Injured Vitalia Diatchenko Shows Retirement Has Its Perks

Abstract: Vitalia Diatchenko’s hobbled performance Monday night against Serena Williams — which ended when she retired in the second set with a foot injury — stole some energy from the opening night of the United States Open and provoked more debate about how award money is handled for injured players. By the time Diatchenko began to serve in the second game of the match, it was clear that something was amiss. Unable to push off with her left leg, Diatchenko used only her upper body to serve, hitting halfheartedly and erratically. On return, she was little better, barely able to move for most balls. The crowd, eager to see a piece of history as Williams continued her attempt at a Grand Slam, quickly grew displeased with the uncompetitive match. Diatchenko retired after eight games, down by 0-6, 0-2. Of the 37 points played, she won five — four of them on unforced errors by Williams. After the match, Diatchenko arrived to her news conference with a support boot on her left foot and said that she had felt fine until sustaining an injury to her foot in prematch sprints, which she aggravated early in the match. Image Had Diatchenko retired before her match, she would have forfeited $39,500. Credit Kathy Willens/Associated Press If Diatchenko had withdrawn before the match, she would have forfeited the $39,500 that goes to players who lose in the first round of the Open. With payouts swelling at Grand Slam events, including those for lower-ranked players, many believe that a player is entitled to the minimum prize money simply by virtue of having earned a spot in the draw by her ranking. The $39,500 Diatchenko received for taking the court Monday will be a significant addition to her total earnings this year, which stood at $182,565. The issue of players’ deserving prize money even when unable to compete has been raised more frequently as checks have grown larger, and it escalated at the 2014 Australian Open, when Polona Hercog retired after playing just six points with a pre-existing injury. John Isner, who played after Hercog that day and also retired, suggested a split between a withdrawing player and the lucky loser who takes his or her place. “In a situation like that, maybe a rule could be put into place so that the person who pulls out gets compensated,” Isner said. “I don’t know, 75 percent of the first-round prize money, maybe 80, maybe even 100 percent of it. I think, at this point, a lucky loser is just happy to get in. I would be in favor of a rule change there. I don’t know about that girl in front of me, but she earned her spot in the main draw.” When asked her thoughts on the predicament for injured players, Williams initially made it clear that she was not interested in pursuing the topic. “I told you all in Cincinnati that I’m not answering no questions that involve controversy,” Williams said before settling into a more considered answer. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t think about that. I mean, you play to get compensated. You go to work to get compensated. I guess if you have a sick day in regular life, you still get compensated, so I don’t know.” Though hers was of the highest profile, Diatchenko was one of 12 players (two women, 10 men; seven on Monday, five on Tuesday) to retire during the first round of the tournament by Tuesday evening, a U.S. Open record during one round of the event. Image Marina Erakovic after retiring against Simona Halep. Twelve players retired during the first round, a U.S. Open record. Credit Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Some, like Diatchenko, were in obvious discomfort from the early stages of matches. Aleksandr Nedovyesov appeared immediately imperiled by a shoulder injury in his match against Lleyton Hewitt, losing the first set, 6-0, before retiring in the third set. Not all retirements were brought on by pre-existing conditions. Thanasi Kokkinakis retired Tuesday afternoon while struggling in the hot, humid conditions through the fourth and fifth set of his match against 12th-seeded Richard Gasquet. Aljaz Bedene was caught off guard when his first-round opponent, Ernests Gulbis, retired with an apparent right wrist injury in the middle of the third set. “I was quite surprised,” Bedene said. “But I didn’t say, ‘Wait for the physio to come.’ I was quite happy.”

Tennis
Vitalia Diatchenko
Serena Williams
Sports injury
US Open Tennis


Oil Company Sasol Delays Huge Louisiana Project as Prices Slide

Abstract: HOUSTON — In the biggest retrenchment in the United States as oil prices fall , Sasol has delayed an expansive $14 billion project in southwestern Louisiana to make diesel out of natural gas . The project, which had not yet been approved by the company, was to create at least 1,200 permanent jobs and 7,000 construction jobs, and begin production in 2018. But with the price of oil down by more than 50 percent since June, the highly speculative, and expensive, project was economically impractical. The announcement was the most extreme example of how oil companies are delaying, or canceling outright, some of their more ambitious projects as the price of oil plunges. Total, the French oil giant, has announced a 10 percent reduction in capital investments, including in American shale fields. And Hess has said it will halve the number of rigs it deploys in the North Dakota Bakken shale field, where oil is more expensive to extract than in traditional wells. “The shock of the price collapse has worn off, and the budget-cutting knives are out,” said Daniel Yergin, an energy historian. “People are going through a process of real re-examination, reflecting what they see as the new tougher reality of prices.” Worldwide, investments in petroleum projects will be cut an estimated $100 billion, or 15 percent, this year, according to the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris. The Sasol project depended on two dynamics in the energy markets: oil prices remaining high and natural gas prices staying low, because the conversion process for producing diesel is expensive and highly complex. Now any diesel produced by the plant would almost surely cost more than diesel produced by conventional refiners. In a short statement, Sasol, a South African company known for its boldness, said it had not decided to terminate the project indefinitely. But it added, “As a result of the ongoing capital investment reprioritization exercise, Sasol has decided to delay the final investment decision.” The announcement said the decision was part of “a comprehensive plan to conserve cash in response to lower international oil prices.” No sign suggests the price of oil will snap back soon with the global market oversaturated by nearly two million barrels a day. On Wednesday, global oil benchmark prices swooned again, falling between 2 percent and 4 percent, after the Energy Department reported record domestic stockpiles of crude. The steep drop was reflected in the quarterly earnings reported Wednesday by Hess, the first major oil company to report results this season. With revenues dropping in the fourth quarter by 19 percent to $2.53 billion, the company posted a net loss of $8 million compared with a profit of $1.93 billion a year ago (which included after tax gains from asset sales of $1.34 billion). “Our whole focus here is to maintain our financial strength and flexibility while still preserving our long-term growth options,” John B. Hess, the chief executive, said in a conference call with analysts. “But we do believe, with the decrease in investment programs for the industry and the consequent leveling out of production growth, oil prices will recover starting next year.” Cenovus Energy, a major independent Canadian producer, announced it was slashing its 2015 investment budget by roughly 15 percent, or more than $560 million, by suspending most of its conventional drilling in Saskatchewan and south Alberta. And Weatherford International, a large oil services company, announced it was eliminating its chief operating officer position to flatten its management structure and cut costs. But the Sasol move is the single largest investment cut or delay in the recent downturn, at least in the United States. Having already built smaller plants in Qatar and South Africa, Sasol had intended for its new plant in Westlake, La., to produce 96,000 barrels of fuel a day using the “gas-to-liquids” technology, known as G.T.L., conceived by German scientists in the 1920s to produce liquid fuels without using oil. Only a handful of gas-to-liquids plants operate commercially globally, in Malaysia, South Africa and Qatar. “In order for the G.T.L. technology to pay, it has to use inexpensive natural gas and sell into a high-priced market, the $100-a-barrel oil market we have grown accustomed to the last few years,” said Don Hertzmark, an international energy consultant who has worked on gas-to-liquids and other global natural gas projects for three decades. “That cost advantage has collapsed, taking with it the profit potential for G.T.L. in the United States at least for now.” The gas-to-liquids technology has a mixed record at best. The largest plant in operation, Royal Dutch Shell’s Pearl plant, north of Doha, Qatar, cost the leviathan sum of $19 billion, more than three times its original projected cost, and was plagued with unexpected maintenance problems. BP and ConocoPhillips built and briefly operated demonstration plants in Alaska and Oklahoma, but stopped short of full development of the technology. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips announced plans to build giant plants in Qatar, but backed out, putting their capital instead into terminals to export liquefied natural gas.

Sasol
Oil and Gasoline
Offshore drilling
Price


A.I.G.’s Essential Asset, Its Brand, Is Tarnished

Abstract: The government’s fourth round of assistance to the American International Group this month was a play for time — for languishing markets to rebound, for pockets to fill up again and for buyers to emerge for the sturdy insurance companies under A.I.G.’s tattered corporate umbrella. Only when those insurance companies are sold will there be money to repay American taxpayers. But after the latest uproar, time does not look like A.I.G.’s friend. The problem now is not a toxic spiral of derivatives like the one that crippled the company last fall, but the damage done to A.I.G.’s brand, first by the financial troubles and then by the recent wave of hearings, subpoenas, late-night television jokes and even a bus tour past executives’ homes. A strong brand is something no insurer can afford to put at risk. Insurance companies trade, more than anything else, on their image of strength and stability. “Why would we do business with a company that’s constantly in the news, even if the ratings are still supposedly O.K.?” wondered Greg Theis, a financial planner with Legacy Investment Services in Homer Glen, Ill. He helps 55-to-70-year-olds select variable annuities from a bewildering array of carriers. “If they look at the brochure and at the top it says ‘A.I.G.,’ who’s going to want to explain all that?” Mr. Theis asked. “It’s a liability. A little bit dangerous.” The giant insurance portfolio of A.I.G. looks less like it is being salvaged by the government than being savaged, as competitors try to exploit the company’s weakness and as customers grow wary of the very name. And the result at A.I.G. suggests the potential pitfalls should the government move in, as some observers contend is necessary, and forcefully take control of businesses in an array of industries that need financing to survive, be they banks or automakers. Money may not be flying out the door anymore at A.I.G., but it is not flying in either, in new business or renewals. The company said in a regulatory filing that it took in 22 percent less in premiums in the last three months of 2008 after its federal rescue than it did in the last three months of 2007. It also said that its ability to retain existing business had improved somewhat in early 2009, but not enough to catch up with the 2008 level — and that was before the public relations bashing of the past week. Declining revenue presents the company’s government overseers with a quandary: They decided not to sell its trophy life insurance subsidiaries until the economy improved, when prospective buyers would presumably be willing and able to pay more. But if A.I.G.’s customers drift away in the meantime, then the value of those businesses may fade as well. “There’s kind of a Catch-22,” Mr. Theis said. Although states have a track record of unwinding insolvent insurance companies in a way that protects policy holders, the federal government is guiding this one, without a clear overseer from the Federal Reserve or the Treasury Department. The federal agencies are mainly trying to avoid a shock to the financial system that could arise from the collapse of the derivatives portion of the company, not focusing on how to shore up or sell the insurance businesses, which the states have always supervised. Edward M. Liddy , the chief executive installed by the Federal Reserve at A.I.G. last fall and a longtime insurance executive, described the problem to a House Financial Services subcommittee last week. Several members of the subcommittee asked him whether he had any idea how long it would be before he could sell the insurance subsidiaries and pay back the taxpayers. He said it might take two to three years. “But it’s very dependent upon what happens to market conditions around the world,” he said somberly, repeating the point several times over his six-hour session with the panel. “Over time, people just get ‘A.I.G. fatigue,’ ” he said. “A buyer of insurance just doesn’t want to deal with: ‘Is A.I.G. bankrupt? Are they solvent? Are they going to be around? Why did they pay those bonuses?’ “And if I can’t turn this situation around,” he added, “we run the risk that business does atrophy.” Competitors spotted opportunities to poach A.I.G.’s customers just after its crisis last fall. ACE USA raised the limit on its professional liability insurance coverage to $50 million from $25 million and advertised “the importance of partnering with a financially strong insurer.” Zurich North America speeded up the introduction of pollution liability insurance — the sort of coverage A.I.G. pioneered. Competitors are also keen on A.I.G.’s prime turf in Asia. “The whole Asian market is where everybody’s running to,” said Andrew Barile, an insurance consultant in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. “They see millions and millions of people that all have to buy auto insurance and homeowners’ insurance .” Lloyd’s of London representatives have gone to Hong Kong, seeking to raise money for expanded underwriting. “Certainly other insurers see it as an opportunity,” said a Hong Kong banker who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss other companies in the financial sector. “In the past, companies were happy to put everything with A.I.G. because of its size,” the banker said. “Now, the consideration may be, it’s worthwhile to give some of it to other companies.” This month, A.I.G. revived the name it first used in 1919, when it was founded in Shanghai: American International Underwriters. The name was phased out long ago, but many older business executives in Asia still recognize it. In his testimony, Mr. Liddy said that A.I.G. had begun a “rebranding” process, because its name had been “thoroughly wounded and disgraced.” He said that in the future the company’s property and casualty business would use the name American International Underwriters. Competitors have been complaining that as A.I.G. fights to revive itself, it has been taking unfair advantage of its low-cost financing from the government to undercut market prices. “I think it’s fair to say they’re doing some very stupid things in the market,” Edmund Kelly, the chief executive of Liberty Mutual, said of A.I.G. in a conference call with investors. Christina Pretto, a spokeswoman for A.I.G., denied that the company was pushing prices down and said that in fact, its competitors were to blame. The New York State Insurance Department has received complaints from both sides and is investigating. While low insurance prices might sound like a boon for consumers, they can weaken companies, which would then be exposed to losses much bigger than the premiums they are collecting. “That is a very treacherous slope to go down,” said Frank Pennachio, a workers’ compensation insurance agent in Bartow, Fla. Pricing in property and casualty insurance has been soft for several years, and just last fall, some in the market spotted signs of a rebound. Higher prices would strengthen all insurers. But as A.I.G. fights to hold on to its customers, rivals say it is forcing prices down again. They fault the government. “This is a particularly bad time,” said Paul Mattera, a spokesman for Liberty Mutual. “Carriers were beginning to harden their prices, and they can’t when you have this behemoth in the market with a federal guarantee.”

American International Group
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Liddy Edward M


Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen shot dead five female health workers who were immunizing children against polio on Tuesday, causing the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealing a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease’s last global strongholds. “It is a blow, no doubt,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, an adviser on polio to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “Never before have female health workers been targeted like this in Pakistan. Clearly there will have to be more and better arrangements for security.” No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but most suspicion focused on the Pakistani Taliban, which has previously blocked polio vaccinators and complained that the United States is using the program as a cover for espionage. The killings were a serious reversal for the multibillion-dollar global polio immunization effort, which over the past quarter century has reduced the number of endemic countries from 120 to just three: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Nonetheless, United Nations officials insisted that the drive would be revived after a period for investigation and regrouping, as it had been after previous attacks on vaccinators here, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Pakistan has made solid gains against polio, with 56 new recorded cases of the diseases in 2012, compared with 192 at the same point last year, according to the government. Worldwide, cases of death and paralysis from polio have been reduced to less than 1,000 last year, from 350,000 worldwide in 1988. But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before. Insurgents have long been suspicious of polio vaccinators, seeing them as potential spies. But that greatly intensified after the C.I.A. used a vaccination team headed by a local doctor, Shakil Afridi , to visit Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, reportedly in an attempt to obtain DNA proof that the Bin Laden family was there before an American commando raid on it in May 2011. In North Waziristan, one prominent warlord has banned polio vaccinations until the United States ceases drone strikes in the area. Most new infections in Pakistan occur in the tribal belt and adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province — some of the most remote areas of the country, and also those with the strongest militant presence. People fleeing fighting in those areas have also spread the disease to Karachi, the country’s largest city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years. After Tuesday’s attacks, witnesses described violence that was both disciplined and well coordinated. Five attacks occurred within an hour in different Karachi neighborhoods. In several cases, the killers traveled in pairs on motorcycle, opening fire on female health workers as they administered polio drops or moved between houses in crowded neighborhoods. Of the five victims, three were teenagers, and some had been shot in the head, a senior government official said. Two male health workers were also wounded by gunfire; early reports incorrectly stated that one of them had died, the official said. In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, gunmen opened fire on two sisters participating in the polio vaccination program, killing one of them. It was unclear whether that shooting was directly linked to the Karachi attacks. In remote parts of the northwest, the Taliban threat is exacerbated by the government’s crumbling writ. In Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, one polio worker, Noor Khan, said he quit work on Tuesday once news of the attacks in Karachi and Peshawar filtered in. “We were told to stop immediately,” he said by phone. Still, the Pakistani government has engaged considerable political and financial capital in fighting polio. President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa have been at the forefront of immunization drives. With the help of international donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have mounted a huge vaccination campaign aimed at up to 35 million children younger than 5, usually in three-day bursts that can involve 225,000 health workers. The plan seeks to have every child in Pakistan immunized at least four times per year, although in the hardest-hit areas one child could be reached as many as 12 times in a year. After an attack on a United Nations doctor from Ghana in Karachi last July, officials had been braced for some sort of violent resistance in the city. But the extent and scale of the attacks on Tuesday caught the government by surprise. “Clearly, this sort of coordinated and well-planned target killing has more than just an antipolio agenda,” said Ms. Ali, the prime minister’s adviser. She declined to speculate on the gunmen’s identity, but noted both the previous Taliban threats against polio workers and Karachi’s history of ethnically driven political violence. “I can’t say who is behind this. Only the investigation will show,” she said. Heidi Larson , an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who keeps an index of “vaccine confidence,” predicted that the new killings would hurt the eradication drive. “We knew this was coming, didn’t we?” she said. Unicef does detailed interviews with people who refuse vaccines. Although that often uncovers the real reasons they refuse — in India, Dr. Larson said, the surveys found that women did not want men giving drops to their children — it can miss the larger political issues, like a desire by some fanatics to terrorize all vaccinators by killing a few. But Dr. Bruce Aylward , the World Health Organization’s chief of polio eradication, said that although vaccinators were often threatened, neither the Taliban nor any subgroup had ever claimed responsibility for killing them, despite the fact that militants usually boast about attacks on government targets and happily explain why they were chosen. Some earlier vaccinator deaths, he said, were thought to be private grudges, some occurred in the course of other criminal activities, like carjacking, and some were “just wrong place, wrong time.” For Pakistan’s beleaguered progressives, the attack on female health workers was another sign of how the country’s extremist fringe would stoop to attack the vulnerable and minorities. “ Ahmadis , Shias, Hazaras, Christians, child activists, doctors, antipolio workers — who’s next on the target list, Pakistan?” asked Mira Hashmi, a lecturer in film studies at the Lahore School of Economics, in a post on Twitter.

Pakistan
Vaccination and Immunization
Murders and Attempted Murders
Poliomyelitis
Taliban


Thomas Roberts, Who Led Fight to Save Fire Island Lighthouse, Dies at 75

Abstract: Thomas Roberts, a banker whose efforts to save the black-and-white-striped Fire Island Lighthouse in the early 1980s became a model for scores of lighthouse preservation campaigns around the country and yielded a popular tourist destination, died on Monday at his home in Bay Shore, N.Y. He was 75. The cause was colon cancer, said his son, Thomas Roberts IV. Mr. Roberts, who had grown up in the heyday of fishermen and clammers on Long Island’s South Shore, was a mortgage banker and suburban weekend boater when the Coast Guard announced plans to save money by knocking down the 121-year-old lighthouse in 1979. The Fire Island Light, as it is called — a 170-foot tower on the western end of the barrier island — had sent its beam across a 20-mile arc of the Atlantic, waving off vessels from its ship-littered shoals from 1858 to 1974, when its lantern was dismantled. It was one of dozens of lighthouses the government planned to demolish, a link in a necklace of shoreline beacons once considered essential to the nation’s trade and commerce. The government plan prompted Mr. Roberts to write an essay, published by Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, in which he argued for the lighthouses’ preservation, emphasizing their importance in American maritime history. From scores of neighbors and people who sent letters to the newspaper agreeing with him, Mr. Roberts recruited the founding membership of the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society. The society, established in 1982, raised money through concerts, fashion shows, five-mile runs, clambakes and black-tie dinners. Children collected aluminum cans on the beach and sent in a check for $186. Liz Claiborne, the fashion designer, and her husband, Arthur Ortenberg, pulled in substantial corporate donations and then matched the donors’ gifts. The $1.2 million raised in the society’s first four years paid for repairs to the lighthouse, the conversion of the lighthouse-keeper’s cottage into a visitors’ center, and the rekindling of the old lighthouse beacon. Image Thomas Roberts Mr. Roberts and his group also reached an agreement with the National Park Service in 1996, giving them rights to operate the lighthouse as a self-supporting maritime museum. The agreement became the model for provisions in the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000, governing similar lighthouse reclamation efforts. The Fire Island Lighthouse, which has been open to the public since the late 1980s, now draws 200,000 visitors a year, according to the preservation society. “This was not the first, but it was certainly one of the earliest and most successful efforts of its kind, a model for how it could be done,” said Jess Gales, executive director of the United States Lighthouse Society , a nonprofit group that has helped save nearly 100 lighthouses since 1984. “Mr. Roberts was very influential in lighthouse preservation, and in a very New York way,” he added. “He and his people, they just didn’t take no for an answer.” Thomas Franklin Roberts III was born on May 11, 1938, to Thomas Roberts II and Irene Roberts in Bay Shore, where his father owned a real estate brokerage firm. After attending Bay Shore High School, where he was a golfing champion, Mr. Roberts graduated from Wake Forest University in North Carolina and received a master’s degree in business from Brown University. He became executive vice president of Seamen’s Bank for Savings, served as president of the Mortgage Bankers Association of New York, and in the mid-1980s formed his own real estate finance firm. In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife, Marilyn; a daughter, Nancy Lee Zuch; a brother, Richard; and two grandchildren. Mr. Roberts helped raise more than $5 million for the preservation society before illness slowed him in recent years. His most triumphant moment came on a balmy May night in 1986, when he pulled the ceremonial switch that turned on the lighthouse beacon after it had been dark for 12 years. Thousands of people attended the event. Smithsonian magazine wrote that hundreds of boats off shore were crammed with spectators. When the first beam of light swept over the surface of the water, the magazine said, many of them cried.


Factory Orders Topped Forecasts in October

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — Orders to American factories unexpectedly rose in October, the sixth gain in seven months, providing further evidence that the manufacturing sector was beginning to recover. Orders rose 0.6 percent in October, the Commerce Department said Friday , better than the flat reading that economists had expected. A jump in demand for commercial aircraft and petroleum products led the gain. Orders for durable goods, items expected to last three years, rose 0.6 percent, unchanged from a preliminary estimate last week. Orders for nondurable goods rose 1.6 percent, propelled by gains in demand for petroleum, chemicals, plastics and food. Economists are hoping that the fortunes of the manufacturing sector are beginning to rebound after the recession forced two major automakers — General Motors and Chrysler — into bankruptcy protection earlier this year. The overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, rose at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the third quarter, the first increase after four quarterly declines. The factory orders report followed news earlier this week that a closely watched gauge of manufacturing activity showed growth for a fourth month in November. The Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index was 53.6 in November, slightly lower than October’s 55.7. But any reading above 50 indicates growth. The factory orders report for October showed that demand for transportation products rose 1.6 percent, led by a 50.1 percent surge in orders for commercial aircraft, a volatile category. Demand for motor vehicles and parts rose 0.4 percent, while orders for military aircraft and parts fell 8.1 percent. Excluding transportation, factory orders would have risen 0.5 percent, after a 1.5 percent increase in September. Outside of transportation, demand for primary metals like steel rose 4.3 percent, but orders for machinery fell 8.5 percent, reflecting a 30 percent decline in demand for heavy construction equipment.

Factories and Manufacturing
United States Economy


In Emails, Disney Worried About Measles Depiction

Abstract: ANAHEIM, Calif. — As the measles outbreak spread last month, Disneyland executives sent a series of emails to California health officials asking them to emphasize that the theme park was not responsible for the illnesses and was safe to visit, documents obtained by The Associated Press show. There is no evidence that Disneyland — or health officials, who incorporated at least some of the theme park’s suggestions — tried to play down the seriousness of the outbreak or mislead the public. Nor is it unusual for companies to try to get the ear of public officials during a crisis. But the email exchanges pull back the curtain on what can be a delicate process. And they show Disneyland’s concern about the potential harm to the theme park even as its officials worked with the health authorities to alert the public to the danger. As the infections multiplied, Disneyland forwarded suggestions to the California Department of Public Health and tried to insert language into an update from the Orange County Health Care Agency, according to correspondence spanning the first two weeks of the outbreak. The emails were obtained through a public records request. In one exchange, a Disneyland official wanted the state to make clear that the park was not responsible for the outbreak. In another, Disneyland wanted the state to clarify that it was safe for vaccinated people to visit the theme park. In that instance, the state updated its website to address Disneyland’s concern. More than 100 people in California — including six Disneyland employees — and about two dozen others in six states, Mexico and Canada have been sickened in the outbreak. While measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, the illness has reappeared in recent years, brought in from overseas and transmitted to Americans who did not get vaccinated. A Disneyland spokeswoman, Lisa Haines, said the park was in constant contact with health authorities during the outbreak “in order to ensure that factual and accurate information flowed both ways to avoid confusion and properly inform the public.” First word of the outbreak came on Jan. 7 when California authorities confirmed a cluster of infections in people who visited Disney’s California theme parks days before Christmas. Disneyland’s medical team worked with health investigators to identify people who had close contact with infected workers, and it offered employees vaccinations and blood tests to see if they were immune. The next week, Disneyland Resort’s vice president of communications, Cathi Killian, emailed a state health agency spokesman, laying out her desire to advise the public that measles was highly contagious and could be prevented only through vaccination. “Basically, our goal is to ensure people know that the exposure period at the Disneyland Resort is now over, that this has nothing to do with Disneyland and this could happen anywhere,” Ms. Killian wrote. She added: “Can you please let us know if you are able to help us on this front?” The state health department’s website included similar language. Anita Gore, a health department spokeswoman, said in an email: “When clarification is needed, we make adjustments where necessary.” Ms. Killian also sent wording suggestions to the health department in Orange County, where Disneyland is situated, for a news release. In that instance, Dr. Matthew Zahn, the county’s medical director for epidemiology, said he had no problem with the proposed wording but saw no need to include it, the records show. Deanne Thompson, a spokeswoman for the county health department, said Disneyland had made “no attempt to control or pressure” the department to incorporate any suggestions. In one of the email exchanges, Disneyland’s chief medical officer, Dr. Pamela Hymel, forwarded to California’s top epidemiologist, Dr. Gil Chavez, a statement from Disneyland’s public relations arm with “some points,” including: “It is absolutely safe to visit these places, including the Disneyland Resort, if you are vaccinated.” Dr. Chavez replied that Disneyland’s statement was “100 percent consistent” with what he had said publicly a day earlier, when he announced that it was fine to visit Disneyland with the proper vaccinations but that those who had not gotten their shots should stay away. Dr. Chavez had a version of Disneyland’s statement posted on the state health department’s website. Crisis communications experts said that it was not uncommon for companies to make suggestions during a disease outbreak and that their views could be helpful as long as they did not try to distort the message. “At the end of the day, you are trying to balance potentially competing interests, but you are also trying to give people the best advice possible,” said Glen Nowak, a former spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who now heads the Center for Health and Risk Communication at the University of Georgia.

Disneyland Anaheim Calif
Measles
California
Email
Amusement park
CDC


What Is Putin’s ‘New Russia’?

Abstract: MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, appearing cool and confident on national television during a four-hour question-and-answer show on Thursday, referred repeatedly to southeastern Ukraine as “New Russia,” a historical term for the area north of the Black Sea that the Russian empire conquered in the 1700s. “God knows” why the region became part of Ukraine in the 1920s, he said in response to a questioner, a strong signal that he would gladly correct that error. Mr. Putin’s use of the term “Novorossiya,” which he had not emphasized previously, suggested that he was replicating, with regard to eastern Ukraine, Russia’s assertions of historical ties to Crimea before it occupied and annexed the peninsula. Novorossiya generally refers to a broad area of Ukraine, stretching from what is now the border of Moldova in the west to the Russian border in the east, and including Donetsk, the port city of Odessa to the south, and the industrial center of Dnipropetrovsk to the north. It was conquered in the late 18th century by Catherine the Great, who installed Prince Grigory Potemkin to lead the colonization of the lands. The prince earned fame as the architect of the Potemkin village, a town of brightly painted facades and happy people erected to deceive visiting officials and dignitaries. Critics have accused Mr. Putin of employing a similar sleight of hand in the invasion of Crimea and the supposedly spontaneous pro-Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine. On Thursday, Mr. Putin repeated his assertion that he felt an obligation to protect ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, where they are a large minority of the population. “We must do everything to help these people to protect their rights and independently determine their own destiny,” he said. “The question is to ensure the rights and interests of the Russian southeast,” he added. “It’s New Russia. Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in czarist times; they were transferred in 1920. Why? God knows. Then, for various reasons, these areas were gone, and the people stayed there. We need to encourage them to find a solution.”


Mahmoud Abbas Seeks U.N. ‘Protection’ for Palestinians

Abstract: GENEVA — The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas , used an appearance at the United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday to appeal for United Nations intervention to defuse the recent wave of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Human rights in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are at their worst since 1948, Mr. Abbas said in a statement to a special meeting of the council in Geneva, referring to the year the State of Israel was established. He called for “strong and decisive intervention,” urging the United Nations Security Council to establish “a special regime of international protection” for Palestinians but added no details to flesh out an idea he had previously aired, including in a statement to the General Assembly at the end of September. “We need protection and we look to you to protect us,” Mr. Abbas told diplomats at the meeting on Wednesday, convened at the Palestinian Authority’s request and a courtesy never previously shown to a United Nations observer state. “It is no longer useful to waste time in negotiations just for the sake of negotiations, what is required is the ending of the occupation in accordance with international legitimacy,” he said. Mr. Abbas’s comments were quickly condemned by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement, “President Abbas chose once more the way of propaganda and incitement, instead of the dialogue proposed by Israel.” Addressing the Human Rights Council before Mr. Abbas, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein , warned that the recent violence between Palestinians and Israelis, if not stopped, threatened to draw the crisis “ever closer to catastrophe.” The series of stabbings and shootings that flared in recent weeks resulted in the deaths of 58 Palestinians and 11 Israelis, Mr. al-Hussein said. An additional 2,100 Palestinians and 127 Israelis were wounded, he added. About half the Palestinians killed were suspected assailants who were fatally shot at the scene of attacks. Others were killed in clashes with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and along Israel’s border with Gaza. Citing allegations that Israeli security forces had used disproportionate force leading to the deaths of some Palestinians, Mr. al-Hussein said that “extrajudicial killings are strongly suspected.” This crisis, fueled by fear and visceral rage on both sides, “is dangerous in the extreme,” Mr. al-Hussein warned. “There is a growing possibility if this violence continues to sharpen along religious lines, we will draw closer to the makings of a broader, and much more terrible, confrontation.” Mr. Abbas’s visit to the Human Rights Council was part of a European tour that took him to Brussels on Tuesday for talks with the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, on ways to defuse tensions and end the attacks and reprisals. But Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Eviatar Manor , roundly condemned Mr. Abbas for statements that he said had fanned the violence and the Human Rights Council for staging this “scandalous special meeting” and allowing itself to be used as a stage for propaganda and “fanning the flames of conflict.” “What we have witnessed today is the glorification of terror and violence,” Mr. Manor told diplomats in a meeting convened hours after Mr. Abbas spoke. “What the council allowed today is the banalization of the spilling of Jewish blood.” Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

UN
Mahmoud Abbas
Palestinians
Israel
UNCHR
Human Rights
International relations


Rabbi on the Go, Even While Relaxing

Abstract: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach , 43, calls himself “America’s rabbi.” He even has his own bobblehead doll, which sells for $14.95 at his Web site, www.shmuley.com . The rabbi has written more than 20 books, including “Kosher Sex” and “The Kosher Sutra,” not to mention the recently released “Michael Jackson Tapes.” He and his wife, Debbie, live in Englewood, N.J. They have nine children: six girls and three boys, ranging in age from a year and a half to 20. NO VEGGING The rest of my week is very harried, but I still don’t believe in vegging on Sunday. I wake up and say my prayers and read the paper, and then I walk for about 45 minutes on the treadmill. NO JOGGING? Forget jogging — I might rip a coronary, God forbid. I have nine kids to support. I’m looking for a semblance of exercise, not the real thing — something to assuage the guilt. BAGEL AND CAFFEINE I have breakfast with the children. My oldest daughter buys the bagels. I have an everything bagel with cream cheese and I always drink about three cups of coffee in the morning, very caffeinated. EVERYBODY OUTSIDE I will not spend a Sunday indoors, because I feel confined and uninspired. When I’m outdoors I feel uplifted by nature, so during the day we usually go biking. We pack all the kids and the bikes into our Ford Excursion so that the rear of the truck is practically dragging. We may go to Palisades park or the pier on the Hudson River, in Piermont , or Tallman Mountain State Park , near the Tappan Zee. Seven Lakes Drive in Harriman State Park is also great. We also kayak on the Delaware River in the summer. In the winter we go skiing. It takes like three hours to outfit all of us in boots and skis. We usually go to Camelback . FEEDING THE TROOPS For dinner, we usually order kosher Chinese takeout. It’s vaguely edible, but you should see the bill. That’s why people say about kosher food: half the taste, double the price. Sometimes we barbecue, and my oldest son, Mendy, who’s 16, mans the grill. Sometimes we do kosher fast food. I don’t cook — in fact, I’m not good at anything I have to do with my hands except for typing, but I’m a master delegator. READING ... After dinner on Sundays, we gather in the living room to study a section of Torah every week. Then I read the younger kids a story and then watch the football game. I could never blow three hours watching football, so I tape the Giants game and watch it while I catch up on my e-mail. ... AND WRITING Midnight till 3 is my writing time, and on Sunday nights I always write my weekly syndicated column for The Jerusalem Post. Actually, I can write better with all the noise of kids around me, but at that hour I’m not getting any more phone calls, so I can concentrate.


Unity on Eurozone Growth Eludes Germany and France

Abstract: BERLIN — Anyone hoping that last week’s market turmoil might spur Germany and France to take decisive action to spur growth in the eurozone was disappointed on Monday. After meeting here, top ministers from the two nations agreed only to work on a plan they will present in December. With concern rising that the eurozone is slipping into recession, and the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund calling on eurozone leaders to do more for the economy, expectations were high that leaders meeting in Berlin might reach a grand bargain. The German government was expected to agree to invest more in public works if France took steps to improve growth through measures like relaxing labor rules. But a full six years after a global financial collapse from which the eurozone has still not fully recovered, Monday’s meeting was a reminder of the incremental way that policy plays out in Europe, even in the face of crisis. In the European Union’s loose confederation, national leaders try to maintain a precarious balance between their change-averse voters and the impatient demands of international financial markets. Often, as in Berlin on Monday, problems are not so much solved as referred to a study group. Wolfgang Schäuble and Sigmar Gabriel, the German finance and economics ministers, and their counterparts Michel Sapin and Emmanuel Macron, said at news conference here on Monday that they would not present any specific proposals until a meeting planned for Dec. 1. Mr. Sapin said, “We want to offer specific proposals — not just announcements but concrete proposals.” But it was difficult not to conclude that the prevailing position on Monday was Germany’s continued reluctance to spend its taxpayers’ money on priming the euro pump. At the very least, the joint appearance, which the ministers said had been planned well before recent market turmoil, served as a show of solidarity to rebut perceptions that Berlin and Paris are no longer able to work together. As the ministers acknowledged, Europe has rarely if ever made political progress without cooperation by Germany and France. Expectations of a tacit accord had nonetheless been high after Mr. Sapin and Mr. Macron on Sunday called on Germany to invest at least 50 billion euros, or $64 billion, through 2017. That was seen as a way to offset the €50 billion in spending cuts that France has planned in the same period to meet Berlin’s demands for deficit reduction. “It is in our collective interest that Germany invests,” Mr. Macron said in a joint interview with Mr. Sapin in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. A spending commitment by Germany would help provide France’s leaders with political cover while they pursue unpopular measures that economists say are needed to cut French unemployment, in particular a rollback of laws that make it difficult and costly to dismiss workers. Strict French labor rules discourage companies from hiring in the first place, some economists argue. Matthias Kullas, an analyst at the Center for European Policy in Freiburg, Germany, said €50 billion of public investment would be “a flash in the pan” in terms of affecting growth. But, he said, “it would provide a face-saving way to sell reforms to French voters.” But Mr. Schäuble gave no indication that the German government was ready to waver from its determination to have a balanced budget next year and to avoid issuing any new debt. He and Mr. Gabriel said any such investment would have to include a large dollop of spending by the private sector. While popular among voters in Germany, tight-budget measures are seen by many economists as shortsighted, given that the German government can borrow money that is effectively interest-free. Investment in universities, research and development, or roads would pay off in the form of faster growth, many economists argue. Because Germany is the eurozone’s biggest economy, its growth tends to benefit the entire region. Monday’s meeting did nothing to bolster European stocks, which were already down after a short-lived rally at the end of last week. The German index, the DAX, has down the most — by 1.5 percent, with a big drag from the German software company SAP, whose shares fell nearly 6 percent after a profit warning. The CAC 40, in France, fell slightly more than 1 percent. At the prospect of a third recession in the eurozone in five years, a debate has swirled over where new growth might come from. While Germany continues to press for more budgetary discipline from France and other countries whose budget deficits grew during the crisis, a number of countries have pushed Germany to take the lead on spending. Last week, the International Monetary Fund joined that call, asking Germany to increase infrastructure spending in light of signs that its economy also was slowing. Germany and France are also responding in part to pressure from the European Central Bank, which has called on eurozone countries to overhaul their labor laws while saying that countries that can afford it — a group that includes Germany — should spend more to improve public infrastructure. Leaders of other eurozone nations hope that more spending by the German government would spill across the country’s borders and help the rest of the eurozone. Paris is seeking German support for — or at least trying to avoid Berlin’s active resistance to — the French government’s proposed budget for 2015. The proposal essentially asks for leniency from Brussels to meet European Union deficit targets, after France already missed two deadlines in the last three years. In Berlin, Mr. Sapin pledged allegiance to budget limits, which he said were essential to maintaining trust in the eurozone. “In France, the deficit is too high, that’s clear,” he said. But Mr. Sapin did not say how France would get its budget back within limits prescribed by the treaties that were part of creation of the common currency. At least on Monday, Mr. Schäuble refrained from criticizing French budget policy. Mr. Gabriel noted that the rules provide some flexibility for countries in distress. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy has taken a similar stance of deficit defiance, and last week unveiled a budget heavy on stimulus, including investments and tax cuts, to offset the effects of the country having slipped back into a recession. Mr. Sapin and Mr. Macron promised that they would reform the French economy, but on their own terms. Mr. Sapin said: “One country telling the other what to do — that has never worked. We are making reforms in France because they are good for France, not because we were asked to.” In France, Mr. Sapin and Mr. Macron are likely to face significant public and union opposition to any changes in the rules that currently give workers a strong say in company management and that make it difficult and costly to dismiss people. Many economists argue that such rules discourage hiring, and point to Spain as an example of a country where deregulation has translated into faster growth. But the economic benefits of such changes are a tough sell to voters who fear that their jobs would become less secure — especially in France, where François Hollande already has the lowest popularity rating of any modern French president. Signs of flagging growth in Germany have raised anxiety about a recurrence of the crisis that nearly destroyed the eurozone two years ago. Concern about Europe contributed to turmoil in stock exchanges and bond markets around the world last week. The global anxiety was made worse by tensions between France and Germany. The rapprochement on view at the German Finance Ministry on Monday was an attempt by Mr. Schäuble, an outspoken Francophile, to show that the two countries’ policy differences had not fundamentally shaken their alliance. But, as is the case in France, domestic politics in Germany can act as a restraint on policies that might benefit the wider eurozone. Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, the party to which Mr. Schäuble also belongs, faces dissent from conservatives who oppose the use of German tax revenue to help the rest of the eurozone. The Alternative for Germany, a right-wing party that wants to scrap the euro, has drained votes from Ms. Merkel’s party in recent state elections. In France, Mr. Hollande faces a serious challenge from the far-right party National Front, and the leaders acknowledged on Monday that they needed to cut unemployment to reduce that party’s appeal. Mr. Gabriel said the goal of the measures to be presented in December should be to strengthen Europe. “If it makes the National Front less of an alternative,” he added, “there is no one here who will be unhappy about that.”

EU
Euro
Germany
France
Europe
Economy
Eurozone
Budget
Euro Crisis


A History-Making Week to Consider the 2 Sides of George Ryan

Abstract: On the morning the death penalty was formally abolished in Illinois , former Gov. George Ryan awoke at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind., three miles from the Illinois border. He was a short distance, too, from the walls and razor wire of the so-called death house at the Terre Haute pen. It’s the site of all federal executions, including that of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Mr. Ryan lives under constant surveillance, and the most human contact he has is with people convicted of drug conspiracies, immigration violations and the like. He’ll rarely spy a woman and has virtually no privacy, with most visits in a large, noisy room occupied by other offenders and their families. “For a man who once lived in a governor’s mansion, it is a topple to a remarkably low place,” said a federal official in Terre Haute who knows the prison well. Mr. Ryan, 77, is there because of a conviction for corruption, including benefiting from a scheme by which unqualified truck drivers secured driver’s licenses in exchange for bribes while he was Illinois secretary of state. His criminal record will most likely be in the first line of his obituary. But he was also the governor who dared to declare a halt to executions in Illinois. So there was no small irony that the bill abolishing the death penalty was signed Wednesday by Gov. Pat Quinn, the Hamlet of Springfield and a onetime bitter political enemy of Mr. Ryan. He even tried to recall Mr. Ryan from office, back when Mr. Quinn was the Solti of Sundays, a maestro of self-aggrandizing press conferences exploiting the news media’s desperate need for anything that looked like news. Mr. Quinn’s minimalist signing ceremony left many who had worked for abolition, especially African-American legislators, feeling he improbably deflated a historic moment. “You have to believe Quinn thought of Ryan more than once during the whole process,” said Dennis Culloton, who worked as Mr. Ryan’s press secretary. Mr. Ryan, the former Kankakee pharmacist, made life much easier for Mr. Quinn. As a result of the moratorium, polling shows, a significant percentage of Illinoisans assumed that the death penalty had already been abolished. It’s one factor behind the surprise Senate passage that brought the bill to Mr. Quinn’s desk. Mr. Ryan went through a moral struggle that reminds us of the perils of caricature, in his case the reflexive tag “convicted former governor of Illinois.” Mr. Ryan agonized over the death penalty amid disclosures of innocent men on death row. He declared a moratorium on executions and commuted sentences of death row inmates at a time when the public clearly supported executions. On this matter, a very political animal did not bend to the fashions of the day. I asked Mr. Culloton to play amateur dramatist and tell me who George Ryan is, only to learn that Mr. Ryan actually has wondered if someone should produce a play called “How Does this Happen?” That was a frequent Ryan refrain after the disclosures of so many innocent people being on death row. A fictional scene would have Mr. Ryan, escorted by marshals, see the wavering Mr. Quinn, prompting the governor’s own act of conscience. Mr. Ryan could then return to his cell, “at least knowing he made the right thing happen,” Mr. Culloton said. Steven Drizin, a Northwestern University law professor and death penalty expert, said of Mr. Ryan: “He was a small-town pharmacist whose views of the death penalty and the criminal justice system were profoundly rocked by the prospect that he would preside over the execution of an innocent person.” Scott Turow, the lawyer, author and member of the commission that Mr. Ryan formed to examine the state’s handling of capital crimes, said: “Who was George Ryan? It’s a question best put to Shakespeare.” Mr. Ryan was a master of compartmentalization, Mr. Turow said, adding that as time marches on, “we will all come to terms with the fact there was good George and bad George.” “The fact he was willing to stand up and say, ‘I can’t understand what the hell is going on here’ was unique,” Mr. Turow continued. “To tamper with the criminal justice system, especially for a governor and non-lawyer, is generally politically verboten. To declare a moratorium on executions was amazingly bold stuff.” An official of TimeLine Theater Company likened Mr. Ryan on Thursday to Arthur Dimmesdale, the Puritan minister and symbol of human frailty in “The Scarlet Letter.” Forlornly trapped in Terre Haute, Mr. Ryan seems an even more profound figure.

Illinois
Ryan George H
Capital Punishment
Politics and Government


A New Alarm Clock That Hears You, and Talks Back

Abstract: One of the irksome things about voice-recognition technology is that it often doesn’t recognize voices very well. That makes Moshi’s line of voice-controlled clocks particularly attractive. In only one instance out of 10 did its travel alarm clock fail to understand a spoken command. You speak a few simple phrases, like “set time” and “set alarm,” and the clock responds by asking you for the times you want. The company says that its voice-recognition works because it has combined two separate voice-recognition technologies and sampled 1,000 voices across the Northern Hemisphere. Why would you want a voice-activated clock? If you’ve ever tried to set the alarm on a hotel’s clock radio as you prepare to fall asleep, you could appreciate this type of product. And if you’re blind or have limited sight, setting a clock by simply speaking commands (and then having the time read to you) could be a godsend. Moshi’s clocks range in price from $25 to $40. Features include indoor temperature readings, multiple wake-up sounds and the ability to change background colors. It says it has voice-recognition clock applications for mobile devices on the way. ERIC A. TAUB

Watches and Clocks
Computers and the Internet


Under Golf’s Code, Rory McIlroy’s Behavior Wandered Off Course

Abstract: DORAL, Fla. At age 9, Rory McIlroy conducted a television interview that his longtime coach, Michael Bannon, calls up occasionally on his laptop. It makes him smile to see a wee McIlroy exhibiting the poise and promise that would carry him to international stardom a decade later. What also catches one’s eye is McIlroy’s choice of clothing. In a clear foreshadowing of the mega deal he signed with Nike this year, McIlroy was wearing a V-neck wind jacket with a large red swoosh across his chest. Friends of McIlroy, the world’s top-ranked player, believe he is heaping pressure on himself to prove he is worthy of his blockbuster endorsement contract. They say those expectations, not the equipment, are the root cause of his 2013 struggles, which culminated with his abrupt withdrawal from the Honda Classic on the ninth hole of his second round Friday. McIlroy’s failure to complete his round throws into sharp relief the PGA Tour’s policy on withdrawals, and the unwritten code of conduct for playing on while in considerable mental or physical anguish. The tour rules state that a player must have a persuasive reason for withdrawing during a round — an injury that requires medical attention, or a serious personal emergency — and must provide the tour commissioner with proof of his distress. McElroy’s severely bruised ego from giving back seven strokes to par on the first eight holes Friday does not qualify as a compelling reason. An hour after he left the course, McIlroy, 23, released a statement through his management group saying that he had a sore wisdom tooth that made it impossible for him to continue, an explanation he presumably will back up with a note from his dentist. Failing to finish is not unprecedented on tour. Tiger Woods limped off the course here last year on the 12th hole of the final round with an Achilles’ heel injury. But it does not happen nearly as often as in tennis, a sport McIlroy has become immersed in since he began dating Caroline Wozniacki. Image Top-ranked Rory McIlroy walked off the course on the ninth hole of his second round at the Honda Classic, citing a sore tooth. Credit Stuart Franklin/Getty Images Before Novak Djokovic rose to No. 1 in the world in men’s tennis, he retired from four Grand Slam matches. Wozniacki, ranked 10th, withdrew from two matches in which she was trailing last year. All touring professionals have days when their swings go missing. The occasional clunker of a round is an occupational hazard, akin to a baseball slugger’s striking out four times in four at-bats. The difference is the struggling hitter can be replaced, delivered from his misery on a bad day by a merciful manager. A golfer having a bad round is in a fish bowl, shadowed by his caddie and swimming in dark thoughts for as many as five hours. After completing a round, a player can withdraw for any reason. Last year, Phil Mickelson cited “mental fatigue” when he pulled out of the Memorial after an opening 79 in front of a swarming gallery rife with camera-clicking fans. Where the tour’s blanket policy on withdrawals ends is where a player’s conscience carries on. “You don’t have to finish your second round, but it is probably considered to be sort of in poor taste if you just say, ‘I’m out of here’ after shooting a big number,’ “ said Stewart Cink, a six-time tour winner. Cink, 39, has made more than 400 starts since joining the tour full time in 1997. He said he had withdrawn only once, from last year’s Phoenix Open, when a frost delay prevented him from finishing his second round after an opening 83. Rather than return Saturday to complete his final few holes, Cink pulled out so he could catch a redeye flight home to spend the weekend with his family. “That’s the only time I’ve ever done that in my career, and I wasn’t proud of it,” he said. “Probably violated whatever unwritten code there is.” Brendan Steele, a one-time tour winner and a member of the tour’s player advisory council, said, “There’s going to be a round this year — I hope not, but it probably will happen — where we just know we’re not going to make the cut, shoot 77 on Thursday when the cut’s going to be three under.” Image In the Memorial last year, Phil Mickelson finished a round of 79, then withdrew. A player can withdraw for any reason after a round. Credit Jay LaPrete/Associated Press If that happens, he said, he’ll play on, as he did at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last year when he opened with an 81. Steele returned the next day and carded a 75. “I had no clue what was going on with any shots,” he said. “It’s tough when that happens, but I always try to take something away from it and keep moving forward. That’s been my philosophy.” Meg Mallon, a 4-time major champion and 18-time champion on the L.P.G.A. tour, takes pride in her playing record, which she said included no withdrawals. Mallon, who attended the Honda Classic, said she would have liked to see McIlroy finish. So would McIlroy. He told Sports Illustrated that he should have completed his round. Withdrawing “was not the right thing to do,” he said. Mallon said, “If you withdraw once, for whatever reason, it becomes easier to do it the next time.” There were times, she said, when she was playing so poorly she was walking from hole to hole repeating to herself, “Don’t cry.” “You feel like the bad rounds are never going to end,” she said. There is a good reason to persevere, Cink said. “You never know when something will click in your swing,” he said, “or you’ll have a putt and a few years down the road you’ll have the same putt, and it’ll be meaningful.” The bottom line, he added, is, “We’ve all been the guy that’s shooting in the 80s and we’ve all played with the guy that’s shooting in the 80s.” On the same day that McIlroy bowed out of his round, Camilo Villegas, the 18-hole leader, shot a seven-over 77 in the second round and missed the cut by one. Many others started the day playing for nothing but pride and finished. “When I watch golf on Friday afternoon,” Cink said, “and I see guys coming down the stretch that are miles from making the cut and I see them grinding away and hitting good shots and making good putts and showing the crowd a little something, I feel proud for myself and for the rest of the players on the tour. And there’s a lot of that.”

Golf
PGA Tour
Rory McIlroy
Phil Mickelson
Tiger Woods
Stewart Cink
Brendan Steele
Meg Mallon


Letters to the Editor

Abstract: Blatter Deserves Anything But Praise To the Sports Editor: Re: “A Little Praise for Blatter. Very Little,” May 31. Sepp Blatter, the “godfather” of women’s soccer, deserves a red card, not praise. He has set up a separate and unequal system where women cannot earn a living wage and are in danger of injuring themselves just by doing their jobs. Female players earn $6,000 to $30,000 annually; most players are at the lower end of the scale. Female players simply cannot support themselves or their families with those wages. By comparison, top male players earn $8 million or more. Last year, 84 women’s soccer players sued FIFA for gender discrimination when FIFA announced that the 2015 Women’s World Cup would be played on artificial turf instead of natural grass. Turf greatly increases career-ending injuries, including A.C.L. tears, concussions, arthritis and antibiotic-resistant infections. If Blatter were a true champion of women’s soccer, he would level the playing field for female players by requiring pay equity, and by letting women play on grass in the upcoming Women’s World Cup. PENNY M. VENETIS, New York The writer is executive vice president and legal director of Legal Momentum, the Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund.  To the Sports Editor: This last week we were informed of the Department of Justice’s triumphant (potential) victory over FIFA, which has always been on the verge of invading our sacred shores. I must admit I feel safer now. I had hoped the D.O.J. would have made me feel safer about the banks that hold my mortgage. A raft of indictments there would certainly have gone a long way. The same might be said about the Wall Street tycoons who are every bit as indictable. It would have been nice to see action taken on Cliven Bundy and his supporters, who, heavily armed, interfered with federal deputies in the execution of their duties — a federal offense. JAMES HELLER, Kenmore, Wash.  To the Sports Editor: It is good to see that UEFA, the European soccer governing body, is considering boycotting the World Cup if accusations of corruption are not properly addressed. In addition to such possible measures, national teams should be given the right to boycott the World Cup without any penalty from FIFA if the number of deaths among construction workers building the facilities exceeds a designated level. There are reports that several hundred workers have died in 2013 and 2014 in preparation for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Hosting agreements should contain provisions allowing third-party inspections of construction sites and workers’ hostels to promote worker safety and monitor the number of deaths and injuries. BRUCE COUCHMAN, Ottawa


Trampolinists Stay in Sync Despite Their Distance

Abstract: MIDDLETOWN, N.J. — As Americans in a sport dominated by Chinese and Eastern Europeans, the trampolinists Steven Gluckstein and Logan Dooley are accustomed to overcoming long odds. But as synchronized trampolinists whose success depends on perfectly coordinated flips and twists, they are doubly disadvantaged. They live more than 2,700 miles apart: Dooley in California and Gluckstein in New Jersey. They say they believe they are the only high-level synchronized trampoline team that does not regularly train together. “We make jokes all the time, saying we’re going to video-chat our practices,” Dooley said. The distance does not seem to have hurt them. In August, Dooley and Gluckstein won a gold medal at the tumbling and trampoline World Cup in Ostend, Belgium, a first for the United States, and they were briefly ranked second in the world before falling to No. 6 after they skipped a World Cup event in Europe. They have each excelled individually. Dooley, 22, took the gold in the individual event in Belgium, and is ranked ninth in the world. Gluckstein, 19, is 15th. Although trampoline has been an Olympic event since 2000 and features the same thrilling flips and somersaults as diving and freestyle skiing, the events are rarely televised, and corporate sponsors are nearly unheard of. But that is beginning to change. The success of United States athletes like Dooley and Gluckstein in the sport is beginning to attract attention. Steve Penny , the president of USA Gymnastics, says he has seen an increase in the number of coaches who are developing elite trampolinists. “I think as we see more success in trampoline, we’ll see more participation and much more consistency,” Penny said. Trampoline athletes are judged on aesthetics and execution, and degree of difficulty of their routines. Synchronization is also judged for trampoline teams. Each routine consists of 10 elements, and includes combinations of somersaults, pikes and twists, similar to Olympic dives. Competitors reach heights of more than 25 feet. Synchronized trampoline is not yet an Olympic event, although Dooley and Gluckstein said they hoped it would follow the path of synchronized diving, which became an Olympic sport in 2000. Coordinating a synchronized routine is not as difficult as it seems, they said. Gluckstein and Dooley rarely speak to each other on the phone, and practice together only at national team training camps or before they compete, which is about once every two months. With similar body types — Gluckstein is 5 feet 7 inches, Dooley is 5-9 and they each weigh about 130 pounds — they move similarly on the trampoline. During competition, they listen carefully to each other. If one lands early, the other knows not to jump as high the next time. “The trampolines are pretty noisy,” Dooley said. “They do make a very squeaky sound when you’re jumping, so you can listen for that.” Gluckstein said their weakness was that sometimes one would try to compensate for the other. “When we are off, it’s us both trying to fix what is wrong,” he said. At the Beijing Olympics last year, neither of the United States trampolinists came close to earning a medal. Chris Estrada, the first American man to qualify for the Olympics in trampoline, did not reach the finals, nor did Erin Blanchard in the women’s individual event. But Penny said that their qualifying for the Games signaled progress. The United States has been winning world and Olympic medals regularly in men’s and women’s artistic gymnastics for about 25 years, so the vast majority of novice gymnasts in the United States gravitate to those disciplines. About 5,000 of the 91,000 athletes who are members of USA Gymnastics competed in tumbling and trampoline in 2007 , the most recent year for which numbers are available. “You have fewer coaches and fewer business models that are based on trampoline,” Penny said. “Clearly still, the artistic disciplines are the ones that drive the business at the club level.” China won both trampoline gold medals in Beijing and Canada won both silvers, but Penny said he saw potential in athletes like Dooley and Gluckstein, who each narrowly missed qualifying for the 2008 Games. Dooley served as an alternate. At the national trials, Penny said, “I remember saying to both of them, ‘You’re next.’ ” He added, “It was clear that they had potential, they had talent and they had a commitment to achieving a higher level.” Dooley said he began the sport after his parents gave him a backyard trampoline for his seventh birthday; they soon became alarmed at his rapid progress. “I learned to double back-flip by myself,” Dooley said. “That’s where they drew the line.” Concerned for his safety, his parents removed the trampoline but signed him up for classes near their home in Lake Forest, Calif. Although he has been competing in trampoline since he was 11, something changed recently for him and Gluckstein. “This year, we’ve kind of had our breakthrough year,” Dooley said. Gluckstein was 10 and taking a gymnastics class at the Head Over Heels gymnastics school in Middletown, N.J., when Tatiana Kovaleva, the women’s individual world champion in 1996, spotted him. He had already learned to do flips on the trampoline. “I said, O.K., I’ll take that kid,” Kovaleva recalled. She became Gluckstein’s coach and also trains his younger brother, Jeffrey , 16, the top-ranked junior in the United States. Like other members of the national trampoline team, Dooley and Gluckstein receive a monthly stipend from USA Gymnastics to cover the cost of their training. Gluckstein lives with his family in Atlantic Highlands, N.J.; he teaches gymnastics when he is not training and takes business classes at a community college. Dooley also teaches gymnastics. When their schedules allow, they earn extra money performing trampoline tricks at corporate and sporting events — feats that involve bouncing on snowboards and passing a basketball. Despite their skill and recent success, Dooley and Gluckstein said it was sometimes frustrating to receive less attention than they felt the sport deserved. “It’s just not looked at, at all,” Gluckstein said. “You say, ‘I do trampoline,’ and they say, ‘I have one of those in my backyard.’ ” He shook his head and smiled, then recounted his response to such remarks: “Oh, yeah? How high can you jump?”


Hackensack: Woman Stabbed in Church

Abstract: A woman was stabbed multiple times with a box cutter inside a church yesterday morning, the police said. The stabbing occurred at Trinity Baptist Church at 218 Passaic Street shortly before 11:30 a.m. Theresa Whitfield, 38, was cut in the face, neck and body, the police said. Another woman, Yolanda Cooper, 40, was arrested. Charges against her included aggravated assault and possession of a weapon, the police said. The motive was under investigation. Ms. Whitfield was in fair condition last night at Hackensack University Medical Center. The pastor of the church is the Rev. Jonathan Whitfield. The police would not comment about the victim’s relationship to Mr. Whitfield or Ms. Cooper.


Earnings Rally Wanes on Wall Street

Abstract: After two weeks of strong earnings pumped up the markets, weak results from the drug maker Pfizer and others deflated a broad earnings rally on Tuesday, at least for one day. Pfizer posted lower than expected quarterly results, overshadowing a recent parade of positive corporate reports. Clorox, Molson Coors Brewing, and Beazer Homes also slipped after announcing weaker earnings. At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was up less than a point at 12,807.51. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index lost 4.60 points, or 0.34 percent, to 1,356.62, while the Nasdaq dropped 22.46 points, or 0.78 percent, to 2,841.62. In London, the FTSE 100 index was up 0.21 percent, while the DAX in Frankfurt fell 0.36 percent. The CAC 40 in France was 0.29 percent lower. Randy Bateman, chief investment officer and president of Huntington Asset Advisors, said some weakness was not surprising after a mostly positive earnings season. About 65 percent of companies in the S.& P. have reported their results, and earnings are up about 21 percent from the same period last year, according to FactSet. “We’ve had such a strong, hard run for the entirety of the year in the face of an awful lot of adversity,” Mr. Bateman said. “Investors are going to sit back a little bit and say, ‘How much more good news is out there?’ ” Pfizer fared worst in the Dow Jones industrial average Tuesday, losing nearly 3 percent. Clorox, the consumer goods maker, fell 3.6 percent and Molson Coors Brewing, the beverage company, fell nearly 6 percent after each reported lower net income compared with the period a year ago. Both blamed higher costs for raw materials for the decline. The home builder Beazer Homes USA slipped 5 percent after it reported a larger-than-expected loss because orders for new homes fell, reflecting continued weakness in the housing industry. The losses came after a string of stronger-than-expected earnings reports pushed the broad stock market up 2 percent this quarter. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 2.4 percent last week alone. “You get a nice move like that and you’re bound to have a pullback,” said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Asset Management. Investors sold stocks based on their perceived riskiness, he said, with the stable companies in the Dow losing the least and smaller, riskier companies in the Russell 2000 declining the most. Not every company had poor results. MetroPCS Communications rose 10 percent, the most of any company in the S.& P. 500, after it added a record number of subscribers in the first quarter. The company sells low-cost phone service, primarily in cities. General Motors rose 2.5 percent after its American car and truck sales jumped 26 percent in April. Higher gas prices motivated consumers to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. In the commodities market, silver fell 7.6 percent to $42.585 a ounce after a 5.2 percent drop on Monday. Gold also fell. Oil tumbled because of the stronger dollar. Benchmark West Texas crude lost $2.47 to settle at $111.05 in New York trading. Bond prices rose slightly. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dipped to 3.25 percent from 3.28 percent from late Monday, while the price increased 8/32 to 103 4/32.

Stocks and Bonds
Economic Conditions and Trends


BP Aims for a Bull’s-Eye Under the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract: HOUSTON — To hear the people at Baker Hughes tell it, a drill string — length after length of narrow pipe that can extend for miles into the earth — is far from a rigid assembly of high-strength steel. It is more like a wet noodle. “The challenge is not to get it to bend,” said Aravindh Kaniappan, a product manager for Baker Hughes, a drilling equipment and services company. “It’s to get it to not bend.” Because a string of drill pipe, along with the rotating bit at its cutting end, tends to go this way and that, drillers need critical information about the location of a well as it is being drilled. “First you need to know where you are,” Mr. Kaniappan said. “Then you need to know from where you are, where you need to go.” The need for accurate location information — in a subterranean environment that Global Positioning System satellite signals cannot reach — is true now more than ever, as oil and gas wells go deeper and become more complex, veering off horizontally through narrow hydrocarbon reservoirs or parallel existing wells. But it is especially true right now in the Gulf of Mexico, where BP is drilling a relief well to intersect the runaway well that has been spewing oil since April . The relief well will be used to pump heavy drilling mud, followed by cement, into the damaged well to stop the gusher permanently. But first it, or a second relief well being drilled nearby as a backup, must hit the target — the existing well’s steel casing pipe, only seven inches in diameter, more than 3 miles below the surface of the gulf. The first relief well is currently about 20 feet horizontally and less than 1,000 feet vertically from the interception point. “We feel very good about the progress we’ve made,” Kent Wells, a BP vice president overseeing the relief well effort, said at a recent news conference, but did not revise an estimated completion date of early August. Baker Hughes and other companies are helping BP reach the target, providing specialized techniques and tools for measuring and surveying the relief wells as they are drilled, and steering them in the right direction. Many of these services — variously described as “measuring while drilling,” “logging while drilling” and “directional drilling” — are used in almost all wells, and have been for decades. But the techniques have been improved and expanded over the years, aided by advances in sensors and processing. Baker Hughes and companies like Halliburton, Schlumberger and Vector Magnetics use sophisticated accelerometers and magnetometers to determine the inclination, or angle, and azimuth, or compass direction, of the hole, sending the data back to the drill rig as binary pulses in the drilling mud that circulates through the drill pipe. If the drill bit has strayed, it can be steered back on course by several means, one of which uses pressure pads against the well bore to change the bit’s direction. With the relief wells, magnetometers are also being used to locate the target, by detecting the electromagnetic field created by an electric current induced in the runaway well’s casing pipe. The relief wells are then being steered closer and closer to the intercept point, nearly 18,000 feet down. More than direction and location, though, sensing tools — hollow pipes that resemble thin, shiny torpedoes, up to 30 feet long, with sensors and processors installed in precisely machined cavities — can help oil companies better understand rock and hydrocarbon reservoirs, often in real time as they are drilling through them. “During the last five to 10 years there has been a step change in the technology,” said Mattiass Schlecht, Baker Hughes’s vice president for drilling systems. Tools measure the natural gamma radiation emitted by rock, the electrical resistance of any fluids within, and even, through a kind of inverse M.R.I. device, the magnetic resonance of the nuclei of hydrocarbon atoms. Gamma measurements can determine whether the bit is drilling through sand (which is more likely to contain hydrocarbons) or shale. Resistance information shows whether the formation contains oil, gas or water. And nuclear resonance data indicates how easily the oil will flow out of the porous rock. “How much of that fluid you can really move out of the pores and into the well bore,” Dr. Schlecht said. Stephen Prensky, a consultant in Silver Spring, Md., who follows trends in drilling technology, said that many of the changes have been evolutionary, improvements to existing measurements using newer electronics. But the move toward more real-time data collection is crucial, he said, with deepwater and other complex wells costing upward of $100 million. “You want to have as much information as possible to make sure you drill the best well possible,” Mr. Prensky said. “Real-time information is essential in those circumstances.” But even in relatively simple vertical wells, measurement and other data is crucial. Geologists may have mapped the various rock formations in advance based on seismic surveys, but formations are far from homogeneous, so it can be important to know precisely what kind of rock the well has traveled through. And a well cannot be allowed to veer across a lease line, for example. Drill bits stray all the time, as the bit encounters pockets of softer or harder rock. “Drilling straight down doesn’t necessarily mean you go straight down,” said Scott Schmidt, Baker Hughes’s president of drilling and evaluation services. “The bit wants to follow the path of least resistance.” In any well, one goal is to keep the well bore smooth and any turns gradual, avoiding what drilling engineers call “high dogleg severity.” “Once you have a kink in there it will hurt you for the rest of the well,” Dr. Schlecht said. It will create higher friction for the drill string, he said, and make it more difficult to send casing pipe down the well. Decades ago, well surveys were done only after pulling the drill pipe out of the hole, a process that, depending on depth, could take a day or more. Instruments were lowered on a wire, readings were taken, and the instruments were brought back up. (Some of the earliest equipment, called single-shot tools, actually took a photograph of a compass rose lowered deep in the hole; drillers would have to wait for the film to be developed to determine azimuth.) Now the high-tech tools usually form a permanent part of the drill string, assembled at the very end. Together with the drill bit, perhaps a mud-driven motor to rotate it and steering equipment, the tools form a “bottom hole assembly” that can be well over 100 feet long — and easily worth several million dollars, particularly since the bit is usually encrusted with synthetic diamonds. Because the tools form part of the drill string, they must be hollow to allow the drilling mud to pass through to the bit, where it provides lubrication and cooling and carries the rock cuttings back to the rig. That makes the job of the tool designer more difficult, as all the sensors, silicon chips and power supplies have to sit in the walls of the pipe. At a long and low building near Houston’s international airport where Baker Hughes makes its tools, workers regularly perform extreme feats of machining, like drilling a small hole for wires down through 30 feet of pipe wall. Not all the tools can provide data while the well is being drilled, however. Accelerometers, tiny silicon devices that measure gravitational pull along three axes, work best when there is not much external vibration, so drilling is usually stopped to take measurements, although the drill pipe remains in place. Magnetometers work best when there is no magnetic interference from other steel, so in the early stages of drilling BP’s relief wells, “ranging” runs to determine how close the relief wells were to the runaway well were performed with the drill pipe pulled out of the hole and a separate magnetometer lowered on a wire. A device sent a current into the formation, inducing a current in the metal casing pipe of the runaway well. The magnetometer detected the field created by the induced current, and software sorted out the signal to determine the distance to the pipe. In later ranging runs, however, the drillers have been using a faster system that does not require the drill string to be pulled completely out of the well. The system also has a sensor directly behind the bit, which gives drillers a more accurate reading of the most important piece of information: where the actual bit is in relation to the runaway well. Those magnetometers are connected to the surface by a wire that can handle a lot of data. For other tools that form part of the drill string, however, data is usually sent to the rig through mud pulse . A simple valve raises and lowers the pressure in the mud inside the drill string, and a sensor on the rig measures the small pressure changes. With the data being transmitted at about 10 bits per second, it takes about 30 seconds to transmit basic measurement data, and that is with much of the data being crunched in processors on the tool. That is glacially slow by modern standards, but as Mr. Kaniappan describes it, still a remarkable feat to distinguish the small pressure changes that make up the signal from all the background noise. “It’s amazing the technology we have,” he said.

Offshore Drilling and Exploration
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Gulf of Mexico
BP Plc
Science and Technology
Accidents and Safety


4 Prosecutors in Stevens Case Held in Contempt

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The federal judge who presided over the trial and conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens on ethics charges ruled Friday that four Justice Department lawyers involved with the case were in contempt of court. The judge, Emmit G. Sullivan, was angered over the failure of the Justice Department to produce 32 documents he had asked for to help him assess a statement by an F.B.I. agent who had accused the prosecution team of willfully concealing evidence helpful to the defense. Judge Sullivan said it was “outrageous for the Justice Department, the largest law firm in the nation, to come before a federal judge” and have no justification for ignoring his order. The lawyers charged with contempt included William Welch, the chief of the public integrity section that investigates official corruption and handled the Stevens case, and Brenda Morris, the section’s deputy. The contempt holding also covered Kevin Driscoll, a trial lawyer who had just joined the prosecution team. Judge Sullivan asked, “Is there anyone else involved in this?” — referring to a government filing that failed to include the documents. Patty Stemler, an appellate lawyer sitting in the audience, stood up and said, “I signed it, too, judge.” She was added to the list. The dispute involves the handling of a formal complaint filed by an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who worked on the Stevens case in which he said he had witnessed improper behavior by the prosecution team, including possible violations of law. The agent, Chad Joy, said that his colleague, Mary Beth Kepner, had an inappropriate relationship with the prosecution’s chief witness, Bill Allen. A contempt decree like the one issued orally from the bench by Judge Sullivan may come with penalties like jail time or fines. But it is just as likely to be dropped if and when the documents are produced. Judge Sullivan did not specify any penalties and said he would deal with the contempt issue later. Mr. Stevens, an Alaska Republican, was convicted in October on ethics charges for failing to list on Senate disclosure forms gifts and services from several supporters, but mostly from Mr. Allen, an oil-services tycoon and onetime friend of the senator. Judge Sullivan has not yet set a sentencing date for Mr. Stevens, who was defeated in his re-election bid in November, as he has been obliged to deal with other issues, like the statement from Mr. Joy. Mr. Stevens’s lawyers have cited the Joy statement in their request to have the conviction thrown out.

Stevens Ted
Ethics
Decisions and Verdicts
Justice Department


Seahawks Move Past a Loss, Instead of Using It as Motivation

Abstract: BALTIMORE — Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson put on another show Sunday afternoon. Wilson matched a career and season high by throwing five touchdown passes, three to Doug Baldwin, in a 35-6 victory over the injury-riddled Baltimore Ravens. Seattle has won six of its last seven games. There are the analytics of quarterbacks like Wilson and the soulfulness of quarterbacks like Wilson. The analytics get you into the Hall of Fame; the soul gets you into two Super Bowls in your first three seasons of professional football. First, the analytics. Wilson has thrown 16 touchdown passes with no interceptions in his last four games. Sunday’s game was the 22nd time in Wilson’s career that he has thrown multiple touchdowns without an interception in a game, the most of any player in his first four seasons since 1970. Those are the analytics. The soulfulness is that Wilson is once again finding ways to win games. He is driven and motivated. We disagree on the source of the drive and motivation. After New England lost its second consecutive game last week, I realized I had been focusing too much on what I was calling the Tom Brady revenge tour. After an off-season during which his name had been tarnished by an N.F.L. investigation into deflated footballs, Brady and the Patriots began the season with a vengeance. But who could possibly be more motivated than Seattle, Wilson and Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll? From the Patriots’ 1-yard line in last season’s Super Bowl, a touchdown would have secured Wilson’s second consecutive championship, silenced the critics and positioned Wilson among the game’s elite winners. Instead, Carroll called the wrong play and Wilson threw an interception. From that one bad throw through the Seahawks’ first six games this season, of which they lost four, Wilson heard familiar criticisms: He is too short, he can’t function from the pocket and he is a game manager at best. In the last six weeks, Wilson has been hotter than any quarterback except Carolina’s Cam Newton and Arizona’s Carson Palmer. During this past season’s World Series, a number of Kansas City Royals players said that what had sustained them, what had picked them up when they were down, what had grounded them when they became too full of themselves was the memory of being 90 feet away from a chance at a World Series championship in 2014. The Royals owner David Glass said not a day had gone by during the season when he had not thought about Game 7, which ended with the Royals ’ tying run on third base against the San Francisco Giants. Royals outfielder Lorenzo Cain said the loss had ruined his off-season, as he thought about that 90 feet every day, but he said he felt that in the long run, the defeat brought the team closer. However, no Seahawks player or coach I spoke with on Sunday felt that anything good or inspiring had come from their devastating Super Bowl loss. “We’ve tried to move past it as much as we could,” said Richard Sherman, the Seattle cornerback, whose contorted face was broadcast after the interception. There was no silver lining, nothing gained from it. “It’s more of just remembering who we are,” Sherman said. Carroll conceded that the way his team had lost threw the Seahawks off-kilter. “It took us some time to make sure to leave that behind,” Carroll said. “We don’t need that to be motivated.” He added: “We had to work our way through it, and it took us a while and that’s the farthest thing from our talk, minds right now. It has nothing to do with nothing.” Carroll said that the team was “just getting ready each week now from this point forward.” I would argue that the first six weeks of the season were about regaining their balance. Wilson said he did not believe in mission theology when it came to professional football. “I don’t think you erase it completely,” Wilson said of the Super Bowl loss. “Every year’s a new year. We don’t have time to look back.” Wilson said that the team had won a lot of games and “done a lot of special things” because the next week’s game had always been the focus. Perhaps the perspectives of Glass and Cain are the difference between football and baseball. The difference between a long, meandering baseball season and a 16-game N.F.L. season in which every play may be your last and every game is important. One minute on Sunday, running back Thomas Rawls was carrying the weight of the Seattle offense, the next he was being carried off with a broken ankle. Beyond that, baseball is a game of introspection and history, a game drenched in nostalgia. Football is a game with no memory. It cannot have a memory; it must not have a memory. That’s the only way we can watch the brutality and still live with ourselves. That is why N.F.L. football has become our national pastime: We do not like to look deeply at our past, either. Too troubling. Best to focus on the here and now — on tomorrow. Until tomorrow becomes part of the past. Perhaps it’s better to have amnesia. For the Seahawks, at least, it works for now. “We can’t look too far back,” Wilson said on Sunday. “All we have is now.”


Hyundai Executive Meets With Kim Jong Il

Abstract: SEOUL — Kim Jong Il, the leader of North Korea, met the head of South Korea’s Hyundai Group, the North’s state media reported Sunday, days after the communist country released a Hyundai worker who had been held there for months. Kim and Hyun Jung-eun, Hyundai’s chairwoman, had a “cordial talk,” the Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch from Pyongyang that provided few details. It did not specify when the talks took place, though they were likely held Sunday since Hyun had extended her stay in the North for an additional day, the fifth time since arriving in Pyongyang last Monday. Hyun traveled to North Korea’s capital to seek the release of the Hyundai worker as well as discuss joint projects the business group has pursued in the North that have stalled amid sharply higher inter-Korean tensions. North Korea on Thursday deported Yoo Seong-jin, a 44-year-old Hyundai Asan technician who worked at a joint industrial zone in the North where about 110 South Korean-run factories employ about 40,000 North Korean workers. Yoo had been held for allegedly denouncing the North’s government and attempting to persuade a North Korean worker to defect. North Korea still holds four South Korean fishermen it detained earlier this month after their boat strayed into its waters. Chung Ju-yung, the late Hyundai Group founder and Hyun’s father-in-law, pushed aggressively for closer business ties with North Korea beginning in the late 1990s.

Kim Jong Il
Hyundai Motor Company
South Korea
North Korea