added, “I feel like the game’s being played at a pretty damn good high level by a lot of good teams.” Butorac and Klaasen joined forces in September and joked that living on separate continents placed them in a perfect position to practice together. In the fourth round, Butorac and Klaasen face Treat Huey of Charlottesville, Va., and Dominic Inglot of Britain, seeded 12th. As evidence of the rising competition in doubles, the 2012 champions, Leander Paes of India and Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic, are seeded fifth and will face Michael Llodra and Nicolas Mahut of France in the quarterfinals.

Tennis
Australian Open
Mike Bryan
Bob Bryan
Eric Butorac
Raven Klaasen


Trying to Salvage Garbage Time

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y. — When the Knicks played the Nets on Dec. 5 at Barclays Center, the game presented the rare opportunity for Carmelo Anthony to watch the final minutes of a blowout win from the bench. He enjoyed the experience. “It was definitely a great feeling,” said Anthony, who hopes to recapture some of those good vibes Monday afternoon when the Knicks play the Nets at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks, of course, are no strangers to garbage time, loosely defined as late-game situations in which one team holds a lead so substantial that an act of cosmic intervention would be required to upset the outcome. The problem for the Knicks, though, and what made their 30-point victory over the Nets exceedingly rare, is that they tend to lose games by big margins, not win them. They have lost 25 games by an average of 12 points. Translation: Few teams in the N.B.A. are better versed in the thankless art of garbage time. “We win by a lot,” Anthony said, “and we lose by a lot.” No player on the team is more associated with garbage time than Cole Aldrich, a reserve center whose most important contributions come at practice. He occupies himself during games by sitting near the end of the bench. He stands occasionally to cheer teammates, peer at Coach Mike Woodson’s clipboard during timeouts or, more often, move down a spot to make room for someone else. A former lottery pick, he has played 51 minutes all season. “It’s tough sometimes,” Aldrich said, “because the game can be a little erratic by then.” The act of Aldrich stripping off his warm-ups usually coincides with fans heading to the exits. In recent weeks, that has meant being down by 28 points to both the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder. On Dec. 8, Woodson called on Aldrich with the Knicks trailing the Boston Celtics by 39. Aldrich collected three rebounds. The Knicks lost by 41 points. “You have to understand that there’s only so many guys who can get on the court at once,” Aldrich said. “It’s about being professional and going in every day and getting your extra work in and staying ready — staying ready for those times when somebody gets in foul trouble or somebody goes out with a sprained ankle.” Doc Rivers, the coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, rejected the term “garbage time.” More specifically, he said, “I don’t know what garbage time is.” In any case, Rivers does not seem to look at games that way. Every second is valuable. For example, he said, he often uses blowouts as a chance to experiment with new plays. He has even been known to call a timeout to set one up. He wants to get a sense of its timing and how opponents will defend it. “We’ll try something, just to see if it works,” Rivers said. And if it doesn’t work? “The game’s already been decided,” he said. Toure’ Murry, a first-year guard for the Knicks who has drawn more playing time in recent weeks as a result of injuries to Raymond Felton and Pablo Prigioni, said garbage time was an adjustment. In high school and college, he was always the star. With the Knicks, he learned to embrace his minutes whenever he got them. What little playing time he did have earlier this season also helped him acclimate to the pressures of the N.B.A. “I think it helps with confidence,” he said. “Just stepping on the floor can be a little nerve-racking. Those two minutes give you a sense of what it’s like to be out there. So once you’re getting 20 minutes, you feel more prepared.” Dan Issel, a former coach of the Denver Nuggets, said that younger players often wanted to use garbage time to show that they were deserving of more meaningful minutes. In other words, garbage time is a chance to prove that they should not be on the court during garbage time. The real problem, Issel said, is the veteran players, who want nothing to do with it. “They feel like it’s beneath them,” Issel said. “They’re just going through the motions.” Along those lines, coaches can use blowouts to mete out punishment. Consider the plight of J. R. Smith, whose chaotic relationship with Woodson played a role in his being on the floor in the final minutes of last week’s loss to the Pacers. To his credit, Smith said he was glad to get any minutes, even meaningless ones. It was better than being benched. “Whenever I play, I’m satisfied,” he said. Issel cited the enormous difference between the winning side and the losing side. Teams that are up big have the luxury of celebrating. Down big? Garbage time runs the risk of turning into a pity party. “You’re really just getting ahead on where you’re going to have dinner after the game,” Issel said. There is also the small matter of late-game etiquette. The unspoken rule among coaches is that teams with huge leads are expected to run the shot clock down and generally refrain from shooting 3-pointers. Issel recalled one game when that was not the case. “By the end, I had steam coming out of my ears,” said Issel, who could not recall the opponent. “I couldn’t wait to play them again because I was going to do the same thing to them. That’s the thing about garbage time: You have to be respectful of the game and the other teams. What goes around, comes around.” REBOUNDS Pablo Prigioni, sidelined since Dec. 16 with a broken toe, is expected to return to the Knicks’ lineup Monday, Mike Woodson said. Prigioni has missed 16 games. ... Woodson said Metta World Peace was continuing to receive treatment on his left knee.

Basketball
Knicks
Dan Issel
Carmelo Anthony
Cole Aldrich


Comfortably Wasteful With the Air-Conditioner

Abstract: In a handsome prewar building in Greenwich Village, a tenant struggled to remember the last time she turned off her air-conditioner. Upstairs, a young couple admitted to having let the window unit run for four days while they went out of town for a funeral, thinking it would be nice, amid the July heat wave, to return to a cool apartment. Another resident of the 160-unit building, on Seventh Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, says he leaves the air-conditioning on when he goes to work, when he sleeps at his girlfriend’s apartment, even when he leaves the country on vacation — and only partly out of sympathy for his cat, Kitty. “My A.C. is pretty much running 24/7,” Kitty’s owner, Michael Perlo, a 28-year-old television producer, said with more bravado than guilt. “Not having to pay for electricity makes me a little bit more reckless.” Forget round-the-clock doormen or views of Central Park. This sweltering summer, the most coveted New York real estate amenity is two little words that in other times can go unnoticed: “utilities included.” Mr. Perlo and his neighbors live in a building where not just heat and hot water, but electricity, is part of their monthly rent — a more-common-than-you’d-think arrangement caused by old-fashioned wiring in which a building has a single “master meter” tracking power use rather than individual meters tied to each tenant. They can blast their air-conditioners all summer long without paying a dollar extra. Con Edison counts about 250,000 apartments across the city, not including public housing projects, that do not have individual meters tracking electricity consumption, compared with roughly 1.75 million that do. One large management company, Cooper Square, estimates that these units expend at least 30 percent more electricity year-round than their counterparts. So while lucky tenants across the city relax beneath arctic gusts, their landlords and building managers are left to worry whether these weeks of record-challenging heat will break the bank. And regardless of who pays the electric bills, there is a considerable environmental cost: a 2009 report said that residential buildings account for 39 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, and 40 percent of the energy that buildings use is spent on heating and cooling. “Using it when you’re not home is outright irresponsible and disrespectful of all the rest of us,” Dan Hendrick of the New York League of Conservation Voters said. “There’s no good way to look at this. The worst thing is, you’re warming our climate to cool your apartment for your own comfort.” But as any introductory economics course might explain, tenants who blast air-conditioners on their landlord’s dime are making rational, predictable choices. “This is Homo economicus coming out in full feather,” said Prof. Lawrence J. White of New York University ’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. “When something is free, until some point of satiation, you will take up a lot of it.” New York State ’s Energy and Research Development Authority, in part out of concern over the environmental effects of excessive air-conditioning, is planning to offer building owners financial incentives to install “submeters” that measure individual consumption, a major construction project that can require a significant upfront expense. Under an earlier incentive program, the state helped convert 426 buildings in the city over the last decade, said Jeffrey Gordon, a department spokesman. The new conversion project will focus on submeters, which track individual electricity use but still feed a single utility account paid by the building owner or manager. (Some landlords then charge tenants based on actual consumption.) That is simpler than individual metering and is seen as an improvement over master meters because it introduces a level of accountability, according to state energy officials. Con Edison estimates that there are 30,000 apartments in the city with submeters. David Kuperberg, the chief executive officer of Cooper Square, compared two co-op buildings he manages on the Upper East Side. Annually, the one with a master meter used 1.38 kilowatt hours per square foot more than the one with submeters, he said, costing an additional $52,000 a year. Over all, Cooper Square’s 45 or so master-metered buildings have energy costs 14 to 24 percent higher than their submetered counterparts, Mr. Kuperberg said. But installing submeters almost always sets off a battle with tenants who are loath to give up what they see as a perk, even if it could lower their rent or maintenance charges. “Many of these properties have older populations, and some people are scaring them, saying that if you do this your costs are going to go up,” Mr. Kuperberg said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Indeed, some tenants in Mr. Perlo’s building in the Village have become upset at a submeter plan in the works by the management company, Northbrook Partners. Mr. Perlo said that Northbrook had agreed to knock $150 off his monthly rent; but some residents fear their air-conditioning habits would surpass that. “It’s the end of an era,” lamented his neighbor, a telecommuter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering her landlord. “It was a great treat.” Northbrook officials declined to discuss the matter. Two years ago, a similar kerfuffle unfolded at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the famed middle-class enclaves overlooking the East River that had long offered “free” — at least to tenants — electricity. Tishman Speyer Properties , which bought the complexes in 2006, announced plans to install individual meters in each unit as part of an effort to reduce energy use by 20 percent. The news distressed some long-term residents, sparking newspaper articles and blog posts, including one that announced, “No More Free Electricity.” Tishman Speyer abandoned the plans amid larger financial problems that ended with a default on the properties. Danielle, a social worker who asked that her last name not be used, definitely considered free air-conditioning among the “pros” for the two-bedroom apartment in Stuyvesant Town that she moved into last month. She and her roommate have kept their two units running almost constantly ever since, partly for her purse-size dog, who is in the house all day, but also for that moment, after trekking through the sweaty subways and steaming sidewalks of the city in summer, when they open the door and get to feel a chill. “I don’t want to walk into a hot apartment at the end of the day,” Danielle said, simply. “It’s nice to not have to worry about it.”

Air conditioning
Energy Efficiency
Conservation of Resources
Con Edison
NYC


Investors Stalk the Wounded of Wall Street

Abstract: Almost two centuries ago, as Napoleon marched on Waterloo, a scion of the Rothschilds banking dynasty is said to have declared: The time to buy is when blood is running in the streets. Now, as red ink runs on Wall Street, the figurative heirs of the Rothschilds — bankers, traders, hedge fund gurus and takeover artists — are plotting to profit from today’s financial upheaval. These market opportunists — vulture investors is the Wall Street term — have begun to swoop. They are buying up mortgages of hard-pressed homeowners, the bank loans of cash-short businesses, and companies that seem to be hurtling toward bankruptcy. And they are trying to buy them all on the cheap. One Wall Street specialist in so-called distressed debt recently spent at least $450 million for assets of Thornburg Mortgage, the battered mortgage servicing company. Others are buying beaten-down corporate bonds and looking at car and credit card loans. A former executive of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, one of the mortgage giants that fostered subprime lending, recently helped start a company — to buy mortgages. And executives of the Blackstone Group, those lords of the now faded buyout boom, just raised $10.9 billion from investors to scoop up real estate. The vultures are betting, and betting big, that some people have thrown the good out with the bad, and that the prices of some investments have simply fallen too far. But even many of the vultures warn that the worst is not over for the markets or the broader economy. The investors say that they are spotting deals that are good values and that their footsteps do not always track the broader economy. Opportunity investing, as the trade is politely known, takes nerve: the best time to buy is when others panic or are forced to sell something they wish they could keep. And the moment to buy is often clear only in hindsight. Even supposedly savvy traders, as well as cash-rich investors from the Middle East and Asia, have lost big in recent months by jumping into the markets too early. Among the most prominent is the billionaire investor Joseph Lewis, who lost a reported $1.19 billion when Bear Stearns collapsed last month. “The only time you really know you’ve reached the bottom is when you’re back on the other side and things are going back up,” said Wilbur L. Ross Jr. , a dean of vulture investing, who made a fortune buying steel companies when no one else seemed to want them. Such caution aside, his firm, W. L. Ross & Company, recently spent $2.6 billion for two mortgage servicers and a bond insurance company. He said he planned to buy more as hedge funds and other investors sell at bargain prices. Some deep-pocketed investors are following his lead. Wealthy individuals, endowments and pension funds are giving the vultures billions of dollars to invest. Last year, as the mortgage crisis erupted and then ripped through the credit markets, about $21 billion flowed into hedge funds that specialize in distressed investments — just over $1 out of every $10 flowed into those loosely regulated investment vehicles, according to Hedge Fund Research. “There are a lot of dead carcasses on the road, and the vultures are out sniffing,” said Andy Kessler, a former hedge fund manager. “This is the cycle of Wall Street. When bubbles crash, you get the value guys who come in and say, ‘This thing is cheap.’ ” To some, Wall Street looks like a big bargain basement. All kinds of financial assets are selling for a fraction of what they were only months ago. The average corporate loan, for example, fetches less than 90 cents on the dollar in the secondary, or resale, market. Some mortgage bonds sell for pennies on the dollar. It is no surprise more hedge funds and private equity firms are getting into distressed investing given the outlook for the economy, said Abraham Gulkowitz, a portfolio manager at FrontPoint, the hedge fund business within Morgan Stanley. “A lot of companies are under stress,” Mr. Gulkowitz said. “When you have more and more companies under stress, suddenly by force everyone becomes a distressed investor.” Mr. Ross is already planning a reshaping of the mortgage industry. He said he would use his mortgage servicing companies — Option One and a unit of American Home Mortgage — to expand into mortgage origination and eventually to purchase loans. He predicts huge consolidation in the troubled bond reinsurance business, where he will play a role through Assured Guaranty. He paid $1 billion for a stake in Assured a few weeks ago. Some longtime vulture investors, however, said they were waiting for prices to get even cheaper. “There aren’t many great bargains around,” said David A. Tepper, founder of Appaloosa Management, a hedge fund in New Jersey that is a major investor in the auto parts company Delphi. When asked about mortgage assets, he said, “The fact that things are distressed or down doesn’t mean that they’re cheap or good buys.” The outcome of several big investments last fall is still up in the air. For example, the Citadel Investment Group, a hedge fund known for buying distressed assets, purchased $3 billion of E*Trade’s asset-backed securities for $800 million, or 27 cents on the dollar, last November. Only time will tell if that trade, and Citadel’s 18 percent stake in E*Trade, pays off. For now, many investors have a “buried optimism” about distressed assets, said Mark Patterson, chairman of MatlinPatterson Global Advisers, which bought substantial assets from Thornburg Mortgage. His firm made hundreds of millions of dollars purchasing distressed bonds from WorldCom during the last economic downturn. Investors have fled some kinds of assets indiscriminately in recent months. Standard & Poor’s data shows that corporate bonds are selling for less than 90 cents on the dollars — across the board. In the 2002 downturn, particular bonds like those in telecommunications fell far more than the average bond. The broad flight this time leaves an opening for firms that can pick out the valuable ones, said Leon Wagner, chairman of GoldenTree Asset Management, an investment fund in New York. “People know there will be money made out of this,” Mr. Wagner said, adding that “distressed” has become a buzzword on Wall Street. Already in the private equity world, more distressed companies are under review. Stephen Presser, a partner at Monomoy Capital Partners, said a year ago he was seeing 15 to 20 midsize companies a month that were in trouble. Now, that figure is 30. “There is an actual consumer spending slowdown that we can see almost throughout the companies,” Mr. Presser said. “The same companies have typically borrowed their way out of trouble in the past.” Banks are also trying to sell the mortgage loans that they did not bundle into bonds and resell, said Stanford L. Kurland, the former president of Countrywide. Mr. Kurland now runs a joint venture that will buy mortgages on the cheap and rework their terms. The venture is backed by the investment funds BlackRock Inc. and Highfields Capital Management. Mr. Ross predicted that the debt troubles of ordinary Americans will spread far beyond mortgages. And on Wall Street, some hedge funds are selling good assets on the cheap. Just last month, Mr. Ross spent $1 billion buying municipal bonds at a discount from a hedge fund that faced margin calls. The fund, which Mr. Ross declined to identify, had bet that municipal bonds would increase in price and Treasury bond prices would fall. The bet went wrong, and the fund had to sell — fast. In swooped Mr. Ross.

Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
distressed debt
Ross Wilbur L Jr
Bankruptcies


Chinese Tycoon Behind Grindr Will Pay $1.14 Billion in Divorce

Abstract: BEIJING — Divorce can take a toll. For the Chinese tycoon behind the gay dating app Grindr , that toll comes to $1.14 billion. Zhou Yahui, a Chinese internet mogul and billionaire, will have to transfer nearly 300 million shares of his company to his wife, Li Qiong, according to a statement from the company. The document does not say why, but China’s news media is widely abuzz with articles saying the two are getting a divorce. That apparent split is the latest to show how divorces can have a significant impact on the commercial ventures of some of China’s wealthiest business leaders. Mr. Zhou, 39, earned his fortune developing web and mobile games. In January, he made headlines when his company, Beijing Kunlun World Wide Technology Share Company, purchased a controlling stake in Grindr for $93 million. In a Monday ruling, the Haidian district court in Beijing awarded Ms. Li 70.5 million of Kunlun’s shares. Based on the most recent stock price, Ms. Li’s shares are worth about $1.14 billion. The huge equity transfer would make this one of the most expensive divorce settlements in China to date. Neither Kunlun nor Grindr could be reached for comment on Thursday, which is a holiday in China. Resolving matters of the heart can be especially costly in China because many of China’s billionaires derive a significant chunk of their personal wealth from equity shares in businesses they control. The well-publicized 2012 divorce of Wu Yajun, who founded Longfor Properties Company with her former husband, Cai Kui, is a notable case. Ms. Wu, once the richest woman in China, saw her wealth tumble by nearly $3 billion after she transferred about 40 percent of her shares in the company to her former husband. Tudou, a Chinese video streaming service, had to delay its 2010 initial public offering after Yang Lei, the former wife of its chief executive, Gary Wang, filed a lawsuit against him. During the delay, Tudou’s competitor, Youku, raised $203 million on the New York Stock Exchange, valuing the company at $3.3 billion. Tudou eventually went public with a valuation of $822 million. By comparison, Mr. Zhou may be emerging from his former marriage somewhat better off. After the equity transfer, Mr. Zhou will still hold on to 388 million shares in Kunlun, retaining a majority 35 percent stake in the company. According to the court filing , Ms. Li will not be able to cash out Kunlun’s shares until Jan. 21, 2018, per conditions the company agreed to when it went public on the Shenzhen stock exchange in 2015. Kunlun’s board members and major personnel will stay the same, and Ms. Li will not be able to invest in competing businesses.

Zhou Yahui
Li Qiong
Beijing Kunlun Tech Company
Divorce
Grindr.com
China
Stocks,Bonds


Food Prices Stir Concern About Biofuels Mandates

Abstract: The starchy cassava root has long been an important ingredient in everything from tapioca pudding and ice cream to paper and animal feed. But last year, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the world’s largest cassava exporter , went to just one place and almost all for one purpose: to China to make biofuel. Driven by new demand, Thai exports of cassava chips have increased nearly fourfold since 2008, and the price of cassava has roughly doubled. Each year, an ever larger portion of the world’s crops — cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil — is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging powerhouses like China seek new sources of energy to keep their cars and industries running. Cassava is a relatively new entrant in the biofuel stream. But with food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability. This year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that its index of food prices was the highest in its more than 20 years of existence. Prices rose 15 percent from October to January alone, potentially “throwing an additional 44 million people in low- and middle-income countries into poverty,” the World Bank said . Soaring food prices have caused riots or contributed to political turmoil in a host of poor countries in recent months, including Algeria , Egypt and Bangladesh , where palm oil, a common biofuel ingredient, provides crucial nutrition to a desperately poor populace. During the second half of 2010, the price of corn rose steeply — 73 percent in the United States — an increase that the United Nations World Food Program attributed in part to the greater use of American corn for bioethanol. “The fact that cassava is being used for biofuel in China, rapeseed is being used in Europe , and sugar cane elsewhere is definitely creating a shift in demand curves,” said Timothy D. Searchinger , a research scholar at Princeton University who studies the topic. “Biofuels are contributing to higher prices and tighter markets.” In the United States, Congress has mandated that biofuel use must reach 36 billion gallons annually by 2022. The European Union stipulates that 10 percent of transportation fuel must come from renewable sources like biofuel or wind power by 2020. Countries like China, India , Indonesia and Thailand have adopted biofuel targets as well. To be sure, many factors help drive up the price of food, including bad weather that ruins crop yields and high oil prices that make transportation costly. Last year, for example, unusually severe weather destroyed wheat harvests in Russia , Australia and China, and an infestation of the mealy bug reduced Thailand’s cassava output. Olivier Dubois, a bioenergy expert at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said it was hard to quantify the extent to which the diversions for biofuels had driven up food prices. “The problem is complex, so it is hard to come up with sweeping statements like biofuels are good or bad,” he said. “But what is certain is that biofuels are playing a role. Is it 20 or 30 or 40 percent? That depends on your modeling.” While no one is suggesting that countries abandon biofuels, Mr. Dubois and other food experts suggest that they should revise their policies so that rigid fuel mandates can be suspended when food stocks get low or prices become too high. “The policy really has to be food first,” said Hans Timmer , director of the Development Prospects Group of the World Bank . “The problems occur when you set targets for biofuels irrespective of the prices of other commodities.” Mr. Timmer said that the recent rise in oil prices was likely to increase the demand for biofuels. It can be tricky predicting how new demand from the biofuel sector will affect the supply and price of food. Sometimes, as with corn or cassava, direct competition between purchasers drives up the prices of biofuel ingredients. In other instances, shortages and price inflation occur because farmers who formerly grew crops like vegetables for consumption plant different crops that can be used for fuel. China learned this the hard way nearly a decade ago when it set out to make bioethanol from corn, only to discover that the plan caused alarming shortages and a rise in food prices. In 2007 the government banned the use of grains to make biofuel. Chinese scientists then perfected the process of making fuel from cassava, a root that yielded good energy returns, leading to the opening of the first commercial cassava ethanol plant several years ago. “They’re moving very aggressively in this new direction; cassava seems to be the go-to crop,” said Greg Harris , an analyst with Commodore Research and Consultancy in New York who has studied the trade. In addition to expanding cassava cultivation at home, China is buying from Cambodia and Laos as well as Thailand. Although a mainstay of diets in much of Africa , cassava is not central to Asian diets, even though the Chinese once called it “the underground food store” because it provided crucial backup nutrition in lean harvest years. So the Chinese reasoned that making fuel with cassava would not directly affect food prices or create food shortages, at least at home. The proportion of Chinese cassava going to ethanol leapt to 52 percent last year from 10 percent in 2008. More distant or indirect impacts are considered to be likely, however. Because cassava chips have been commonly used as animal feed, new demand from the biofuels industry might affect the availability and cost of meat. In Southeast Asian countries where China is paying generously for stockpiles of cassava, farmers may be tempted to grow the crop instead of, for example, other vegetables or rice. And if China turned to Africa as a source, one of that continent’s staple food crops could be in jeopardy, although experts note that exporting cassava could also become a business opportunity. “This is becoming a more valuable cash crop,” Mr. Harris said. “The farmland is limited, so the more that is devoted to fuel, the less is devoted to food.” The Chinese demand for cassava could also dent planned biofuel production in poorer Asian nations: in the Philippines and Cambodia, developers were recently forced to suspend the construction of cassava bioethanol plants because the tuber had become too expensive. Thailand’s own nascent biofuel industry may have trouble getting the homegrown cassava it needs because it may not be able to match the prices offered by Chinese buyers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Biofuels development in wealthier nations has already proved to have a powerful effect on the prices and the cultivation of crops. Encouraged by national biofuel subsidies, nearly 40 percent of the corn grown in the United States now goes to make fuel, with prices of corn on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange rising 73 percent from June to December 2010. Such price rises also have distant ripple effects, food security experts say. “How much does the price of corn in Chicago influence the price of corn in Rwanda ? It turns out there is a correlation,” said Marie Brill, senior policy analyst at ActionAid , an international development group. The price of corn in Rwanda rose 19 percent last year. “For Americans it may mean a few extra cents for a box of cereal,” she said. “But that kind of increase puts corn out of the range of impoverished people.” Higher prices also mean that groups like the World Food Program can buy less food to feed the world’s hungry. European biofuels developers are buying large tracts of what they call “marginal land” in Africa with the aim of cultivating biofuel crops, particularly the woody bush known as jatropha. Advocates say that promoting jatropha for biofuels production has little impact on food supplies. But some of that land is used by poor people for subsistence farming or for gathering food like wild nuts. “We have to move away from the thinking that producing an energy crop doesn’t compete with food,” said Mr. Dubois of the Food and Agriculture Organization. “It almost inevitably does.”

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations


Athletes Finding Their Voice in Derek Jeter’s Digital Venture

Abstract: David Ortiz’s blustery rant about being unfairly branded a cheater for testing positive for a banned substance in 2003 made news Thursday, not only for its strident tone, but for where it appeared. Instead of being reported by a newspaper or a website known for breaking news, Ortiz’s remarks appeared as a first-person essay on The Players’ Tribune , Derek Jeter’s digital venture. The scoop was a small triumph for a website that has a mission to give an athlete a platform to say what is on his or her mind, serious or not, without a reporter playing the journalistic middleman. But it also showcased how the site’s streamlined structure — a small staff of producers and editors offering a (largely) unfiltered megaphone — can be appealing to prominent athletes who are eager to have their say on a topic, or a grievance. Before Ortiz used the site to angrily and profanely talk about his testing history, Tiger Woods had published a piece criticizing a writer who had parodied him and Blake Griffin had used another to take a few shots at Donald Sterling, the former Los Angeles Clippers owner. But the way the Ortiz article quickly went viral also showed the growing reach of The Players’ Tribune, especially when an athlete has something provocative to say, and how its direct pipeline to athletes positions it well to break news ahead of traditional news organizations. Within a half-hour of Ortiz’s post being published on The Players’ Tribune on Thursday night, The Boston Globe rushed onto its website a similar article, the product of an interview Ortiz gave March 11 to one of its reporters, Bob Hohler. That piece had been held since last week so it could be the centerpiece of The Globe’s Major League Baseball preview April 5. “When he filed it, we were wary,” said Joseph Sullivan, the Globe’s sports editor. “I worried about ESPN or Yahoo or The Boston Herald somehow doing a similar story. But I didn’t think about The Players’ Tribune.” Sullivan added: “Last night was not a good night for me.” Gary Hoenig, the editorial director of The Players’ Tribune, called the Ortiz story “a victory for our small staff, not a victory that we got the story and The Globe didn’t.” Ortiz had promised to contribute to the site since its launch last October, but it was not until earlier this month, when one of the site’s producers saw him at training camp, that he talked about what he felt was the unfairness of being bunched with baseball’s steroid users. In 2009, The New York Times reported that Ortiz had tested positive in baseball’s anonymous 2003 drug tests, for which there were no penalties. Ortiz has brooded about that disclosure ever since, and in the Tribune piece he said that if he tested positive, it was because he took an over-the-counter supplement and that he was not intending to cheat. He also used the first-person piece to declare that he had tested negative more than 80 times since 2004. “We were down there to talk to him, but we didn’t know where he’d be going with this,” Hoenig said. Eventually, Ortiz gave the website his interview 10 days to two weeks ago. “This was not a screed,” Hoenig added. “He’d been thinking about this.” Like nearly every post on the site, the Ortiz essay was not written directly by its bylined athlete but instead crafted from a recorded interview with a Tribune staff producer. Hoenig said these interviews are less traditional question-and-answer sessions than monologues with questions to nudge the conversation along. Editing is minimal, he added, and the athletes get the final approval. The staff producers who talk to them do not get bylines. Image David Ortiz, center, presenting Derek Jeter with a sign before his last game. Ortiz recently contributed to Jeter’s Players’ Tribune. Credit Steven Senne/Associated Press Providing athletes with unfettered access to fans carries with it the risk that they will lie or shade the truth. Is everything in Ortiz’s essay absolutely accurate? Are the athletes’ first-person accounts being vetted and edited as if they were being published by a more traditional journalistic enterprise? Hoenig, a longtime newspaper editor who was a founding editor of ESPN the Magazine, said: “We do standard fact-checking. We knew the entire history of steroid testing in baseball. We knew how he’d been exposed in anonymous testing. We couldn’t verify the number of tests that he said he’s taken, but it was verified by his agent that he’d been tested frequently. Baseball would never tell us.” But Hoenig said the athletes whose bylines appear over controversial subjects run a potential risk, as well. “It’s their reputation out there,” he said. “It’s our job to say, ‘Do you really want to go out there and say that?’ ” Hoenig said that Jeter, who assiduously preserved his clean public image during his playing career by saying and doing nothing that could get him in trouble, reads accounts like Ortiz’s before they are published and asks questions. “He reads everything,” Hoenig added of Jeter. “He’s got mobile. We talk to him every day. He has comments every day.” The roster of athletes (and former players) featured on the site is lengthy and has included Jason Collins, Danica Patrick, Billie Jean King, Paul Pierce, Larry Sanders, Tyson Chandler, Eric LeGrand, Elena Delle Donne, Chris Long, Andrew McCutchen and Sue Bird. The accumulated message is that athletes, with help from a website overseen by an image-conscious superstar, can freely tell their stories and share their views as if they were credentialed writers. If they ultimately cannot bypass the ravenous news media in locker rooms or the digital hordes of social media, at least they can better set their own agenda. The website’s small staff identifies prospective contributors with direct outreach. In recent weeks, the site’s producers have been visiting baseball spring training camps. Last Sunday, two of the staff members were in the Yankees’ dugout talking to Didi Gregorius, Jeter’s successor at shortstop, about controlling his story and letting fans get to know him better. “You send them to spring training because access is better,” Hoenig said. Matt Harvey, the Mets’ pitching ace, said he had been approached by The Players’ Tribune and wrote last month about his time away from baseball while recovering from Tommy John surgery. “A lot of times, especially in New York, you can read stuff or hear things that aren’t necessarily true,” Harvey said Friday after losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in a spring training game. “So for me to have an outlet where it’s first person and it’s true — everything is from me — it’s something I was really excited about.” But if there are open arms to athletes who want to tell a personal story directly to the Players’ Tribune audience, there is also a closed door to evident self-promotion. “We won’t pimp a product, a charity, or help you with your endorsement,” Hoenig said, with one exception being a piece by Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson about domestic violence that cited his charitable effort to raise money for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “We’ve rejected those ideas.” But as the site’s renown has grown — it had a modest 225,000 unique users last month, according to comScore, which tracks online traffic — more athletes have begun initiating contact. The agent for Brady Aiken, the No. 1 pick in last June’s baseball draft who did not sign with the Houston Astros after contentious contract negotiations, contacted The Players’ Tribune recently to arrange breaking the story Thursday that the pitcher had undergone Tommy John surgery . Doing so allowed Aiken, and his agent, to control the narrative about the injury, and his decision last year not to accept the Astros’ multimillion-dollar offer, before reporters and teams even knew he had had the operation.

Sports
The Players' Tribune
News media,journalism
Derek Jeter
David Ortiz
Baseball


Space Station Crew Temporarily Moves to Russian Side Over Fears of Ammonia Leak

Abstract: International Space Station crew members evacuated to the Russian side of the station twice on Wednesday because of worries of a possible ammonia leak, but less than 12 hours after a warning alarm roused them from their sleep, everything was back to normal, NASA said. Wearing protective masks, two astronauts, Terry Virts of NASA and Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency, opened the hatch that separates the American and Russian segments at 3:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Tests of the air showed no signs of ammonia, which is poisonous if inhaled, so the astronauts returned to the American side. The problem appeared more likely to have been caused by a faulty computer card than an actual leak. An alarm had awakened the crew around 4 a.m. Eastern when pressure increased in one of two water loops in the space station’s cooling system. The water loops remove heat from the space station. The heat is transferred to loops of ammonia on the outside of the station and radiated into outer space. A problem with the heat exchanger could cause ammonia to leak into the water loop and then into the American segment of the space station. The space station consists of two essentially independent segments, one built by Russia, the other by the United States and other nations. Image The International Space Station will stay in orbit for at least four years after 2020, NASA said. Credit Uncredited/NASA, via Associated Press The astronauts put on gas masks, moved into the Russian segment and closed the hatch. After sifting through the measurements, the managers at mission control let the astronauts return. But then air pressure in the American segment also started to rise. “If you’re leaking ammonia into the water loop and it eventually finds its way to the cabin, you would expect the cabin pressure to go up,” said Michael T. Suffredini, the manager of the space station, in an interview on NASA Television. The crew evacuated to the Russian segment a second time. Nonessential systems were turned off to avoid the possibility of overheating but were later gradually restarted. “Everything is looking pretty normal right now,” James Kelly, an astronaut at mission control, told Barry Wilmore, the station commander, in an update after 8 a.m. Eastern. “It’s a little more positive than we thought before.” The space station crew includes three Russians, Elena Serova, Alexander Samokutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov. Mr. Suffredini said none of the science research on the space station had been compromised. Freezers preserving samples and supplies had been briefly turned off, but those are designed to remain cold for more than eight hours even if power is lost. “We were well within that, and all the freezers are back up and running now,” Mr. Suffredini said.

International Space Station
Johnson Space Center
NASA
Evacuation


Shift From Spending to Saving May Be Slump’s Lasting Impact

Abstract: The economic downturn is forcing a return to a culture of thrift that many economists say could last well beyond the inevitable recovery. This is not because Americans have suddenly become more financially virtuous or have learned the error of their free-spending ways. Instead, these experts say, Americans may have no choice but to continue pinching pennies. This shift back to thrift may seem to be a healthy change for a consumer class known for spending more than it earns, but there is a downside: American businesses have become so dependent on consumer spending that any pullback sends ripples through the economy. Fearful of job losses and anxious over housing and stock declines, Americans are squirreling away more of their paychecks than they were before the recession. In the last year, the savings rate — the percentage of after- tax income that people do not spend — has risen to above 4 percent, from virtually zero. This happens in nearly every recession, and the effect is usually fleeting. Once the economy recovers, Americans revert to more spending and less saving. Over the last 30 years, the savings rate has fluctuated from over 14 percent in the 1970s to negative 2.7 percent in 2005, meaning Americans were spending more than they made. This time is expected to be different, because the forces that enabled and even egged on consumers to save less and spend more — easy credit and skyrocketing asset values — could be permanently altered by the financial crisis that spun the economy into recession. “I expect that the savings rate will end up at the end of this recession higher than it was going into it,” said Jonathan A. Parker, a finance professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University . “It’s hard to see how it wouldn’t.” Sustained increases in household saving would cause a difficult period of restructuring for the American economy, which has become increasingly driven by consumer spending. Such spending makes up about 70 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Add the decline in consumer spending to the planned expiration of government stimulus spending, and a painful readjustment in demand for goods and services could occur, economists say. The effect would be felt here and abroad, as many developing economies also depend on America’s big-spending ways. “If Americans cut back, as they almost have to do, what will replace that source of demand?” asked William G. Gale, director of the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution , a liberal-centrist policy research group. “The easy answer is the Chinese consumer,” he said, but unlike their more prodigal American counterparts, the Chinese save about a quarter of what they earn. “We may cut back faster than they expand into that space, so there might be a lull.” Why might the higher savings rate outlast the recession? Social critics like David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, hope that introspection about America’s “culture of consumption” will awaken Americans to the virtues of thrift, just as the Great Depression reset American financial values for a generation. But many economists believe consumers will change their habits for more pragmatic reasons. Consumers have lost a huge chunk of their net worth, in the housing bust and the stock market, and to resuscitate their retirement accounts or children’s college funds they will have to channel more of their paychecks toward saving — unless those asset markets soar again. Forms of easy credit that were once prevalent, like mortgages with no down payments, also may not return, either because the government regulates them out of existence or because banks dare not venture back into such risky lending. That means if Americans want to buy a house, they will have to save more and borrow less. Whether for reasons moral or otherwise, consumers are already thinking a bit differently about their long-term budgets. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that many more Americans had begun regarding products like microwave ovens as luxuries rather than necessities. Such attitudes suggest that retailers will have to change their marketing strategies, said J. Walker Smith, executive vice chairman of the Futures Company, a marketing and research consultancy. “People are realizing they can’t accumulate everything they want anymore, and they’ll have to prioritize more,” he said. “That may be hard for a lot of brands — figuring out not only how to get considered by consumers, but put at the top of their list.” Consumers planning big purchases are also anticipating that their borrowing options will remain limited. Last year, Aryn Kennedy and her husband, Brian Ewing, who live in Los Angeles , spent “every dollar” they earned on debt repayment and living expenses. When local housing prices began to fall, Mr. Ewing toyed with the idea of a low-down-payment mortgage. “By the time we really started looking at buying, I knew from reading blogs that most loans like that were not really available anymore, since lenders didn’t want to take risks,” said Ms. Kennedy, who said she was suspicious of such offers anyhow. Since then, through “windfalls” like a salary increase for Mr. Ewing, and by cutting expenses for clothing, entertainment and other items, Ms. Kennedy says the couple has begun saving about 25 percent of their take-home pay in anticipation of making a traditional down payment of 20 percent on a house. Even after they buy, Ms. Kennedy said, the couple plans to keep saving 25 percent of their pay. A recent Gallup poll found that most Americans who have recently increased their savings believe their budget adjustments represent a “new, normal pattern for years ahead.” Despite the immediate jolt to the economy, more personal saving would be a positive step in the long run, analysts say. More saving leads to more investment , which promotes economic growth, which leads to better living standards. At the family level, social critics, economists and even many consumers seem to agree that a forced financial conservatism may be for the better. Kenny Tran of Santa Ana, Calif., for example, said he had been nervous about saving enough to buy his first house — he and his fiancé have been setting aside about $800 a month for the last year and a half — but he has no regrets about not buying a home when credit was looser and saving was less of a priority. “A couple years ago it would have been easier for us to get a loan,” despite the fact that the couple’s combined income was lower, Mr. Tran said. “But if we would have gotten a loan, and a house, a couple years ago, we’d probably have ended up in foreclosure now.”

Personal finance
Economy
US Economy
Recession and Depression
Consumer behaviour


Introduced to Monty Python, on the Concorde

Abstract: MY parents made the mistake of getting me a Eurail pass when I was 19 years old. I haven’t stopped traveling since. I’ve been flying for work for about 40 years. I’m an attorney, specializing in protecting trademarks and designs and ideas. That means I have to meet with my clients face to face. I do a lot of international travel and split time between my New York and Boston offices. It’s debatable whether I like flying, since the days of being able to fly like a human being are over. When I fly, I’m on someone else’s dime, and as a consequence, I can’t be watching horror movies or eating 19 meals. I need to work. I probably don’t seem like the type, but I meditate for a bit on every flight. It helps me relax and helps me work harder and more effectively. On the plane I’m pleasant enough, although my idea of a great flight is one where nobody bothers me. There is no screaming kid behind me, no families with kids running up and down the aisle and no separated seatmates talking to each other across the aisle. I don’t mind talking to seatmates when I can, and of course, like all lawyers, I get asked for free advice. I’ll help when I can. But I’ve met some interesting people on planes, so sometimes it’s worth it to talk. I was an early user of laptops since it could extend my workday, especially on flights. A number of years ago, most flights to Tel Aviv, where I was litigating an intellectual property dispute, went through Geneva or Zurich. One time I was flying back from Tel Aviv to Zurich and, as is my style, I whipped out my laptop and started hammering away. My seatmate interrupted me and asked me what I was working on and what I did for a living. I told him, and it turns out he was the C.E.O. of Liz Claiborne. He said he liked my work ethic and wondered if it would be O.K. if he introduced me to their general counsel. I said, of course; I’m no fool. As a result, I wound up with Claiborne as a client and represented the company for a decade. Years ago, when the Concorde ran between New York City and London, I was representing a group of entertainers and litigating for them in both cities. I virtually commuted via the Concorde. I could have London meetings and still make it to court in time in New York. It wasn’t comfortable or quiet, and the seats were narrow. But it was really fast, like screaming through the sky. At the time, the Sony Walkman was the rage. There was a gentleman sitting next to me, elegantly dressed, as many were on the Concorde. He had early vintage earbuds and was listening to a tape and chuckling to himself. He was clearly having a good time. At a certain point he paused, and I introduced myself. It turns out he was the C.E.O. of Aston Martin. I asked why he was laughing. He told me he was listening to Monty Python. He was so classy looking that it made me chuckle since I dress like a bum when I fly. But he was a great, down-to-earth guy, and we chatted for a while. It was wonderful to connect with someone over something you don’t expect. Plus, I made a great acquaintance and got turned on to Monty Python. That’s a good flight.


12-Year-Old Is a Radio Commentator and an N.F.L. Trend

Abstract: BALTIMORE — As the Ravens were losing three consecutive games in December, Cullen Little told his radio audience that the team should let quarterback Joe Flacco leave as a free agent. The remark surprised some listeners. Flacco, after all, has twice reached the A.F.C. Championship game and been to the playoffs in each of his five seasons. A listener called in to say that rather than the Ravens’ dumping Flacco, the station should cut Cullen. If that happened, Cullen would move on with his life as a sixth grader and a nationally ranked squash player. But at 12, he has found an audience as a football savant while sharing an hourlong broadcast, “The Booker Corrigan Show,” on Thursday nights on a local CBS Sports Radio station. The show has 25,000 listeners and another 20,000 who download its podcasts , Corrigan said. Although he does not have ratings figures to demonstrate any Cullen Little effect, “I’d certainly bet that we’ve increased” the audience. Cullen, a 4-foot-9, 73-pound boy, called in to the show in early November and within weeks was sitting beside the host. “One of the things I saw in Cullen was a great ability to communicate at a much higher level than a 12-year-old,” Corrigan said. Those first tuning in might be jarred by Cullen’s knowledge of intricate defenses and of backup tight ends playing for far-off teams. “I’m on the air because people want to hear my opinions,” he said last week after ducking out of class at the Calvert School. “I’m not just going to say what people want to hear.” “I’m a Ravens fan. I’d love it if they won, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t see that happening,” he added, revealing his prediction for Saturday’s Baltimore-Denver A.F.C. playoff game. In the studio, he offered a play-calling tip, too — with an edge. Little cited the Giants’ and the Oakland Raiders’ use of flare patterns to their running backs when they visited Baltimore this season. Image Cullen Little holds court on a Thursday night sports radio show in Baltimore. He picked the Ravens to lose to the Broncos. Credit Steve Ruark for The New York Times “I’d like to see that once,” he said of the Ravens, shaking his head. “That’s my wish for this game: to see one flare route to Ray Rice because he can use his speed to get outside and pass those linebackers. They won’t be expecting it because all we ever do is throw screens.” Cullen’s knowledge of the game has gone hand in hand with his passion for fantasy football. In 2010, he joined a league his father, Stephen, a real estate lawyer, formed for neighborhood youngsters. Now Cullen is a member of five leagues, including one that consists of 20 sixth graders at his school. Cullen has traded some of his talented players to help his friends. Cullen’s ability to master numbers and concepts while applying them critically serves him well in fantasy football and on the radio, his math teacher, Roman Doss, said. Cullen’s precociousness drew the interest of Brian Rolapp, the chief operating officer of NFL Media, the business arm of the N.F.L., whose holdings include fantasy football leagues. Fifty-four percent of fantasy players on nfl.com are 13 to 29, he said. Those players would also appear to be a key to the N.F.L. in developing fans. The 13-to-29 group, Rolapp said, reads four times more pages on the league’s Web site, returns twice as often and stays on the site six times longer than the average visitor. “It’s not just college guys,” Rolapp said. “It’s young people like Cullen, it’s women. It’s become more adopted by the N.F.L. fan base. They do everything; they go on RedZone, and they watch games they wouldn’t ordinarily be interested in.” Cullen spends Sundays glued to the N.F.L. RedZone channel, watching every scoring opportunity across the league, between glances at his laptop to check on his fantasy players. (His 9 p.m. bedtime means he misses most of the Sunday and Monday night games.) Cullen absorbs all that information, which becomes the basis for his Thursday commentary. His comments on the radio, however, can be puzzling. On Thursday, Corrigan and a guest picked New England to defeat Houston in another A.F.C. playoff matchup. “How about you, Cullen?” Corrigan said. “I think Houston will win this one,” Cullen said. “They’ve got J. J. Watt on the line,” he said. “They’re going to put lots of pressure on Tom Brady, and he doesn’t always react well to pressure,” he added, although Brady drove the Patriots downfield in the closing minutes to win three Super Bowls, starting when Cullen was a toddler. “Under pressure, when he can’t step up into the pocket and be comfortable where he’s used to being, he’s just going to crack, in my opinion — and when he does, and they don’t score 30 points, the Texans are going to come out offensively, throw the ball to Andre Johnson and Owen Daniels, and hand the ball to Arian Foster. I think the Houston Texans are going to win this game, 23-17.” As for the Ravens, he said: “I don’t see it happening. I call the Broncos, 27-23.” With that, Cullen joined his mother, Emily, and skipped out of the studio. He was wearing shorts because squash practice came next.


Iraq: Monitoring Group to Investigate Possible Chemical Weapons Use by ISIS

Abstract: The group responsible for monitoring adherence to the global ban on chemical weapons said Monday that it had contacted Iraq over reports of the possible use of such munitions there. A statement by the group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, came a few days after United States officials said Islamic State militants appeared to have used such munitions, possibly mustard gas , on Kurdish fighters in Iraq. If confirmed, it would be the first known use of the weapons by the Islamic State, which occupies parts of Syria and Iraq. The monitoring group called such reports “a matter of serious concern,” and its director, Ahmet Uzumcu, said it would “examine any substantive reports it receives including pertinent information that might be shared” by other signers of the chemical weapons ban, which appeared to be a reference to both Iraq and Syria. Iraq, where hundreds of old, corroded mustard artillery shells remained after the 2003 American invasion, signed the chemical weapons ban in 2009. Syria joined in 2013 after having promised to destroy its chemical stockpile, although the monitoring organization said this year that chlorine bombs had been used in the Syrian conflict. On Aug. 7, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing an inquiry into who was responsible for the chlorine attacks.


Car Bomb at Cafe Kills 11 in Mogadishu

Abstract: MOGADISHU, Somalia — A car bomb exploded outside a popular cafe in Somalia’s capital, killing 11 people and wounding eight others, a senior police official said Sunday. The blast struck the Aroma cafe in Mogadishu, and the bomb was believed to have been detonated by remote control, said the police official, Mohammed Hussein. Most of those who died were sitting outside the cafe, he said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion has fallen on the Shabab, the militant group with links to Al Qaeda, whose members have vowed to avenge the death of their leader , Ahmed Abdi Godane. Mr. Godane was killed in early September in an American airstrike. He has been replaced by Ahmed Omar, also known as Abu Ubeid. The Shabab have continued to carry out attacks on Somalia’s capital despite being pushed out of Mogadishu in August 2011 by African Union forces supporting Somalia’s weak government. The Somali government troops backed by the African Union forces are making progress in capturing the remaining Shabab strongholds. Last week, they captured the port town of Baraawe . Earlier Sunday, gunmen shot and seriously wounded a Somali television reporter, officials said. The African Union Mission in Somalia condemned the attack on the reporter, who was shot three times while fleeing the gunmen. The attack is the third against journalists in Somalia this year, the mission said. Somalia remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists.


With Two Bids, Iona Savors ‘Incredible Accomplishment’

Abstract: NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — Once the final cord of the net was cut and the final picture was taken to commemorate Iona’s triumph in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference men’s basketball tournament, Iona Coach Tim Cluess went looking to congratulate Billi Godsey. A few hours before the Iona men’s team (22-10) won the MAAC tournament title (its league-record ninth) on March 7, earning an automatic berth in the N.C.A.A. tournament, Godsey and the Iona women’s team (23-11) had matched the feat. It was the first conference title, and the first N.C.A.A. berth, for the program since its inception in 1974. At least a dozen universities will send their men’s and women’s teams to the N.C.A.A. tournaments this season. Still, an achievement that has become the norm at places like UConn, Oklahoma and Maryland feels a bit more remarkable at a place like Iona. “It’s so hard for one team to make it, let alone two, especially in a conference our size,” Cluess said. For Cluess and Godsey, that made last Monday twice as sweet. They understand better than most the challenges midmajor programs face in facilities, recruiting and financing when competing against major conferences for players as well as victories. 2016 Men’s N.C.A.A. Tournament Bracket Kansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon are the top seeds in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. “I think it’s an incredible accomplishment,” said Rick Cole Jr., who is in his third year as Iona’s athletic director, adding: “You can find excuses or you can find ways to succeed. How do you want to spend your energy?” For decades, enthusiasm and energy at Iona, a private Catholic liberal arts college with an enrollment of about 3,800, revolved around the men’s program. Jim Valvano, as energetic and charismatic as they come, helped to place Iona on the national stage from 1975 to 1980, and many his successors fed off of his creation. The women’s program provided a stark contrast. While the Gaels men have made 11 N.C.A.A. tournament trips, the women’s team finished without a winning record every season from 1982-83 until 2005-6. Coaches came and went, but success never arrived. “The presidents would always wonder why we didn’t do much better,” said Richard Petriccione, Iona’s athletic director from 1989 to 2001. “But other than that, there wasn’t a sense of urgency to get the program to the point where we would be very competitive as opposed to just putting out a team.” He added: “The biggest difference I see today, which is really great, is that the student-athlete experience for the men’s and women’s teams is, for the most part, equal, if not absolutely equal. That was different in those days. Budgets were different, the way teams traveled was different, recruiting budgets were different.” Cole emphasized Iona’s desire to do more than comply with opportunity required by Title IX, saying, “Women’s basketball matters to Iona.” Godsey, in her third year, credits her team’s long-awaited breakthrough to that administrative support. Hired in May 2013, she inherited a rising program from Tony Bozzella — he is N.C.A.A.-bound this season with the Seton Hall women’s team — and continued its ascent through tough defense and strong recruiting. Marina Lizarazu, a junior guard and a key figure on this year’s team, readily downsized in transferring to Iona after her freshman year at Texas Tech. “I was looking for a different kind of environment, and Iona is next to the best city in the world,” said Lizarazu, who is from Madrid. “I love all the people. I love all my teammates.” Godsey, who holds a master’s degree in psychology, also tries to turn Iona’s small size to its advantage by working to create a family atmosphere. Aaliyah Robinson, a senior guard, said of Godsey, “I feel like one of her daughters.” Referring to what bigger programs can offer, Godsey said: “That facility is not going to love you back. You can get in that gym and shoot all you want, but it’s people who are going to take care of you.” Godsey is so intent on achieving the right chemistry that she acknowledges scrutinizing the parents of recruits before recruiting them. “We see how they cheer for players or against players and see the manner in which they interact in general,” she said, “because we want good people.” Stylistically, Godsey emphasizes defense. Her team ranks 38th nationally, allowing 56.6 points a game. Cluess’s 22-10 squad, by contrast, is built around a high-powered offense that ranks 31st at 79.6 points a game. Now those paths are finally converging in the N.C.A.A. tournament. The women’s team, a 15th seed in the Lexington Region, was matched against No. 2-seeded Maryland in the first round Saturday in College Park, Md. The men’s team, seeded 13th in the Midwest Region, is off to Denver, where it will face Iowa State (21-11) on Thursday.

College basketball
NCAA Women's Basketball
Iona College


Texas Tech Knocks Off Iowa State

Abstract: Zach Smith made two free throws with 18 seconds remaining in overtime to lead host Texas Tech past No. 14 Iowa State, 85-82, on Wednesday night. Deonte Burton scored a season-high 20 points, and Abdel Nader added 19 points for Iowa State (17-7, 6-5 Big 12). Fans stormed the court after the victory. Aaron Ross scored 20 points to lead Texas Texas (14-9, 4-7). ALABAMA 63, TEXAS A&M 62 Retin Obasohan scored 16 points, and Alabama (14-9, 5-6 Southeastern Conference) survived a big rally from No. 15 Texas A&M (18-6, 7-4) in a home victory. TULSA 82, S.M.U. 77 Shaquille Harrison had 21 points, Pat Birt hit a crucial 3-pointer and scored 12 of his 17 points after halftime, and Tulsa (16-8, 8-4 American Athletic Conference) rallied from an 8-point deficit in the second half to win at No. 16 Southern Methodist (20-3, 9-3). MARQUETTE 96, PROVIDENCE 91 Jajuan Johnson scored 16 points and hit a 3-pointer with 1 minute 16 seconds left in the second overtime, and host Marquette (16-9, 5-7 Big East) outlasted No. 20 Providence (18-7, 6-6). BAYLOR 82, KANSAS ST. 72 Al Freeman scored 21 points, Taurean Prince had 18, and No. 21 Baylor (18-6, 7-4) beat host Kansas State (14-10, 3-8) to remain a game back of the Big 12 leaders. Women TEXAS 70, OKLA. ST. 55 Brooke McCarty scored 18 points, Ariel Atkins added 16, and No. 6 Texas (22-1, 11-1 Big 12) won at home against No. 20 Oklahoma State (18-5, 8-4) to sweep their two-game season series for the first time since 2006. BAYLOR 81, T.C.U. 75 Nina Davis had 19 points, Niya Johnson had 14 assists, and No. 4 Baylor (24-1, 11-1) stretched its Big 12 winning streak to 11 games with a victory at Texas Christian (12-11, 4-8).

College basketball
Texas Tech University
Iowa State