World Cup 2014: Executive Is Called Fugitive in Ticket-Selling Case

Abstract: SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A police investigation into an illegal ticket-selling scheme at the World Cup took a cinematic turn as one of the suspects slipped out of an employee entrance of the luxurious Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro just minutes before the police arrived to arrest him. The suspect, Ray Whelan — an executive with Match Services, the company contracted by FIFA to sell match tickets and hospitality packages — can be seen on security footage casually following his lawyer, Fernando Fernandes, out an employee entrance of the hotel on Thursday afternoon. Police officers arrived minutes later with an arrest warrant. Whelan had been arrested earlier in the week and then released by a judge after a habeas corpus request. “He’s a fugitive,” said Marcos Kac, the prosecutor in the investigation for Rio de Janeiro’s Public Ministry. “He escaped from the hotel. The police should have taken greater precautions.” The state authorities alerted Brazil’s Federal Police and Interpol to prevent Whelan from fleeing the country, though the police had already retained his passport. “We do not believe the term ‘fugitive’ is appropriate,” said a statement released by Match Services, which called his initial arrest “arbitrary and illegal.” In a statement on Friday, Fernandes, the lawyer, said Whelan “did not know of the arrest order when he left the Copacabana Palace, and is not fleeing from Rio de Janeiro or the country.” The police have been investigating an alleged Ticket Mafia, as the Brazilian press has called it, that supposedly acquired and sold World Cup match tickets and packages for well above list prices. The Rio de Janeiro police have recorded 50,000 phone calls, including around 900 calls between Whelan and Mohamadou Lamine Fofana, an Algerian who officials said was the mastermind of the operation, the police investigator Fabio Barucke told The Associated Press. Investigators have accused 12 men of charges including ticket scalping, criminal conspiracy and, in three cases, bribing police officers in a sting operation. All but Whelan and José Massih, who assisted investigators during his initial arrest, are in police custody. Fofana acquired tickets from Whelan — who had access through Match Services — and then sold them at a premium either directly or through agents, said Kac, the prosecutor. Illegal sales totaled about $100 million, he said. The police released to the Brazilian news media a short transcript of a call between the two men in which they discuss the sale of 24 ticket packages for about $25,000 each, in cash. But in a statement, Jaime Byron, executive chairman of Match Services, questioned the investigators’ competence. The police “are not experts in FIFA World Cup ticketing or hospitality,” he said. “A cursory review of the ticket and hospitality pages on FIFA.com would have alerted them to the fact that there is a distinction to be made between admission tickets and hospitality packages.” Match Services said Whelan was offering to sell hospitality packages — including tickets to all seven matches in Rio de Janeiro as well as other services — and did not know Match Services had forbidden sales to Fofana. “The 24 hospitality packages were offered on cash basis, which is highly unusual but permitted under the various terms and conditions,” Match Services said in the statement. Kac, from the public ministry, questioned the legitimacy of that explanation. “It doesn’t seem that an actual business would receive $600,000 in cash,” he said.

2014 World Cup
Soccer
Brazil
Rio de Janeiro
Fugitive
Ticket Scalping


Experts Say Iran May Be Ready for a Nuclear Deal

Abstract: RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Iran says it has no plans to build nuclear weapons . Western nations say they do not believe Iran and periodically release intelligence reports that they say prove Iran has been working on building a bomb. For years, that has been the point of contention in an intractable international dispute. But as the United States and its Western allies prepare for a second round of direct negotiations with Tehran this month, that may no longer be the central question. The more pertinent point, Iran experts and regional analysts say, is that Iran finally may be ready to make a deal. The analysts cite a confluence of factors, from Iran’s internal political crisis to the change in leadership in Washington, and one overriding point: Iran’s leadership may have achieved much of what it set out to accomplish when it stepped up its clandestine nuclear program in 1999. In contentious, high-stakes negotiations, deals are possible when both sides have a chance to declare victory, and that point may have been reached. “If the Iranian endgame is to keep enrichment, and if the United States’ endgame is to make sure there are no nuclear weapons in Iran, then it can be a win-win,” said Trita Parsi, author of a book on Iran and president of the National Iranian American Council , an independent advocacy group in Washington. “Those who have been criticizing the administration for compromising or giving Iran a concession, they are wrong. It is not a concession to adjust to an unchanging reality.” For Iran, this is not exactly about compromising — which it has shown little appetite for — as much as cooperating. For the West, it is not about winning concessions but about developing verifiable assurances that Iran is not producing weapons. “I think the Iranians are simply in no mood to accept any serious limits on the expansion of their program,” said Flynt Leverett, director of the Iran Project at the New America Foundation . “From their point of view, they already suspended enrichment for almost two years, from 2003 to 2005, and from their perspective, they got nothing for that and they’re not going to do that again.” But Mr. Leverett said Iran sees “that by expanding, they’ve gotten the attention of the international community and they have cards to play.” And that may have been Iran’s primary goal from the start. There are many analysts inside and outside Iran who say that Tehran’s objective has been to master — or at least appear to master — the process of preparing nuclear fuel, fashioning a warhead and providing the means to deliver that warhead, but not actually to build a weapon. This is in line with a recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency , which found that Iran had acquired “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” nuclear weapon but did not present evidence that it was trying to produce one. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in 2005 banning the production of nuclear weapons . Tehran knows that actually deploying a weapon could undermine its regional strength by driving smaller oil-rich neighbors to seek their own nuclear umbrella, presumably from the United States. Rather, experts say, Iran’s intention all along was to strengthen its hand in dealing with the West, to achieve legitimacy, security and recognition of its leadership in the region. Iran’s meeting with the United States and Western powers in Geneva brought it within reach of those goals. The United States negotiated directly with Iran and, perhaps more important, Iran walked away with an implicit acceptance of its right to continue enrichment on its own soil, which it considers a matter of national sovereignty. “They are already where they wanted to be,” said Abbas Milani, head of Iranian studies at Stanford, even before the Geneva meeting. “They are virtually a nuclear state; the issue of national pride is resolved.” Writing in his blog, Informed Comment , Juan Cole, an expert on Iran and the contemporary Middle East, described Tehran’s goal as “nuclear latency,” which he said explained why the leadership had insisted it was not trying to build weapons while also driving hard to master construction of a bomb. “Nuclear latency has all the advantages of actual possession of a bomb without any of the unpleasant consequences, of the sort North Korea is suffering,” Mr. Cole wrote. There is other evidence that this was Iran’s goal from the start. Hassan Rowhani, a cleric who served for years as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and the head of its Supreme National Security Council, published in 2005 a private speech he gave a year earlier. While there have been tactical disagreements over the years between hard-liners and pragmatists like Mr. Rowhani, the speech indicated that there was no dispute over the end goal. “The world did not want Pakistan to have an atomic bomb or Brazil to have the fuel cycle, but Pakistan built its bomb and Brazil has its fuel cycle, and the world started to work with them,” he said. “Our problem is that we have not achieved either one, but we are standing at the threshold. As for building the atomic bomb, we never wanted to move in that direction and we have not yet completely developed our fuel cycle capability.” When Iran met with Western powers in Geneva, it offered what appeared to be a compromise. It said that it would allow inspectors into a recently disclosed enrichment facility near the holy city of Qum and it agreed to send its modestly enriched fuel to Russia to be processed further. Tehran also agreed to keep talking, which seemed to contradict President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s insistence that Iran would deal only with the I.A.E.A. about its nuclear program. But back at home, the hard-liners declared success. “Prior to the talks, they used to speak of suspension and sanctions against Iran, but after the talks there has not been any word of suspension or sanctions. Rather, Iran’s package of proposals was the focus,” said Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, a conservative cleric, during a Friday Prayer sermon at Tehran University last week. Even if the West manages to extract a deal from Iran that both sides can accept, and even if it can verify implementation, there are other, serious considerations, experts said. Some analysts said that there was concern the West could undermine whatever fragment of a reform movement survived in Iran after the disputed June presidential election and government crackdown. There is also the chance that a latent nuclear program could become active, which is why some, like Mr. Parsi of the National Iranian American Council, argue that monitoring and inspections — more than trying to end enrichment — should become the West’s primary demands. There is also the danger that making a deal now will send the message that the way to get what you want is to emulate North Korea and act belligerently. But Mr. Parsi said that might also provide Washington policy makers with a valuable lesson. “Sometimes,” he said, “a compromise is an adjustment to reality.”

Iran
Nuclear Weapons
United States International Relations


BMW Promotes Its Tagline to Its Slogan

Abstract: BMW of North America will introduce its new brand advertising on Saturday, reinforcing its image as “the ultimate driving machine” as it introduces 14 new models in the United States this year. Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, appointed in August by BMW as its lead agency in the United States for national brand creative work and ads for BMW dealers, has produced a new 30-second television spot that will have its premiere on NBC’s broadcast of the N.F.L.’s wild-card games. Unlike BMW’s previous global brand campaign by GSD&M of Austin, Tex. — which focused on the joy of driving a BMW — the new advertising depicts the BMW as the “ultimate driving machine,” whatever the model. The tagline has been used continuously by BMW since it was created by Martin Puris, then the chief executive of Ammirati & Puris, in 1975. The new spot features, in quick succession, a BMW M3 Coupe on a track, followed by a BMW X5 in sand, then a BMWi8 on a bridge, then a BMW 7 Series in a tunnel, before finishing with a montage of the BMW family of cars. The voice-over says, “We don’t make sports cars. We don’t make S.U.V.’s. We don’t make hybrids, and we don’t make luxury sedans. We only make one thing, the ultimate driving machine.” • Dan Creed, vice president of marketing for BMW of North America, said, “We’re in the middle of an extremely significant product offensive.” The introduction of 14 models in 2012 will be the most by BMW in the United States in one year in at least a decade. With the new campaign, Mr. Creed said, the company is trying to “take the ultimate driving machine and define what it will be in the future.” Ed Brojerdi, co-chief creative officer of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal, a New York-based part of MDC Partners, said the agency was dealing “with one of the most iconic taglines in marketing. We needed to make sure the marketing is as encompassing as the portfolio. Big brands have a focused point of view, they stand for something. BMW evokes the joy and passion for driving, sheer driving pleasure.” After Saturday’s football games, the new spot will run during prime-time programs like “House,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Modern Family” and “Law and Order: SVU” on the Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC networks. It also will run nationally on cable channels throughout the year. According to Trudy Hardy, manager of marketing for BMW North America, the ad is aimed at the company’s “normal buying demographic,” men and women age 35 to 54. Mr. Creed said BMW’s 2012 advertising budget would be “slightly more” than its budget in 2011. According to Kantar Media, the company spent $133 million on all advertising in the United States in 2009, $166 million in 2010, and $109 million in the first nine months of 2011, slightly up from $108 million spent in the same period in 2010. Mr. Creed said that for the luxury segment of automobiles, 2011 was a “two-horse race between BMW and Mercedes-Benz from a volume standpoint” in the American market. The BMW Group announced Thursday that sales of BMW brand vehicles in the United States were up 12.6 percent in 2011, to 247,907 vehicles, while Mercedes-Benz USA said on Thursday that sales of that brand rose 13.3 percent in 2011, to 245,231 vehicles. Noting he would “rather go into any downturn with the newest products rather than the oldest” and with more efficient and dynamic products than their predecessors, Mr. Creed said, “regardless of which way the economy goes in 2012, we feel BMW is in the strongest position of our competitive set.” Christopher Cedergren, managing director of Iceology, a Los Angeles consulting and research company that has worked with BMW in the past, called the new TV spot an effort by the automaker to “go back to its performance roots as the ultimate driving machine. The previous campaign was too nebulous. It blurred the image of the BMW brand, made it too much like its competitors. It kind of walked away from its positioning about its driving performance.” “They’re trying to pull on the heartstrings of consumers again. The joy campaign really didn’t pull on the heartstrings that effectively,”‘ he said, adding, “The luxury business is an emotional business. If you want to sell a product that commands a premium price, you need to tug on the heartstrings, the passion points of consumers.” • Christie L. Nordhielm, an associate professor of business administration at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, said that although the ad’s depiction of multiple car models was “not particularly unique, the message in the campaign is very unique. I don’t recall another automotive company emphasizing the overall corporate benefit, while expressly de-emphasizing the specific types of cars, in the last 30 years.” BMW, she added, “in a sense is the Apple of the automotive industry. Apple delivers great user experience across products, and BMW delivers an exceptional experience across all types of automobiles.” Renée Richardson Gosline, an assistant professor of marketing at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, said “a campaign that emphasizes a consistent brand essence is powerful, but BMW has to keep in mind that luxury consumers seek distinction, even within the brand. So, along with the egalitarian message that all BMWs are ‘ultimate driving machines,’ BMW has to make owners of different models each feel special as well, by building relationships with the owners of each model.” She said that could be done with customized direct mail campaigns or online or offline community groups.

Automobiles
Advertising and Marketing
Bayerische Motorenwerke AG
Slogans and Mottoes


For Astronauts and Their Families, Lives With Built-In Stress

Abstract: An astronaut’s life can stretch family ties to the breaking point, and astronauts are not immune to emotional stress. That lesson is nowhere more obvious, experts and friends said, than in the case of Lisa M. Nowak, the Navy captain who was arrested early Monday on charges of attacking a woman in Florida. The police say Captain Nowak considered the woman, Colleen Shipman, an Air Force captain, to be a rival for the affections of another astronaut, Cmdr. William A. Oefelein of the Navy. Captain Nowak and her husband of nearly 20 years, Richard, separated some weeks ago, according to a statement this week from her family. “There’s a lot of marital discord in the astronaut corps,” with the long absences and high pressure, Dr. Jon Clark, a former NASA physician whose wife, Laurel Salton Clark, died in the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, said in an interview. Dr. Clark, who said the Nowaks were good friends with whom he and his wife had a great deal in common, said that life after a mission could have been very hard for Captain Nowak. “You’re the rock star, you’re at the high of your high, you have this great, wonderful, super-elevated moment in space,” Dr. Clark said. “You come back and you’re cleaning up your kids’ mess and cooking.” What’s more, he said, the astronaut returns to a husband who has been doing solo parenting duty and expects to get a break, only to hear, “Hey, this is your problem now.” It could be wrenching, he said, “Some of those things can just conspire to nail you.” The police said that Captain Nowak attacked Captain Shipman with pepper spray in the parking lot of the Orlando airport; Captain Nowak was charged with attempted murder. The police said they found such items as a knife, a steel mallet, rubber tubing, latex gloves and garbage bags in Captain Nowak’s car, along with e-mail messages between Commander Oefelein and Captain Shipman, and Captain Shipman’s travel plans, which Captain Nowak told the police that she had obtained from Commander Oefelein’s computer. Captain Nowak had driven more than 900 miles from Texas to Florida to confront Captain Shipman, and the police said she wore adult diapers on the trip so that she would not have to stop to relieve herself. Since her arrest, NASA has put her on 30-day leave and removed her from mission activities; she was going to work at mission control during the space shuttle flight in March. NASA officials announced on Wednesday that the agency was reviewing its screening and psychological evaluation, and would try to determine whether signs of trouble with Captain Nowak had been missed. On Thursday, Captain Nowak and her parents were in her home in the Houston suburbs. It was not clear where her husband and children were. In an official NASA interview on the space agency’s Web site from 2005, Captain Nowak, who has twin 5-year-old girls and a teenage son, talked about the way that NASA’s intense training means “a sacrifice for our own personal time and our families and the people around us.” While the unique aspects of an astronaut’s life might draw attention, Lawrence A. Palinkas, an expert in astronaut psychology at the University of Southern California, said space travelers have sources of stress that would be recognized by many people in more earthbound careers — and a similarly elevated rate of divorce rate. “Any occupation where you have people spending a fair amount of time away from families — perhaps the best analogy is military deployment — you’re going to have stress related to job demands,” he said. Astronauts are not immune to stress, he said, though they are selected for emotional stability and trained to compartmentalize emotional issues and continue to perform on the job. NASA officials said they intended to find out if they can do more to provide astronauts and their families with the support they need. In a telephone briefing with reporters yesterday, Ellen Ochoa, the director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center, said that in the review of the space agency’s psychological counseling services and procedures, “we’re going to be asking ourselves, ‘Is there more that we should be doing post flight?’ ” She said that NASA had no rules regarding relationships between astronauts, beyond general civil service, that govern relationships between bosses and subordinates. In an interview with reporters before her July flight, Captain Nowak said that with the space shuttle program winding down, she expected that her first flight could be her last. “There’s a good chance I won’t fly again,” she said. “They don’t need me to do another flight,” because there are many astronauts with similar skills. But when asked if that was cause for regret, she quickly said, “Of course it was worth doing it.”

National Aeronautics and Space Administration


Vatican Preparing New Guidelines to Deal With Sexual Abuse

Abstract: VATICAN CITY — The Vatican announced on Friday that it was preparing a new set of guidelines to help bishops offer a “coordinated and efficient” response to sexual abuse, one that emphasizes protecting children, cooperating with civil authorities and careful selection of future priests. The Vatican did not reveal details of the guidelines or when they would be published, but they appear to be one of the most decisive remedial measures it has taken to tackle a sexual abuse crisis that roared back last spring, challenging its moral authority and underscoring widespread confusion about its own rules for handling abuse. Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is responsible for disciplining abusive priests, announced the guidelines at a meeting of more than 200 cardinals at the Vatican on Friday. The cardinals had been summoned by Pope Benedict XVI to discuss key issues facing the church on the eve of his elevating new cardinals on Saturday. In the past, Cardinal Levada, the highest ranking American in the Vatican hierarchy and a former archbishop of San Francisco, has praised the so-called Dallas Charter adopted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002, which offers guidelines on reporting abuse and raising awareness. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said that it would be impossible for the Vatican to apply the United States norms worldwide, but that the new guidelines would allow local bishops’ conferences to issue their own procedures, taking into consideration “the different legal and pastoral situations” in each country. In a central issue, some countries require the mandatory reporting of abuse to civil authorities, while others do not. In a statement, the Vatican also said that after Cardinal Levada’s presentation, several cardinals suggested that the Vatican “encourage bishops’ conferences to develop plans that are effective, timely, articulate, complete and decisive about protecting minors,” and that help “re-establish justice, both for the aiding of victims and for prevention and training, including in countries where the problem has not yet manifested itself as dramatically as it has in others.” According to several cardinals who attended Friday’s meeting, two speakers who raised those themes were Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, a former archbishop of Westminster, and Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, both of whom were chosen by the pope as part of a delegation to investigate a widespread sex abuse scandal in Ireland. In the past, some bishops had complained that the Vatican’s own rules for handling abuse were unclear. In 2001, Pope John Paul II issued a document saying all credible allegations of abuse by priests should be reported to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. But the document was not widely circulated, and the confusion remained. Last July, the Vatican issued changes to canon law for handling abuse, placing pedophilia in the rank of the church’s gravest crimes, but drew criticism confusion when it also placed the attempted ordination of women in a similar category.


Arctic Sea Ice Eyed for Clues to Weather Extremes

Abstract: Some people call what has been happening the last few years “weather weirding,” and March is turning out to be a fine example. As a surreal heat wave was peaking across much of the nation last week, pools and beaches drew crowds, some farmers planted their crops six weeks early, and trees burst into bloom. “The trees said: ‘Aha! Let’s get going!’ ” said Peter Purinton, a maple syrup producer in Vermont . “ ‘ Spring is here!’ ” Now, of course, a cold snap in Northern states has brought some of the lowest temperatures of the season, with damage to tree crops alone likely to be in the millions of dollars. Lurching from one weather extreme to another seems to have become routine across the Northern Hemisphere. Parts of the United States may be shivering now, but Scotland is setting heat records. Across Europe , people died by the hundreds during a severe cold wave in the first half of February, but a week later revelers in Paris were strolling down the Champs-Élysées in their shirt-sleeves. Does science have a clue what is going on? The short answer appears to be: not quite. The longer answer is that researchers are developing theories that, should they withstand critical scrutiny, may tie at least some of the erratic weather to global warming . Specifically, suspicion is focused these days on the drastic decline of sea ice in the Arctic , which is believed to be a direct consequence of the human release of greenhouse gases. “The question really is not whether the loss of the sea ice can be affecting the atmospheric circulation on a large scale,” said Jennifer A. Francis, a Rutgers University climate researcher. “The question is, how can it not be, and what are the mechanisms?” Some aspects of the climate situation are clear from earlier research. As the planet warms, many scientists say, more energy and water vapor are entering the atmosphere and driving weather systems. “The reason you have a clothes dryer that heats the air is that warm air can evaporate water more easily,” said Thomas C. Peterson, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A report released on Wednesday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , the United Nations body that issues periodic updates on climate science, confirmed that a strong body of evidence links global warming to an increase in heat waves, a rise in episodes of heavy rainfall and other precipitation, and more frequent coastal flooding. “A changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events,” the report found. Some of the documented imbalances in the climate have certainly become remarkable. United States government scientists recently reported , for instance, that February was the 324th consecutive month in which global temperatures exceeded their long-term average for a given month; the last month with below-average temperatures was February 1985. In the United States, many more record highs are being set at weather stations than record lows, a bellwether indicator of a warming climate. So far this year, the United States has set 17 new daily highs for every new daily low, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times by Climate Central , a research group in New Jersey . Last year, despite a chilly winter, the country set nearly three new highs for every low, the analysis found. But, while the link between heat waves and global warming may be clear, the evidence is much thinner regarding some types of weather extremes. Scientists studying tornadoes are plagued by poor statistics that could be hiding significant trends, but so far, they are not seeing any long-term increase in the most damaging twisters. And researchers studying specific events, like the Russian heat wave of 2010, have often come to conflicting conclusions about whether to blame climate change. Scientists who dispute the importance of global warming have long ridiculed any attempt to link greenhouse gases to weather extremes. John R. Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told Congress last year that “the weather is very dynamic, especially at local scales, so that extreme events of one type or another will occur somewhere on the planet every year.” Yet mainstream scientists are determined to figure out which climate extremes are being influenced by human activity, and their attention is increasingly drawn to the Arctic sea ice. Because greenhouse gases are causing the Arctic to warm more rapidly than the rest of the planet, the sea ice cap has shrunk about 40 percent since the early 1980s. That means an area of the Arctic Ocean the size of Europe has become dark, open water in the summer instead of reflective ice, absorbing extra heat and then releasing it to the atmosphere in the fall and early winter. Dr. Francis, of Rutgers, has presented evidence that this is affecting the jet stream, the huge river of air that circles the Northern Hemisphere in a loopy, meandering fashion. Her research suggests that the declining temperature contrast between the Arctic and the middle latitudes is causing kinks in the jet stream to move from west to east more slowly than before, and that those kinks have everything to do with the weather in a particular spot. “This means that whatever weather you have today — be it wet, hot, dry or snowy — is more likely to last longer than it used to,” said Dr. Francis, who published a major paper on her theory a few weeks ago. “If conditions hang around long enough, the chances increase for an extreme heat wave, drought or cold spell to occur,” she said, but the weather can change rapidly once the kink in the jet stream moves along. Not all of her colleagues buy that explanation. Martin P. Hoerling, a NOAA researcher who analyzes climate events, agrees with other scientists that global warming is a problem to be taken seriously. But he contends that some researchers are in too much of a rush to attribute specific weather events to human causes. Dr. Hoerling said he had run computer analyses that failed to confirm a widespread effect outside the Arctic from declining sea ice. “What’s happening in the Arctic is mostly staying in the Arctic,” he said. Dr. Hoerling suspects that future analyses will find the magnitude of this month’s heat wave to have resulted mostly from natural causes, but he conceded, “It’s been a stunning March.” That was certainly what farmers thought. Mr. Purinton, the syrup producer in Huntington, Vt., has been tapping maple trees for 46 years, since he was a boy. This year he tapped the trees two weeks earlier than normal, a consequence of the warm winter. But when the heat wave hit, the trees budded early, and this tends to ruin the taste of maple syrup. That forced him to stop four weeks earlier than normal and cut his production in half compared with a typical year. “Is it climate change? I really don’t know,” he said. “This was just one year out of my 46, but I have never seen anything like it.”

Weather
Climate Change Global Warming
Ice
Arctic
Greenhouse gas
Temperature


U.S. Airstrikes on ISIS in Tikrit Prompt Boycott by Shiite Fighters

Abstract: AL RASHID AIR BASE, Iraq — By Day 2 of the American airstrike campaign against militants holed up in Tikrit, the mission appeared beleaguered on several fronts on Thursday: Thousands of Shiite militiamen boycotted the fight, others threatened to attack any Americans they found, and Iraqi officials said nine of their fighters had been accidentally killed in an airstrike. In Washington, American military leaders insisted that things were going according to plan. They said that they were stepping into the Tikrit fight only after the Iranian- and militia-led advance on the city had stalled after three weeks, and that they welcomed working solely with Iraqi government forces. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the United States Central Command, told a Senate hearing on Thursday that no Shiite militias remained in Tikrit. While the withdrawal of Iranian-led Shiite militias was one of the preconditions for the Americans to join the fight against the Islamic State in Tikrit, the sudden departure of three of the major groups risked leaving the Iraqi ground forces short-handed, especially if other Shiite militiamen also abandoned the fight. The three militia groups, some of which had Iranian advisers with them until recently, pulled out of the Tikrit fight to protest the American airstrikes, which began late Wednesday night, insisting that the Americans were not needed to defeat the extremists in Tikrit. Too great or abrupt a withdrawal by militia forces, analysts said, could complicate the entire Iraqi counteroffensive. Even with the militias involved, officials said the current pro-government force would not be large enough to eventually help take Mosul back from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Top officials at the Pentagon appeared to think that it would not be easy to retake even Tikrit without Iranian help. “It’s going to require the kind of hammer-and-anvil approach of ground forces forcing ISIL to respond in ways that they’re targetable by air power,” one Defense Department official said. “But we’re less than 24 hours into it.” Another official, asked if he was worried that the United States now owned the Tikrit operation, said, “Yes. This was a calculated risk, but it’s one that had to be taken.” Both officials spoke on grounds of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. Together, the four Shiite groups that objected to the American air role already represent more than a third of the 30,000 fighters on the government side in the offensive against the Islamic State, analysts said. “We don’t trust the American-led coalition in combating ISIS,” said Naeem al-Uboudi, the spokesman for Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the three groups which said it would withdraw from the front line around Tikrit. “In the past, they have targeted our security forces and dropped aid to ISIS by mistake,” he said. Video Khalid al-Obaidi, the Iraqi defense minister, visited an air base in Baghdad as Iraqi Sukhoi-25 fighter bombers took off for what were said to be bombing runs over Tikrit. Credit Credit Khalid al-Mousily/Reuters One of the leaders of the biggest militias in the fight, the Badr Organization, also criticized the American role and said his group, too, might pull out. “We don’t need the American-led coalition to participate in Tikrit. Tikrit is an easy battle, we can win it ourselves,” said Mueen al-Kadhumi, who is one of the Shiite militia group’s top commanders. “We have not yet decided if we will pull out or not,” he said. The Badr Organization’s leader, Hadi al-Ameri, was shown on Iraqi television leading the ground fight in Tikrit on Thursday. The office of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced Thursday night that he went personally to Tikrit, presumably to persuade Mr. Ameri to keep his fighters in the field. The Badr Organization fields the largest cohesive ground force in the conflict, and its withdrawal from Tikrit would be potentially catastrophic, according to Wafiq al-Hashimi, the head of the Iraqi Group for Strategic Studies. “Dr. Abadi rushed into this decision to liberate Tikrit with the Americans without taking time to work out a compromise among all these groups and the Americans, most of whom have a lot of disputes with the Americans,” Mr. Hashimi said. Another Iranian-aligned Shiite militia group reacted with defiance and threats against the Americans. “We are staying in Tikrit, we are not leaving and we are going to target the American-led coalition in Tikrit and their creation, ISIS,” said Akram al-Kabi, the leader of the Nujabaa Brigade, a powerful militia that has previously sent fighters to Syria on behalf of the Bashir al-Assad government there. His remarks raised the possibility that the group would use antiaircraft fire against coalition warplanes, using Iraqi fighting positions. On Thursday night, an airstrike on the village of Alvu Ajeel, on the edge of Tikrit, killed six Shiite militiamen, as well as three federal policemen, one of them a colonel, according to a spokesman for the Iraqi military’s Salahuddin Operations Command. The strike was thought to have been carried out by the United States. The spokesman, who would not give his name because of official policy, described it as a “friendly fire” episode. Image Iraqi soldiers patrolled near Tikrit on Thursday. Credit European Pressphoto Agency A Pentagon spokesman said he could not confirm the event. “We review all allegations and investigate those found credible,” said Col. Steve Warren, director of Defense Press Operations. It was not known if the militiamen who were killed in the friendly fire episode belonged to Al Nujabaa or another group. The American airstrikes in Tikrit began late on Wednesday night and continued for eight and a half hours, subsiding at dawn on Thursday, when Iraq’s handful of Russian-made fighter jets took over from this base on the outskirts of Baghdad and further bombed Tikrit in a succession of daytime raids, Iraqi officials said. The other groups that announced they would boycott the Tikrit operation were Qatab Hizbullah, which like Asaib Ahl al-Haq is closely aligned and supported by Iran, and the Peace Brigade, the latest name for a militia made of up followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, previously known as the Mahdi Army. Mr. Sadr, whose troops fought bitter battles against the Americans during much of the Iraq war, said his group was pulling out because, “The participation of the so-called international alliance is to protect ISIS on the one hand, and to confiscate the achievements of the Iraqis on the other hand.” Since March 2, Islamic State forces in Tikrit have been under attack by the Iraqi militias, collectively known as the Popular Mobilization Committees, and regular Iraqi military forces, accompanied at times by Iranian military advisers. Still, a much smaller force of Islamic State fighters has been able to hold them off in a few areas of the city for almost four weeks. In recent days, despite the claims of self-sufficiency made by militia commanders, Iraqi military officials said American airstrikes were needed to break the deadlock. The militias who were withdrawing did not say they were quitting their positions in the Tikrit area altogether, or in adjoining areas of Salahuddin Province, just returning to their nearby bases and boycotting the front-line advance. Staff Gen. Anwer Hamid, the commander of the Iraqi Air Force, said that the American airstrikes would continue, with Americans concentrating their attacks during the night for operational reasons. “Their role in this fighting is very important to us,” he said. “They have a high number of aircraft and they have good capabilities, they can really help us.”

US Military
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Tikrit
Iraq
Islam
Iraqi Army


As Aid Floods Into Flint, a Fix Remains Far Off

Abstract: FLINT, Mich. — For months, almost no one would listen to residents’ fears about their odd-looking drinking water. Now, it seems, everyone is listening — and sending truckloads of bottled water, water filters and baby wipes, and cash donations and television news crews that set up along Saginaw Street downtown. Last Sunday, as the Oscars went on in Hollywood, the filmmakers Ryan Coogler and Ava DuVernay , and musicians like Janelle Monáe and Stevie Wonder, held a #JusticeForFlint benefit on a local stage, raising more than $156,000. Cher, Eminem, Big Sean, Mark Wahlberg and other celebrities have offered their support, as have faraway grade-school classes, labor unions, police groups, rotary clubs and corporations. But five months after state authorities announced that it was unsafe to drink unfiltered water because of high lead levels caused by government errors over the past two years, federal officials said here last week that the water still was not safe, and, as testing goes on, offered no promise for when it would be. Living with this — not for days, but for months — has grown exhausting for some residents, who see their problem less as a topic of political discussion and more as a daily grind through a blur of water bottles for baths, dish cleaning, cooking, everything. Image The Rev. Alfred Harris, the pastor of Saints of God Church, is an active member of the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, a group that has been active in advocating for Flint residents amid the city’s ongoing water crisis. Credit Brittany Greeson for The New York Times “This is all pretty tiresome after a while,” said Florence Chamberlain, as she trudged through falling snow last week to pick up yet more cases of bottled water, a weekly or nightly chore for residents. Many here said they were grateful for the rush of attention and the outpouring of help, though offers have come from many quarters and not all are coordinated. They said they appreciated the prospect that this city’s crisis may have opened a broader national conversation over aging infrastructure, government missteps and transparency, and the treatment of poor, mostly black communities. And many were hopeful about a flurry of assistance for children here — added funds for Headstart, Medicaid , lead testing, even for learning to cook family meals aimed at reducing lead absorption. But while the water bottles pile up, the money to replace all of Flint’s lead pipes is uncertain, leaving a permanent fix for the city’s deteriorated water lines still far from reach. Many residents also fear that rebuilding trust in the government will take still longer. “We’re national news — international news — and maybe that will help,” said the Rev. Alfred Harris, the pastor of Saints of God Church. “But I think we need to stop talking about fixing the water, and get moving. I’m not a politician. I’m not a scientist. All I know is this water is still poison.” Flint has seen disappointment before, along with flashes of national attention. As jobs vanished over many decades, the city, now 56 percent black, dropped by half, to fewer than 100,000 people. The city was the focus of “Roger & Me,” a 1989 documentary directed by Michael Moore that examined the desolation left by the disappearance of auto industry jobs. Image Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign office in Flint, Mich. Credit Brittany Greeson for The New York Times Yet after the documentary, the jobs went right on vanishing. The city has hollowed out: About 20,000 properties among the city’s 56,000 total are vacant or blighted, many of them foreclosed for failure to pay property taxes. “I’m sure the feeling among most people is that they don’t really expect anything to happen this time either,” Mr. Moore, a Flint native who has protested here over the water, said in an interview. “There is a real sense of defeat and demoralization.” Flint’s fiscal condition, too, has long been tenuous, leading to state oversight in 2011 . Last year, an emergency manager departed , gradually returning control to city leaders. But the water crisis, set off in 2014 while the city was under state emergency management, has set recovery efforts back. Officials had switched the source of the city’s drinking water to the Flint River and failed to use chemicals that prevent lead from leaching into the flow. Last week, officials said nearly 9 percent of sites tested for lead continued to exceed accepted limits, and that residents still should not drink unfiltered water. “We had issues, but it was a matter of keeping things on course,” Jody Lundquist, the chief financial officer of Flint since June, said of the city’s budget. “Eight months later, it’s a completely different landscape. All of the challenges we have been facing have been amplified now.” Image Dawn Hughey wore a button in support of Hillary Clinton while attending an MSNBC broadcast at the Flint Farmers’ Market. Credit Brittany Greeson for The New York Times Since the water problems were acknowledged by Gov. Rick Snyder in October, help has been heaped on Flint. State and federal authorities have pledged millions of dollars for some types of help, including, lately, assistance for residents to pay their water bills, and private donors are promising millions more. Water bottles are handed out seemingly everywhere, including by Michigan National Guard members outside fire stations. Three warehouses here and another in Detroit are now stocked with water, officials say, and they must now figure out how to recycle so much plastic. While there are some established organizations leading private charity efforts, including the Community Foundation of Greater Flint , there are also lesser known groups, with no central organization here to coordinate all the needs and avoid duplication, waste or fraud. Officials say there are at least 100 GoFundMe sites related to Flint’s water. At least two websites have received warnings from the Michigan attorney general’s office, which has cautioned about fake Flint charity drives. “I hate to describe it as the Wild West, but it is a scenario in which I highly advise people who are donating to be very intentional,” said Jamie Gaskin, chief executive of the United Way of Genesee County, which serves Flint. As the months have gone by, sales at restaurants in Flint have dropped, even as eateries try to reassure customers: The giant sign outside Rally’s promises “Water Passed,” and the 501 Bar & Grill has posted the state environmental agency’s form prominently on its front door, noting that lead was “not detected” in tests there. Along the way, new concerns have cropped up about wear on equipment that came into contact with the contaminated water: refrigerators with water lines, dishwashers, water heaters, even fire trucks. Image William Hurteau, an owner of Flint City T-shirts, at his shop in Flint. Credit Brittany Greeson for The New York Times “The outpouring of support is just amazing,” said Tim Herman, the chief executive of the Flint & Genesee Chamber of Commerce. “But there’s a huge negative halo effect due to the picture being painted in national headlines. Flint businesses are seeing their bottom lines affected.” The crisis has become fodder for political discourse. Mr. Snyder, a Republican, has been largely blamed for the crisis and has been targeted by some for recall. The two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders , have not only made campaign stops, but will hold a debate in an auditorium here on Sunday to try to highlight residents’ plight and government failures that led to the crisis, while courting minority voters as Michigan holds its primary on Tuesday . Outside a Republican presidential debate in Detroit on Thursday, protesters chanted “Flint Lives Matter,” while, inside, Senator Marco Rubio answered a question about Flint by describing what happened here as “terrible” but adding that “politicizing of it” was unfair. Congressional Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi of California, visited a local church on Friday to listen to residents’ harrowing stories. What the residents said they needed the most was replacement of their lead pipes — and then a restoration of their trust in government. Both may be slow in coming. Here on Friday, Karen Weaver, who was elected mayor of Flint in November promising to solve the water crisis, stood outside the home of a family expecting a new baby this year as a construction crew began removing lead service lines — only the first to be replaced as part of her $55 million “Fast Start” plan for the city. It is uncertain where all the funding will come from. On the streets, there is a sense of weary resignation, as well as a reserve of hope. “If they really start fixing the infrastructure — and I’m not sure I really believe they will — then Flint might stand a chance of being O.K.,” said Courtney Farrington, a Taco Bell employee who has lived here most of her 28 years and who said she has devoted a lot of energy to preventing her 6-month-old daughter, Dakota, from coming into contact with the water. “But if there’s a holdup, if there’s anything more that goes wrong, I think everybody might start leaving Flint.” Christopher Collins, a longtime Flint resident, shrugged. “What are you going to do?” he said. “How angry can you be? We’ll survive.”

Water
Lead
Flint Michigan
Infrastructure,public works
Water pollution
2016 Presidential Election


Mario Richard, BASE Jumper and Sky Diver, Dies at 47

Abstract: Mario Richard, a leader in the extreme sport of BASE jumping, in which participants leap from fixed objects and use a parachute to break their fall, died Monday while wingsuit flying in the Dolomites in Italy. He was 47. His death was confirmed by family and friends in the United States. Details of the accident were unclear Tuesday, but the Italian news media reported that Richard hit a cliff wall minutes after his wife, the professional rock climber Steph Davis, had jumped successfully. BASE jumpers launch themselves not from airplanes, but from objects attached to the ground. The acronym stands for buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and the earth (cliffs). Moab B.A.S.E. Adventures, a company started by Richard and Davis, was thought to be the first commercial operation to offer tandem BASE jumps — in this case, the towering sandstone formations surrounding Moab, Utah. Richard and Davis combined their talents and passions, leading customers on guided hikes or climbs and attaching them to the front of Richard for a fall of 1,000 feet or more. Image Mario Richard and his company, Moab B.A.S.E. Adventures, were the subjects of a New York Times article in 2012. Credit Chris Hunter Increasingly, when diving solo in their free time, the Richard and Davis wore wingsuits, sometimes called squirrel suits, to extend their flights before pulling the parachute. The suits are webbed under the arms and between the legs to slow the fall and give more experienced users some ability to maneuver through the air before pulling the parachute. BASE jumping, particularly in high-speed wingsuits, is one of the more dangerous thrill pursuits because of the low margin for error. Not only is the typical fall shorter than from an airplane, but the very objects used as a jumping platform — such as a sheer cliff — become an obstacle in flight. Last week, Mark Sutton, who wore a James Bond costume while parachuting into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London with a jumper dressed as Queen Elizabeth II, died when he was wingsuit jumping in Switzerland. Richard, a native of Quebec, began sky diving in 1988 and did his first BASE jump in 1991. He had estimated last year that he had performed 7,000 sky dives and 2,000 BASE jumps, and had never had so much as a sprained ankle. He was quick to admit that his business and his passion were dangerous. “But I’ve got very good reasons to come home at the end of the day,” he said in 2012. Richard moved to Moab in 2007 and soon met Davis. They married in 2011, atop the majestic Parriott Mesa outside Moab, and celebrated by running and leaping off the mesa and gliding to earth with parachutes. “It’s a simple device,” Richard said last year of the little-considered parachute, something he spent years building and designing earlier in his career. “And it makes us do extraordinary things.” Survivors include Davis, two sisters and a brother.

Parachuting
Obituary
Mario Richard
Accidents and Safety


NewFronts Make Bids for Big Marketing Dollars

Abstract: THE annual spring upfronts, when television peddles its wares to Madison Avenue, has a new twist ahead of the 2012-13 season: Media companies that specialize in online video and other digital delights are adding themselves to the lineup of presentations by broadcast and cable TV outlets. Last week marked the start of what is being called the Digital Content NewFronts, as new and new-ish faces like AOL, Google (with sibling YouTube ), Hulu, Microsoft, Vevo and Yahoo schedule events amid those being held by regular upfront participants like E!, MTV, Oxygen, Scripps Networks Interactive and Syfy. The goal of the NewFronts, or new upfronts, is to encourage marketers and agencies to spend more money on digital ads, either by increasing budgets or shifting to online media some of the estimated $70 billion a year that is spent on television commercials. Ad spending for online video has been growing strongly, but still totals, by most estimates, less than $2 billion a year. Initially, the point of having a NewFront was “to beat a drum for change,” Mark Beeching, worldwide chief creative and strategy officer at Digitas, a digital agency owned by the Publicis Groupe, said at the Digitas NewFront on Thursday. “Now, it’s servicing a need.” The impetus has shifted from “looking for best practices,” he added, to “looking for opportunities.” Digitas, which has been putting on annual NewFront events since 2008, was instrumental in getting new-media companies to agree to a series of coordinated presentations to be held in late April and early May under the Digital Content NewFronts umbrella. Some companies with roots in traditional television are even getting into the act. The NBCUniversal division of Comcast, which operates broadcast and cable outlets like Bravo, E!, NBC, Oxygen, Syfy and USA, plans a NewFront event on Tuesday to shine a spotlight on its digital offerings. To woo Madison Avenue, the participants in the NewFronts are playing up similarities between television shows and digital content, particularly online video. There have been numerous announcements of new original programming, emulating the series format of TV; branded entertainment, in which products are woven into plot lines; and alliances with famous names. For instance, ABC News and Katie Couric are joining forces with Yahoo for a weekly Web show, “Katie’s Take.” Ms. Couric appeared during the Yahoo NewFront event on Wednesday, turning up during a presentation by Ross B. Levinsohn, executive vice president for global media for Yahoo; she was accompanied by a cameraman and conducted a mock interview of Mr. Levinsohn. Mr. Levinsohn described the NewFronts as “a watershed moment” and said he hoped the shift to watching video online would be followed by a concomitant shift of ad dollars. (Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News, also appeared during the Yahoo NewFront.) Other new original video programs for yahoo.com will include “Dancing With Myself” (a working title), a scripted musical comedy series, and a talk show with the actor Jeff Goldblum. At its NewFront event, also on Wednesday, executives of Vevo, the music video channel at vevo.com , described how they will be working on original programming with well-known television production companies like Shine America (previously named Reveille) and Principato-Young Entertainment. The new Vevo series include its first reality competition show, “Busk or Bust”; “Hear Me Out,” a reality show with a dating theme; “Strange Island,” an offbeat musical comedy scripted series; and “You Play Like a Girl,” which will present young women around the country who are trying for careers as musicians. A crowd of more than 600, evocative of the turnout for TV upfront events, attended the Digitas NewFront presentation. During one panel discussion, Diego Scotti, chief marketing officer at J. Crew, showed the audience a video of a factory in Florence, Italy, where the company makes its shoes. He offered the clip as an example of how more brands are creating their own high-quality videos. “Content costs money,” Mr. Scotti said. “If you’re going to do it right, you’re going to have to invest in it.” Christa Carone, corporate vice president and chief marketing officer at Xerox, discussed her company’s experiments with different types of media like YouTube videos . “It’s not so much about the views on YouTube,” she said, adding that the video is also shown on sales calls, to investors and to new employees. During another panel discussion, Jamie Byrne, the global head of content strategy at YouTube, said his company was creating “networks of channels or brands that act like programmers,” to help users sort through the mass of content available on YouTube. Having lots of channels on YouTube will help provide content for “underserved markets,” Mr. Byrne said, showing the audience a clip from a new show called “ Mi Vida Con Toty ,” or My Life With Toty,” starring the actress Sofia Vergara and her son, Manolo. “We’re making a big bet in the Latino space,” Mr. Byrne said.

NewFronts
Online Advertising
YouTube.com
Web-Original Programming
Advertising and Marketing
Computers and the Internet
Upfronts (Television)


Tigers Have Ace Justin Verlander, but Giants Are Resilient

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — When Justin Verlander throws his first pitch on Wednesday, in Game 1 of the World Series, you wonder if he will somehow rev his fastball to 150 miles an hour. Such is the rollicking atmosphere that will greet Verlander, the ace of the Detroit Tigers , who thrives on adrenaline and will get a major dose here. The San Francisco Giants are back in the World Series, meaning baseball’s best party will rage at least two more nights. The Giants snuffed the reigning champions, the St. Louis Cardinals , 9-0, to win Game 7 of the National League Championship Series at AT&T Park on Monday. They shook orange towels, jammed to classic rock, scarfed garlic fries and reveled in another shot at glory. Verlander and the Tigers, who have not won a title since 1984, will probably be the favorites. They have already dashed the dreams of one Bay Area team — the Oakland Athletics — and eviscerated the Yankees in a four-game sweep. But these Giants are not like those teams. Oakland hitters led the majors in strikeouts and whiffed 50 times in five games against Detroit. The Yankees spent the American League Championship Series flailing at pitches far off the plate, averaging nine strikeouts per game. The Giants, meanwhile, have a pesky habit of putting the bat on the ball, which could be especially important against a Tigers team not known for defense. Nothing good can come from a strikeout, and while making contact sometimes hurts — why did the Cardinals let Lance Lynn swing away in Game 5, when he tapped into a killer double play? — the Giants understand that when you hit the ball, you have a chance. Their offense ranked 26th in the majors in strikeouts. Little things added up in Game 7. In the first inning, Cardinals starter Kyle Lohse double-clutched a weak dribbler, as third baseman David Freese had done in Game 6, allowing a run to score. In the second, a groundout by Brandon Crawford moved a runner to second, and pitcher Matt Cain scored him with a two-out single. A deluge followed in the third, when five runs scored on a series of zigzag hits and bad infield decisions. A rout was on, without anything close to a home run. The Giants, of course, prefer the unconventional. They glided to the 2010 World Series on the bat of Cody Ross, an August waiver claim who ripped two home runs in a playoff game against Roy Halladay, who had just pitched a no-hitter. Then the Giants bounced the Texas Rangers in five games, using stingy young pitching and a clutch home run from Edgar Renteria, the last gasp of his career. These Giants have new offensive stars — notably Marco Scutaro, who ripped 14 hits in the series — and found their pitching just in time. Barry Zito, Ryan Vogelsong and Cain stifled the Cardinals in Games 5, 6 and 7, dominating so thoroughly that each even drove in a run. Mostly, though, the team embodies a comeback spirit their fans adore. Down two games to none in the division series, the Giants roared back with three wins in Cincinnati to advance. Down three games to one in this N.L.C.S., they prevailed again. “The team has captured people’s imagination — and people call them cockroaches — because every time this team has been beaten down, it’s popped back up,” Larry Baer, the Giants’ chief executive, said before Game 7. “And I’m talking lots of ways. Beaten down by Brian Wilson being out for the season. Beaten down by Aubrey Huff not being the starting first baseman, Freddy Sanchez not playing, Melky Cabrera off the field, the prospects of a blockbuster Dodger trade, down 2-0 and having to win three in a row in Cincinnati, down 3-1 here. “There’s sort of this anything-can-happen, never-say-die relentlessness that is just a quality of life that people like,” Baer said. “It says, ‘You cannot defeat me.’ And the fans respond to that. The fans are going to yell their hearts out, because that is a quality that just doesn’t come around too often in sports.” The Giants became only the second team to win three consecutive elimination games twice in the same postseason. Steve Balboni, a Giants scout, was the first baseman for the other team to do it, the 1985 Kansas City Royals. After Game 4 in St. Louis, Balboni said pitching would make the difference, and that each win by the trailing team would put more pressure on the team with the lead. He was right on both counts, it seems, and also on a third. “To me, it boils down to each game you need to play well,” Balboni said. “You can’t really make mistakes. The two teams that you play are both hot. If you give them anything, they’re going to take it.” The Giants let the Cardinals make the big mistakes, which extended beyond the field. When Lohse left in the third inning, with the bases loaded and no outs, trailing by two, the situation screamed for the team’s best power pitcher. Yet Mike Matheny, the Cardinals’ rookie manager, used his long reliever, Joe Kelly, instead of Trevor Rosenthal. By the time Rosenthal entered the game — in the fifth inning, when he struck out the side — the Cardinals were down by seven and the most important moment of the game was long gone. The Cardinals had missed it, the Giants had seized it, and now they welcome Verlander to their mosh pit by the bay. “Going through what we did, winning three in a row, and coming back in this series, I can’t explain how much joy I feel,” Angel Pagan said. “It’s really just magical.”

Baseball
San Francisco Giants
World Series
National League
St Louis Cardinals
Detroit Tigers
Verlander Justin


Ex-Employee of Passaic Sheriff Will Go to Prison

Abstract: PATERSON, N.J. — The former director of the Passaic County Sheriff’s Department motor pool was sentenced on Thursday to four years in prison for stealing $20,000 and a car engine from the department. The charges emerged from an inquiry into accusations that the pool repaired cars for the sheriff’s campaign contributors. In addition to the prison term, the former director, Paolo Mariano, 53, was ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution for the crimes, committed while he was also the senior mechanic for the department. It was led by Sheriff Jerry Speziale, now the second in command of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, from 2002 until last year. Mr. Mariano, who pleaded guilty in March to two counts of official misconduct, wept just before Judge Marilyn C. Clark of Superior Court sentenced him. “I don’t know what came over me,” he said. “But I’m very, very sorry.” Mr. Mariano, who is known as Paul, was charged after the New Jersey attorney general’s office began an investigation of the department last August. The inquiry into accusations that the department’s motor pool repaired cars for people who had donated to Mr. Speziale’s re-election campaign is continuing. The attorney general’s office also investigated whether Mr. Speziale worked to give department identification cards to some of his campaign donors, cards that would allow them to carry concealed weapons. No charges have been filed in that portion of the inquiry. Mr. Speziale, who has not been charged, did not return phone calls, and a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department would not comment on Thursday. Mr. Speziale resigned as sheriff on Aug. 10, 2010, just days before investigators from the office of Attorney General Paula T. Dow descended on the department’s motor pool here. Before working in Passaic County, Mr. Speziale was a New York Police Department narcotics detective and wrote a memoir about his experiences, on which the movie “Brooklyn’s Finest” was based. Mr. Speziale, a powerful Democrat who raised more than $1 million for his re-election campaign before abandoning the campaign and switching jobs, had a cameo in the film. In spring 2005, Mr. Mariano stole $20,000, in what was believed to have been drug money, from a car that the Sheriff’s Department had seized. In November 2006, Mr. Mariano took an engine out of a Toyota 4Runner that had been seized by the county and used it to replace the failing engine in his own Toyota 4Runner. Mr. Mariano, who began working for the Sheriff’s Department in 1997, said before his sentencing that he was no longer in contact with Mr. Speziale. “I’m sorry, very much so, that I ever worked for the Passaic County sheriff,” he said. “But I have to wonder, what about the other people in the motor pool? Why am I the only one charged?” Because Mr. Mariano has many connections with Passaic County sheriff’s employees, Judge Clark said she would allow him to serve his time elsewhere, most likely in Bergen County or Essex County. After 90 days, he will be eligible to apply to serve his time under house arrest, wearing an ankle bracelet, and return to work so that he can provide for his ailing wife and youngest son. He operates a crane for a construction company in Hackensack. Mr. Mariano quit the Sheriff’s Department in August 2010. Mr. Mariano’s lawyer, Ronald Ricci, said his client felt awful about his crimes. “He wants to punch himself in the face every second of every day for what he did,” he said.

Mariano Paolo
Sentences (Criminal)
Passaic County Sheriff's Department
Speziale Jerry
Passaic County (NJ)
Police


Google Glass to Be Covered by Vision Care Insurer VSP

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Google and VSP, the nation’s biggest optical health insurance provider, have struck a deal to offer subsidized frames and prescription lenses for Google Glass, the Internet-connected eyewear. The announcement could take wearable devices, which tech analysts say are the next wave of computing, out of the realm of science fiction and into the mainstream by making them more affordable and giving them a medical stamp of approval. And it opens the door to a new level of cooperation between the health care and consumer electronics industries, which could lead to a world in which people wear or even ingest computers. “The key business model of the year for wearables is becoming embedded into the health care system,” said J. P. Gownder, an analyst studying wearable devices at Forrester, which predicts that computers that people can ingest, tattoo on their skin or embed in a tooth are three to five years from being a medical reality. “Selling wearable consumer electronics one-on-one to individual consumers is kind of a tough business,” Mr. Gownder said. “By embedding them into the health care system, you can reach a mass market.” The agreement with VSP, which insures one-fifth of Americans, is also a coup for Google, which plans to begin selling Glass to the public this year. Resistance to Glass has grown from privacy fears that the devices could be used to secretly record conversations or take photos. Some establishments have banned Glass wearers , and just this month, a man in Ohio was removed from a movie theater and interrogated after wearing Glass to a movie. With traditional-style frames and prescription lenses, which Glass did not have before, the computer and screen for the device are less evident and the device looks more typical — and is available even to people who wear glasses. Some early Glass owners hacked Glass to add prescription lenses, sunglasses and other accessories. “What I’ve noticed in public is I get less interaction with people” when wearing Glass with frames, said Steve Lee, product management director for Google Glass. “It’s something society’s more accustomed to.” Wearable devices have posed a challenge to technology companies because they involve understanding fashion and health, not just software and screens. That is why Fitbit partnered with Tory Burch and Intel partnered with Opening Ceremony to make smart bracelets, and one reason Apple hired Angela Ahrendts , former chief executive of Burberry, to oversee retail. Some health insurers and big companies have offered wearable devices like the Fitbit or Jawbone UP as part of corporate wellness programs, and discounts to employees who improved their health with the gadgets. But Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, said she was not aware of other insurance companies offering coverage for wearable devices. “We know our 64 million members are seeing and hearing about Google Glass and how it will affect their lives and vision, so we are really focusing on the eye health management perspective,” said Jim McGrann, president of VSP Vision Care, VSP’s insurance division. “We see this whole concept of smart eyewear continuing to evolve as an opportunity to provide instant information,” he added. The hurdle to persuade people to wear a computer on their bodies is lower if the computer is attached to something they are already accustomed to wearing, like glasses or a watch. Google’s design team, led by Isabelle Olsson , designed frames for Glass in four styles, made of lightweight titanium, partly because Glass’s processor and battery add weight. Google also plans to offer two new styles of clip-on sunglasses for $150 each (Glass is sold with another style of clip-on shade). The color, frame and shade choices will offer 40 style variations for Glass, Mr. Lee said. The Glass computing device, which costs $1,500 for people invited to buy the current version, will retail for several hundred dollars less than that later this year when Google introduces the consumer version. The titanium frames are $225. VSP will reimburse members based on their prescription plan, with an average reimbursement of $120, plus the cost of buying prescription lenses, but it will not subsidize the computer portion of Glass. VSP and Google created a training program for optometrists to learn how to mount the Glass device on frames and fit Glass on people’s faces. It is important that the nose pads are adjusted so the screen is not in people’s direct field of vision, said Dr. Matthew Alpert, an optometrist in Los Angeles who is on the board of VSP Global, the insurer’s parent company. A VSP lab in Sacramento will cut the lenses for Glass frames. Nathan O’Kane, a traffic engineer in Salem, Va., did not wait for Google to introduce new styles. He bought an old pair of sunglasses on eBay and used a saw, a sander and a drill to attach them to his Glass. “I definitely think that the sunglasses make Glass look less obvious or more discreet,” he said. “You definitely see people whispering and pointing, but I let the really skeptical people try it on, and after they use it for two or three minutes, they think it’s really cool and useful.”

Google Glass
Wearable Computing
VSP Global
Health Insurance
Glasses
Google


Mississippi: Clerk Quits

Abstract: Grenada County’s circuit clerk, Linda Barnette, resigned Tuesday, saying that issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples violates her religious beliefs. She wrote in her resignation letter that she is a “follower of Christ” and that she chooses ”to obey God rather than man.” Ms. Barnette, who served 24 years, was to retire after a successor is elected in November.

Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Mississippi
Linda Barnette


Revenue Falls 22% as Blockbuster Posts a Loss

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Blockbuster , the struggling video rental chain, said Thursday that its second-quarter loss narrowed as it cut costs amid declines in revenue. The results, however, missed analyst estimates. Blockbuster, which has been fighting competition from rivals like the DVD-by-mail service Netflix and DVD rental kiosk operator Redbox, said it lost $39.7 million, or 21 cents a share, in the quarter that ended July 5. The company lost $44.7 million, or 23 cents a share, in the quarter a year earlier. When excluding one-time items, Blockbuster lost 19 cents a share, compared with the 12 cents a share expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Revenue fell nearly 22 percent, to $1.02 billion; analysts had expected $1.12 billion. Revenue from rentals sank 19 percent, to $789.2 million, while merchandise sales fell nearly 31 percent, to $224.9 million. Blockbuster said sales at stores open at least a year, or comparable-store sales, fell 17.8 percent in the quarter. Video rentals fell 13.3 percent, while retail sales fell 37.9 percent. The company cut expenses 17 percent, to $562.5 million. Blockbuster completed financing of a $250 million loan during the quarter. This may have eased some concerns about its financial footing since the company raised the possibility in an April regulatory filing that it might not get an extension of its credit line. For the year, the company issued an earnings expectation ranging from a $15 million loss to a $5 million profit.

Company Reports
Blockbuster Inc
DVD (Digital Versatile Disc)
Netflix Incorporated


In His Own Words

Abstract: In Boston: " As president of the United States, I will preserve my proud conservative Republican credentials, but I will reach across the aisle to the Democrats and work together for the good of the country. ... My friends, we’ve got some real challenges. You saw the jobs report last week. You saw that our economy continues to have blows after blow. And you know about a lot of the problems with housing in America. And you know about the uncertainty on Wall Street. And, my friends, I have specific proposals to address our economic challenges. We will be coming out with more specific proposals, and they will be based not on big-government intervention, and not on raising your taxes, not on increasing government regulation but unleashing the forces of the free market and capitalism. And we will restore this economy because the fundamentals are strong of our economy. And we can get through this. We can get through it. The first thing we have to do is pass the stimulus package through the Senate, don’t load it up with a bunch of pork barrel projects, have the president sign it, and let’s start moving forward.”

Presidential Election of 2008
McCain John


Critic of N.F.L. Settlement on Concussions Reverses Position

Abstract: Joe DeLamielluere, one the biggest critics of the settlement in a suit that accused the N.F.L. of failing to warn former players about the dangers of concussions, has reversed himself and joined the agreement, according to a court filing on Tuesday. DeLamielluere, a former offensive lineman, joined nine others who initially opted out but will now take part in the settlement, which provides up to $5 million for a limited number of severe neurological conditions. In all, 211 retired players, or about 1 percent of the total, opted out of the deal, which lawyers for the N.F.L. and the former players revised Friday to meet some concerns of Anita B. Brody, the federal judge in the case.

Football
Concussion
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015
Joe DeLamielluere


Nebraska Democrat Drops Challenge for House Seat

Abstract: A Democratic candidate for Congress in Nebraska ended his campaign on Monday, just two months after announcing that he would enter the race because of voter anger over the Republican-led shutdown of the federal government. The candidate, Pete Festersen, told The Omaha World-Herald that he was leaving the race because it was not the right timing for him and his family. Mr. Festersen, the president of the Omaha City Council, was running against Lee Terry, a Republican who has held the House seat since 1999. In October, Mr. Festersen, a business consultant, jumped into the race because of “widespread dissatisfaction with Congress’s ability to get anything done,” he told The New York Times. Several other Democratic candidates across the country also lined up to contest Republican-held seats after the shutdown. Mr. Terry was seen as a vulnerable candidate, especially after a gaffe during the shutdown in which he said he would continue to accept his salary because he had “a nice house and a kid in college.” He later apologized and agreed not to collect his salary until the shutdown ended. On Monday, Republicans said that Mr. Festersen’s decision to drop out signaled that Democrats were worried about losing support in the 2014 election because of problems with the rollout of the new health care law. “Their continued commitment to ObamaCare is not only costing them votes, it is now costing them their star candidates,” the National Republican Congressional Committee said in a statement. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said that Mr. Festersen’s decision was an “isolated” case involving his family and that many other Democrats were stepping forward to challenge Republicans in Congress.


Argentina Starts ‘Dirty War’ Trial of an Ex-Officer

Abstract: BUENOS AIRES, Oct. 18 (AP) — The first trial involving charges of torture at a notorious military prison during Argentina ’s “dirty war” began Thursday with a former coast guard officer facing possible life in prison. The former officer, Héctor Febres, 66, is accused of kidnapping and torture in the case of four people who were seized by government agents and taken to the feared Navy Mechanics School during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Argentine prosecutors have brought a series of charges against former state security agents and their civilian allies for crimes committed during the “dirty war,” when the government seized, tortured and killed thousands of suspected leftists. The Navy Mechanics School was the largest clandestine torture center of the era. An estimated 4,500 prisoners passed through its cells, and many were never seen again. Official figures put the number of “disappeared” at 13,000 during the seven-year junta rule, although human rights groups say the number is closer to 30,000. Last week, the Rev. Christian von Wernich, a Catholic priest who had served as a police chaplain, was convicted of being a “co-participant” in the torture and disappearance of several political prisoners. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Argentina
Freedom and Human Rights
Torture
Prisons and Prisoners


Trump Cards and Strudel at the Manhattan Bridge Club

Abstract: Soon after the buffet of cold cuts and chicken salad is cleared, the matinee begins. In a vanilla-hued office space high above Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, the players bang on tables, shush the chatter and stare one another down fiercely, all while cracking Neil Simonesque asides. This is the Manhattan Bridge Club , the longest-running play on the West Side. “I call it Bridge and a Show,” Lindsey Weinger, 35, said during a break in the game on a recent Tuesday afternoon. “If you want to compete, play online. You come here for the show.” Brian and Flo Mahony certainly have their act down, a rare married couple who play as partners. “We met in prison,” Mr. Mahony, 76, deadpanned. “We’re attached at the hip,” Ms. Mahony, also 76, added. They ran an employment service together, hiked the Himalayas three times. They are tennis partners. “We’ve been together over 50 years but only married 33,” she said. Image The club is in its 37th year. Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times “We didn’t want to rush into it,” Mr. Mahony explained. “Why ruin a good thing?” The Manhattan Bridge Club, now in its 37th year (its 9th in its current location), follows the same adage. It advertises itself as the nation’s fifth-largest bridge club, playing host to 1,500 players a week, some coming multiple times for tournaments and classes. This club has no members, but players pay $25 for a three-hour weekday afternoon tournament, with lunch and brain food like Bugles, strudel, dried prunes and Oreos. “It’s a beautiful summer day, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” Mark Hyman, 59, said as he finished lunch with club friends. Mr. Hyman, from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, drove a taxi for most of his life, a job he loved, until his brother-in-law, he said, made him join the family’s kosher butcher business. That lasted four long years. “At least I composed songs about it,” Mr. Hyman said. Then he learned bridge. He became an instructor on the Queen Elizabeth 2, and now teaches at the club. Mr. Hyman’s bridge partner for the last seven years is Ruth Fennessy Moss, who just finished writing a musical about Frederick Douglass. They won the open tournament that day. The weekday crowd skews toward the retired and the flexibly scheduled: psychiatrists, civil engineers, lawyers, rabbis, boogie boarders and Peace Corps veterans. Evening games tend to draw a younger set. On this Tuesday, though, many of the young players were off competing in Las Vegas, said Justin Blanchard, 24. Sotto voce, he confessed his mother was a champion player at the Honors Bridge Center across town. Neighborhood Joint: The Manhattan Bridge Club 11 Photos View Slide Show › Image Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Bridge clubs illustrate the great Manhattan divide. Jeff Bayone, a native of the Upper West Side who founded the club and now owns it with his wife, Barbara, said the beginners program sets his club apart. Others see it differently. “The East Side one is all the fancy ladies with the face-lifts and the ‘whatever’ bags in style,” one woman said, begging for anonymity so as not to appear catty. “The West Side club, if you look around, there’s a lot of grungy people — but a lot of them are scientists and authors. There are a lot of personalities here.” For some, the club has become a second family. “I got pregnant here,” Lauren Carajohn, 43, said. “It’s in the cards,” her partner, Mel Schoenfeld, 70, a psychiatrist, quipped. Her fertility doctor advised her to quit her job as a trusts and estates lawyer and pick up a hobby. She got pregnant soon after she joined the club. In her sixth month, she passed out from dehydration during a tournament, and the director did something rare for her: he stopped the game. Nicholas and Alexander, her twins, are 5 months old now. “I call them my Bridge Babies,” Ms. Carajohn said. She returned the minute she could. “Everything happened here,” she said.

Bridge Game
Manhattan Bridge Club
Clubs
Midtown Area Manhattan


Turkey Faults France and Germany on Arms Sales to Greece

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Just as the German chancellor arrived in Ankara on Monday for bilateral talks, fraught with differences over education and accession to the European Union, a fresh rift seemed to have emerged over policies toward Greece, Turkey’s regional rival. Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief negotiator with the European Union, has criticized Germany, along with France, for seeking to sell military equipment to Greece while pressing the government in Athens to make drastic public spending cuts as a result of its dire financial crisis. The pointed critique of Berlin and Paris was made in an interview last week in Brussels. Mr. Bagis’s visit to see E.U. officials took place as Greece’s debt problems dominated the European Union’s agenda, having plunged the euro into the worst crisis in its history. On Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel played a central role in an E.U. summit meeting that put in place a financial safety net for Athens, but only reluctantly and after insisting on a tough austerity package in Greece. Mr. Bagis also said that to help Greece escape its “economic disaster” and reduce regional tensions, Ankara would reciprocate if the Greeks froze or cut defense procurement. “One of the reasons for the economic crisis in Greece is because of their attempt to compete with Turkey in terms of defense expenditures,” Mr. Bagis said. “Even those countries that are trying to help Greece at this time of difficulty are offering to sell them new military equipment,” he added. “Greece doesn’t need new tanks or missiles or submarines or fighter planes, neither does Turkey. It’s time to cut military expenditure throughout the world, but especially between Turkey and Greece. Neither Greece nor Turkey needs neither German nor French submarines.” The Greek Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Mr. Bagis’s comments. Under pressure from the European Union, Greece recently approved a deep package of cuts to reduce the budget deficit of 12.7 percent of gross domestic product by 4 percentage points this year. The latest austerity measures include an increase in value-added sales tax, an increase on taxes for fuel, alcohol, cigarette and alcohol and a cut in supplements to wages for civil servants. According to NATO, in 2008, Greece spent 2.8 percent of G.D.P. on its military, or about €6.9 billion, or around $9.3 billion. Turkey spent 1.8 percent of G.D.P. on its military, or the equivalent of about €11.5 billion, in 2008, according to NATO. Talks between the Turkish and Greek leaders are due to be held soon. “It is good to have positive rhetoric, but it needs to be followed up by positive action,” a Greek official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Mr. Bagis did not identify any specific military projects, though the Greek Navy has had a longstanding order to buy four German submarines. Mrs. Merkel, who met the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gave a cool reception to his suggestion that Turkish-language schools should be set up in Germany. “Of course Turkey also can have schools in Germany” she said while adding that they must not be “an excuse for Turks living in Germany not to learn the German language,” The Associated Press reported. She also described Turkey’s E.U. accession talks as “open-ended,” The A.P. reported, but did not repeat her longstanding suggestion, and that of France, of offering Ankara a “privileged partnership” that falls short of full E.U. membership. Ankara is pleased that Mrs. Merkel has changed her language, and Mr. Bagis said that the fact that this “insulting phrase” was “no longer being used by those countries is a good sign.” Nevertheless, Turkey’s bid for E.U. membership has lost momentum. Negotiations in only one area, research and development, have been provisionally completed. Talks on 11 of the 35 subjects, or “chapters” in E.U. jargon, have been opened, but 8 remain blocked over Turkey’s failure to carry out the Ankara Protocol, which was signed in 2005 and states that Turkish ports should be opened to products from the European Union, including Greek Cypriot goods. Mr. Bagis said he wanted to start talks in four more areas this year and expressed optimism about progress in talks on the reunification of Cyprus, adding that the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders had met “almost 70 times” during the past two years or so. “It might not be a comprehensive solution that touches every single issue on the island, but they must have achieved something,” he said. “The rumors we hear are that they have achieved a lot” But Mr. Bagis rejected the idea of a unilateral gesture from Turkey to open its ports without a move to end the economic embargo of Northern Cyprus that came about after the island’s partition in 1974. This would be impossible, he said, “because Turkey is not a sultanate or an emirate — Turkey is a democracy where we have an opposition and a public opinion that matter.” Mr. Bagis also dismissed the idea that the Turkey’s E.U. accession process could be plunged into crisis this year over the Ankara Protocol. The talks, he said, are “so important that neither Turkey nor the E.U. can afford to have a wreck.” A recent controversy over a supposed military coup plot had made Turkey more open and transparent, and that process will be encouraged by a new constitutional amendment package, Mr. Bagis argued. Meanwhile, he said, Turkey’s place as the 16th-largest economy in the world and the 6th-largest economy in Europe, makes his country centrally important to the European Union. “Especially in the aftermath of this major economic crisis that had its influence throughout Europe,” Mr. Bagis added, “Turkey’s economic strength has made it a very attractive candidate country.”


Texas Prosecutors May Have Been Killed by ‘Lone Wolf’

Abstract: KAUFMAN, Tex. — Soon after one of his prosecutors was shot and killed here in January, the district attorney in this rural county outside Dallas, Mike McLelland, told colleagues that he believed the victim was the target of a specific disgruntled defendant whom his office had successfully prosecuted. Eight weeks later, early on a Saturday at the end of March, a gunman or gunmen entered Mr. McLelland’s red-brick home and shot him and his wife multiple times. In the days after the couple were killed, investigators have been increasingly focusing on the theory that Mr. McLelland himself had initially embraced — that whoever was responsible had a grudge against the district attorney’s office and was either a defendant or affiliated with one. Law enforcement officials have been exploring the possibility that the three killings — of Mr. McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65, as well as the assistant district attorney, Mark E. Hasse, 57 — were the work of a local person seeking to avenge some case or investigation and to make a dramatic statement by attacking those at the center of the Kaufman County criminal justice system. Investigators have been cooling to the notion that the shootings were the work of a prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, or of Mexican drug cartels, and focusing more on what officials described as “lone wolf” figures — defendants and those even closer to the victims, including current or former county employees who work or used to work within the local courts. “The Aryan Brotherhood theory has been losing some steam,” one law enforcement official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to talk about the investigation. Officials said it was possible that the McLellands might even have known their attacker, since there were no signs of forced entry in their home. Some law enforcement officials said Ms. McLelland might have opened the front door that morning or the couple might have briefly left it unlocked. The killer or killers may have even had a key to the house, they said. The assault on the McLellands’ home was particularly brazen. Mr. McLelland, a 23-year Army veteran, was a regular at a gun shop near his home, browsing for firearms and chatting up the owner two or three times a week. And he kept five to six dozen different types of firearms at his residence, many of them loaded, according to two law enforcement officials. “There were guns hidden all over the house,” said Mr. McLelland’s son, J. R. McLelland, 39. “Behind doors, everywhere. He could have been standing next to a .40-caliber Glock and you would not have known it. When they said that he got shot, it was unbelievable because he was so well-armed and so well-versed in guns.” It was unclear why Mr. McLelland and his wife — she was also comfortable with a firearm, and she had a license to carry a concealed handgun — did not have immediate access to the guns in the house when the killer or killers entered. Law enforcement officials have not publicly linked the Hasse and McLelland killings and have not identified a suspect or motive in either case, but they have been operating under the theory that the crimes were connected. They said that they were continuing to follow various leads and that, at this point, none of the theories they have developed were “off the table.” But they have grown wary of a connection to the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, which also has members and associates outside of prison, because investigators believe the white-supremacist gang would not jeopardize its drug-trafficking profits by assassinating two prosecutors. In addition, the gang appears to value money over ideology, and investigators believe that members and associates would have snitched on one another to get the $200,000 reward for information in the case. Less than an hour after Mr. Hasse was shot on Jan. 31 in an employee parking lot near the county courthouse in Kaufman, Mr. McLelland called his staff together. They crowded into the chapel at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Mr. Hasse was rushed after the attack. The last time a prosecutor had been killed in Texas was in September 1996, when an assistant district attorney in Fort Bend County, Gil Epstein, was shot as he was robbed in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center in Houston. Even in those early moments, Mr. McLelland believed the killing of Mr. Hasse was different, and had nothing to do with a random street crime. “He talked to us, and he said we don’t know what’s going on, but everybody needs to take precautions,” said Bruce Bryant, the chief investigator in Mr. McLelland’s office and one of his friends. “He recognized it as an assault on the office.” The Kaufman County district attorney’s office is small compared with those in Houston or Dallas. It has about 13 prosecutors, and Mr. Hasse’s docket the month he was killed provides a glimpse of the kinds of cases common in the county: burglary, aggravated assault, forgery, theft of a firearm. But both Mr. Hasse and Mr. McLelland were known as aggressive, tough-talking prosecutors who tried defendants for even the smallest of charges, leaving investigators with no shortage of residents with grudges or hostility toward the office. Defense lawyers also said that both prosecutors, but especially Mr. McLelland, had a tendency to make some of the office’s prosecutions quite personal. After Mr. Hasse’s death, Mr. McLelland thought that investigators should focus on whether a former justice of the peace had killed him or had someone do it, according to two associates and another person he was close to. The former official, Eric L. Williams, 45, lost his job in a case prosecuted by both Mr. Hasse and Mr. McLelland. Mr. Williams was accused of stealing computer monitors from a county office, and was convicted last year of burglary and theft. Witnesses testified that he had made threatening remarks in the past, though those remarks were not directed toward Mr. Hasse or Mr. McLelland. Because he had been convicted of the charges, his law license was suspended by the statewide Board of Disciplinary Appeals in October 2012, three months before Mr. Hasse was killed. The Williams case led Mr. Hasse to start carrying a Glock pistol regularly, according to a lawyer who was a friend of Mr. Hasse’s. Mr. Williams’s lawyer, David K. Sergi, said that his client had had no role in either shooting, and that he had been cooperating with investigators and appealed his conviction. Investigators tested Mr. Williams for gun residue after the killings of Mr. Hasse and the McLellands and have examined his cellphone, but they have not named him nor anyone else as a suspect or a person of interest. On Thursday, the authorities questioned Mr. Williams at his home in Kaufman as part of their investigation, and on Friday, they searched the residence pursuant to a warrant. They also searched the home of his in-laws nearby. As investigators went through the Williams house, police helicopters circled overhead and law enforcement personnel set up roadblocks to prevent drivers from approaching. Though the McLellands had increased protection after Mr. Hasse’s death and were concerned about their safety, they did not significantly alter their routines, according to a close friend, Leah Phillips. Shortly after Mr. Hasse was shot, they attended a musical in nearby Terrell with Ms. Phillips and her husband, Skeet. The weekend their bodies were found, the McLellands were preparing to host an Easter Sunday brunch for friends and family at their house. “They just did not go inside the house and hide,” said Ms. Phillips, adding, “It was watch your surroundings and keep your eyes open.” She said that Ms. McLelland “was more vigilant, but she got up and went to work every day just like she always did.” Ms. McLelland, a nurse at a state psychiatric hospital and an avid quilter and baker, received her state-issued concealed handgun permit about a year ago, taking the required courses with Ms. Phillips. “We had just always talked about it,” she said. “We decided we would be two girls armed. You should have the right to defend yourself.”

Murders
Kaufman County TX
Mike McLelland
Mark E Hasse
Cynthia McLelland