For French and Italian Soccer, Dark Days Could Lie Ahead

Abstract: The four-year cycle of a World Cup is almost run. Italy and France, who contested an unedifying final in Berlin in 2006, appear to be preparing some of the same old cast, with more bad odor along the way. Zinédine Zidane, the most marvellous player of his generation until he chose to end his career with that infamous head butt in Berlin, is retired. But Franck Ribéry, the man who would be the new Zidane, is among the players being questioned by the police investigating a prostitution racket involving underage girls. That, so far, is simply a story of suspicion, but the leak comes at the worst imaginable time. Raymond Domenech, the same France national coach as four years ago, is about to set up camp for South Africa 2010 with, reportedly, four of his squad liable to be wanted for further police questioning. Italy, meanwhile, is truly back in the old routine. It won the last World Cup even as the Calciopoli, the investigation into referee tampering, was running through leading clubs like Juventus and AC Milan. Italy won the World Cup with two-thirds of its players coming from clubs implicated in those trials. And it won at a time when spectator violence, including murders, threatened to close down some of Italy’s stadiums. Roll on four years, and Calciopoli is back in front of magistrates with yet more claims of corruption, yet more evidence from tapped telephone calls leaked to the media and about to be heard in court. And, as the derby Sunday in Rome showed, the crowd violence has not gone away. This could hardly be more ill-timed. Marcello Lippi has been restored as the national coach of Italy and is intent on taking many of his 2006 World Cup winners to the next tournament, implying that few younger Italians have impressed him in the four intervening years. There has been change in Italy because Juventus has not totally recovered from being dumped down a division and made to work its way back up. AC Milan, Silvio Berlusconi’s club, has run short on cash and sold its brightest star, Kaká, to Real Madrid. There is a fresh challenger for Serie A. Inter, whose team is predominantly Argentine and Brazilian, has been eased off the top by Roma, which achieved a remarkable comeback to beat its neighbor Lazio, 2-1, in the stadium they share in Rome. There was, once again, serious violence. One fan had his throat slit, others suffered knife wounds, a few were under arrest. Players fought and scrapped, tempers were lost — a normal day in the Olympic stadium, Rome’s modern day Coliseum. Even Inter Milan, the club that benefited from the Calciopoli trial, is under suspicion. Its accuser, it has to be said, is Luciano Moggi, the man branded as the biggest manipulator for Juventus. Moggi tells the media, and now the Naples court, that Inter was as involved as all the rest in making the irregular calls to match referees. Oh, what a web of Machiavellian intrigue the Italians make of soccer. Last weekend did provide one moment of absolute purity. It came through a goal of sweet Brazilian magic, by Inter’s right back Maicon as he scored against Juventus and Italy’s No. 1 goalkeeper, Gigi Buffon. We might all need to cling to Maicon’s artistry to retain any sense that the sport is worth the notoriety that sometimes it attracts. Maybe it is the pervasive nature of 24/7 media using, and being used by, the police and rumor mongers. It isn’t just soccer that has changed through easy money and overblown idolatry. Only in make-believe can we imagine ourselves still to be in the era of Arnie Palmer and Jack Nicklaus rather than Tiger Woods. The world has changed, and with it the methods of communication that sometimes blur the lines between fact and fiction around sporting icons. There is substance, but as yet very little fact to the French scandal involving Ribéry et al. His legal representative, Sophie Bottai, sought to put press speculation into perspective on Monday through a statement that read: “Personalities including Franck Ribéry and other players of international fame count among their relationships a person close to the leader of a girls escort network. It is only because of that relationship that they have been, or will be, heard by police investigating this case. “My client was called as a witness, but had no other part in the matter. The matter stops there,” she said. No, it does not, not even in France where a privacy law protects politicians, sports figures and anyone else in the spotlight from media intrusion. On Wednesday, Ribéry is due to play for Bayern Munich against Lyon in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal. He hopes to be at the top of his game, which is a rare occurrence given his perpetual injury breaks — and he might come face to face with Sidney Govou, his fellow striker on the France national team. Govou, too, was named in the investigation into the nightclub near the Champs-Elysées that the police claim was being used as a brothel. Lyon, and Govou’s lawyer, deny he is involved. Ribéry, 27, has two young daughters and converted to Islam when he married their mother. Govou is single, with a 5-year-old daughter. But there are other, younger, French national squad players being named on French Web sites and in print. One of those, currently employed outside of France, is reported to have admitted that he had sex with a prostitute but did not know she was under 18. Jean-Pierre Escalettes, the president of the French soccer federation, told the media: “An investigation is under way. There is nothing else to say at the moment.” He might think that suffices, but in today’s environment, and with the French about to start World Cup camp, it might be easier to cap the outpouring of an Icelandic volcano than put a lid on this story.

Italy
Rome (Italy)
France
Paris (France)
Sex Crimes
Soccer
World Cup (Soccer)
Zidane Zinedine


At the Rye Arts Center, Learning New Ways of Creating

Abstract: Julian Clemente sits at a laptop in a 3-D printing class at the Rye Arts Center, using the track pad to design a geometric container. A freckled 10-year-old with a mop of red hair, he stretches the squat cylinder with a virtual dragging tool, making it taller on the digital graphing paper. Now it resembles a vase. He spins the on-screen design, then flips it upside down to see if all the sides are even. Later, his art teacher, Nicole Zahour, will print the object in plastic on the classroom’s 3-D printer, which during a recent visit was abuzz producing a bracelet made with paper-thin plastic layers. By next week, Julian will hold his vase-like invention in his hands. Forget the days when art classes were strictly about drawing, painting and sculpting. In the last two years, the Rye Arts Center, located in a classic, gray-shingled colonial house in the village of Rye, N.Y., has added classes for children as young as 8 in coding, 3-D printing, computer animation, robotics and even Minecraft, the building game that some parents write off as just another video game. Here, the digital arts are given the same weight as watercolors and clay-making. Image Manipulating a 3-D design. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times “There’s always going to be a need for traditional arts,” Meg Rodriguez, the executive director of the Rye Arts Center, said. “We’re not trying to change that. But we do want to introduce children to the modern tools for creativity.” Rye isn’t the only art school that has retooled its course offerings in recent years. The Rhode Island School of Design led the charge several years ago when John Maeda, then its president, championed a movement to inject the arts into STEM curriculums (science, technology, engineering and math), arguing that design was a critical component of innovation. A new acronym, Steam, has since caught on, with supporters including members of Congress, the National Science Foundation, school districts around the country and the Department of Education. Many educators maintain that classes that combine technology, engineering and art help students learn how to solve problems and, perhaps more important, think creatively. The Katonah Art Center offers two Steam classes for younger children, as does the Digital Arts Experience in White Plains, which offers several 3-D design and coding classes for youngsters. At the Rye Arts Center, 25 percent of the budget for traditional art programs is now reserved for Steam course offerings. Last year, the center’s darkroom, which was abandoned when digital photography classes became popular several years ago, was transformed into what the school calls its “MakerSpace”: a brightly lit classroom with a high square table at the center covered with a dozen laptops and surrounded by citrine and royal blue metal stools. A large flat-screen TV hangs at the center of the room for teacher demonstrations, and three 3-D printers sit in a row on a back shelf. Also on the shelves are the students’ creations: a robotic dog that was programmed to move; a charming pair of owls printed on the 3-D printer. In a coding class here, the young children weren’t sitting in rows plugging numbers into a computer — they were learning how to build rockets and space stations in Minecraft, a game that is like a digital version of Lego. Sometimes those projects lead to offline discoveries. One 8-year-old student, Ben Fritsche, was taking his space station design from coding class and building it out of cardboard and mirrored tiles in another class called Creative Building. Image A product of the class, which is offered to students as young as 8. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times Said Ben of his space station: “I thought it would be cool to make it for real.” In Creative Building, children are inspired to think up their dream structure, build it with found materials and often power it with electricity using basic circuitry. One 9-year-old girl, Sydney Ruthazer, is making a fashion house with a runway and pendant lights with beaded drum shades, while another boy is building a copy of his little sister’s nursery school, complete with beeping smoke alarms. The teacher of both the Minecraft and Creative Building classes, Gary McLoughlin, whom the children call Mr. Mack, has developed a bit of a following over the last few years; creative-minded children take his Steam classes at Discover Camp in Hawthorne in the summer and then at the Rye Arts Center during the school year. One Friday in November, he was in the MakerSpace with six boys no older than 10. All were building in Minecraft. A boy named Manuel Marchand had created an underground secret base in the game, and the other boys were trying to find it. When asked how they would use the code they were learning here in class, one boy shrugged, “Build an app.” Mr. McLoughlin said he had heard naysayers over the years assert that digital art was not art at all. All of us, he argued, need to re-examine our ideas about what counts as creativity. “Why does art have to be a framed watercolor hanging in a museum?” Mr. McLoughlin asked. Besides, he added, the art world is already experimenting with the same digital tools as the children in Rye. Case in point: A dress made with a 3-D printer is now hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “A kid might say he’s not an artist because he can’t draw or paint,” Mr. McLoughlin said. “But if you go into a 3-D world and manipulate structures and print them out, or if you build a rocket in a virtual world and make it take off, it’s still your creation. It’s still your idea. And it’s still art.”

Art
Rye Arts Center
Children
Rye NY
3-D Printers
K-12 Education


Scores Are Stranded as Ferry Catches Fire Off Greek Coast

Abstract: VERBANIA, Italy — Italian, Greek and Albanian vessels battled gale-force winds and rough seas early Monday as they struggled to rescue hundreds of passengers stranded on a ferry that caught fire on Sunday off the northwestern coast of Greece en route to Italy. Italian news media reported that the fire broke out on the car deck of the ferry, which was heading to the Italian port of Ancona. The ship was carrying 422 passengers and 56 crew members, according to the Greek Merchant Marine Ministry. The ministry said that 234 of the passengers were Greek and that the ship was also carrying passengers from Albania, Austria, Belgium, France, Georgia, Italy, Switzerland, Syria, Turkey and other countries. Italian officials said that one passenger had died while trying to get off the ship, and a spokeswoman for the Greek Merchant Marine Ministry confirmed that a Greek man had died during the rescue effort. Image Passengers from the Norman Atlantic on Sunday in the harbor of Otranto, Italy. The fire is said to have started on the car deck. Credit Biagio Claudio Longo/European Pressphoto Agency Nearly 200 people remained stranded on the ferry as dawn broke on Monday, while helicopters continued to airlift exhausted passengers to waiting merchant vessels nearby. Some were taken directly to Italian hospitals to be treated for hypothermia. Difficult weather conditions continued to hamper the rescue efforts, which had gone on through the night. Helicopters redoubled their efforts after a navy ship with a helipad reached the ferry on Sunday evening. Another naval vessel was heading to the scene on Monday. An Italian Coast Guard official, Giovanni de Tullio, said on Italian television that stormy weather had been forecast. A container ship carrying 49 passengers from the ferry arrived in the Italian port of Bari on Monday morning. Shortly before 8 a.m., the Italian Navy said that 290 people had been saved, and that another 188 were still on board. “The water is choppy, and it is very cold,” Capt. Riccardo Rizzotto of the Italian Navy said on RAI News, an Italian national broadcaster. “Certainly they’re suffering.” Image Photographs taken from video show the burning ferry adrift off Albania. Credit Italian Navy Throughout the day, ships and helicopters departed from several Italian ports to reach the stricken boat. The ferry, the Norman Atlantic, sails under an Italian flag but was chartered by a Greek company, ANEK Lines. It caught fire about 35 miles north of the Greek island of Corfu after leaving the Greek port of Igoumenitsa early Sunday morning, the charter company said in a statement. It did not say what had caused the fire. A distress call was issued shortly before 5 a.m. on Sunday, requesting that all ships in the channel off Otranto in the Puglia region of Italy assist with the rescue efforts. Italian news media broadcast images of the ship enveloped in smoke. Greece’s merchant marine minister, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, described the rescue operations as “particularly difficult and complicated,” and the Italian Navy said Sunday evening that the smoke was hampering rescue efforts. Passengers found refuge on the top deck of the ship, according to the navy. But a Greek woman, who gave her name only as Athina, told a Greek television station that she and about 40 other passengers could feel the heat from the fire on the deck before boarding a lifeboat. “The deck was hot; it was burning our feet,” she said. “We couldn’t believe what was happening.” Image The ferry caught fire with 422 passengers and 56 crew members on board. Credit Italian Navy Navy helicopters were used to begin carrying some passengers to safety, and by late Sunday afternoon, the ship was attached to a towboat. Although other ships were responding to the distress call, rescuers warned that it was still a hazardous situation. “The severe weather conditions are still making it difficult for ships to get close, and it’s beginning to be dark,” said an Italian Defense Ministry spokesman, who asked not to be identified according to Italian institutional practices. But by Sunday evening, 10 merchant ships had managed to reach the ferry, and they were taking on passengers, the Greek Merchant Marine Ministry said. Another Greek passenger, Nikos Papatheodosiou, told Greek television that “the wind is pushing us from one side to the other, and we can’t breathe in the smoke.” “Do something to save us,” he begged. “We’ll drown like mice.” In a separate accident in the region, a Turkish cargo ship collided with another merchant vessel and sank off the coast of Italy in the northern Adriatic on Sunday, killing two crew members and leaving four others missing, officials said, according to The Associated Press.


Rockies Give Carlos Gonzalez 7-Year, $80 Million Extension

Abstract: No team has spent more money this off-season than the Colorado Rockies . Most of it has gone toward re-signing their core players, and the latest beneficiary is the star outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, who has agreed to a seven-year, $80 million extension. The deal, confirmed Tuesday by a person in baseball with knowledge of the contract, is pending a physical. Gonzalez starred for the Rockies in 2010, his first full season, batting a National League-best .336 with 34 home runs and 117 runs batted in . He won a Gold Glove and finished third in the balloting for most valuable player, two slots ahead of shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who signed a seven-year, $134.5 million extension with Colorado in late November and is under contract through 2020. Gonzalez was not eligible for free agency until after the 2014 season, but Colorado was betting that his value, if he continued to perform, would only escalate. Gonzalez has already been traded twice, including as part of a package Colorado acquired from Oakland for Matt Holliday in 2008, and he seemed to value the stability of a long-term deal. With Gonzalez, 25, on board through 2017 — taking him through his first three years of free agency — the Rockies have two of baseball’s best all-around players locked up at reasonable contracts. The Rockies, who also re-signed the left-hander Jorge De La Rosa and added the utility player Ty Wigginton, have committed about $250 million this winter. TRAINER ARRESTED FOR FRAUD A high-profile baseball trainer in the Dominican Republic who negotiated multimillion-dollar contracts with major league teams for teenage prospects has been arrested there on charges he falsified documents about players’ identities, the Dominican authorities said Tuesday. The arrest is seen as a significant victory for baseball, which has invested millions of dollars in trying to clean up its operations in the Dominican Republic and has urged the government to crack down on the trainers. Baseball officials believe the trainers help falsify prospects’ identities to make them appear younger and more appealing to teams, and are also a source of steroids for prospects. The trainer, Victor Baez, has been on the radar of baseball officials for several years. In 2009, he said in an interview with The New York Times that he routinely injected his teenage players with vitamin B12 because he could not afford to feed them meat. In 2010, Baez had 5 of the top 40 prospects who were eligible to sign with teams after July 2, and all five tested positive for steroids as part of their registration with Major League Baseball. Baez said the positive results were because of a tainted protein shake he had given his players. Baez’s arrest stemmed from an investigation by Major League Baseball, which uncovered that he had falsified documents. Baseball officials turned the investigation over to the Dominican government, which further pursued the matter. “We have been working very hard to implement reforms that will improve the environment for conducting the business of baseball in the Dominican Republic,” Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations, said in a statement. “Today’s action by the Dominican authorities is a positive step that the commissioner’s office truly appreciates.” MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT BUCKNER RETURNS Bill Buckner, the Boston Red Sox player long associated with the team’s former curse, will try to work some managerial magic in Massachusetts. The Brockton Rox of the independent Can-Am League announced Tuesday that Buckner would manage the team this summer. Buckner had 2,715 career hits, but he is most remembered for an error that cost the Red Sox Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. In a statement, Buckner said he was excited to return to Massachusetts. The Rox’s chief executive, Chris Carminucci, praised Buckner’s vast baseball knowledge and called it a “great day” for the Rox. (AP)

Baseball
Colorado Rockies
Gonzalez Carlos


Fireplace in a Brooklyn Church Is Drawing Scholars’ Interest

Abstract: A mystery involving a fireplace in Brooklyn has set off a scholarly stir. At the Greenpoint Reformed Church on Milton Street, a grand 19th-century pillared building that the congregation has owned since 1943, half a dozen historians have visited over the past few months to scrutinize old tiles along the back wall of a fireplace in the parlor. It was not until this year that anyone recognized their historical significance. Two white porcelain plaques depict a pair of gentlemen wearing waistcoats, a model of a primitive paddle-wheel boat and a snub-nosed object that resembles a miniature submarine or perhaps a torpedo. The bas-relief porcelain is detailed down to fingernails, hair strands, buttonholes and boot tassels — even the upholstery tacks on one man’s chair are visible. “Of course I’d seen many, many fireplace tiles over the years, but never anything like this,” said Andrew S. Dolkart, director of the historic preservation program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. Mr. Dolkart said he stumbled on the parlor and the tiled fireplace by accident. He had gone to the Greenpoint church while researching sites for walking tours he conducts for the American Guild of Organists, and happened to take a close look at the parlor fireplace. “I realized these pieces were important and rare, and out of my field of expertise,” Mr. Dolkart said. So he started assembling a team, which has included Susan Tunick, president of the Friends of Terra Cotta, a preservation group in New York, and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the lead curator of American decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What they have determined about the porcelain scenes is that the nattily dressed standing figure is Robert Fulton, who pioneered designs for paddle-wheel steamboats, submarines and torpedoes in the early 1800s. The seated gentleman is the politician Robert Livingston, Fulton’s business partner. The plaques were probably made in the late 1870s at the Union Porcelain Works, a factory in Greenpoint that was in operation from the 1860s to the 1920s, Ms. Frelinghuysen said. The factory’s owner, a major real-estate developer named Thomas C. Smith, built and lived in the bay-fronted building that now houses the Greenpoint church. In the 1940s, the congregation converted some central rooms into a sanctuary with stained glass and an organ, but much of Smith’s décor was left intact, including honey-colored carved woodwork and elaborate plaster moldings. Union Porcelain Works was known for producing some zealously realistic images of historic figures. But Ms. Frelinghuysen said she had never seen a Fulton portrait made by the company. Did Smith commission the scenes? Who installed them in the Greenpoint fireplace alongside tiny 1890s tiles patterned in blue and white griffins and flowers, and why? “Was there just some bin of extra stuff at the factory that these were all pulled from at some point, or was there some actual connection between Smith and Fulton?” asked Ms. Frelinghuysen, who has gamely crawled around the sooty fireplace with a flashlight and magnifying glass. “It’s really wonderful how well preserved these are, as a puzzle for us to explore.” The leaders of the church, Pastor Ann Kansfield and the Rev. Jennifer Aull, find the academics’ enthusiasm somewhat perplexing. “I feel like such a philistine — why is everyone so excited about these?” Ms. Kansfield said. “But I do wonder why they were made, and how they ended up here. I hope someone figures it out.”

Fireplaces
History
Brick and Tile
Greenpoint (NYC)
Greenpoint Reformed Church


María Elena Ibarra Martín, Cuban Marine Biologist, Dies at 76

Abstract: María Elena Ibarra Martín, director of the Center for Marine Research at the University of Havana , a co-founder of the Cuban Society for the Protection of the Environment and a leader in Caribbean marine ecology, died on May 5 in Cuba . She was 76. Her death was confirmed by Orlando Rey Santos, director of the environment directorate at Cuba’s Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment. Dr. Ibarra was born on Dec. 27, 1932, in Santiago de Cuba. She joined the faculty of the University of Havana in 1964 and eventually rose to become dean of biology. After early research on plankton and related marine organisms, she turned her attention to crocodiles, manatees and especially the turtles of the Caribbean, and to measures to protect them. “She was the quintessential scientist-activist,” said Oliver Houck, a professor at Tulane University Law School who went to Cuba in the 1990s to help draft environmental legislation. “She did not back down.” The World Wildlife Fund describes Cuba’s marine habitats as well preserved, in what it calls “dramatic contrast” to its Caribbean neighbors. Researchers who study its marine ecology attribute its relative health at least in part to Dr. Ibarra. Working at the marine center with very limited resources, Dr. Ibarra and her colleagues “created a hell of an agency out of nothing,” Professor Houck said.

Ibarra Martín María Elena
Cuba
Deaths (Obituaries)


Alabama: Suit Is Filed to Block Abortion Clinic Law

Abstract: Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday to block a new Alabama law that would force three of the state’s five abortion clinics to shut down. The law, like measures passed in Mississippi and North Dakota that are under challenge, would require doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Proponents say it will protect patients in emergencies, but the clinics and prominent medical groups call it medically unnecessary and an unconstitutional effort to force the closing of the clinics in Birmingham, Mobile and Montgomery, which rely on visiting doctors.

Alabama
Abortion
Lawsuits
ACLU
Planned Parenthood


Thailand: Insurgents Kill 8 Soldiers

Abstract: Suspected Muslim insurgents ambushed security forces in southern Thailand on Thursday night, killing five members of a patrol, an officer said. On Friday, three soldiers were killed in a similar attack by a roadside bomb blast, another army officer said, ratcheting up violence in a low-level insurgency that has gone on for about six years in the southern part of the country. Muslims dominate the deep southern section of Thailand, a mainly Buddhist nation. The spike in attacks is a worry for the government of southeast Asia’s second biggest economy, which is also experiencing fierce, sometimes violent rivalries among political factions.


Tiger Woods Seems Doubtful for British Open

Abstract: NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Tiger Woods did not rule out playing in the British Open. But the bulk of his remarks Tuesday indicated that his ailing left knee and left Achilles’ tendon would not be healed in time for him to make the tournament, the season’s third major championship, at Royal St. George’s in two weeks. Woods, who is here at the AT&T National this week in his role as the nonplaying tournament host, said that other than some putts, he had not hit any golf balls since he withdrew from the Players Championship after nine holes almost seven weeks ago. He said he exacerbated the strains to his left lateral collateral ligament and Achilles’, which he originally injured at the Masters in April. “Probably in retrospect, it was a borderline call whether I should have played the Players,” Woods said. He added: “I pushed it too hard and hurt myself. Now this time around, it’s different. I’m setting no timetable.” By not making a call on whether he will be ready for the British Open, he leaves open the possibility that he could play if he improves drastically in the next two weeks. But based on previous training regimens he has used when preparing to return to competition after an injury, the chances of a return appear virtually nil. Relaxed, joking at times and wearing an almost full beard, Woods looked as if he has been on summer vacation. That is hardly the case, he said. “We’re in the gym every day, most of the time two times, sometimes three times a day,” he said. “It’s not just the leg; it’s the whole body. Got to keep everything going. And obviously soft tissue, getting that worked on. So it’s been arduous, but then again, I’ve done this before.” Woods said surgery had not been discussed and was not required. And he dismissed the notion that his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championship victories — which Nicklaus capped by winning the 1986 Masters — had been set back by missing the recent United States Open and, possibly, the British Open. “Absolutely not,” said Woods, 35. “He won when he was 46, right? I’ve still got some time. And on top of that, we’re about the same pace, I believe, years on tour and majors won. So I feel pretty confident of what my future holds and very excited about it. “I’m excited about coming out here and being ready to go instead of trying to kind of patch it, which I’ve been for a while.”


New York City Police Reorganizing to Focus More on Gangs

Abstract: The New York Police Department announced on Tuesday that it was reorganizing its investigative operations, a move that senior officials said would allow for an increased focus on gang activity. Under the new structure, nearly all of the department’s investigative units will be brought under the supervision of the Detective Bureau, James P. O’Neill, chief of department, said. An investigative chief will be assigned to each of the department’s eight patrol borough commands and will report directly to the chief of detectives, Robert K. Boyce, Chief O’Neill said. The changes, which are to take effect next month, are the latest in a series of moves by the department as it tries to adapt its crime-fighting methods to new technology and trends. Under the plan announced on Tuesday, the Organized Crime Control Bureau will be eliminated, and its chief, Thomas P. Purtell, will be assigned a broader role as chief of a citywide operations bureau. In that role, he will oversee units conducting a range of tasks, from special operations to homeless outreach. The new strategy resurrects a style of policing that was employed in New York City decades ago and is now being revived by Commissioner William J. Bratton. The recent initiative began as a pilot program in Queens that was meant to increase efficiency by giving local commanders direct access to resources in the department’s specialized units, including detectives and officers assigned to divisions focused on gangs, guns and drugs. “It’s going to improve the coordination and focus of our investigations,” Chief O’Neill said. “So it will help us more quickly identify targets and patterns.” The Internal Affairs Bureau, which investigates allegations of police misconduct, and the Intelligence Division and Counterterrorism Bureau are not part of the reorganization. Chief Boyce said officials hoped to further drive down crime by targeting gangs and crews, whose members were responsible for more than half of the nonfatal shootings in the city last year. Chief O’Neill said: “It’s just an evolution of the way we do business. I think it’s important that if we’re going to keep pushing homicides and shootings down, we have to keep up with the trends, and this is where the trends are leading us.”

NYPD
Gang
James P O'Neill
NYC
William J Bratton


Hole in Fuselage Forces Qantas 747 to Land

Abstract: The Australian authorities opened an investigation on Friday into what caused a section of the fuselage of a Qantas airliner to burst open en route from Hong Kong to Melbourne , Australia , forcing the Boeing 747-400 to make an emergency landing in Manila . The jumbo jet, which carried 346 passengers and 19 crew members, landed safely on Friday and those on board left without injury. As a piece of fuselage the size of a sedan ripped from the plane, the jet, Qantas Flight 30, had been forced to descend steeply to 10,000 feet from 29,000 feet. Passengers described hearing a loud bang and seeing debris fly into the cabin. As the plane depressurized, oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and cabin crew members shouted to passengers to put them on. “There was a terrific boom and bits of wood and debris just flew forward” into the first-class area, a passenger, Dr. June Kane, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from Manila, the capital of the Philippines . Another passenger, Phill Restall, of Chippenham, England , said that he was awakened by the sound of what the authorities said may have been an explosive decompression, but that there was no panic. “It dawned on a lot of people that this was a major incident,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation. “There was no screaming. It wasn’t your typical television movie.” He said some passengers were shaking afterward, while, according to The Associated Press, others vomited. Aviation experts said the hole might have appeared when a part of the plane meant to reduce wind resistance pulled away from the fuselage, although they cautioned it was too soon to draw conclusions. Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board of the United States said Friday that they were sending teams to aid in an investigation by the Australian Air Transport Safety Bureau. Under international treaty, the United States, as the country where the plane was built, will be an official participant in the investigation. The plane had recently undergone a major overhaul, in which engineers discovered a great deal of corrosion inside the cargo hold, The Daily Telegraph of Australia reported in its Saturday issue. As the plane lost pressure, oxygen masks descended from the ceiling, and passengers reported seeing mist and debris in the cabin. Video, apparently taken on a passenger’s cellphone and released by Reuters , showed passengers sitting calmly, wearing their yellow masks and watching the seat-back screens showing the plane’s altitude as the aircraft descended. “Nobody had any idea what was going on,” George Kierans, of Drogheda, Ireland , told the BBC. “I think most people were in a state of shock.” Many of those on board only realized how serious the situation was after they got off. Photographs and video of the plane, which went into service in 1991, showed a gaping hole in the underside of the aircraft, just in front of its right wing. In Washington , a senior counterterrorism official said there was no indication of terrorism in the incident. The accident was a blemish for Qantas, which has one of the world’s best safety records and prides itself on never having lost a jet in a major crash. Qantas gave no information on the probable cause of the accident but praised crew members for their calm handling of the emergency. The hole appeared to encompass a part of the plane called a fairing, which is meant to smooth out the surface of the fuselage and reduce wind drag. Many airplanes are subject to cracking as they age as a result of the repeated stress of pressurization and depressurization, but a 747 typically flies for many hours between landings and has far fewer pressurization cycles. Although metal fatigue has been blamed for similar emergencies in the past, fairings, which are installed on various parts of an aircraft, do not normally have that problem, said Robert W. Mann Jr., an industry consultant based in Port Washington, N.Y. That raised the question of whether the aircraft might have been damaged on the ground or from inside the cargo compartment, possibly when bags were being loaded, Mr. Mann said. He said passengers were not in danger from the depressurization because aircraft that fly above 10,000 feet are generally required to carry oxygen systems. The atmosphere is thin above that altitude, and people can function for only a few minutes without oxygen before becoming groggy and losing consciousness. Pilots are trained to bring a plane down swiftly to 10,000 feet, where passengers and crew can breathe without assistance. Given that the Qantas jet was at 29,000 feet, the plane dropped roughly a mile a minute, “not the kind of descent you would normally subject passengers to,” Mr. Mann said. The landing in Manila came only about 630 miles into the journey, a little over an hour after the plane took off. Qantas has decades of experience flying the Boeing 747, a model it first ordered in the 1960s. It has more than 50 of the planes in its fleet, although it was also one of the first customers for the rival Airbus A380 jumbo jet. At one point in the 1980s, Qantas’s entire jet fleet was made up of 747s, which are ideal for the long-haul flights in which the airline specializes. Qantas has promoted its safety record, and in the 1988 movie “Rain Man,” the autistic savant Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman , declared he would feel safe flying on Qantas because its planes “never crashed.” However, the airline suffered fatalities in its early years in business, when it flew propeller planes and flying boats, which take off and land on water. Qantas has also had some close calls. In 1999, a Qantas jet ran off a runway in Bangkok while landing in heavy rain. There were no reports of serious injuries. More recently, a Qantas-operated Boeing 717 was damaged in February when it sustained a hard landing at Darwin, Australia. The landing gear, tires and fuselage of the plane, flown by QantasLink, the airline’s regional carrier, were damaged. In 1988, a gash opened in a Boeing 737 belonging to Aloha Airlines at 24,000 feet on a flight from Hilo to Honolulu , Hawaii . A chunk of the plane’s roof and the cockpit door were blown out. One flight attendant was killed when she was swept out of the plane, and 65 passengers and crew members were hurt. Federal investigators said the accident was caused by metal fatigue, exacerbated by corrosion caused by salt water.


California Sues State Street Bank for Fraud

Abstract: The California attorney general’s office has charged the State Street Corporation with fraud, accusing the company of cheating the state’s two largest pension funds of at least $56.6 million by overcharging them for a series of foreign exchange trades. The lawsuit , unsealed on Tuesday by a Sacramento Superior Court judge, contends that State Street currency traders consistently overcharged the two state pension funds, Calpers and Calstrs, for the costs of managing their accounts since 2001, and then concealed the charges. The California attorney general is seeking to recover $200 million in overcharges and penalties. “State Street bankers committed unconscionable fraud by misappropriating millions of dollars that rightfully belonged to California’s public pension funds,” said Jerry Brown, the California attorney general. “This is just the latest example of how clever financial traders violate laws and rip off the public trust.” Carolyn Cichon, a spokeswoman for State Street, which is based in Boston, said the bank categorically denied any allegations of wrongdoing and would defend itself against any litigation. The lawsuit is the latest in a string of recent legal headaches for State Street, a bank that has long flown under the radar of ordinary investors but plays a crucial role in the global financial system in booking trades, lending securities and providing other services to hedge funds, pension funds and investment firms. Federal regulators considered it one of 19 too-big-to-fail banks in the recent stress tests . State Street has faced multiple regulatory investigations and shareholder lawsuits over whether it misled investors about the risk in certain bond fund, derivatives , and subprime mortgage-related investments. One lawsuit was filed in April on behalf of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It also comes as State Street is struggling to regain its financial footing. After passing the stress tests this spring, federal officials put them alongside JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and eight other large banks that were among the first to repay their taxpayer investments. State Street announced on Tuesday a $516 million profit in the third quarter, but its shares fell 8.4 percent, its biggest drop in five months, on the news of the lawsuit and a sobering earnings forecast. Ronald E. Logue, State Street’s chief executive, said the bank expected earnings to decrease by about 16 percent, worse than the 12 percent decline projected earlier this year. Bank of New York Mellon, another big custodial bank, reported a $2.46 billion third-quarter loss on Tuesday, but its shares rose 6.1 percent. Still, the lawsuit raises troubling questions about the bank’s practices and controls. It grew out of an inquiry by California state investigators who were looking into claims made against State Street by unidentified whistle-blowers that accused the bank of adding a secret and substantial markup to the price of their currency trades. The whistleblowers alleged that the scheme cost State Street clients about $400 million annually and dated back to 1998. According to the California Attorney General, State Street executed about $35.2 billion in currency trades for Calpers, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, and Calstrs, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, from 2001 to this fall. State Street tellingly referred to the state pension funds as “dumb” clients since they allowed the bank to handle foreign exchange transactions for them, according to a complaint filed by the whistleblowers. Smart clients, it said, traded directly with the bank and obtained better rates. The lawsuit contends that State Street concealed fraudulent pricing practices by entering false exchange rates into electronic trading databases and reporting false prices in the account statements that it provided Calpers and Calstrs. The lawsuit also accuses State Street of deliberately failing to include time stamp data in its reports so that the pension funds could not verify the actual cost of the trade. If the California attorney general is successful, the whistle-blowers who filed the original sealed lawsuit could receive a share of any money recovered.

Banks and Banking
Frauds and Swindling
State Street Corporation
California
Suits and Litigation
Attorneys General
Pensions and Retirement Plans


Al Qaeda Fighters Try to Seize Yemeni Military Base in Aden

Abstract: MAHRA, Yemen — Dozens of fighters belonging to Al Qaeda ’s Yemeni affiliate briefly tried to seize control of a military base and the presidential palace in the port city of Aden before suddenly withdrawing on Sunday, according to local fighters and a senior military official in the city. By Sunday afternoon, there were no signs of Qaeda militants in Tawahi, the neighborhood surrounding the palace. But their appearance, however fleeting, was an embarrassing setback for the exiled government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which had described its success in securing Aden as a major victory in its war with the Houthi rebels. The government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia , was driven from power this year as the Houthis, a northern group, captured territory across Yemen, including parts of Aden in the south. A Saudi-led military coalition began an air offensive against the Houthis in March to restore Mr. Hadi. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch, which fiercely opposes the Houthis, has been able to capitalize on the disorder by seizing territory, including Mukalla, the country’s fifth largest city. At the same time, the militants have faced no opposition from the Saudi-led coalition as warplanes have carried out thousands of airstrikes against the Houthis and their allies. Officials in Mr. Hadi’s government have been reluctant to admit that small numbers of Qaeda militants have been fighting as part of a broad anti-Houthi coalition that includes southern separatists, Yemeni soldiers trained in the Persian Gulf as well as troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. On Saturday, local officials denied that Al Qaeda was present in Tawahi — even as local news accounts said that the militants had raised their black flag in the area and were telling residents that they controlled the neighborhood. On Sunday, a senior military official aligned with the anti-Houthi forces acknowledged the entrance of about 100 Qaeda fighters into Tawahi and said they had been the subject of a local security committee meeting. The official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists. It was unclear whether the Qaeda fighters left because of an agreement with local commanders, or because they were trying to avoid an armed confrontation. On Sunday, local southern separatists took total control of Tawahi, said Abdul Wahab Al-Boujah, a local fighter who was guarding a checkpoint there.

Yemen
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi
Houthis
Al Qaeda
Aden
Saudi Arabia
Military Bases


Power Rising, Taliban Besiege Pakistani Shiites

Abstract: PESHAWAR, Pakistan — It was once known as the Parrot’s Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the American-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan . That was during the cold war. Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is near the center of the new kind of struggle. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege. The Taliban, which have solidified control across Pakistan’s tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds to attack American soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 66-pound bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100. And, in a mini-conflict that yet again demonstrates the growing influence of the Taliban and the Pakistan government’s lack of control over this highly sensitive border area, young and old, wounded and able-bodied, have become refugees in their own land. Thousands of displaced Shiites from Parachinar are scattered among relatives in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, and in hotels and shelters where images of Iranian religious leaders decorate the halls. Last month, a Pakistani government relief convoy loaded with food and medicines that had been sent to break the siege was attacked by the Taliban at the village of Pir Qayyum. Many of the 22 vehicles were burned and 12 drivers were killed by the Taliban, according to government officials here and Shiites. And little seems to be hindering the Taliban since the army, six months ago, agreed to a peace deal with the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, and has remained in its barracks. Groups of Taliban affiliated with Mr. Mehsud, who according to the Bush administration is supported by Al Qaeda, now control wide swaths of the tribal areas, from Waziristan in the south to Bajur in the north. From some parts of the tribal areas, like Waziristan and Mohmand, the Taliban have stepped up their operations into Afghanistan against NATO and American soldiers, cross-border attacks that have resulted in rising casualties for coalition forces over the last two months, the Bush administration said. In Kurram, the general area where Parachinar is located, the Taliban are a relatively new phenomenon, exploiting the generations-old sectarian conflict as a way of keeping the government out of the strategically important piece of territory, the senior government official in Kurram, Azam Khan, who serves as the political agent and who organized the June convoy, said in an interview. But Shiites say the Taliban are doing more than just keeping the government at bay. The Shiites say that because they are stopping the militants from entering Afghanistan, the Taliban are attacking them. The situation has attracted the attention of the leading Shiite figure of Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has encouraged all Shiites in Pakistan to do what they can to help their brethren in Parachinar, said Sheik Mohammed Shifah Alnajafi, the deputy representative of Ayatollah Sistani in Pakistan, and the vice principal of a Shiite seminary in the capital, Islamabad. About 80 percent of Pakistan’s overwhelmingly Muslim population is Sunni, and about 20 percent Shiite. In Kurram as a whole, the two sects are almost evenly divided, with Parachinar almost entirely Shiite, according to figures from the secretariat of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the body that loosely oversees the tribal region. The origins of the siege reach back to April 2007, when sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis flared over provocative remarks made by a Sunni of Wahhabi beliefs against historical Shiite figures, said Muhammad Amin Shaheedi, the director of the Islamic Research Council in Islamabad, and a leader of the Shiite community in Pakistan. But unlike previous bouts of sectarian violence that were settled by mediation after a few days, the tensions mounted, exacerbated by the Taliban, who sided with some of the Sunni, he said. Then, last Nov. 16, the tensions exploded in a day of extraordinary violence in Parachinar and surrounding villages, including mortar fire between Sunni mosques and Shiite mosques, said M. B. Bangash, a Shiite businessman from Parachinar who has taken refuge in Peshawar. In contrast to other parts of the tribal areas, the Pakistani Army has had a garrison in Parachinar for decades, but it failed to stop the violence, he said. “The government is indifferent,” Mr. Bangash said. Some of the moderate Sunni families in Parachinar, who had often helped Shiites in conflicts, were attacked in the November fighting by extremist Shiites and were forced to flee, according to Mr. Khan, a well-regarded political agent who was appointed last month to the area in an effort by the government to reduce tensions. This left the general Shiite population feeling more vulnerable to the Taliban, he said. But the ambush of the convoy last month proved the power of the Taliban, the displaced Shiites in Peshawar said. A driver of one of the trucks who survived, Asif Hussain, described being captured at Pir Qayyum, taken to a Taliban training camp in the village of Shasho, interrogated and then released after convincing his captors that he was not Shiite, but Sunni. “At the camp, the Taliban killed eight other drivers because they were Shia,” said Mr. Hussain, 33, in a telephone interview from Parachinar. An official of the Pakistan Peoples Party from Parachinar, Mirza Jihadi, confirmed the existence of the Shasho camp, which, he said, is at a place where Afghan refugees used to live and is now controlled by loyalists of Mr. Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban. The displaced in Peshawar told stories of growing hardship at home, and they complained bitterly of the failure of the government to help. “I want to go home but the government does not provide any transportation,” said Mohib Ali, 45, at a hotel here, as he nursed a bandaged right arm that was wounded, he said, in fighting. He had spent the previous day at the Peshawar airport hoping to board a military helicopter that he had been told would take civilians back to Parachinar. But instead, he said, it filled up with soldiers returning after leave, and a few favored others with good contacts. The army garrison in the town had done little to help, and had failed to organize major food supplies, said Haji Gulab Hussain, a retired government official who leads a Shiite tribal council. “The lower-ranking soldiers are ready for any action,” he said. “But the army is supporting the Taliban. There are no orders.” During the November violence, he said, “The army did nothing.” Parachinar has prided itself on the best education in the tribal areas since the British colonial era, so the closing of schools since the violence began is a special blow, some of the displaced said. Teachers were too afraid to travel, they said. The one hospital in Parachinar was left with only a few nurses. Basic medicines, including anesthesia equipment and oxygen, were depleted, according to a medic reached by telephone. Killings have demoralized the population. In the village of Bilyamin, 22 miles south of Parachinar, two students walking to their matriculation exams were shot dead by the Taliban, Mr. Bangash said. Some solace was coming from Afghanistan, the refugees said. A schoolboy, Ashfaq Hussain, 12, arrived in Peshawar on Tuesday after a two-day journey by car through Afghanistan to enroll at Islamia Collegiate School, a prestigious school here. “We can go through Afghanistan without a visa, it’s a help,” said his father, Sabir Hussain. But his son’s travel to Peshawar by car via Afghanistan cost the equivalent of $50 over two days, instead of the usual $3 by bus in about five hours, he said. Much of the vegetable crop of potatoes and tomatoes that is normally sold to markets in the heart of Pakistan was now being sent to Kabul, Mr. Bangash said. More perishable fruits were wasted. After the disaster of the June convoy, Mr. Khan, the political agent, said he had a new plan to try to persuade moderate tribesmen, both Sunni and Shiite, who were now weary of the violence, to allow the opening of the 45-mile road that runs from the town of Thal along a deep, wide valley up to Parachinar. “It’s been an intense year of warfare,” he said. “Both sides are fed up.” In Islamabad, Mr. Jihadi said the Interior Ministry had promised on Wednesday to resume flights by the government airline, Pakistan International Airways, to the airstrip in Parachinar, which had been abandoned long ago. To try to quash the Taliban, the ministry would urge the local tribes to form small armies, known as lashkar, he said. The ministry was also offering local people financial rewards, he said, if they killed a Taliban leader. But whether the army would take a role in the efforts to find a solution appeared to remain an open question.

Peshawar (Pakistan)
Taliban
Shiite Muslims
Politics and Government
Afghanistan
Sunni Muslims
Pakistan


Pirates Beat Tigers as Justin Verlander Is Shelled

Abstract: Justin Verlander has never been a big fan of April. That is why it was surprising when he took a no-hitter into the sixth inning of his season-opening start last week in Miami. On Monday, though, things got back to normal. Gregory Polanco had two of Pittsburgh’s six doubles, and the Pirates chased Verlander in the fifth inning on the way to a 7-4 win over the host Detroit Tigers. Verlander (0-1) allowed seven runs and 10 hits — five of them doubles — in four and a third innings. Jon Niese (1-0) gave up four runs — three earned — and five hits in six innings. Mark Melancon pitched a one-hit ninth for his third save. ORIOLES 9, RED SOX 7 Chris Davis hit a tiebreaking, three-run homer off the new Boston closer Craig Kimbrel in the ninth inning and drove in five runs, carrying Baltimore over the Red Sox in David Ortiz’s final home opener. Kimbrel (0-1), the All-Star reliever acquired in an off-season trade from San Diego, entered with the score tied at 6-6. He walked Caleb Joseph with one out and Manny Machado with two outs, then gave up Davis’s home run to center. PADRES 4, PHILLIES 3 Alexi Amarista’s safety squeeze in the seventh scored the go-ahead run as San Diego spoiled Philadelphia’s home opener. Kevin Quackenbush (1-0) struck out the only batter he faced to earn the win after starter Andrew Cashner allowed three runs in five-plus innings. CARDINALS 10, BREWERS 1 Michael Wacha allowed four hits in six scoreless innings, and St. Louis had 10 extra-base hits while routing Milwaukee in the Cardinals’ home opener. Jeremy Hazelbaker was 4 for 4 with a triple, double and sacrifice fly, lifting his average to .526, and his fellow rookie Aledmys Diaz had two doubles. WHITE SOX 4, TWINS 1 Austin Jackson hit a two-run, two-out single in the fourth inning, one pitch after just missing a grand slam, and Minnesota dropped to 0-7 with a loss in its home opener. Jose Quintana (1-0) completed six smooth innings with one run allowed for the White Sox, who have won five of their first seven. NATIONALS 6, BRAVES 4 Falling to 0-6 for the first time in nearly 30 years, Atlanta lost to host Washington, which overcame a shaky start by Max Scherzer. The Nationals’ Wilson Ramos helped out with four singles and two R.B.I. Scherzer (1-0), who went six innings, won despite allowing two-run doubles to A. J. Pierzynski and Nick Markakis in the first two innings.

Baseball
Justin Verlander
Detroit Tigers
Pittsburgh Pirates


Macy’s Will Cut 10,000 Jobs After Poor Holiday Sales

Abstract: Struggling with sagging sales over another crucial holiday shopping season, Macy’s announced on Wednesday that it was eliminating more than 10,000 jobs as part of a continuing plan to cut costs and close 100 stores. Macy’s, the country’s largest department store chain, said sales at its stores had fallen 2.1 percent in November and December compared with the same period in 2015. Terry J. Lundgren, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement that while the trend was “consistent with the lower end of our guidance, we had anticipated sales would be stronger.” He attributed the decline to “broader challenges” facing much of the retail industry. Consumers, who endured a long recession, have turned to low-cost chains like T. J. Maxx and shifted their spending away from brick-and-mortar stores for the convenience of online shopping with the retail giant Amazon. The announcement on Wednesday continued a trend for Macy’s, which announced last January that it was eliminating about 4,500 jobs in a major restructuring. Then, too, it said slumping holiday season sales had hurt its bottom line. The company, which now has 730 stores, announced in August that it would close 100 of them. On Wednesday, it identified 68 stores to be closed. The 158,000-square-foot store in the Douglaston neighborhood of Queens, which opened in 1981, will close. Stores at the Marketplace Mall in Rochester; at the Oakdale Mall in Johnson City, N.Y., near Binghamton; and at the Preakness Shopping Center in Wayne, N.J., will close, the company said. Of the 68, three were closed by the middle of 2016, 63 will close in the spring and two will be closed by the middle of 2017. Three other locations were sold or are to be sold. The company said it planned to close about 30 other stores over the next few years. Some employees may be offered positions at nearby stores, but Macy’s estimated that 3,900 workers would be affected by the closings. It also said it planned to restructure parts of its business, leading to a reduction of an additional 6,200 jobs. Over all, the job cuts represent about 7 percent of its work force. The company estimated that the changes would save about $550 million a year, starting in 2017. Mr. Lundgren said the company was closing stores that were “unproductive or are no longer robust shopping destinations because of changes in the local retail shopping landscape.” Other sites were being targeted for closing to take advantage of their highly valued real estate. The company, which owns the Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s brands, has been struggling with declining traffic in its stores, where the bulk of its business is still conducted. It plans to invest some of its savings in expanding its digital business. Macy’s said it now expected to earn $2.95 to $3.10 per share on an adjusted basis for its 2016 fiscal year, compared with its prior forecast of $3.15 to $3.40 per share. Shares in Macy’s fell nearly 10 percent to $32.30 in after-hours trading on Wednesday.


Sanchez Is the Starter for the Jets, Until He Isn’t

Abstract: FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Mark Sanchez , who seems to be everyone’s favorite target, took a spot in front of his locker, as he usually does on Wednesdays. He did not look, or sound, like a guy who was having a bad day, or month. “Start winning, and we’ll be all right,” he said with his customary cheerfulness. Sanchez had taken subtle public hits within hours from not only Woody Johnson, the Jets ’ owner, but also his coach and staunchest defender, Rex Ryan , who had made a lukewarm pronouncement: Sanchez is the team’s starter. This week. Barring injury. “And things happen,” Ryan said. Ryan did not elaborate on what that meant. But with the Jets at 2-3 and Sanchez not completing half his passes, Ryan was much less enthusiastic about Sanchez’s future than he was last Nov. 18, after a loss to the Denver Broncos (and Tim Tebow ). That day, Ryan said of Sanchez, “He’s going to be our quarterback for as long as I’m here, which I hope is a long, long time.” Ryan sounded a lot less sure about that Wednesday. His news conference started as it usually does, with an overview of the next opponent, the Indianapolis Colts, but then evolved into a discussion over semantics. At one point, a reporter pointed out to Ryan that if he did not want to make a similar pronouncement to last year’s, he would have to answer questions every week about Sanchez’s status. “I got no problems answering questions each week,” Ryan said. “You guys know me.” Another reporter said, “But you’ve gone from saying, ‘he’s our starter,’ to, ‘he’s our starter this week,’ ’ “He’s our starter. What do you want me to say?” Ryan said. “If he’s our starter this week, he’s our starter. You can go Answer A and Answer B and come up with C, I guess.” On Tuesday, the day after the Jets lost to the Houston Texans, Ryan said there was no question that Sanchez was the starter. But that was a day before Johnson said in an interview with CNBC that he wanted to keep Tebow on the team through the 2014 season, when his contract expires. Johnson, who appeared on the cable channel to talk primarily about Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, said of Tebow, “I think he’s going to be a real valuable asset in terms of helping us win games.” Johnson was also supportive of Sanchez, saying that he also had the ability to help the Jets win games. But when asked if that meant Sanchez would never be benched, Johnson replied, “Never is a long, long time period.” But there was some good news. Nick Mangold, the all-pro center who injured his right ankle in the third quarter of Monday’s loss, said he was “hopeful” — “I’m always hopeful,” he said — that he would be able to play Sunday. Dustin Keller, the tight end who has been Sanchez’s favorite receiver, is expected to return Sunday after missing the last four games with a hamstring injury. Stephen Hill, the rookie wide receiver, is also expected to return from a similar injury. Keller said of Sanchez, “Just because of the time Mark and I have spent together, we kind of have that communication that makes it so much easier.” Sanchez also did not seem bothered by answering a lot of questions about Ryan’s tepid endorsement. Sanchez said of Ryan, “He has faith in me,” and he added that he was not worried about losing his starting position. “I’m really not,” he said. He has ways to block out the criticism. “Stick around the building, put blinders on, put earplugs in and keep playing,” he said. There are more than sports channels to watch on television. “There’s a power button,” he added. Sanchez left the locker room, and shortly before it was closed to reporters, Tebow stepped in front of his locker and was surrounded by reporters. He said it meant a lot that Johnson had given him such a strong public endorsement. “I’m definitely someone who gets frustrated,” Tebow said, “but I know my role here right now.” But then, just a few minutes later, he said, “You never know what’s going to happen in the future.” EXTRA POINTS Matt Slauson, the Jets offensive lineman whose chop block Monday resulted in a season-ending knee injury to Houston linebacker Brian Cushing, said: “It’s unfortunate, but you know, it happens. I wasn’t trying to hurt him, obviously. I must have caught him by surprise. Things like that happen.”

New York Jets
Sanchez Mark
Johnson Woody
Ryan Rex
Tebow Tim
Football
Denver Broncos


A Westchester School for Those Who Want to Train in the Circus Arts

Abstract: Jenna Kavalchuk is a cardiac sonographer with the VA Hudson Valley Health Care System in Castle Point. She is also a daredevil, whose aerial feats inspire strangers to stop and shoot videos of her on their iPhones. They did so at the September installment of downtown Tarrytown’s Third Friday Street Fair , where Ms. Kavalchuk, dressed in a purple leotard and black tights, hung upside-down from a sky-high rig hung with yards of purple silk. To the rhythms of Rose McGowan’s version of “You Belong to Me,” Ms. Kavalchuk glided, aloft, through a series of gymnastic tumbles. When she dismounted onto a small black mat on the Washington Street asphalt, she was met with applause and wolf whistles. It was her first time performing an aerial show. “I was actually very nervous before I got up there,” said Ms. Kavulchuk, 28, of Suffern, after her two-minute routine for an audience of about 100, made up mostly of families with young children. “But I think I did really well. I concentrated and I didn’t make any mistakes, like getting caught in the fabric. By the time I got up there, I wasn’t nervous at all. It felt great.” Her sense of triumph, she said, was made possible by Westchester Circus Arts , a 2-year-old Tarrytown school offering instruction on everything found under the classic big top, from tightrope walking to the trapeze. Ms. Kavalchuk got the idea to try aerial performing after watching traditional burlesque shows in Manhattan. She has been taking aerial performing classes since March. “I love it. I’ve gotten very fit very quickly,” she said. Westchester Circus Arts, operating in the gymnasium at the Y Early Learning Center, part of the Family Y.M.C.A. at Tarrytown , was formed in 2012 by Hilary Sweeney, 33, of Nyack, a former ballerina. She started dancing at age 5 in her hometown, Oxford, Mass., but discovered while in a pre-professional training program with the Boston Ballet that her body was ill-suited for such a career. Image Mikayla Nolan is a performer from Westchester Circus Arts. Credit Richard Getler “Specifically, it was my hips. I was born with my hips turned in, and I had to have both my legs broken and reset at birth to get me to walk straight,” she said. “Ballet is an art form that requires perfect turnout. Even though I was yearning to do it professionally, I never really could.” Then, in her early 20s, she saw a Cirque du Soleil performance. “It was ballet in the air. For me, it was transformational,” she said. “In the circus, you didn’t have to fit a mold. You could make your own mold.” Ms. Sweeney did not run away and join the circus after that inspirational show. Instead, she graduated with a degree in neuroscience from Manhattanville College in Purchase in 2003, and went to work as a flavor chemist for PepsiCo in Valhalla. She developed her aerial skills through private training with professionals in Manhattan, Montreal and San Francisco and performed in shows such as Cirque Le Masque’s “Carnivale,” and an Off Broadway production of “Above the Belt.” In 2008 she began moonlighting as an aerial instructor at the Family Y.M.C.A. at Tarrytown. “I was doing so much teaching and aerial performing on the side that it sort of took over my life,” she said. “I made a decision to leave the cubicle, which I was very wary of doing because there are so many unknowns. And a job with Pepsi is like a golden handcuff. But it was the best decision I ever made.” The community’s response to the classes, which are geared to everyone from kindergartners hoping to master juggling to adults who want to learn aerial skills, has been enthusiastic. Image Ms. Nolan in Tarrytown on Sept. 19. Credit Richard Getler “This was my second year doing summer camps, and both years we were full,” with 40 campers, ages 5 to 18, per session, some traveling from as far away as Connecticut and Peekskill. “It hasn’t been a hard sell,” said Ms. Sweeney, who runs the school with a co-director, Carlo Pellegrini, also of Nyack. Mr. Pellegrini, 62, is a former ringmaster with the Big Apple Circus and the director and co-founder of Amazing Grace Circus , a nonprofit Tarrytown circus specializing in youth outreach. Both he and Ms. Sweeney teach at Westchester Circus Arts. Ms. Sweeney teaches aerial silks, which she said is the most popular class among adults. Mr. Pellegrini leads classes for children and teenagers, including “circus gym,” a program with clowning and acrobatics for children five to eight, and “variety arts,” including juggling, unicycle, stilts and other on-the-ground-tricks for children nine through 12. Four more instructors lead classes in trapeze, acrobatics and lyra , which involves a suspended spinning hoop used in aerial shows. Both Ms. Sweeney and Mr. Pellegrini offer private lessons; Ms. Sweeney in aerial arts and Mr. Pellegrini in juggling, clowning, vaudeville and human pyramid-making. Classes, though, are not the only way to experience Westchester Circus Arts. “Nevermore,” a circus-theater show created by Ms. Sweeney and based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” will have its premiere in Sleepy Hollow, in a tent on Horan’s Landing, Oct. 25 and 26. At the recent Tarrytown street festival, Mr. Pellegrini assembled and monitored the aerial rig, an A-shaped structure that looks like a swing set without the swings, while Ms. Sweeney played M.C. In addition to Ms. Kavalchuk, a handful of students from the school’s “teen troupe” performed routines using the silks and lyra. Image Carlo Pellegrini, a former ringmaster with the Big Apple Circus, teaches at Westchester Circus Arts. Credit Richard Getler Among them was Tess Weitzner, 19, of Sleepy Hollow, whose feats of acrobatic derring-do using the lengths of purple silk left Jenny Mirchandani wide-eyed. Jenny, a 7-year-old from Cortlandt Manor, watched from the sidewalk with her mother, Tina. “This is the coolest gymnastics I’ve ever seen,” Jenny said. “I mean ballet.” Her reaction was a familiar one to Ms. Weitzner, who has performed with Westchester Circus Arts at several Third Fridays events. “What I love about aerial is that it combines creativity with athleticism. It’s graceful, and to me it’s more creative than gymnastics,” she said. Since she was in seventh grade, Ms. Weitzner has been training with Ms. Sweeney, but her fascination with the circus dates to a circus summer camp she attended at Purchase College as a 7-year-old. “I’ve just always loved the idea of it,” she said. “And the circus is an incredibly tight-knit community. No one is hopeless in the circus. Even if you can’t do a split on the silks, you can still learn to juggle or learn a clown act.” Ms. Sweeney puts the allure of it in another way: “There’s a sense of doing the impossible that’s innate to the circus. A sense of amazement. Everybody wants that feeling, and we want to provide it.”

Westchester Circus Arts
Acrobats
Circus
Tarrytown NY
Art
Westchester
Hilary Sweeney


Nook Prices Cut as Barnes & Noble Expects New Kindle Fire From Amazon

Abstract: Barnes & Noble cut prices on three models of its Nook e-reader and tablet devices on Sunday, ahead of the peak of back-to-school shopping and amid speculation that its rival, Amazon.com, was preparing to introduce a new version of its Kindle Fire tablet. Barnes & Noble, the largest American bookstore chain, said it had reduced the retail price of its Nook tablet with 16 gigabytes of memory to $199, from $249. The company also shaved $20 off its eight-gigabyte model, to $179. And Barnes & Noble lowered the price of its Nook Color by $20, to $149. The new prices went into effect on Sunday. The Nook has given the chain 27 percent of the American market for e-books, Barnes & Noble has said. Amazon is the market leader with about 60 percent of e-book and e-reader sales. Despite the popularity of the Nook devices, Barnes & Noble has had to cut prices a number of times to compete with Amazon. Earlier price reductions ate into Barnes & Noble’s earnings. The company, which has bet its future on e-books, reported lower-than-expected revenue in its fourth fiscal quarter and said Nook revenue fell 10.5 percent. Signs at one Barnes & Noble store in Manhattan already reflected the new prices on Sunday.

Barnes & Noble Nook
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
E-Books and Readers


Ex-Racehorses Starve as Charity Fails in Mission to Care for Them

Abstract: One of the largest private organizations in the world dedicated to caring for former racehorses has been so slow or delinquent in paying for the upkeep of the more than 1,000 horses under its care that scores have wound up starved and neglected, some fatally, according to interviews and inspection reports. The group, the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, is based in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., just miles from the famous racetrack that annually hosts one of thoroughbred racing’s premier meets. For years, it has received millions in donations from some pillars of the industry. But over the past two years, according to the foundation’s financial disclosure documents, it has been operating at a deficit, and as a result has not reliably been paying the 25 farms it contracts with to oversee the retired horses. For example, at the 4-H Farm in Oklahoma, inspectors last month could find only 47 of the 63 retired horses that had been assigned to it. Many of those were starving. The rest had died, probably of neglect, inspectors concluded. Last week, at a Kentucky farm that is also supposed to receive money from the foundation, 34 horses were found in “poor” or “emaciated” condition, inspectors found. One horse had to be euthanized because of malnutrition. It is unclear how many members of the foundation’s blue-chip board of trustees might have been aware of the deteriorating quality of care the horses were receiving. But the foundation’s biggest benefactor — the estate of the breeder and owner Paul Mellon — in recent years had become concerned about the growth of the foundation’s herd after hearing the complaints of caretakers, and it investigated. The estate, which in 2001 established a $5 million endowment for the foundation and subsequently contributed $2 million more, last December requested that Stacey Huntington, a veterinarian based in Springfield, Mo., evaluate the foundation’s herd. So far, Dr. Huntington, along with a local veterinarian in each location, has examined more than 700 horses at more than a dozen farms from Oklahoma to Kentucky and South Carolina. She found many examples of neglect and lack of support from the T.R.F. in her visits to the farms. “We have dug ourselves a big hole financially, and we’re still behind,” the foundation’s president, George Grayson, said. “It’s been a struggle to keep up with the costs associated with a large and aging horse population, at a time when the economy and giving is down. Everybody on the board takes any allegation seriously, and anything less than positive circumstances for the horses are unacceptable. When we’ve been made aware of issues, we have responded quickly, and we will on this.” The cases of neglect, while noteworthy because of the prominence of the organization overseeing the horses, are only the latest embarrassment for an industry that remains vexed by one of its most fundamental challenges: how to humanely look out for horses that no longer have any value at the racetrack or in the breeding shed. The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation was founded in 1984 to save racehorses no longer able to compete on the racetrack “from possible neglect, abuse and slaughter,” its mission statement says. It has been embraced by some of the biggest forces in the sport: the Jockey Club has given the foundation nearly $250,000 over the past two years, and individual owners — like Mike Repole, the co-founder of Glaceau water and the owner of the current Kentucky Derby favorite, Uncle Mo — have given sizable contributions as well. Over the years, the foundation’s board has included some of the sport’s most influential owners, and the farms it contracts with have been homes to many of the horses those owners have bred and campaigned. Beam Us Up, an accomplished racehorse bred by Richard Santulli, the former chief executive of NetJets, was recently removed from one of the contract farms because of neglect. Santulli’s wife, Peggy, is on the T.R.F. board. The findings of the veterinarian hired by the Mellon estate, Dr. Huntington, moved the estate’s trustees to send the farms money for things as basic as food. She found that some 25 percent of the horses have required some kind of urgent care, which the Mellon estate has provided, costing it “tens of thousands” of dollars, said Ted Terry, one of its trustees. Dr. Huntington found that the foundation’s education of the caretakers and oversight of their farms had been poor. At one farm, Dr. Huntington said, the horses were being fed cattle feed that contained a toxic element. “The horses are getting the short end of the stick from this group that advertises itself as advocates of horses,” Dr. Huntington said. The most dramatic instance of neglect discovered so far, she said, was at the 4-H Farm in Okmulgee, Okla., where the owners, Alan and Janice Hudgins, would not let Dr. Huntington onto their property to inspect T.R.F. horses until the foundation gave them $20,000, a partial payment of what was owed them for taking care of 63 horses since 2005. They also forced the foundation to sign a pledge not to prosecute them for the condition of the horses. When the horses were released, the 47 survivors were in such poor condition that Dr. Huntington filed a report with the Okmulgee County sheriff’s office. Her report included photographs of the malnourished horses, three of them considered starving. Nearly all of them needed urgent care. Ms. Hudgins said her farm had kept horses for the foundation since 2005, but in recent years it fell into a pattern of falling behind in payments. In a tough economy with rising fuel and feed costs, Ms. Hudgins said her family got tired of having to settle for less than they were owed by the foundation. She said they had done the best they could with the horses, and had informed the T.R.F. that some older horses had died. The foundation ran a $1.2 million deficit in 2009, according to its most recent tax filings with the federal government, three times the total in its previous filing. Its inability to pay the agreed costs for the care of its horses severed a number of relationships with farms, including Claybank Farm in Lexington, Ky., which cared for up to 80 horses. Interviews with farm owners, as well as e-mail correspondence they provided, showed the foundation was aware of its deepening financial straits — occasionally taking horses from farms where they had been well cared for and placing them elsewhere on the cheap. Last September, the T.R.F. owed Out2Pasture Farms in Jamestown, Mo., more than $43,000, The farm, run by two University of Missouri professors, Zachary and Robin Hurst-March, is one of the nation’s most highly regarded sanctuaries for thoroughbreds. When the couple pressed for payment, the T.R.F. asked them to reduce their per diem to $3 a day and eventually removed 13 of their horses. “I was being emotionally blackmailed to lower my per diem, and was the subject of retribution because I questioned the care of the horses,” said Mrs. Hurst-Marsh, who is owed $10,000. When Gayle England, whose farm in Stroud, Okla., is also highly regarded as a special-care facility, complained not only of the chronic slow pay but the general lack of regard for the farms and the horses, 26 T.R.F. horses were taken from her. Last month, some of the horses in the worst shape were taken from other foundation farms and returned to the Hurst-Marsh farm and Ms. England. In fact, one of the 14 horses moved to England’s farm with the help and funding of the Mellon Estate had to be put down. “They were making their administrative payroll this whole time, but the horses they were suffering,” Ms. England said. “They need to be held accountable.” Mr. Terry, a Mellon estate trustee, said he still does not know what went wrong. “We don’t know if it was bad judgment, taking on too many horses or bad decisions made internally,” he said. “Eventually, we’re going to have to ask ourselves if we are throwing good money after bad.”

Horse Racing
Philanthropy
Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation
Cruelty to Animals
Malnutrition


Tech Leaders and Obama Find Shared Problem: Fading Public Trust

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama met with top technology industry executives on Tuesday to discuss two seemingly distinct controversies: a faulty health care website, and the digital surveillance practices of the National Security Agency. The meeting started with an announcement by Mr. Obama that he was reaching into the ranks of Microsoft, the software giant, to select Kurt DelBene as the next person to run HealthCare.gov. But the focus quickly turned from the health care site to the concerns of Apple, Microsoft, Google and other technology companies about the spying efforts, the latest illustration of the strained relationship between an industry and a White House that had long been close. For months, leading technology companies have been buffeted by revelations about government spying on their customers’ data, which they believe are undermining confidence in their services. The Obama administration has been blasted for the botched rollout of the health site, which prevented many people from signing up for health insurance in the first weeks of the site’s introduction, but seem to have been largely repaired since then. The meeting on Tuesday brought those two issues together into a common forum, and at least partly in the public eye. “Both sides are saying, ‘My biggest issue right now is trust,’ ” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and chief executive of CloudFlare, an Internet start-up. “If you’re on the White House side, the issue is they’re getting beaten up because they’re seen as technically incompetent. On the other side, the tech industry needs the White House right now to give a stern rebuke to the N.S.A. and put in real procedures to rein in a program that feels like it’s out of control.” The meeting of Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and 15 executives from the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo came a week after those companies and other giants, usually archrivals, united in a public campaign calling for reform in government surveillance practices. On Monday, a federal district judge ruled that the N.S.A. sweep of data from all Americans’ phone calls was unconstitutional , a ruling that added import to the discussions. “We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the president our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform,” the executives said in a statement afterward. The chief executives invited to the White House included Timothy D. Cook of Apple, Dick Costolo of Twitter, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Eric E. Schmidt of Google, Brian L. Roberts of Comcast, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, Randall Stephenson of AT&T and Reed Hastings of Netflix. Also there were Bradford L. Smith, executive vice president and general counsel of Microsoft, and Erika Rottenberg, vice president and general counsel of LinkedIn. The exchange, which both the White House and attendees from the technology industry said was cordial, lasted about two hours, more than twice as long as scheduled. Image Kurt DelBene, a longtime Microsoft executive, was appointed Tuesday to run HealthCare.gov. Credit Paul Sakuma/Associated Press But even before the meeting, there were some differences about where the discussion would be headed, especially as the White House indicated that the top item on the agenda for discussion be improvements to HealthCare.gov. “From our perspective, this was all about the N.S.A.,” said one person from the tech industry briefed on the meeting who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about it. “We all want Healthcare.gov to succeed, but it is not key to our business.” But Mr. Obama was also there to name Mr. DelBene, a longtime Microsoft executive, as the new fix-it manager of Healthcare.gov. Mr. DelBene, who joined Microsoft in 1992, was president of the company’s lucrative Office division for nearly three years. Mr. DelBene announced his retirement from Microsoft earlier this year, and his last day at the company was Monday. He starts his new job Wednesday, succeeding the initial manager, Jeffrey D. Zients. In February, a month later than initially planned, Mr. Zients will shift to his previously announced job as Mr. Obama’s chief White House economic adviser, the director of the National Economic Council. Mr. DelBene will stay at least through the first half of 2014; his wife, Suzan DelBene, also was a Microsoft executive but was elected in 2012 to Congress as a Democrat representing the Washington State district where Microsoft has its headquarters. The discussion on Tuesday quickly turned to the controversy over the N.S.A.’s intelligence-gathering, which has mounted since leaks by the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden began emerging last summer. More recent revelations that the N.S.A. is accessing data from Google and Yahoo services without their knowledge was also discussed, according to technology executives briefed on the meeting who asked not to be named. The technology companies raised some specific concerns about that the government’s spying efforts. Several executives, including Ms. Mayer, the chief executive of Yahoo, expressed concerned that foreign countries may now decide to prevent all the user data generated by users in a foreign country from flowing to the United States, the people said. One such law has been proposed in Brazil. The executives said these laws would significantly hurt their businesses and America’s start-up economy. The administration listened to executives’ concerns, but made no commitments, these people said. The one topic the administration seemed most sympathetic to was the web companies’ call for greater transparency around government surveillance requests, according to these people. It was the one issue nearly everyone in the room seemed most aligned on. The administration told executives that government action related to N.S.A. surveillance would happen in the new year, but there was no indication of what that meant and more precisely when it would occur. “This was an opportunity for the president to hear from C.E.O.’s directly,” the White House said in a statement about the meeting, adding, “The president made clear his belief in an open, free and innovative Internet and listened to the group’s concerns and recommendations, and made clear that we will consider their input as well as the input of other outside stakeholders as we finalize our review of signals intelligence programs.” The meeting reflected a shift in the tech sector’s once-close relationship with Mr. Obama, whose 2008 election many industry executives generously supported. After the troubled start of the health care site, the Obama administration tapped a small group of engineers, who took leave from various technology companies to help with the effort. That group included Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer at Google who had also worked on Mr. Obama’s campaign. “The government really needs the tech industry to achieve its policy goals,” said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School. “They tried on their own with the Washington version of tech and we saw what happened.”

Government Surveillance
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Barack Obama
NSA
Kurt D DelBene
HealthCare.gov


Predators Send Rangers to Fourth Loss in Five Games

Abstract: James Neal scored twice, Mike Ribeiro had three assists and the Predators held off the Rangers, 5-3, in Nashville on Monday night. Filip Forsberg, Craig Smith and Ryan Ellis also scored for the Predators, who won for the third time in four games. Roman Josi added two assists, and Pekka Rinne had 26 saves. Jesper Fast, Rick Nash and J. T. Miller had goals for the Rangers, who lost for the fourth time in five games. Forsberg scored the first goal with 1 minute 4 seconds left in the first period. With Nashville on a power play, Josi sent a pass from the right boards to Forsberg on the left face-off dot, where he sent a one-timer by goaltender Henrik Lundqvist on the stick side. Fast tied the game at 6:59 of the second. Standing in the low slot, he deflected Dan Girardi’s shot from the right point between Rinne’s pads. Girardi returned to the Rangers’ lineup after missing five games with a small crack in his right kneecap. Nashville regained the lead at 13:48 of the second on Neal’s 14th of the season. From the high slot, he beat Lundqvist with a wrist shot that glanced off the left post. Smith gave Nashville a two-goal lead at 7:34 of the third when he tipped home Josi’s shot from the high slot. That goal came just 2:16 after Forsberg appeared to make it 3-1 at 5:18 with a shot from behind the Rangers’ net, but the goal was overturned when the Rangers challenged and it was ruled that Smith had interfered with Lundqvist. Ellis scored at 9:52 of the third on Nashville’s second power-play goal of the night. Neal scored his second of the game at 11:13. Lundqvist was relieved by Antti Raanta following Neal’s second goal. Lundqvist made 30 saves on 35 shots against. Nash scored an unassisted goal at 13:20, and Miller added a goal at 16:02. Rangers defenseman Kevin Klein, a former Predator, returned to the lineup after missing 11 games with an oblique injury. CAPITALS 2, SABRES 0 Braden Holtby made 31 saves, and Alex Ovechkin scored his 18th goal to lead visiting Washington over Buffalo for its eighth straight win. The Capitals, who lead the Eastern Conference, improved to 27-6-2, the best start in franchise history. Sabres forward Evander Kane played for the first time since The Buffalo News reported that the Buffalo police were investigating a sex-crime allegation against him. Kane spoke to reporters at a morning skate Monday for about 30 seconds, saying that he had done nothing wrong and was looking forward to having his name cleared. CANADIENS 4, LIGHTNING 3 Max Pacioretty delivered in the third round of a shootout as Montreal ended a six-game losing streak with a victory over host Tampa Bay. Brian Flynn also scored in the shootout for the Canadiens, who got goals from Tomas Plekanec, Alex Galchenyuk and Dale Weise. WILD 3, RED WINGS 1 Mikko Koivu scored twice, Devan Dubnyk made 28 saves in a surprise appearance, and Minnesota beat visiting Detroit. Dubnyk sustained a cut on his arm in practice Sunday and required stitches. He was expected to sit, but Darcy Kuemper was scratched with an upper-body injury about an hour before the game.

Ice hockey
Alex Ovechkin
Washington Capitals
Rangers
Nashville Predators


Knicks’ Playoff Slump Finally Ends

Abstract: For all the baggage inherited and hauled around, all the mishaps endured or missteps taken, the Knicks deserved one. If for no other reason that they showed up battered and bandaged, they merited an endgame buzzer that put a bounce in their steps and teeth in their smiles. They earned the streamers that fell from the Madison Square Garden rafters, a spontaneous celebration of sheer — and mere — survival. “I know what it’s like to be a winner in the playoffs — I can finally say that,” the second-year Knick Landry Fields said after Miami’s Dwyane Wade misfired on what would have been a series-ending 3-pointer from the right corner and the Knicks broke their 11-year playoff victory drought, 89-87. “It feels good.” It also seems almost inconceivable that a big-market franchise that spends as much money as the Knicks have from year to year could go so long without winning a measly postseason game. In the N.B.A. only the Charlotte Bobcats have failed to notch a playoff victory in that time and they have had the excuse of not existing before 2004 and more recently being run on a shoestring tied to Michael Jordan’s Nikes. The Knicks had last outscored a playoff opponent — the Toronto Raptors — on April 29, 2001. They had lost 13 straight until the Heat , leading the Eastern Conference series 3-0, contributed 11 missed free throws and 41 percent shooting to a philanthropic cause known as the long-suffering Knicks fan. Think about it: that last Knicks playoff victory came before 9/11, before the start of the war in Afghanistan. The drought easily exceeded America’s other marathon military action in Iraq. It consumed the better part of three presidential terms. It preceded Apple’s unveiling of the iPod in October 2001 and extended beyond the invention of the iPad . The Los Angeles Lakers won four championships between Knicks playoff victories and the San Antonio Spurs claimed three. The New England Patriots’ three-title dynasty in the N.F.L. happened and Eli Manning arrived in New Jersey in 2004 and won two titles for the Giants. Alex Rodriguez began a three-year run with the Texas Rangers the same month of the Knicks’ previous playoff triumph and has since played what feels like a lifetime — this being his ninth season — with the Yankees. And through all of the head-spinning events that spanned the globe, through so much dysfunction that enveloped the Knicks from regimes fronted by Scott Layden, then Isiah Thomas, then Donnie Walsh, Knicks fans kept showing up, filling the building. They have dealt with continuing change, embarrassing behavioral episodes, outrageous ticket price increases and other miseries foisted on them by the Family Dolan while waiting for something good to happen, for the streamers to come down. Yes, of course, fans had championship aspirations more in mind. But considering the alternatives, they took what they could get early Sunday night. They watched Carmelo Anthony finally finish his one-man show with a flourish and with 41 points that sent the Knicks off to Miami for Game 5 on Wednesday night, more crippled than ever but contemplating a miracle. Easy to please, the fans forgave Amar’e Stoudemire’s attempted smackdown of a fire extinguisher casing after Game 2 in Miami and roared for his 20 points and 10 rebounds as at least partial redemption. They chanted “Baron Davis” as the team’s latest casualty — a Knick for all of four months and change — was carried off on a stretcher and out of the series with a dislocated kneecap. Down to Mike Bibby, who delivered a clutch 3-pointer late in the game, at the point, the fans readied themselves for the next news cycle preoccupation, a possible return of Jeremy Lin, or Linsanity itself, to take more heat to South Beach. “He seems to be moving well, real well,” Fields said of Lin’s recent workouts, already stoking the story. “I hope so, although it’s up to the doctors and him.” Knicks fans will wait three days with bated breath. They will interpret Wade’s inability to exploit the defensive switch that left the vulnerable Stoudemire on him — “I lost control of the ball and had to take it out for 3,” Wade said — as a sign of something, anything, that might bring them back to the Garden on Friday night. Maybe the Heat will start to hear footsteps or have a player go down; that seems to be in the air this playoff season. Wade, for one, had his ankles in ice after Sunday’s game. Bottom line: don’t tell Knicks fans — that ever loyal band of wishful thinkers and Anthony worshipers — that no N.B.A. team has ever recovered from a 0-3 playoff deficit. Not after they finally left a playoff game without having to curse the fates while finding the rationalization to still care. “It was a great win for us and our fans to get over the hump,” Stoudemire said. “To finally get over the hump now and win a game today is great.” It was now or not until next year for the Knicks, several of whom won’t be back, and their fans, most of whom certainly will return just as they have season after deflating season. They all earned the win Sunday. But all things considered, the paying sufferers in the stands deserved it more.

Basketball
New York Knicks
Playoff Games
Stoudemire Amar'e
Anthony Carmelo
Miami Heat