Occidental Chairman Irani Agrees to Leave Company

Abstract: Conceding to a shareholder revolt, Occidental Petroleum’s longtime chairman, Ray R. Irani, on Friday stepped down from the board, essentially forced into retirement a year ahead of schedule. The decision, announced at the company’s annual meeting, was the climax of a brutal boardroom struggle between Mr. Irani and Stephen I. Chazen, the chief executive during the last two years, over leadership and direction of the company. Earlier this week, the Occidental board bowed to investor pressure by announcing that Mr. Chazen would continue to serve in his position through the end of 2014 and help find a successor. The company announced that Edward P. Djererjian, a former ambassador in the Middle East who has served as an independent director since 1996, will assume the role of independent chairman of the board, and that former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will become the independent vice chairmen. Both were elected by the board. Mr. Irani has been chairman of Occidental since 1990, and many observers of the company believed he had been maneuvering to remove Mr. Chazen and retake the post of chief executive. He did not attend the shareholder meeting, held in Santa Monica, Calif. Image Ray R. Irani is leaving Occidental Petroleum’s board. Credit Occidental Petroleum, via Associated Press Mr. Irani, 78, took over the Los Angeles-based company from Armand Hammer and stretched its reach across the Middle East, including Iraq, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. But he angered many investors by rewarding himself and some of his most senior executives with pay packages that were outsize even by the generous standards of large oil companies. Shareholders forced him to step down as chief executive two years ago. Mr. Irani will be eligible for a severance payment of $38 million, which includes a life insurance payout, and additional annual payments of more than $2 million. In recent years, Mr. Chazen tried to turn the company’s focus toward domestic oil fields to take advantage of the shale oil boom, but the financial results of his approach did not satisfy Mr. Irani. Occidental’s stock price has lagged those of competitors. The shareholders had voted against Mr. Irani’s retention as chairman by more than 3 to 1. “This means Chazen is really in charge until his time is up next year,” said Philip H. Weiss, a senior energy analyst at Argus Research. “This ends the battle at the top and clears a path for new leadership.” In another sign of change, Aziz D. Syriani, the lead independent director, submitted his resignation. Mr. Syriani is the chief executive of the Olayan Group, a global trading and investment company, who received stock and cash worth $879,000 last year as an Occidental board member. Image Occidental Petroleum is part of a consortium led by ENI of Italy that has been working in the Zubair oil field in southern Iraq. Credit Essam al-Sudani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The developments were welcomed by activist investors who wanted Mr. Irani to retire. “I am happy and cautiously optimistic but the devil’s in the details,” said Steven Romick, a managing partner of First Pacific Advisors and overseer of the $11 billion FPA Crescent fund, who attended the annual meeting. He said he hoped the company would now restructure its compensation policies for the board and senior management, and he was open to the possibility that Mr. Chazen might stay in his position longer. Mr. Chazen is 66, two years younger than the new retirement age set for the chief executive just this week by the board. Mr. Romick added, drawing a clear distinction with Mr. Irani’s direction, “My preference would be to be very circumspect about the Middle East.” In February, Occidental surprised investors when it announced that it was creating a search committee to replace Mr. Chazen as chief executive. Fear spread among some investors that Mr. Irani was trying to put off his retirement and even return to his old post as chief executive. That stirred a revolt by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and other shareholder activists who came out in favor of Mr. Chazen. They were supported by many Wall Street analysts who have complained that the company under Mr. Irani was often secretive. Mr. Chazen, who previously served as chief financial officer, won the support of many investors because he was viewed as a smart allocator of capital and efficient manager of new projects. Institutional Shareholder Services, the influential proxy adviser, had recommended that shareholders refuse to re-elect Mr. Irani or Mr. Syriani.

Occidental Petroleum
Ray R Irani
Stephen I Chazen
Oil and Gasoline


Mejia Shows Inexperience in Loss

Abstract: CHICAGO — For the first four innings, the combination of a 20-year-old making his first major league start and a 27-year-old catcher making his big-league debut was working fine. Jenrry Mejia, the pitcher, had allowed only a couple of runs, and the catcher, Mike Nickeas, was handling him well, just as he had in their games together in the minor leagues. But this was not the minor leagues. And although Mejia would show some of the promise the Mets hold for him, this inexperienced battery was working against some fairly savvy hitters. By the time the Cubs had seen Mejia twice, in Manager Jerry Manuel’s eyes, they were able to make adjustments and knock him from the game. Manuel used Nickeas to catch Mejia instead of Henry Blanco, a 13-year veteran, because he felt the pair’s previous work together would provide comfort for Mejia, one of the Mets’ top pitching prospects. Manuel did not question starting Nickeas, but after the game he wondered, half jokingly, if instead of making a pitching change in the sixth, he should have changed catchers. “Probably to get through later, I should have switched him with Henry,” Manuel said. Instead, Mejia lasted only five innings and took the loss as the Chicago Cubs beat the Mets, 5-3. Mejia, who turns 21 on Oct. 11, became the seventh pitcher under 21 to start a game for the Mets and the youngest Met to start since Dwight Gooden pitched as a 20-year-old in 1985. Whether another catcher might have made a difference, there were some encouraging signs for Mejia, most notably that he kept his teammates within striking distance. If the Mets were a team that regularly pounded out hits and runs, Mejia might have come away with a victory. Instead, his record fell to 0-3. “It will be a lot better than today,” Mejia said of his future. “You know, it was not too bad, but not too good.” Mejia threw 96 pitches, 64 for strikes, and his fastball was recorded at 96 miles per hour on the radar gun. He allowed four runs and eight hits, walked two and struck out two and also threw a pair of wild pitches. One of those, a curveball on a two-out strikeout of Tyler Colvin in the fifth, resulted in a run scoring from third base as Colvin reached first base ahead of Nickeas’s throw. “I think it was promising, performing the way he did,” Manuel said of Mejia. “I think he’s going to be O.K.” It was in spring training that Mejia caught the attention of Manuel, who campaigned that instead of developing as a starter in the minor leagues, Mejia should join the major league roster as an eighth-inning setup man. Mejia struggled, and on June 20 he was sent back to the minors to stretch out his arm and develop his curveball, which looked noticeably better Saturday than it did earlier in the season. He dominated in nine starts in the minor leagues. He went 2-0 with a 1.28 earned run average with 45 strikeouts and 15 walks at four different levels. But for the most part he was not facing hitters like Aramis Ramirez, Marlon Byrd, Starlin Castro and Xavier Nady, all of whom had hits and runs batted in. And Nickeas had not seen hitters make the adjustments that these players could. “They’ve got better hitters here, this is the major league level,” Nickeas said. “They are better here.” Mejia acknowledged he was nervous in the first inning. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “The first day I pitched I was nervous. But I’ve been here two, three months. I don’t have to be nervous.” INSIDE PITCH Johan Santana, who left his start Thursday because of soreness in his left pectoral muscle, played catch in the outfield for about 10 minutes Saturday morning and said he felt good enough to throw off the mound in the bullpen Sunday. If all goes well, he said, he expects to make his scheduled start Tuesday in Washington. ... Jose Reyes took some swings of soft toss in the batting cage and said his injured oblique muscle felt better, but he still was not ready. He said he would probably take batting practice Sunday. ... Ike Davis hit his 16th home run, his first since July 29.

New York Mets
Baseball
Chicago Cubs
Mejia Jenrry


Suburban Region’s Poets Convey a Sense of Place

Abstract: MAYBE January is the cruelest month. The holiday bills fester, the garden catalogs have not yet arrived with their immodest promises of spring, and escaping to warmer climes is harder now that the economy has stopped working. It’s a perfect time to sit in a chair, calmly, with a lap robe and a comforting book of poetry, and to think about where we live, listen to the heartbeat of here, and learn how words mean home. An abundance of talented poets write and live in the cities and towns outside of New York City, including the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner, Philip Schultz, of East Hampton. For this first Sunday of the year, a time for resolutions and the contemplations that go with them, we have asked some of the area’s leading poets what they find close to home that inspires poetry and what their poems can tell us about where we live. Westchester Billy Collins, the national poet laureate from 2001 to 2003, has published nine books of poetry, including “Ballistics” (Random House, 2008). Mr. Collins, 67, has lived in Somers for the last 18 years. “The location for most of my poems is generally between my ears,” he said during an interview at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, which attracted 19,000 people last fall in Stanhope, N.J. “Coleridge was one of the first poets to begin his poems in domestic settings — the living room, the fireplace, the backyard. I learned how to start a poem in a very familiar place and move away from that and use it as a launching pad to abstract territories.” Mr. Collins grew up in White Plains. “The suburbs have such a terrible rap as being neither here nor there, neither city nor country,” he said. “I didn’t learn about getting along in the city, or about deer hunting. They have a reputation for boring blandness. It’s not until I got this house that I found my surroundings leaking into poetry, with a very attractive set of images.” Patricia Smith’s fifth book of poetry, “Blood Dazzler” (Coffee House Press), was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award , and she won the individual National Poetry Slam four times. Ms. Smith, 53, has lived in Tarrytown for the last nine years. “I’ve explored so much of myself through my poetry, I feel strong and rooted wherever I am,” she said. “You kind of take your community with you.” But she remembers touring the county in search of a new place to call home before she found Tarrytown. “From sitting in a little bench outside the CVS in the middle of town, I heard people beep horns at each other, and saw people walking their dogs, and it looked like a place you could fold yourself into,” she said. “Everyone’s face seemed open, and everyone seemed happy to be living there.” The town’s natural beauty, while not appearing in her poems, helps feed them. “I live so close to the Hudson, and it’s very inspirational,” she said. “I get solace when I need solace.” New Jersey Joe Weil, 50, consistently draws on the muse of Elizabeth, where three generations of his family attended St. Mary of the Assumption High School. His books include “Painting the Christmas Trees” (Texas Review Press) and “What Remains” (Nightshade Press), which includes an imagined encounter between the actress Susan Sarandon and a boozy and besotted narrator. Mr. Weil explained the long-gone setting of the poem, a seedy bar on the Newark border called Two Friends: “It was owned, literally, by two friends who then stopped being friends, but still ran the bar together for 25 years. We called them Surly and Surly. They were both absolutely bald and never smiled.” He added: “It’s not just people who are in love with each other who start to look alike. Sworn enemies start to look alike after 25 years.” For Mr. Weil, Elizabeth has become part of his muscle memory. “In a poem, it becomes part of the rhythms, the speech patterns, the rhythm of your lines. I speak Elizabeth. I have a voice somewhat like Joe Pesci’s, but two bus stops over.” BJ Ward, 41, is the author of “Gravedigger’s Birthday,” “17 Love Poems With No Despair” and “Landing in New Jersey With Soft Hands,” from North Atlantic Books. He grew up in Warren County and lives there in Changewater, which straddles the Musconetcong River. His poems don’t tell us about where we live so much as they create places that are even more compelling. “For me it’s a question of does the place help define your poetry, or can your poems help redefine the place you live in? Would Rutherford be the same if William Carlos Williams hadn’t lived there?” he said during an interview at the Dodge Poetry Festival. Later, he said: “Place is what we reinvent in a lot of poems, in order to make it truer. So often we forsake what people might call accuracy for the sake of truth or truthfulness. If my hometown needs a priest to try to shut down the library, I will invent a priest to shut down the library if that’s what my poem needs, even if that’s not what occurs. In the act of writing a poem, your fidelity shifts from the world outside you that you observe at first, to the world inside that’s asking to be expressed.” He loves living in rural Warren County in part because “it’s largely unimagined.” “I’d find it much more difficult to reinvent Manhattan,” he said. Long Island Grace Schulman, 73, has written “The Broken String” (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) and five other books of poetry. She teaches English at Baruch College and was The Nation’s poetry editor from 1971 to 2006. She spends much of her time in East Hampton. Her poem “Headstones” describes how the graves of Montauk Indians were marked with nothing but wampum. “I think if it is concentrated on and seen with accuracy, and with sympathy, the image can reveal all we are,” she said in a recent phone interview. “The Indian shells were specific to the Indians, yet those shells reveal me, myself and my own ancestry.” In the poem she visits the Devon Yacht Club in Amagansett, but realizes that neither Wyandanch, the Montauk leader, nor her ancestors Dave or Schmuel, would be welcome there. “An image of the Montauk Indians captured for me the truth of my past, their past and the present as well,” she said. “As much as poetry reveals who we are, place provides the imagery which allows poetry to reveal who we are.” Julie Sheehan, 44, has published two books of poetry, including “Orient Point” (W. W. Norton, 2007). She won a 2008 Whiting Writers’ Award and moved from New York City to East Quogue in 2001. Since then, she has become engrossed in economic and class strains, “when your economic life becomes divorced from your place, and you end up working at a Wal-Mart that could be anywhere, instead of on a ship that by necessity would be sailing into the Peconic Bay.” Poems, more than other art forms, tackle thorny social issues through metaphor, she said. “I’m not a nature poet, I’m a people poet,” she said. “Nature in my poetry will always be there as a figure for something else that interests me a lot more.” Connecticut Vivian Shipley has published seven full-length poetry volumes, including “Hardboot” (Southeastern Louisiana University Press, 2005), and five shorter collections. She grew up in Harlan County, Ky., and has lived in Connecticut since 1965. She writes extensively about both places. “What I think is happening in our society, distinctive locales are disappearing,” she said in a recent interview. “If you drive across the country on an interstate, you’ll find the distinction in landscape pretty much disappear into structures of housing, Burger Kings, Domino’s and Wal-Marts. I think we’re really being leveled, and I think it’s very important for poetry to try to preserve a uniqueness of place.” Ms. Shipley, 65, spends her summers on Morgan Point, where she became fascinated by the cormorants diving for fish in Long Island Sound. “I had all this information about them, and I was really interested in the subject for several years, before I found anything to attach it to,” she said. They appeared in her poem about the mysterious crash of T.W.A. Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996, as counterpoints to the divers in black wet suits searching for remains. Ravi Shankar , 33, is the author of “Instrumentality” (Cherry Grove Collections, 2004) and is a founding editor of Drunken Boat, an online journal of the arts. He moved seven years ago from Brooklyn to Chester, a town of about 4,500, which he said was “probably the size of the apartment building I lived in.” He enjoys living close to the Connecticut River, he said, and his walks along it have inspired him to write. “Things I’ve been reading, conversations I’ve been having, phrases I have collected in my notebooks, and I think certainly going out to take a walk, they all help that,” he said. “Wallace Stevens composed many of his poems while he walked down Asylum Avenue in Hartford. The pace of his steps make it into his poems oftentimes.”

Poetry and Poets
Writing and Writers
Books and Literature
Schultz Philip
Smith Patricia
Weil Joe
Schulman Grace
Shankar Ravi


U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home. “Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green. “It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else. As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service. Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images. Together, the two programs show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail. The mail covers program, used to monitor Mr. Pickering, is more than a century old but is still considered a powerful tool. At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Opening the mail would require a warrant.) The information is sent to the law enforcement agency that asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny. The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retrace the path of mail at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping. “In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime,” said Mark D. Rasch, who started a computer crimes unit in the fraud section of the criminal division of the Justice Department and worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. “Now it seems to be, ‘Let’s record everyone’s mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.’ Essentially you’ve added mail covers on millions of Americans.” Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and an author, said whether it was a postal worker taking down information or a computer taking images, the program was still an invasion of privacy. “Basically they are doing the same thing as the other programs, collecting the information on the outside of your mail, the metadata, if you will, of names, addresses, return addresses and postmark locations, which gives the government a pretty good map of your contacts, even if they aren’t reading the contents,” he said. But law enforcement officials said mail covers and the automatic mail tracking program are invaluable, even in an era of smartphones and e-mail. In a criminal complaint filed June 7 in Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the F.B.I. said a postal investigator tracing the ricin letters was able to narrow the search to Shannon Guess Richardson , an actress in New Boston, Tex., by examining information from the front and back images of 60 pieces of mail scanned immediately before and after the tainted letters sent to Mr. Obama and Mr. Bloomberg showing return addresses near her home. Ms. Richardson had originally accused her husband of mailing the letters, but investigators determined that he was at work during the time they were mailed. In 2007, the F.B.I., the Internal Revenue Service and the local police in Charlotte, N.C., used information gleaned from the mail cover program to arrest Sallie Wamsley-Saxon and her husband, Donald, charging both with running a prostitution ring that took in $3 million over six years. Prosecutors said it was one of the largest and most successful such operations in the country. Investigators also used mail covers to help track banking activity and other businesses the couple operated under different names. Other agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, have used mail covers to track drug smugglers and Medicare fraud. “It’s a treasure trove of information,” said James J. Wedick, a former F.B.I. agent who spent 34 years at the agency and who said he used mail covers in a number of investigations, including one that led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California on corruption charges. “Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena.” But, he said: “It can be easily abused because it’s so easy to use and you don’t have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form.” For mail cover requests, law enforcement agencies submit a letter to the Postal Service, which can grant or deny a request without judicial review. Law enforcement officials say the Postal Service rarely denies a request. In other government surveillance programs, like wiretaps, a federal judge must sign off on the requests. The mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days. There are two kinds of mail covers: those related to criminal activity and those requested to protect national security. Criminal activity requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, said law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing them. The number of requests for antiterrorism mail covers has not been made public. Law enforcement officials need warrants to open the mail, although President George W. Bush asserted in a signing statement in 2007 that the federal government had the authority to open mail without warrants in emergencies or in foreign intelligence cases. Court challenges to mail covers have generally failed because judges have ruled that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for information contained on the outside of a letter. Officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations, in fact, have used the mail-cover court rulings to justify the N.S.A.’s surveillance programs, saying the electronic monitoring amounts to the same thing as a mail cover. Congress briefly conducted hearings on mail cover programs in 1976, but has not revisited the issue. The program has led to sporadic reports of abuse. In May 2012, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor in Arizona, was awarded nearly $1 million by a federal judge after winning a lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The sheriff, known for his immigration raids, had obtained mail covers from the Postal Service to track her mail. The judge called the investigation into Ms. Wilcox politically motivated because she had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio’s, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. The case is being appealed. In the mid-1970s the Church Committee, a Senate panel that documented C.I.A. abuses, faulted a program created in the 1950s in New York that used mail covers to trace and sometimes open mail going to the Soviet Union from the United States. A suit brought in 1973 by a high school student in New Jersey, whose letter to the Socialist Workers Party was traced by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation into the group, led to a rebuke from a federal judge. Postal officials refused to discuss either mail covers or the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program. Mr. Pickering says he suspects that the F.B.I. requested the mail cover to monitor his mail because a former associate said the bureau had called with questions about him. Last month, he filed a lawsuit against the Postal Service, the F.B.I. and other agencies, saying they were improperly withholding information. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Buffalo declined to comment. Mr. Pickering said that although he was arrested two dozen times for acts of civil disobedience and convicted of a handful of misdemeanors, he was never involved in the arson attacks the Earth Liberation Front carried out. He said he became tired of focusing only on environmental activism and moved back to Buffalo to finish college, open his bookstore, Burning Books, and start a family. “I’m no terrorist,” he said. “I’m an activist.” Mr. Pickering has written books sympathetic to the liberation front, but he said his political views and past association should not make him the target of a federal investigation. “I’m just a guy who runs a bookstore and has a wife and a kid,” he said.

Postal Service US
Government Surveillance
Leslie James Pickering
Privacy
Postal Service


Leaders Say Obama Has Tapped Pastor for Outreach Office

Abstract: President Obama plans to name Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal pastor and political strategist who handled religious outreach for the Obama campaign, to direct a revamped office of faith-based initiatives , according to religious leaders who have been informed about the choice. The office, created by President George W. Bush by executive order at the start of his first term, is likely to have an even broader mandate in the Obama White House, said the religious leaders, who requested anonymity because the appointment has yet to be announced. The White House declined to comment. Renamed the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the office will not merely oversee the distribution of grants to religious and community groups, but will also look for other ways to involve those groups in working on pressing social problems. Mr. DuBois received a master’s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and was enrolled in law school when he left to work for Mr. Obama, then a senator. “I’ve been very impressed with this young man,” said John J. Dilulio Jr., a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who was the first person appointed to this job by Mr. Bush and who soon left in frustration. Mr. Dilulio was tapped by Mr. DuBois for advice on the religion-based initiative last year and through the transition process. “He is smart. He is calm. He is steady,” Mr. Dilulio said of Mr. DuBois, “and I think he’s very close to the new president. He’d be a good guy to do it.” On Capitol Hill, Mr. DuBois was part of a Democratic working group focused on building relationships with religious leaders, especially evangelical Christians alienated by the Republican record on economic inequality, foreign policy and environmental matters. Mr. DuBois expanded that outreach during the presidential campaign by convening house parties of religious voters across the country to present Mr. Obama as a man motivated by his faith. The most contentious issue that Mr. DuBois will have to help resolve is whether Mr. Obama should rescind a Bush administration legal memorandum that allows religious groups that receive government money to hire only those who share their faith. Mr. Obama said in a campaign speech last June, “If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion.” Mr. DuBois led an effort during the transition to consult with dozens of religious and charity groups about the work of the faith-based office, including what to do about the hiring question, and whether the faith-based centers that Mr. Bush inserted into 12 federal agencies should all be preserved.

Faith-Based Initiatives
Religion and Churches
United States Politics and Government
Obama Barack
DuBois Joshua


Lance Armstrong Faces New Doping Charges

Abstract: The United States Anti-Doping Agency is set to bring doping charges against Lance Armstrong that could lead to his being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. Armstrong, 40, called the charges “a witch hunt,” the same words he has used in the past when fighting off doping accusations that have followed him for more than a decade, including a two-year federal investigation into doping-related crimes that was dropped four months ago. This time the accuser is the antidoping agency, which does not have the power to bring criminal charges but does have the power to strip him of the accolades that helped make him a famous athlete. If its charges are upheld, the agency — a quasi-governmental organization that oversees antidoping mostly in Olympic sports — also could levy a lifetime ban on him that would cover cycling and any other sports that are signatories to the World Anti-Doping Code. The case has already led to Armstrong’s being suspended from competing in triathlons organized by the World Triathlon Corporation. He has focused on triathlons since retiring from cycling last year. Another difference from the federal investigation is that the antidoping agency’s bar to charge and eventually punish Armstrong is not as high. “It’s serious in the sense that they’ve got the ability to take away his title and ban him from future events,” said Robert D. Luskin, one of Armstrong’s lawyers. “Is it a process that is likely to lead to something that gives us some confidence that the allegations are true? Not for a second.” Luskin said Armstrong was notified of the charges last week and was given a week to meet with the antidoping agency officials and give his version of the story. He declined because the agency would not listen to anything short of a confession, Luskin said. The agency said Armstrong was the only American rider contacted who declined to speak with it. Armstrong, who had hoped to qualify for the Ironman World Championship in the fall, said that he had never doped and that the antidoping agency had a vendetta against him, fueled by malice. “These charges are baseless, motivated by spite and paid for by promises of anonymity and immunity,” he said in a statement. On Twitter, he tagged his post about the charges with “#unconstitutional.” The antidoping agency, in a letter obtained by The New York Times that was sent to Armstrong and five of his cycling colleagues on Tuesday, said that Armstrong and his associates were at the heart of systematic doping programs that began in the 1990s. The squads involved were the United States Postal Service team, the Discovery Channel team, the Astana team and the RadioShack team. The letter, first reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, said Armstrong used the blood-booster EPO, blood transfusions, testosterone, corticosteroids and masking agents. He also is charged with distributing and administering some of those doping agents, a violation of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s code that could result in a ban of four years or more. Multiple riders will testify that Armstrong gave them, encouraged them or assisted them in using banned substances, the letter said. “The witnesses to the conduct described in this letter include more than 10 cyclists as well as cycling team employees,” the letter said. The United States agency also said results from blood tests done on Armstrong in 2009 and 2010 by the International Cycling Union are “fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions.” The letter was also addressed to the team manager Johan Bruyneel, the team doctors Pedro Celaya and Luis Garcia del Moral, the consulting doctor Michele Ferrari and the team trainer Pepi Marti, who also face lifetime bans for being part of a doping conspiracy. Considering that Armstrong has an army of high-powered lawyers, including those who worked with him during the federal inquiry, the antidoping agency is facing a steep climb. But Travis Tygart, chief executive of the agency, said it was ready. “We do not choose whether or not we do our job based on outside pressures, intimidation or for any other reasons other than the evidence,” he said in a statement. The agency likely has the help of those cyclists who cooperated with the federal investigation, including Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour title for doping, and Tyler Hamilton, who admitted to being part of a doping scheme with Armstrong. Armstrong still has not decided whether to fight the charges. “Lance has never shrunk from a fair fight, and we haven’t decided whether or not this process affords him a fair opportunity to meet the charges head on,” Luskin said.

Armstrong Lance
Doping (Sports)
Tour de France (Bicycle Race)
Bicycles and Bicycling


Outside National Parks, Feeling Squeezed by the Shutdown

Abstract: SPRINGDALE, Utah — In the 10 days since Zion National Park closed its gates, the community on its doorstep has become a shutdown ghost town. Hotel rooms are dark, and housecleaners are working half-shifts. Herds of campers and sightseers have streamed away along the only highway out of town, and canceled reservations from New Zealand, California and Germany are piling up every day. “The phone’s still ringing, unfortunately,” said Dean Cook, manager of the Zion Park Inn, which lost about $19,000 in business during the first week of the federal government shutdown. “We thought of not answering it for a while.” The shutdown has pinched millions of Americans, from furloughed federal workers to poor mothers seeking food aid, but its economic toll is particularly evident in gateway communities to national parks, from Gatlinburg, Tenn., to Estes Park, Colo., to southwest Utah, where local businesses live or die on tourist traffic. On Thursday, people here welcomed the news that federal officials would allow states to reopen some national parks if they used their own money to run them — an expensive proposition for any state government. Governors in Utah, South Dakota, Colorado and Arizona have been urging the Interior Department to reopen the parks, or to allow states to do so if they paid for some day-to-day operations. In Utah, officials were scrambling to find the money to put the park rangers and employees back to work — Zion alone costs $50,000 a day to operate — and determine which parks might open first and whether the state would be repaid once the shutdown ends. “We’re just figuring this out,” said Ally Isom, a spokeswoman for Utah’s governor, Gary R. Herbert. Image The federal shutdown has closed Zion to tourists, but its main road was open to traffic. Credit Isaac Brekken for The New York Times While operators of restaurants and hotels here at Zion’s shuttered entrance cheered any prospect of reopening the park, they said the shutdown had already taken a heavy toll on this town of 550 people. Big tours had already canceled their reservations and made other plans, and local businesses said they were skeptical about whether the news of any park reopenings would make a difference to foreign tour operators as long as the government shutdown persists. October is supposed to be one of Springdale’s busiest months, when busloads of foreign tourists roll through and empty-nesters drive from Las Vegas or Salt Lake City to take advantage of the balmy temperatures and watch the cottonwoods turn golden. As many as 10,000 people pass through every day. It is the last hurrah of tourist season, when businesses sock away enough money to pay their bills during the slow winter. “They’re killing us on the biggest, last month of our season,” said Lou Rossi, who owns Wildcat Willie’s, where buffalo-and-elk meatloaf is a top seller. “We’re dry till next year.” Since the park closed, many businesses say their revenues have fallen by at least half. There are just not enough people around to buy geodes and T-shirts, rent bikes and splurge on hot-fudge sundaes. Businesses have trimmed their hours or cut staff, and some worried whether they would be able to pay their bills or afford off-season cleaning and repairs. It has gotten so bad that four counties in Utah have declared a state of emergency. The closing of Zion has cost about $3.5 million in visitor spending, according to a report by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, using data from the research firm Headwaters Economics. The report estimates that the shutdown is costing towns near parks across the country about $76 million per day. “This is as dangerous to us as an earthquake,” said Rebecca McKown, whose family owns the Spotted Dog restaurant in Springdale. Image Bob Wilson, a park employee, stood ready to stop visitors to the park on Thursday. Credit Isaac Brekken for The New York Times On an average October night, she said, she would serve about 300 meals. One night earlier this week, she served 102. She cut her food purchases from $15,000 a week to $5,000 and furloughed food runners and a bartender. But she still worries whether she will be able to pay next month’s mortgage. “We’re just trying to make it,” she said. “We don’t care whose fault it is. Fix it.” People here said they were getting increasingly sick of being pawns of political brinkmanship and pointed out that no one would be paying them for lost wages or business. “I try not to read the stupid news,” said Linda Collet, the manager at the Driftwood Lodge. “It’s like Keystone Kops. Each one stands up there and blames the other side.” As the closure drags on, anger has turned into action. Last week, about a dozen protesters climbed over the metal gates and walked through Zion National Park. Another march is planned for Saturday. Similar protests, dubbed Occupy Yellowstone and Occupy Yosemite, have sprung up outside other parks. The visitor’s bureau has tried to blunt the damage by telling tourists about the other activities around Springdale. Check out the ghost town in Grafton, or Sand Hollow State Park, bureau officials say. Go mountain-biking on Gooseberry Mesa, or take a hike in Snow Canyon. But they say it has been a losing fight. “It was like a mass exodus,” said Melva Benson, the general manager of the Majestic View Lodge, where occupancy is running about 42 percent. In a normal year, it would be about 95 percent full, she said. The state highway that runs through Zion is still open to traffic, but rangers at the entrance warn drivers they could be ticketed if they stop to take photos. All day long, disappointed tourists pulled up to the main gate, snapped a photo and drove away, looking for something else to do.

National Parks and National Monuments
Closings
Zion National Park
Travel,Tourism
Interior Department
Utah
Tennessee
Federal Budget


Aw-Shucks Leader Lifts Giants With a New Scowl

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Maybe it is the beard that Eli Manning has grown in the last month. Maybe it is all the early-season losing, six defeats in the first six games. Maybe it is the interceptions, 17 of them, including at least eight that have not been his fault. But the easygoing, aw-shucks Eli who has been walking around in the No. 10 Giants jersey for 10 years is learning to kick some butt and take names. It would be a stretch to now call him “Mean Eli,” because he will eternally have the disposition of everybody’s amiable younger brother, but when it comes to blunders and boneheaded plays by his teammates, Eli is not letting them roll off his back. Once he would jog off the field and swallow his frustration. Not so much anymore. These days he is challenging teammates who make mistakes and gesturing with exasperated waves of his hands on the sideline. He is calling out his receivers when they run the wrong way and exhorting players as they gather on the bench. He has even done some yelling. He would never admit this. That would be putting the focus on him, and he avoids that as he would five rushing linemen — by ducking his head and saying nothing. But asked Wednesday if he had been getting on his teammates more, if he had become more animated or forceful — as some of his teammates had suggested — Eli shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Maybe,” he said with a sheepish — or was it satisfied? — smile. In Eli parlance, a phraseology in which words come out of his mouth but nothing is ever said, that would be a resounding “yes.” Others have noticed as well. Tight end Brandon Myers, in his first year with the Giants, said he had seen a change during Sunday’s victory over the Green Bay Packers. “He was just more vocal,” Myers said. “He’s holding everybody accountable. We’ve been playing for a while now, and we should be in the right places — and when we’re not, he lets us know about it. “And when guys see him a little fired up, it holds everyone to a higher standard. Which is a good thing. He’s our guy.” The wide receivers, with whom Eli must have a symbiotic relationship, say that their quarterback knows how to communicate his displeasure. “It’s not going to be at the most obvious moment, but he’ll let you know,” Victor Cruz said. “He’ll say what’s on his mind in no uncertain terms.” Rueben Randle added: “He’ll come to you after a play that’s gone wrong and say what has to be said. He’s very direct. Right to the point.” Hakeem Nicks used different words to dispel what many have probably thought while watching the seemingly imperturbable No. 10 in Giants blue. “The guy is no wallflower, man,” Nicks said. Eli does not psychoanalyze himself for anyone. Pressed to elaborate on how he had changed this season, he gave a roundabout answer, but there were insights nonetheless. “Early on, we had some new guys in there playing for the first time,” he said. “We weren’t quite as comfortable with some of the personnel. But, you know, we’ve had a lot of time together now. Many games and many plays. It’s time to get rolling.” In other words, the Giants are only one and a half games out of first place, and the season from hell may actually amount to something. So it’s time to run the right routes and pick up the blitzing linebackers. Nice Eli was 0-6; the other Eli is 4-0 and on a roll. Curtis Painter, the backup quarterback who was also Peyton Manning’s backup in Indianapolis, thinks he has seen this somewhere before. “They’re brothers, and they are similar,” Painter said. “They’re going to tell you what they see out there. They feel they have to get that across.” Not everyone agrees. Told that some Giants receivers felt Eli was more assertive during Sunday’s game, the offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride shook his head. “I don’t buy that,” Gilbride said. “I just think a couple of mistakes were made, so he corrected them right on the spot.” Perhaps, but Eli has now played 158 regular-season and postseason games for the Giants. He’s been around the block a few times, even if that happens a lot in New Jersey because you can never make a left-hand turn. He is 32 years old, which is old enough to start being exasperated by rookies or first-year Giants who line up wrong 9 or 10 games into the season. The Dallas Cowboys are coming to town Sunday, and the Giants have a shot to win the N.F.C. East if they keep winning. “It’s time to do whatever it takes to win,” Eli said Wednesday. Even if that takes being mean. Or sort of mean. And finally, there’s the beard. Eli has not been clean-shaven since Oct. 10, the last time the Giants lost. Is the appendage a signal of his new temperament? “I just think it looks great,” he answered without emotion. One thing is sure: No one in the locker room is going to step forward and tell him otherwise.


Cleveland Stews Over Its Breakup With James

Abstract: CLEVELAND — There is hair to be cut and money to be made, so Tony Houston opens his barbershop before the sun rises on weekends. To enter, you walk over a life-size decal of LeBron James , although just a few months ago the same image hung proudly on the barbershop’s wall. “So you can wipe your feet off,” Houston explained when asked why James’s sticker was now on the floor. “You can wipe them off on the way out, too.” If Houston had waited, he could have purchased his new floor decoration for a discount. Dan Gilbert, the Cleveland Cavaliers ’ owner, also owns Fathead, the company that produces decals like the one in Houston’s barbershop. It was Gilbert who also reduced the price of James’s decals to $17.41 this summer, matching the price with the year that Benedict Arnold was born. So it goes in Cleveland, where James used to play. It took only 14 words by James last July 8 — “ I’m going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat ”— to shatter opinions of him in much of Ohio. He was the kid from Akron who was destined to lead nearby Cleveland to some desperately sought championships. Instead, he left without winning even one, igniting an emotional debate that continues as a new N.B.A. season approaches and the Cavaliers, and Cleveland, attempt to move on. Not that it is particularly easy to do so, particularly in a region that is both proud and sensitive, a combination that does not always mix. “This community has been battered around a lot in the last 30 years, a lot of it unfairly starting with the Johnny Carson jokes on down,” said David Gilbert, the president and chief executive of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission . Gilbert is not related to Dan Gilbert. “When things go good, people are very willing to jump in and be part of what’s going on here and it’s great,” he added. “But when things go bad, I think people take it even more personally than they might in other communities.” More defiant was Joe Roman of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, who said it was untrue that James’s departure would have any lasting economic impact on the city and the surrounding areas. “Excuse me, but he’s a basketball player,” Roman said. “Our economy is growing and it’s investing more in the last three or four years than it probably has in the last 20.” Optimism also came from Len Komoroski, the president of both the Cavaliers and Quicken Loans Arena, who spoke in an interview of record season-ticket sales for the approaching season. Still, there was a catch: the Cavaliers annually ask season-ticket holders to commit to the following season by March in order to guarantee the playoff seats they want. So when those commitments were made six months ago, it was still possible that James would stay put. He didn’t. And so on Monday, for the first time in seven years, James was not present as the Cavaliers held their annual media day to kick off training camp. “Whether we believe it or not, he’s not coming back,” point guard Mo Williams said. He and the rest of James’s ex-teammates will play under a new coach, Byron Scott, who has had success elsewhere. But a roster that was pieced together to complement James now looks like a complete hodgepodge without him. “I hope so,” Scott answered when asked if his players should take issue with people who discount them. At the barbershop last weekend, customers and barbers dissected this new, and very modest, Cavaliers team. Some wondered if it was right to attend the first game James plays in Cleveland, in December. They debated how many points James would score in his return. They agreed it would be a high number. ESPN’s “SportsCenter” played in a loop in the background. A Phil Jackson interview came on the air, and the customers listened as Jackson said the emergence of the Heat as a major team would help the league. The footage flashed to the Heat’s initial welcome ceremony for James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, the three of them preening and posturing in blinding white jerseys. ESPN was sending a crew to Miami to cover the Heat’s media day. “What time did they say that was?” said a barber, Ron LaRue. He said he might watch. They all might. Although James’s decision to leave struck a nerve, Houston still keeps a printed list of Miami’s roster at hand and argues with people who do not agree that the Heat has enough complementary talent to win a championship. The intrigue remains, but not the old adulation. In fact, for some the issue is not really that James left. After all, others have also done so, including the original Cleveland Browns. Instead, there is lingering resentment over the way James declared he was leaving — in a nationally televised announcement. “It’s respect,” Rob Wilson said as he waited for his haircut. “It’s all about respect, and he didn’t show any.” The frequent analogy is that the broadcast amounted to someone publicly breaking up with his girlfriend. Keith Dambrot, the coach at the University of Akron and James’s coach during his first two seasons at Akron’s St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, doubted that the emotions would have lessened if James’s decision had been made quietly — if such an option had even been possible. “I still think they would have fried him either way,” Dambrot said. Over the summer, James scrimmaged with some of Dambrot’s players at the university. Akron, about a half-hour’s drive south of Cleveland, is where James grew up, where he learned the game, where he still maintains his bikeathon as a charity event . Dambrot said that when James would grab something to eat in the university cafeteria after one of those summer scrimmages, people still showered him with attention. “I’m sure it’s probably a little hard for LeBron because he’s never faced any fan adversity before,” Dambrot said. “I don’t think much has changed in Akron, but in the rest of Ohio, there seems to be a lot of negative reaction.” Indeed, James spoke of a distinction between Akron and Cleveland in a recent magazine article. Others in both Cleveland and Akron agreed that there is a difference in the two cites in the way James is now perceived. That point was driven home in a newspaper advertisement James took out after he picked the Heat: he thanked Akron but not Cleveland . “Akron is standing up to those criticizing a young man who has done nothing wrong,” said Robert Deck, an assistant coach when James played youth football in the city. “That’s his job and it’s part of his business, going from one place to the next place.” On the same day recently that Houston stepped on James’s decal, Deck headed to a football field in Akron. He still coaches young players. Each of them, he said, still admires James. Of James’s much-criticized television announcement, Deck said: “He did it like Frank Sinatra. He did it his way and you can’t knock him for that.” “The main people that were complaining were the rich and not the poor,” Deck added. “It was like Robin Hood, like LeBron stole from the rich and gave to the poor. You’ve got all these big-shot people and then you’ve got this little poor kid that comes from the neighborhood and you’re putting all these expectations on him and then when he doesn’t do what you ask of him, you’re mad at him.” As he watched James’s televised goodbye to Cleveland, Deck said that he could see a conflicted James. “I saw the hurt in his eyes,” he said. “You know what?” said the sports commission’s David Gilbert, echoing Deck. “The next day the sun came up and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was still standing. I think a lot of people realized that.”

Basketball
Cleveland Cavaliers
James LeBron
Cleveland (Ohio)


Boy Dies in Shooting in East Brunswick

Abstract: A 12-year-old boy was shot in the head about 6 p.m. yesterday and was pronounced dead at 6:30, the police said. Neighbors said that the boy who was shot was visiting a friend's home, where there was a gun collection, and the friend accidentally shot him. The police said the shooting occurred at a condominium on Cypress Lane in the Kingswood Station complex. They said that the grandmother, who owns the condominium, was at home when the shooting occurred.


Brazil: An Apology for Torture

Abstract: The Rio de Janeiro State government said Friday that it would apologize to President Dilma Rousseff for the human rights abuses she suffered during the dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1961 to 1985. Ms. Rousseff is a former leftist guerrilla who spent three years in prison during the dictatorship and was tortured. Paula Pinto, a spokeswoman for Rio’s Social Assistance and Human Rights Department, said that Ms. Rousseff was one of 120 people who would receive apologies from Gov. Sergio Cabral.

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Got a Second? G.E. Has a Quick Message

Abstract: DECADES ago, General Electric and its agency, BBDO Worldwide, joined to create a half-hour weekly television series, "General Electric Theater." Now, in a move that underlines how giant marketers are seeking new ways to reach consumers, G.E., BBDO and two other agencies are introducing an elaborate campaign centered on a version of the series that is 1,799 seconds shorter than the original. "G.E. One Second Theater," as the campaign is being called, presents a humorous peek behind the scenes at recent General Electric commercials produced by BBDO. The campaign is intended specifically for new media like digital video recorders, which can be used to watch expanded versions of the spots, and the MySpace social networking service ( myspace.com ), where visitors can read a mock profile of Elli, the elephant star of one of the commercials. The spots will also be accessible on MP3 players, through podcasts presented as if they were recorded by Elli and other characters from the spots, and on a microsite ( onesecondtheater.com ) , which offers an online version of the campaign. The multimillion-dollar campaign, scheduled to begin today, is the most recent effort by G.E. to explore media beyond conventional commercials and print advertisements. Previous initiatives include a campaign about a virtual sprouting seed, which computer users could tend and send to friends by e-mail, and banner ads offering a way to doodle online. "We're harkening back to an old idea, in combination with new technology," said David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer for the North American operations of BBDO, part of the Omnicom Group. "General Electric Theater" appeared on CBS from February 1953 to September 1962 and the host for all but the first year was an actor named Ronald Reagan. Whatever became of him? The General Electric Company is among marketers devoting a growing part of ad budgets to new media. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, announced yesterday that it would team up with the mtvU cable network owned by Viacom for a worldwide campaign aimed at college students, carrying the theme "Meet or Delete," which will be found on television, online and on cellphones. Also, the Adidas unit of Adidas-Salomon has started releasing a series of short films by directors like Roman Coppola, which can be watched on hand-held devices or on Web sites like ifilm.com , video.google.com and youtube.com , and can be downloaded from the Apple Computer iTunes store ( itunes.com ). And Wendy's International created a MySpace profile for an animated character based on its square hamburger, which also had its own Web site. "It's a challenge whenever you try to do something new, but it's energizing," said Judy L. Hu, global executive director for advertising and branding at General Electric in Fairfield, Conn. She and BBDO executives offered a preview of the One-Second Theater campaign in an interview at the agency's Midtown Manhattan office. "Clearly, we're taking a risk," Ms. Hu said, "but that's what you need to do to break through." "Everything we do that's inventive and innovative helps drive the idea of 'Imagination at work,' " she added, which has been the theme of General Electric campaigns created by BBDO since 2003. Here is how the extended versions of the commercials work. BBDO has re-edited several spots to embed in each one additional material, which can be glimpsed only for a second if the spots are being watched live on TV. But for viewers using TiVo or other digital video recorders, the commercials can be paused and the new material becomes accessible to watch frame by frame. The material includes mock biographies of Elli, a dancing elephant, and the other animal characters from a G.E. commercial promoting its environmental efforts under the "ecomagination" theme, along with fake "lost casting tapes" in which creatures like a shark, a cow and an armadillo flunk their auditions for the spot. "It was hard to imagine Elli ever recovering from the teenage exploitation film 'Don't Touch That Trunk' and the well-publicized 'peanut' scandal," one make-believe biography begins. "As for the future, look for her in the summer blockbuster studio romance 'Love of the Mastodon.' " In the "Elli's interests" section of the elephant's MySpace profile, her favorite music is listed as "Tusk" by Fleetwood Mac and her movies are "Animal House" and "Dumbo." As of yesterday afternoon, Elli already had five friends on her MySpace page ( myspace.com/ellifont ). In another imaginary biography, a toucan that appears in Elli's commercial is described as the star of "the musical 'I Am Toucan' and its sequel, 'I Am Still Toucan.' " And two flamingos from the commercial are described as "self-taught method actors" that appeared in carnival sideshows "as 'The Amazing Two-Headed Flamingo' until their act was exposed on the cable special 'Fake Two-Headed Animal Acts Exposed.' " Plans call for the additional material to be replaced on a regular basis, said Don Schneider, executive vice president and executive creative director at BBDO New York, "so viewers will always be expecting there could be something new embedded" each time they see a G.E. commercial. The re-edited commercials will appear on networks that are part of the NBC Universal division of General Electric, including Bravo, CBNC, MSNBC, NBC, Sci Fi and USA. They will also run on networks not owned by G.E., Ms. Hu said, including A&E, Comedy Central, Discovery, E!, ESPN, the Food Network, the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, TBS, TLC and the Travel Channel. To help generate awareness for the One-Second Theater campaign, Ms. Hu said, it will be promoted in announcements during TV series sponsored by General Electric and in comic "teaser" banner ads on Web sites like gawker.com as well as the sites of print publications like The Hollywood Reporter ( hollywoodreporter.com ) and Variety ( variety.com ). The agencies working on the campaign in addition to BBDO are Blitz, an interactive agency in Beverly Hills, Calif., and OMD, a media planning and buying agency that is also part of Omnicom.

General Electric Company
Advertising and Marketing
MySpace.com


China’s Party-Run Media Is Silent on Market Mayhem

Abstract: HONG KONG — After China ’s stock markets crumpled , prompting a global sell-off, People’s Daily, the premier newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, had other things on its mind. There was no mention of the market mayhem on the newspaper’s front page on Tuesday, when it featured a report about economic development in Tibet. Indeed, there was not a single reference to the stock markets throughout the entire 24 pages of the paper, which dwelled instead on the forthcoming 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. The silence continued on Wednesday, when the paper again did not report on the stock market upheavals, although it did have articles about Chinese central bank decisions and Prime Minister Li Keqiang’s restatement of confidence in the broader economy, despite the effects of what he called global “market volatility.” It was a telling sign that, while Republican aspirants to the White House have upbraided Beijing over the stock market turmoil, China’s leaders were sticking to their habit of staying above the public fray when policies turn sour. “My hunch would be that they’re really not about to stomach another wave of more open reporting by the Chinese media,” said David Bandurski, the website editor for the China Media Project , based at the University of Hong Kong, who has written extensively on China’s controls on news. “This is an explosive economic story for China,” he said. Mr. Bandurski noted that in April, People’s Daily was among the party-run news outlets encouraging investors to buy stocks, on the assumption that prices would keep rising, despite occasional hiccups. “I think people’s memories are long enough that they can remember how this began,” he said. “They were pushing the Kool-Aid.” The home page of Xinhua , the state news agency, was highlighting a report about President Xi Jinping’s visit to Tibet in 1998, when he was a provincial official in eastern China. On Monday, the 7 p.m. news broadcast on China Central Television, the country’s main television network, also skipped mention of the plummet in stock prices. China Digital Times , which collates leaked, confidential propaganda and censorship directives to Chinese journalists, reported that in June they were told to keep coverage of the stock markets strictly in line with official rules intended to deter pessimism or panic. “Do not conduct in-depth analysis, and do not speculate on or assess the direction of the market,” said the instructions, according to China Digital Times, based in Berkeley, Calif. “Do not exaggerate panic or sadness. Do not use emotionally charged words such as ‘slump,’ ‘spike’ or ‘collapse.’ ” Other newspapers and websites in China reported on the market turmoil, though often presenting China as an unlikely bystander in a wider global downturn. Some parts of the Chinese news media that are less firmly yoked to echoing the party leadership’s positions voiced rival views of what the government should do about the stock market slump. Some said the government should do more. Others said it was time to quit intervening. Securities Daily, a leading financial newspaper, seized the opportunity to urge the government to do more to prop up stock prices. “The slump in the stock markets is destroying what remains of investor confidence, and this problem is profoundly serious,” the paper said in a front-page commentary . It called for stronger government measures to shore up stock prices. China’s economic fundamentals remain sound, it said, but “the stock markets’ reactions to these fundamentals have become extremely chilly, and pessimistic sentiment has continued to spread.” The commentary called for continued government intervention in the markets to counter what it called “irrational” and “malicious” sell-offs. But The Economic Information Daily, a newspaper issued by the Xinhua news agency, argued that the Chinese government should retreat from trying to shore up the stock markets. Instead, the paper said, policy makers must focus on improving economic conditions, such as making it easier for businesses to attract loans and investment. “The turbulence in global stock markets has largely arisen from volatile sentiment, and not because major problems have hit the economy,” it said in a front-page commentary. “The domestic policy focus should be on steadily retreating from stock market bailout policies,” it said. “Government bailouts are meant to avert financial risks, not to prop up stock prices. Although A-shares have suffered another substantial fall, we still need to stick to steadily phasing out bailout measures.” Even as frazzled Chinese investors endured another day of market tumult on Tuesday, there was some light relief. Chinese news websites featured images of a massive sculpture in the coastal city of Xiamen that depicted a bull astride a bear. The sculpture was intended to symbolize bullish, upbeat market forces subduing bearish pessimism, according to the news reports. On the Internet, however, some Chinese commenters said the sculpture appeared to show something more intimate going on between the two beasts. Cai Mingchao, the businessman and art collector who commissioned the sculpture, said he hoped it would ease some of the stresses of weary investors. “Actually, this is for stock investors to let off steam,” Mr. Cai said, according to Xiamen Daily. “If everyone is more upbeat, then maybe the stock market will be too.”

China
Stocks,Bonds
News media,journalism
Economy
People's Daily
Xinhua


VW’s U.S. Diesel Settlement Clears Just One Financial Hurdle

Abstract: Volkswagen solved one big problem stemming from its diesel emissions deception, agreeing on Tuesday to pay up to $14.7 billion to settle claims in the United States. But the final financial toll — once the company deals with a long list of fines, lawsuits and criminal investigations around the world — may well be far higher. The continuing fallout could leave Volkswagen vulnerable to billions of dollars more in expenses at a time when profit is already under pressure. So far, Volkswagen has set aside 16.2 billion euros, or about $17.9 billion, for costs related to its public admission last September that its supposed “clean diesel” cars had been deliberately designed to cheat on air-quality tests. Matthias Müller , Volkswagen’s chief executive, said less than two weeks ago that the amount was adequate. But the American settlement with the government and car owners will consume a big chunk of that money. And Volkswagen faces even more scrutiny in the United States and around the world, most notably as authorities pursue criminal investigations. The Volkswagen scandal is “one of the most flagrant violations of environmental and consumer laws,” Sally Q. Yates, deputy attorney general of the United States, said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. “We can’t suck the nitrous oxide out of the air,” Ms. Yates said. But the settlement, she said, would help repair some of the damage. Video Sally Q. Yates, right, the United States deputy attorney general, and Gina McCarthy, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, spoke on Tuesday about the $14.7 billion Volkswagen emissions settlement. Credit Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times The deal, in which Volkswagen did not admit to wrongdoing, includes $10.03 billion to buy back affected cars at their prescandal values and pay additional cash compensation to owners. Additionally, the company has agreed to put $2.7 billion into a government fund to compensate for the environmental impact of the cars and to spend $2 billion on cleaner-vehicle projects. “This is by no means the last step,” Ms. Yates cautioned. “The settlements do not address any potential criminal liability.” She said the United States was aggressively pursuing a criminal investigation of the company and individuals. Volkswagen said the settlement was covered by the money already set aside, though it did not rule out the possibility of allocating more. “Today’s announcement is within the scope of our provisions,” Frank Witter, Volkswagen’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. “We are in a position to manage the consequences.” One big risk to the carmaker is in Europe. The American deal focuses on nearly 500,000 Volkswagen vehicles. But the carmaker admitted to installing the cheating device on more than 11 million cars worldwide, with 8.5 million in Europe. European legal systems do not favor consumers as much as those in the United States do. And the emissions rules in the region are more lenient than in the United States, which will make it harder for European owners to pursue claims. Still, Volkswagen may have to pay up. There is an increasing outcry from European owners and politicians for compensation. Image Gina McCarthy, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said on Tuesday that Volkswagen must fix the cars that it buys back or scrap them, and was encouraged to recycle any scrapped parts. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times “Now that this is done, attention should turn to Europe,” said Michael Hausfeld, a lawyer whose firm represents aggrieved owners and shareholders on both sides of the Atlantic. The settlement “is a strong foundation for what Volkswagen needs to do for European owners as well as for the environment.” In addition, it may not be clear for many months how much Volkswagen will ultimately have to pay to American car owners. A maximum of around $10 billion has been allocated in the settlement. The actual cost to Volkswagen will depend on how many owners exercise their option to sell their cars back to the company at the prescandal value, which will vary according to the age and mileage of the cars. The Federal Trade Commission said consumers could expect to get from roughly $12,500 for an older-model Jetta to as much as $44,000 for a 2014 Audi. The settlement works out to about $21,000 a car. If Volkswagen is lucky, the total paid to car owners could turn out to be less than $10 billion. Analysts at Kelley Blue Book estimate that the cost of buying back all the offending diesels would be $7.3 billion. Volkswagen also owes owners additional compensation of $5,100 to $10,000, or at least another $2.4 billion. Another big uncertainty is Volkswagen’s fix for the problem. VW owners can have the company retool the emissions systems. But the company has not yet come up with solutions that pass regulatory muster — and it is unclear what they will cost Volkswagen. How Volkswagen’s ‘Defeat Devices’ Worked Volkswagen admitted that 11 million of its vehicles were equipped with software that was used to cheat on emissions tests. This is how the technology works and what it now means for vehicle owners. While they would improve emissions, any fixes might not also make the cars fully compliant with American rules and could create more challenges for already frustrated car owners. George Farquar, a plaintiff named in the consumers’ suit, said he was interested in getting his 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI fixed. Mr. Farquar said he had reluctantly continued to drive his Jetta, even though he thinks he “gets nasty looks from every Prius car that passes.” But he said he worried that the eventual fix would require him to drive to the dealer more frequently for maintenance, defeating the purpose of a cleaner car. Even now, he said, “many things aren’t clear.” Then there is the issue of what Volkswagen will do with all the cars it buys back from owners in the United States. The settlement bars Volkswagen from simply exporting the cars, without fixes, to countries with less-stringent emissions standards. “We are not shipping the air pollution elsewhere,” Gina McCarthy, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said on Tuesday, noting that Volkswagen was required to fix the cars that it bought back or scrap them. Volkswagen representatives portrayed the settlement as a good deal for the company under the circumstances. “It would have been counterproductive for Volkswagen to engage in a multiyear, grind-it-out litigation with the U.S. government, 50 states and private plaintiffs,” said Robert J. Giuffra Jr., a lawyer with the firm Sullivan & Cromwell who represented Volkswagen. But the swell of scrutiny worldwide will only add to the financial pressure. German prosecutors are looking into whether Volkswagen and top executives, including the former chief executive Martin Winterkorn, waited too long to inform shareholders about the looming scandal. Investors are also suing Volkswagen over similar disclosure issues. Volkswagen faces an inquiry by attorneys general in 42 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, one of the states leading the investigation, announced on Tuesday the states’ own settlement with Volkswagen for $500 million in penalties for defrauding consumers. A separate investigation by the state attorneys general into possible environmental misconduct by Volkswagen is continuing. In addition, the criminal investigation of Volkswagen in the United States looms large. Senators Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, both Democrats and members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, pressed authorities for further action. “We continue to call on the Department of Justice to vigorously pursue its criminal investigation,” they said in a joint statement. “All the facts point to criminal culpability, and officials should be held accountable as appropriate.” Volkswagen’s credibility with investors, already strained, could deteriorate further if the company is forced to increase the money it has set aside for diesel-related costs. Shares of Volkswagen are down more than 20 percent since the scandal erupted late last year. And the deception itself has been a major drag on sales. Never fabulously profitable, the company reported a record loss in 2015, while earnings and sales declined in the first quarter of 2016. Volkswagen is also trying to quell a potential backlash by dealers in the United States. The carmaker is facing a lawsuit filed by the owner of three dealerships, seeking compensation for lost sales suffered by the more than 600 dealers in the United States. Separately, a group of dealers has been trying to work with Volkswagen to win financial support. “As dealers, we are very anxious to get a settlement,” said Wade Walker, owner of a Volkswagen dealership in Montpelier, Vt. “We’re customers, too — of Volkswagen — and we’ve been hurt in this process, tremendously.”

Volkswagen
Diesel engine
Vehicle Emissions
Lawsuits
Cars
Fraud
Automobile safety
Air pollution


Arkansas: Error Allows Children to Marry

Abstract: A law enacted this year allows Arkansans of any age — even infants — to marry if their parents give approval, and the governor may call a special session of the legislature to fix the mistake, lawmakers said. The legislation was intended to establish 18 as the minimum age to marry but also allow younger pregnant teenagers to marry with parental consent, said Representative Will Bond, a Democrat, who sponsored the bill. The bill contains an extraneous “not”: “In order for a person who is younger than 18 years of age and who is not pregnant to obtain a marriage license, the person must provide the county clerk with evidence of parental consent to the marriage.” Several lawmakers said a special session might be necessary to fix the error. Senator Sue Madison, a Democrat, said, “I am concerned about pedophiles coming to Arkansas to find parents who are willing to sign a very young child’s consent.”


Photoshop at 25: A Thriving Chameleon Adapts to an Instagram World

Abstract: The history of digital technology is full of innovations that are praised for having changed the world: the Mac, Microsoft Windows, the Netscape Navigator browser, the iPod and countless others. Then there are the many products that changed the world and were suddenly overtaken by some newer, supposedly better thing: the Mac, Microsoft Windows, Netscape Navigator, the iPod and countless others. What’s rarer in tech is the product that causes major changes, hits turbulence and then, after some nimble adjustment, finds a surprising new audience. This week is the 25th birthday of one such aging chameleon, Adobe Photoshop, an image-editing program that was created when we snapped pictures on film and displayed them on paper. It has not just survived but thrived through every major technological transition in its lifetime: the rise of the web, the decline of print publishing, the rise and fall of home printing and the supernova of digital photography. Photoshop attained the rare status of a product that became a verb — like Google and Xerox. Along the way, it became a lightning rod for controversy because of, among other things, the way it can be used to turn women’s bodies into unnatural magazine-cover icons , or its use by propagandists and your casually mendacious social-networking buddies who doctor their vacation snaps. But now, for all its cultural cachet, Photoshop risks missing out on a far larger market of casual photo bugs and their smartphones. Once, for better or worse, we Photoshopped photos. Now, more often than not, we Instagram or Snapchat them, and everyone, it seems, is a photo editor. But not everyone needs or even wants a fancy program like Photoshop. Image Photoshop, open to a 1990 image of, left to right in foreground, Adobe’s creative director, Russell Brown, and the artists Nicholas Callaway and David Hockney. Credit Doug Menuez/Stanford University Libraries, via Contour by Getty Images “When I took over the business in 2010, I realized that the growth in our business did not match what was happening all around us,” said David Wadhwani, the executive in charge of Adobe’s creative software. “Visual expression was on the rise everywhere. Our business was a solid business, but it was not growing at the pace that we felt it should.” So Adobe is taking a big risk and reinventing Photoshop and, the company hopes, making it less acutely dependent on sales to a small group of professional customers. The aggressive reinvention of Photoshop, if successful, could serve as a model for other companies, particularly Microsoft, that risk losing business to more nimble app makers. It also suggests a path to mobile devices for software that over the years grew fatter as PCs grew more powerful: Slice it up, cut the price, and you could end up attracting a far wider audience. Or at least make sure your current audience doesn’t abandon you. Adobe’s new plan for Photoshop actually started in 2011. Rather than selling licensed copies of Photoshop and its other high-end creative applications for hundreds of dollars each (Photoshop used to sell for $700 a copy), Adobe began offering monthly access for as little as $10 a month. The price change was initially met with fury from loyalists , who didn’t like the idea of renting rather than buying. Because subscription revenue comes in over time, the change also took a toll on Adobe’s bottom line. Its annual net income declined 65 percent in 2013, and it fell 13 percent last year. Image The Photoshop app, showing the Mix icon feature. But the company sees the decline as the short-term cost of a long-term plan. By lowering the price of Photoshop, Adobe hopes to democratize access, gaining new users who, in the past, wouldn’t have been able to afford $700 software. The trend looks promising. Adobe now has 3.5 million subscribers to its Creative Cloud suite of apps (which includes Photoshop), and it expects to have nearly six million by the end of this year. Annual revenue generated by those subscriptions will approach $3 billion. It’s on track to beat the record $3.4 billion that Adobe made from selling boxed software in 2011. There are risks, of course. Low-end photo editing apps are becoming popular — fast. Adobe may not be reacting quickly enough to them. And when you reach out to new types of customers, you could offend the old ones who supported the business for decades. Will they find a high-end alternative if Photoshop starts looking a little too downscale? Still, the company is forging ahead. Adobe also has grander plans to break up Photoshop into a number of apps, some of which it will make itself. Others will be made by third-party developers who will have access to Adobe’s image-processing systems online. In some cases, those apps will even be free. “The goal is to go from tens of millions of people benefiting from the technology within Photoshop to hundreds of millions of people over the years,” Mr. Wadhwani said. Image Toolbars from several Photoshop versions, starting with the original, from the left, and ending with Photoshop CC. Adobe’s move to apps and the cloud has earned plaudits from optimists on Wall Street. To understand why, it helps to understand Photoshop’s history. Photoshop began as a way to procrastinate from working on a doctoral thesis. In the late 1980s, Thomas Knoll, who was studying computer vision at the University of Michigan, began creating a collection of image-processing utilities for his younger brother John, who was a digital-effects specialist at Industrial Light & Magic. The program, which the brothers named Display, kept growing, and soon many of John’s friends at I.L.M. were using it. In 1988, Adobe agreed to buy the program, but it didn’t really have high expectations. Adobe gave the brothers no extra resources to finish the software; the company didn’t even require them to go to Silicon Valley to work on it. John remained at Industrial Light & Magic, dreaming up new features for Photoshop, while Thomas stuck it out in Ann Arbor, where he wrote every line of code in the first version. “The end result was, I never did finish my Ph.D.,” Thomas said. But after about two years, he did finish Photoshop. On Feb. 19, 1990, Photoshop 1.0 began shipping. It was an instant success. Over the next decade, Adobe sold more than three million copies. Many of Photoshop’s features were built as analogues to techniques that photographers had long been using in the darkroom, but what set it apart from competing image-editing programs was the way it improved on the darkroom. For early users, it was a mind-blowing experience. Image “The Burden of Dreams,” by Maggie Taylor, whose painterly, collage-heavy art relies strongly on Photoshop. Credit Maggie Taylor “What was amazing to me was the ability to change your mind all the time,” said Maggie Taylor, a photographer whose painterly, collage-heavy art relies strongly on Photoshop. “With film, I had to make a decision, make the exposure and you’re done. And I was often disappointed,” she said. “With Photoshop, it’s like, ‘Wow, I can change my mind as many times as I want.’ ” To the chagrin of some old-timers, Photoshop liberated photographers from the rigors of physical perfection (and also from darkroom chemicals). “In the days before a computer, you had to have very good hand-eye coordination to do photography well,” said John Maeda , a designer and former president of the Rhode Island School of Design. Photoshop changed that. But more important than what Photoshop did was the way Adobe navigated its market. In 1990, getting a photograph in and out of a computer was difficult because scanners sold for tens of thousands of dollars and printers and monitors had little capacity to produce high-resolution images. The people who could get the most out of Photoshop, then, were designers working for newspapers, magazines and other industries that used presses. “But we were always watching the trends to see exactly what features were required as the market evolved,” Thomas Knoll said. Each time some new opportunity came along — from the web to inkjet printers to digital cameras — Adobe quickly tuned Photoshop to the new technology. Each time, Photoshop grew. In a way, then, Adobe’s turn to cloud-based subscriptions and mobile apps is similar: The business of software has changed, and Adobe is again shifting with it. Adobe now offers some of Photoshop’s best features to outside developers, who can add advanced image-editing capabilities to their apps at no cost. Adobe is also building a suite of apps that offer specific cuts of Photoshop and other programs to a wider range of users. “When I see all this happening, I’m down with what they’re doing,” said Mr. Maeda, who is now a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “I think the younger generation of designers is looking for new tools, and they don’t care what device it’s on.”

Adobe
Photography
Cloud computing
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Software


Manhattan: Airports on Pace to Set Record

Abstract: A surge in traffic through Newark Liberty International Airport in the first half of 2006 has put the three airports operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on pace to handle more than 100 million passengers this year, Port Authority officials said yesterday. Last year the airports — Newark, La Guardia and Kennedy — handled a record 99.8 million passengers, even though Newark had not regained all the traffic it lost after the Sept. 11 attacks. But in the first half of this year, with the start of service by JetBlue Airways and the addition of several flights by Continental Airlines, Newark’s traffic was up 12.3 percent, or almost 2 million passengers, from the first half of 2005. Newark is on pace to handle more than 35 million passengers.

Airports
Airlines and Airplanes
New Jersey
Manhattan (NYC)


Player’s Abducted Father Freed

Abstract: The kidnapped father of Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel was freed after detectives traced him to the city of Kano in northern Nigeria and arrested his abductors. The father, Michael Obi, was kidnapped Aug. 12 while on his way home from work.

Kidnapping
Soccer
Chelsea (Soccer Team)
Mikel John Obi


Nigeria Fines Emirati Telecom for Poor Performance

Abstract: DUBAI — Etisalat Nigeria , part-owned by the Emirati telecommunications giant Etisalat, was fined around $2 million by Nigerian regulators this week for poor service and failure to meet quality targets. The company says it plans to spend more than $500 million this year on its business. The penalty is the latest in a string of difficulties that have sometimes hampered Etisalat’s efforts to move outside its own tough home market. The fine is only the company’s latest overseas stubbed toe. For instance, the company had to write down $827 million in losses related to its Indian affiliate, Etisalat DB, and exit the Indian market after its license to operate in India was revoked in February, along with those of 122 other mobile operators. Etisalat also has a continuing dispute about whether it owes $800 million for the acquisition of a stake in PCTL in Pakistan. And last year, the company decided not to go through with a $12 billion offer to buy a controlling stake in Kuwait’s Zain Group in March 2011. “As the recent fine in Nigeria has shown, in addition to issues in Pakistan and India, managing a portfolio of investments in a wide-spanning area requires solid oversight and is prone to regulatory changes and legal challenges,” said Martin Kohlhase, a senior analyst at Moody’s Investor Services in Dubai. “These issues have all weighed on Etisalat’s stand-alone creditworthiness, but have so far been mitigated by the company’s strong financials.” It is easy to see why the company continues to look outside its home market despite the risk of complications. Pressed by Dubai’s agile operator, du, Etisalat has seen eroding domestic profits and market share. Meanwhile, revenues from the company’s international operations, driven by strong performance in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Afghanistan, grew 21 percent in the first quarter of 2012, compared with the same period last year. Etisalat’s international gains helped first-quarter total revenue rise 2 percent to 8.2 billion dirhams, or $2.23 billion, offsetting a 2.6 percent drop in domestic revenue to 6.09 billion dirhams. In Africa, Etisalat also has operations in Sudan, Egypt and Tanzania, as well as Ivory Coast. International revenues account for about 28 percent of total sales. Yet analysts warn that mobile operators face difficulties when they leave home, particularly in fast-growing but unpredictable Africa. Although many African governments have stabilized, “risks remain in the consistency with which they license operators, and lack of a well-structured regulatory framework creates an uncertain investment environment,” according to a recent report by consultancy Booz & Co. Etisalat Nigeria, which started in 2008 and is 30 percent-owned by Mubadala, the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government and 40 percent by Etisalat. The company has invested over $2 billion in its network in Nigeria and will continue to invest in upgrading and expanding capacity, according to the company. “This year alone, the company plans to invest more than half a billion dollars” to expand its business in Nigeria, according to an e-mailed statement from Steven Evans, chief executive officer of Etisalat Nigeria. He added that the failures for which the company was fined were partly due to industry-wide challenges. Electricity in Nigeria is highly unreliable. Regular damage and cuts to the fiber networks — due to road repair work and in some cases, sabotage — also contribute to a difficult operating environment for operators in Nigeria. Etisalat Nigeria was only one of several operators fined. The others included Airtel Nigeria, Globacom, and South African subsidiary, MTN Nigeria. The total fines imposed on the operators amounted to 1.17 billion Nigerian naira, or an average of about $2 million per operator. Africa’s mobile telecommunications market is one of the world’s hottest, with more than half a billion mobile phones currently in use. Still, to chase Africa’s riches, investors need to swallow hard and deal with operating uncertainties, like bad roads, as well as governments whose decisions are not always transparent. “If the relationship between operators and governments holds, the African telecommunications success story will drive forward,” said David Tusa, a partner at Booz & Co. the United Arab Emirates. “If it fails, Africa will miss a critical opportunity for economic and social development as the telecommunications industry and its investors move on to more accommodating markets.”

Africa
Nigeria
Telephones and Telecommunications
Cellular Telephones
Foreign Investments
Fines (Penalties)


For Devils’ Brendan Shanahan, It’s the Second Time Around

Abstract: NEWARK — Brendan Shanahan, the old/new right wing for the Devils , was assigned a dressing-room stall at Prudential Center on Wednesday next to Zach Parise, an All-Star left wing who sounded as if he had just been asked to sit at the foot of a master. “Even if I pick up one or two more things from him, it’s going to be that much more helpful,” the 24-year-old Parise said, smiling, before the Devils beat Montreal, 5-2, on Wednesday. The Devils (29-15-3) already have so many savvy veterans that the addition of Shanahan, who will turn 40 on Friday, may seem like overkill. For now, Shanahan plays on the fourth line, and on the power-play and penalty-killing units. But Parise said Shanahan, who signed a one-year contract with the Devils on Jan. 14, has inspired a talented and persistent team that has kept winning despite the loss of goaltender Martin Brodeur to an elbow injury in November. In Shanahan’s first game with the Devils on Monday in Nashville, he scored a power-play goal, the 651st in his 21-year career, by swerving around the Predators’ Greg Zanon and firing the puck into the far side of the net. “That’s something you can’t really teach,” Parise said. That is the reason Devils General Manager Lou Lamoriello signed Shanahan to a prorated contract that will cost the team only $383,000. Although the Rangers did not want to re-sign Shanahan, Lamoriello thought he had something left. “I’m not going to stop because my birth certificate tells me to do it,” Shanahan said. Shanahan abandoned the idea of joining the Rangers on Nov. 1, but he said Wednesday that he had wanted to find another team by the end of January. He wanted to stay in the Northeast, because he has three children and recently bought a home in Manhattan. “I don’t have any bad feelings,” Shanahan said of the Rangers, “but I think people over there understood I had to make the move.” So he struck a deal with Lamoriello, who had made Shanahan his first No. 1 draft choice in 1987. Some of his new teammates understood why Shanahan decided to return to a team that he last played for almost 18 years ago. “It’s the whole organization,” said Brian Rolston, 35, who returned to the Devils after almost nine years with three other teams. “You know it’s a well-run organization, and we have been here before and know what to expect. Guys believe in the system.” Shanahan said he wanted a team that he could blend in with; he does not need to stand out. Although he played in only the last game of a six-game trip, Shanahan joined the team after he signed, practicing and acquainting himself with his teammates. “It’s not been like he was deciding whether to play or not,” Devils Coach Brent Sutter said. With Shanahan’s arrival, Jay Pandolfo, a 34-year-old forward with two Stanley Cups, has been knocked out of the lineup, at least for now. Shanahan skates on a line that includes two other players who left the Devils and returned: Bobby Holik, 38, and Mike Rupp, 29. “The more, the better,” the captain Jamie Langenbrunner said. “As long as they’re contributing, it’s better to have them around. We’re on a pretty good roll, but even though it always looks great when you’re winning, you’ve got to keep that consistency, especially when you need to see how you respond to adversity.” Brodeur is nearly ready to resume on-ice workouts, but Scott Clemmensen has been so impressive as his replacement that the Devils do not need to push Brodeur. And by adding Shanahan, they have four potent forward lines. “It’s not the easiest thing for veterans to step in — they’ve got to find their niche,” Holik said. His first-game goal notwithstanding, Shanahan knows it will take some time to settle into a spot. The Devils have 35 games to play, and his role could grow, or change. This, it would seem, is part of being a master of the game. Shanahan said, “I feel like it’s my job to find a way to fit.” Slap Shots Zach Parise scored his 28th goal as the Devils won their fifth straight game and reclaimed first place in the Atlantic Division from the idle Rangers. ... Travis Zajac scored his 15th goal for the Devils, topping his total from last season.

New Jersey Devils
Shanahan Brendan
Hockey Ice