Serena Williams Wins Australian Open With Coughs, Guts and Aces

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — The record still shows that Maria Sharapova is a pushover for Serena Williams: her muse, her matchup made in tennis heaven. Williams’s 6-3, 7-6 (5) victory on Saturday in the Australian Open final extended her winning streak against Sharapova to 16 matches, despite all the velocity and volume that Sharapova has mustered over the last decade. Forget head-to-head. This is off with her head. Yet Williams, who said she had a severe cold for much of this tournament, encountered some headwinds. She left the court during a rain delay in the first set and, for the first time in her nearly 20 years as a professional, threw up during a match. “I guess there’s a first time for anything,” she said. “I think, in a way, that just helped me. I felt better after that.” Complacency has never been a Williams failing in Grand Slam finals. There is a reason she is 19-4 in such matches, for a winning percentage (.826) superior to those of all the serial champions in women’s tennis history except for Margaret Court. Williams, being Williams, kept blasting clutch serves and returns and also kept fighting that feeling in the pit of her stomach that something might go awry. The skeletons in her Grand Slam closet got a good rattle in the seventh game of the second set, when a hindrance call cost her a point after she shouted, “Come on,” in the middle of a rally. Shouting the same words had cost Williams a point and her composure during the 2011 United States Open final, which she lost to Samantha Stosur of Australia. But on Saturday, Williams, the No. 1 seed, accepted the penalty with equanimity, even levity, mocking the situation with a sarcastic “come on” later in the game delivered well after a winner had landed. “I would have never done that three years ago, four years ago; I would have stayed in the zone,” she said. She hardly went on cruise control, however, which was just as well because Sharapova, for a change, was not making her way quickly to the consolation prize. The second-seeded Sharapova kept clawing back. She saved one championship point when serving at 4-5 in the second set with a forehand winner that landed in the corner. She saved another at 4-6 in the tiebreaker with a gutsy second serve that set up another big, bold forehand. Sharapova, who had already saved two match points in the second round, could have been excused for feeling the tug of destiny. When it was Williams’s turn to serve on a match point, she slammed what she thought was an ace into the corner, dropped her racket to start celebrating and then realized it had been called a let. “I thought after the let, Man, I am not meant to win this tournament,” she said. “I had a couple of match points. I mean, she played great on those match points. She totally went for broke. I was like, come on!” But Williams has not made it to 19 Grand Slam singles titles by dwelling in the past instead of swinging big in the present. All she did this time — once she had removed her hands from her hips and the slightly incredulous look from her face — was return to the service line and slam an ace into the same corner to finish off Sharapova and win her sixth Australian Open singles title. “I think only Serena can do that,” her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, said, referring to the ace. It was quite a serve, quite a set of circumstances, but as Williams pointed out in her emotional victory speech, she has overcome a great deal more than that in her 33 years. With her 19 titles, she is tied for third on the career list of Grand Slam singles champions. “Growing up,” she told the crowd at Rod Laver Arena, “I wasn’t the richest. But I had a rich family in spirit and support, and standing here with 19 championships is something I never thought would happen. I went on the courts with just a ball and a racket and a hope, and that’s all I had.” Image Maria Sharapova in Saturday’s final against Serena Williams, whom she last defeated in 2004. Credit Clive Brunskill/Getty Images Williams was already the oldest woman to reach the Australian Open singles final in the Open era. She is now the oldest woman to win the singles title in the Open era, surpassing Li Na, who won it last year at 31. Williams’s latest phase of excellence began at Wimbledon in 2012, when she joined forces with Mouratoglou. Since they began working together, Williams has won six of the 11 Grand Slam events she has contested. “You really believed in me,” she said to Mouratoglou from the court, referring to her health problems in Melbourne. “There were moments I didn’t believe in me, but you did. I’m so grateful to have you in my life and on my team.” Williams is now tied with Helen Wills Moody on the career list at 19, behind Margaret Court (24) and Steffi Graf (22). Saturday’s victory broke her tie with Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. Navratilova presented Williams with the winner’s trophy as Sharapova looked on, composed but deflated. Again. Sharapova has won all four Grand Slam singles tournaments, twice coming back from major shoulder problems. But despite her competitive spirit and her self-improvement streak, she has been unable to come up with an antidote to Williams. Sharapova last defeated her in 2004 and has won just one set in their last 12 matches. Over all, she trails, 17-2, but remains a gracious loser. “I haven’t beaten her in a really long time, but I love every time I step on the court to play against her because she’s been the best, and as a tennis player you want to play the best,” Sharapova said in her postmatch remarks on court. Williams’s serve remains the most devastating weapon in the women’s game, and it made the difference again Saturday as she hit 18 aces and won 84 percent of the points when she put her first serve in play. Sharapova, a world-class returner, made significant inroads when she got to face second serves, winning 62 percent of those points. But at critical junctures, Williams rarely gave her a second serve to attack. In the opening set, with Williams serving at 3-2, play was stopped at 30-30 because of light rain, and there was a 12-minute delay as organizers closed the roof and turned the final into an indoor match. Williams, who had been coughing before some serves and returns, left the court in visible distress. She said the respite provided considerable relief. She returned and, with no warm-up, nailed an ace down the middle to get to 40-30. She won the next point with a forehand winner. “I just threw up, and I had to run back on the court, and I thought, I’ve got to hit an ace,” she said. “For me there’s no other option. That’s my game.” Sharapova struggled to hold serve and was broken three times in the match, finishing with five aces and four double faults. It required some great escapes for her to even reach the tiebreaker in the second set. But Williams eventually imposed her will by hitting the same unreturnable serve twice, and was soon celebrating with a series of kangaroo hops down under. Next step: No. 20.

Tennis
Maria Sharapova
Serena Williams
Australian Open


Iraq: Free Speech Protests in Kurdistan

Abstract: More than a thousand protesters took to the main street in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital, to condemn a new law requiring all public demonstrations to have government permits. Protesters said the law was part of a broader crackdown on free speech in Iraq ’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region. In the past six months, the government has sued at least 60 writers or media organizations for publishing work critical of the government, according to the Kurdistan Journalists’ Syndicate. Aso Karim, a lawmaker with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said the restrictions were necessary because “Iraq is not politically stable.”

Iraq
Erbil (Iraq)
Kurds
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Freedom of Speech and Expression


Japanese And Russian Take Titles

Abstract: Kohei Uchimura of Japan overcame severe shoulder pain to retain his all-around title Friday at the world gymnastics championships in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the 16-year-old Aliya Mustafina of Russia won the women’s event for her second gold medal. Uchimura won gave a command performance with six consistently good scores to win the title with 92.331 points, for a huge 2.283 margin over Philipp Boy of Germany. Jonathan Horton of the United States won the bronze, 2.467 behind. Mustafina led Russia to the team title earlier in the week and finished with 61.023 points, beating China’s Jiang Yuyan by 1.034. The American Rebecca Bross was third with 58.966.

Uchimura Kohei
Mustafina Aliya
Gymnastics
Horton Jonathan


Empower the People Around You

Abstract: Patrick Piana is chief executive of Rémy Martin Cognac, part of Rémy Cointreau Group. He is based in Paris. Q. Do you remember the first time you became a manager? A. I was working for Philip Morris, I was probably 26 and managing two people. I remember one thing that my boss told me at the time: “The two things you’ve got to remember is that by becoming a manager you should be growing, but you should always make sure you grow your people, too. If you keep that in mind, you should be O.K.” Since that time, this has stayed with me. You should help people grow as you lead them. Q. How do you help people grow? A. First, you need to have people with talent, otherwise you can only ever go so far. Secondly, you must make people realize that they have to be ambitious for themselves and ambitious for the company; the two come hand in hand. At Rémy Martin, we have a long-term vision thanks to our family owner. We are not in a 100-meter sprint. We are in more like a marathon. It seems it’s the same for people: You judge them over time, on their ability to sustain the efforts and to go through good times and difficult times and learning curves. It’s important to align people behind the goal and vision you set out, and then make sure they are empowered. Q. So how do you align people successfully? A. You do so by being extremely clear about what you want to achieve and what the focus is going to be for the organization. One of the biggest traps for a leader is when you get bogged down in too many details and you forget about the big picture, what matters to the organization. Great leaders are people who are extremely clear about where they want to go, they are extremely clear about what really matters in terms of getting there, and they have the ability to trust a lot of people to help them get there. Q. What can be the difficulties? A. In order to not fall into the trap of micromanagement, the key is to be able to have around yourself very qualified people who also have strong leadership skills. They are able to provide you with a clear level of information for you to make the right decision at the right time. Too much information sometimes doesn’t help making decisions. It’s not about filtering, but about summarizing. Q. How have you grown as a leader over the years? A. As a manager you grow through successes and also difficulties. I’ve been fortunate to work with companies that were growing, like Rémy Martin. I’ve also been working with companies at difficult times, and then it’s not about managing but about leading and making sure you define a clear vision and the relevant organization to achieve it. Then you lead by example. And by doing that, you really have a chance of getting people not just to follow you, but be leaders themselves in the organization. The difficulties arise when you can’t get people to really rally behind the vision you’re trying to put forward for the company. Q. How has your management style changed over time? A. I don’t think I’ve changed as a person, but obviously as you grow older you become more confident. I’ve certainly learned how to simplify and synthesize. There is a moment when information is key. I try to challenge more the way things are presented to me, making sure there isn’t something that wasn’t said and is not on the table. And when it’s time to make a decision, I expect people to be aligned behind the decision I’ve made. Q. What difficulties have you encountered? A. The biggest adjustments were cultural ones, when you have to learn more and learn faster. I was fortunate enough to work for six years in New York. That was a great learning curve for me. What I took from that experience is the optimism and the way that, in the U.S., people look at opportunities and not problems. To me, it’s a major difference with the French culture, which is the reason why I’m a great believer in the ability of Americans to reinvent themselves through crisis, and turn around problems in unexpected ways. They believe tomorrow is going to be better than today. Q. Do you adjust your management style depending on culture? A. I stay the same. It’s extremely dangerous to try to behave in so many different ways. At the end of the day the vision remains the vision, and the ambitions you have for the company and the people have to be implemented to be successful. I spent a lot of time with our local teams, our clients and our trade partners: Their expertise is key for the success of our business. We must find the right fit in terms of communication and always stay open-minded. Q. What are the qualities you look out for in your senior managers? A. Above and beyond the technical skills, I’m really trying to make sure that I have people in the organization who will always keep an entrepreneurial spirit. I am looking for people who behave as if they owned the business. It’s not difficult, it’s a mind-set. If people think, “If this were my money, this is what I would do,” we will maximize our chances of success.


Labor Chief for Movie and TV Makers to Retire

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents film and television companies in labor negotiations, said Friday that its longtime president, J. Nicholas Counter III, would retire when his five-year contract expires at the end of March. Mr. Counter, who turns 69 next month, spent 27 years as the group’s president and the industry’s chief negotiator. During a search for a permanent successor, he will be succeeded on an interim basis by Carol Lombardini, executive vice president of the alliance, the group said. For the last eight months, the alliance has been in a standoff with the Screen Actors Guild, whose members have been working without a contract since their last agreement expired at the end of June. Last week, a brief round of talks between the union and the companies broke off without an agreement, as the alliance made what it called a “last, best and final offer” to the guild. A labor lawyer who was born in Colorado, Mr. Counter has generally been a soft-spoken leader, but he took a firm stance against any union that demanded a major break in the pattern of agreements by which the industry has operated.


Does Hewlett-Packard Need a Dose of Anarchy?

Abstract: Palo Alto, Calif. IT all seems obvious when viewed through hindsight’s pristine lens: Hewlett-Packard didn’t need a reinvention. It just needed some fierce fiscal discipline to transform itself from a bumbling, lost soul into a well-oiled profit machine. At its core, H.P.’s turnaround works against the natural order of things in Silicon Valley, where people talk about technology first and finances a distant second. The frenetic hunt for the next big thing has helped a select few endure decades of busts and booms, and they have always left it to the bean counters to obsess about the bottom line. So it took a true outsider, in Mark V. Hurd , to engineer H.P.’s resurrection and to create the world’s largest technology company. Mr. Hurd, hired four years ago in the wake of Carleton S. Fiorina’s tumultuous departure as chief executive, forced a steady, boring diet of performance benchmarks, heavy-handed cost-cutting and data-mining down H.P.’s corporate throat. “Silicon Valley is not known for creating lean organizations, and he’s as good as we have ever seen,” said Michael S. Malone, a historian who wrote “Bill and Dave,” a book about the company’s renowned co-founders, William Hewlett and David Packard. “He’s taught a lesson in what big-time corporate management looks like.” But with the most brutal cuts behind it, H.P. faces a fresh set of challenges as the second stage of Mr. Hurd’s tenure begins. Most pressing is widespread concern that Mr. Hurd has built an inflexible, solipsistic giant so obsessed with schematics and data-driven fiscal machinations that it has lost the ability to deliver that prized and perennial Silicon Valley trick: to surprise and astound. Although H.P. is trying to expand its presence in businesses like personal computers and printers, some critics argue that those markets have little left to give. The company could also use more imaginative thinking to bolster its developing line of software products and services. In short, what may be missing in the formidable intellectual and strategic artillery that Mr. Hurd brings to bear at H.P. is creative inspiration. Or, as Mr. Malone puts it, “I am not sure Mark has built an H.P. that can go through the natural changes that accompany the technology industry as the company has in the past.” If you posit this idea to any of the company’s top executives, they’ll dismiss it. H.P. has plenty of room to grow, they say — in printers, computers, software or services — and has a firm grasp of the technology industry’s nature and undulations. If you don’t believe such talk, that’s fine, they say — just look at the numbers for any convincing. “When you hear me talk, I have four quadrants in my head simultaneously,” Mr. Hurd says, outlining a mental tableau that encompasses H.P.’s operations (Quadrant 1), products (Quadrant 2), business and technology trends (Quadrant 3) and competitors (Quadrant 4). Visions of metrics dance in his mind, and he speaks of them with a passion and devotion that has clearly filtered through the ranks — and H.P.’s results. While that approach also offers a contained, orderly way for Mr. Hurd to tackle his challenges, it isn’t necessarily a recipe for the kind of fertile brainstorming that leads to creative breakthroughs in the tech world. Steven P. Jobs, the co-founder and chief of Apple, has never discussed quadrants when speaking about products like the iPod and the iPhone , and has dismissed the value of using focus groups to inform design projects. Sometimes consumers need to be shown what they want, Mr. Jobs has said. MR. HURD, 52, often strums a tabletop like a pianist as he delves into business minutiae, his enthusiasm measured by the steady clack-clacking of his gold wedding band. He also enjoys riffling through a flip chart, tracing and disgorging a panoply of figures with the ease of a symphony conductor. Indeed, his flip chart is so precious to him that it accompanies him on the road. “He always has that giant white pad and his magic markers,” says Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, who says he sometimes has trouble parsing Mr. Hurd’s scrawls. But for a numbers guy like Mr. Hurd, H.P. is a fantasy land, and the path for navigating it couldn’t be clearer. “He shows a remarkable familiarity with the balance sheet and amazing depth with numbers,” says Matt Lavallee, the director of technology for the MLS Property Information Network, a real estate service, who talked with Mr. Hurd during a recent customer event. “He’s the most impressive executive I have ever met.” Thanks to mega-acquisitions and strong growth, H.P. has emerged as the largest buyer of many components that go into computing systems. It buys about one-fifth of Intel’s chips used in PCs and servers, surpassing all rivals. And its purchasing power should increase as the innards of PCs, servers, storage systems and networking gear overlap more and more every year. H.P. has used its heft as a weapon, playing suppliers off one another, especially during lean times like now, to keep costs as low as possible. Ever to the point, Mr. Hurd says that “if you don’t have scale, and you don’t have leverage, you won’t be able to give the customer what the customer wants.” In recent years, the company has demonstrated an ability to balance chasing growth with its internal cuts. Although industry pundits had derided the PC business as a lost cause, H.P. has expanded its computer division sales by $15.6 billion over the last four years, hitting $42.3 billion in total sales last year. During a similar period, computer sales at Dell rose to $35.8 billion, from $35.2 billion. Just as astonishing, H.P. declared in February that it could shoot past Wall Street’s earnings targets for the full year — at a time when its sales may come in about $18 billion lower than expected because of frozen consumer and corporate spending. Mr. Hurd attributes this performance to having banged out agreements with suppliers during better days and the company’s ability to turn far-flung corporate dials to fine-tune operations when customers suddenly stop buying. His own intensity adds to the corporate mojo. Athletic and tightly focused, he comes from a relatively privileged background. His father attended Yale, and his mother, the daughter of a Park Avenue doctor, was introduced to society at a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. Growing up in New York and then Miami, he attended college preparatory schools and went to Baylor University in Waco, Tex., on a tennis scholarship. “He had long hair, wore tennis shorts and was a religious devotee of the courts," says Max Sandlin, a former congressman from Texas, who was president of Mr. Hurd’s fraternity. “At the time, most of us would have thought Mark more likely to be the next Jimmy Connors than the C.E.O. of H.P.” After Baylor, Mr. Hurd joined NCR, a quiet maker of cash-register equipment and automated teller machines, based in Dayton, Ohio. While not a self-made man in the classic sense, he is by all accounts a self-made business mind who manufactured his own luck and turned himself into a star at NCR, and over the course of 25 years excelled in a number of jobs, including running NCR’s flashiest division, a database unit called Teradata. Mr. Hurd flourished at Teradata, creating a fast-growing business within NCR that caught executives’ attention and ultimately led to his promotion as chief of the entire company. More important, he evolved during those years into a manager both feared and admired for his command of numbers. “Mark provided a level of stability and leadership that inspired people,” says Jim Murphy, who spent more than a decade at Teradata in sales. “He is the kind of guy you were willing to follow despite the pressure that comes with his constant drive to focus on metrics.” That drive played out on the basketball and tennis courts, as well, where Mr. Hurd made it clear that he was always out to win. “He is a vicious athlete and competitor,” Mr. Murphy says. “He would get pretty hot-headed and jaw with people.” At H.P., Mr. Hurd’s reputation for having a quick mind and a quick temper has only grown. It’s common for executives to recount stories about his noticing a lowered forecast in a presentation, slamming his briefing materials down and, with an ever-present salty tongue, ordering that the situation be fixed before their next meeting. For his part, Mr. Hurd is not about to give up his blunt style. “I go all over the place,” he says. “I do like the ability to go around the company at different levels to find the people that have the actual answers to the question.” MR. HURD’S zeal has had a controversial reception at one of his company’s most admired divisions, H.P. Labs. Historically, the unit has been the most freewheeling part of the company, charged with creating new businesses out of thin air. Over the years, the products coming out of the labs have revitalized the company’s business during lulls. Since Mr. Hurd arrived, H.P. Labs has whittled down the number of projects it tackles at any given time to 30, from about 150. Prith Banerjee, the director of H.P. Labs, has dismissed the castoffs as interesting science projects and championed the survivors as big bets with the most commercial potential. Yet the often idiosyncratic researchers now find themselves writing up business plans and dealing directly with customers rather than funneling their ideas out to people more experienced in such matters. For example, Carl Taussig, who runs H.P.’s Information Surfaces Lab, a part of H.P. Labs, has teamed with the Army, Arizona State University, DuPont Teijin Films and E Ink to produce flexible display technology that might be used like electronic paper or to create cheaper screens in mobile devices. “H.P. Labs has a bigger burden now in creating a path toward commercialization,” Mr. Taussig said. “It’s more work, and it’s different work.” But H.P.’s businesslike approach to research and curtailed money for the labs have former employees concerned about the company’s future. “I think they are seriously underspending on research and development,” says Charles H. House, who worked at H.P. for 29 years, overseeing the creation of 12 product lines. “It seems to me that betting on new areas is a struggle for them.” Shane Robison, the company’s chief strategy and technology officer, argues that few companies can match the breadth of its research, in areas as varied as printing systems and data mining. Some of the most impressive work has been in nanotechnology and optics, where engineers do nothing less than manipulate light to move data around computers at ground-breaking speeds. “This is fundamental, breakthrough stuff,” Mr. Robison says. He later added, “It’s just goofy to get into a debate about whether you’re spending enough money.” A believer in long-term planning, Mr. Hurd says the company still has plenty to show the world. “You would not want to short H.P. on its ability to innovate,” he says. Its biggest bets surround the plain-vanilla business of providing technology infrastructure to clients. H.P. believes that customers want to buy as much of those products and services from one company as possible — a move that is, yes, data-driven. H.P. expects the amount of information produced by companies to keep rising along with their desire to analyze that data. More data means more servers, storage and networking gear — and, for as long as companies print paper records of their computing results — plenty of purchases of H.P.’s expensive printer ink. At the heart of the company’s infrastructure play is Electronic Data Systems, the technology services company it acquired last year that manages customers’ data center operations. H.P. is laying off tens of thousands of employees as it tries to revivify the company and make it an integral part of its offerings to corporate customers. But critics, most notably I.B.M., castigate H.P. as more or less the dull grunt of the tech world that has doubled down on humdrum, low-profit businesses. If years of price wars for parts and infrastructure services ensue, H.P. will face serious pressure on the cost structure it has worked so hard to achieve. “There are still lots of opportunities for H.P. to cut costs out, but at some point its ability to do that at the rate of the last few years certainly diminishes,” said A. M. Sacconaghi, a technology analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. Because Mr. Hurd has so ably rationalized the company’s cost structure, he now has to prove that he can foster a culture capable of building a second wave of growth — which zeroes back in on the creativity question. In that regard, the future looks murky. Current and former employees complain that Mr. Hurd has put so much pressure on the organization that the willingness to take risks has faded. Quarterly business unit reviews with Mr. Hurd are known to be intense and probing and to inspire plenty of worry. Adding to this is a fear that morale has declined because of benefits cuts and a pay-for-performance rewards structure that creates deep fissures between the haves and the have-nots. Mr. Hurd faced similar criticisms at NCR. “I am not here trying to tell you it’s perfect,” he says, adding that workers complain about bureaucracy and the process-driven practices creeping into their jobs. “I think at the end of the day all these things come with a price.” Mr. Hurd, however, contends that internal surveys provide a more accurate view of the company than scattered anecdotes and reveal a satisfied work force. The company’s strong, consistent financial performance has restored its luster as a Silicon Valley icon and imbued employees with pride, he says. “There is a tremendous attraction for the people to the scale, the opportunity, the entrepreneurship,” he says. “For us, it is a big deal to attract talent that can flourish in an environment like this and take advantage of our scale without it becoming an issue for them.” A COMPANY of 321,000 people can move only so nimbly, and H.P. has fallen behind in some of the most promising parts of the market. It arrived late with a line of netbooks, the low-cost, compact laptops that have taken the world by storm, opening doors for its rival Acer. And, over the last few years, a wide variety of online services has captured the attention of consumers and businesses, but H.P. has struggled to make its name synonymous with so-called cloud computing. Despite talking so much about data and the powers of information analysis, the company trails rivals like I.B.M. and Oracle when it comes to building the most sophisticated business software. Another glaring weakness resides on the gadget front, where the company concedes an innovation lapse and continues to sell a relatively unpopular smartphone. (H.P. promises that better phones are in the pipeline.) With its software gurus, its newfound penchant for design and its deep ties to retailers, H.P. might have been expected to disrupt the cellphone market with new devices or even to concoct an electronic book reader that would complement its printer business. Instead, it’s Apple and Amazon that built vibrant new businesses around such products. “In spite of the fact that there are things we could always do a better job on, innovating and so forth, I don’t think we have ever felt stronger about our portfolio of products and services and our opportunity to serve the market,” Mr. Hurd says. “I don’t think we think we’re confused about what the market wants.” To H.P.’s credit, it read the PC market just right in recent years, capitalizing on a surge in laptops and retail sales. It revamped the look of its products, developed a distinctive ad campaign and began to assert more independence. For example, the company built a fanciful laptop in tandem with the fashion designer Vivienne Tam; it looks as much like a purse as a computer. And H.P.’s most daring move may have come with its TouchSmart software that lets people manipulate items on their computer screens with their fingers, while also adding a distinct look and feel to the company’s gear. On the printing side, the company feels poised to capitalize on another megatrend: a shift to digital presses for industrial jobs like making magazines and labels. Every percentage point of additional share in this market translates into immense profits for H.P., which pours research and development dollars into proprietary ink. Mr. Hurd points again and again to the company’s scale and diversity as its major advantages. Companies like I.B.M. and Dell have also emerged as the largest buyers of components during different eras, says Intel’s chief executive, Paul S. Otellini. Typically, the companies have started to struggle just as their buying heft approaches that of H.P., when gains prove tougher to come by and unexpected, nimble competitors emerge. That said, the tech industry has never encountered a giant the size of H.P. “I do think Mark has carved out a unique opportunity that comes from selling everything from servers to phones,” Mr. Otellini says. In the end, Mr. Hurd says he’s not worried about his image as a numbers mercenary and refuses to fret about how others view his approach as H.P. tries to innovate its way toward growth. “When I was at Teradata, I got called a growth guy. And then when I became C.E.O. of the whole company, I got called a cost-cutter,” Mr. Hurd says. “Then, I came to H.P. and became an operations guy. “To be very blunt, I am not really that concerned with what labels get associated with somebody. I know we have a whole bunch of things to get done.”

Hewlett-Packard Co
Hurd Mark V
Computers and the Internet
Enterprise Computing


A Skirmish Over Women's Health Gets Political

Abstract: NEW YORK — The outcry that swept across the United States following a decision by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation to cut off financing for Planned Parenthood brought back to center stage the explosive partisan politics and culture wars waged around the wedge issue of abortion. Abortion, a polarizing topic that provokes little debate in Europe, stirs up bitter and sometimes violent debate that has been raging for decades in the United States. And abortion was the real issue at the core of the furious controversy last week. It all began when news surfaced that Komen, a Dallas-based fund-raising giant that is the biggest and best-known breast cancer charity in the United States, had decided to end its financial support of Planned Parenthood, a provider of women’s health services including contraceptives, breast examinations and abortions. By way of explanation, Komen said that Planned Parenthood clinics could not perform mammograms on site (the group refers women with breast problems to other clinics, but it does provide screenings) and therefore did not qualify for Komen’s aid. It also said Planned Parenthood did not meet its standards because it was being investigated by Congress. As the largest abortion provider in the United States, performing about 300,000 abortions a year, Planned Parenthood has been a favorite target of anti-abortion forces. Komen never mentioned the abortion issue when explaining its funding move, but supporters of abortion rights saw a message they recognized. They quickly sent out a howl, accusing Komen of playing politics and giving in to anti-abortion forces and betraying women. Fierce opposition also came from Komen’s own ranks, and from two dozen U.S. senators, feminists, the news media and the hundreds of thousands who took to the Internet to threaten to withdraw their support. The furor was so swift and so strong that The New York Times — sensing a fundamental battle in U.S. society — gave it pride of place on its front page. “The radical right has been relentless in their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood,” Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who was among the senators who asked Komen to reverse its decision, said Friday morning. “When these extremists don’t succeed in getting laws changed in Congress, they resort to pressuring nonprofits such as the Susan G. Komen for the Cure to stop funding Planned Parenthood.” A few hours later, responding to the backlash, Nancy G. Brinker, Komen’s founder and chief executive, issued a statement reversing her decision, restoring ties to Planned Parenthood and resuming funding. “We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” Ms. Brinker said. Planned Parenthood wound up with a bonanza: On top of Komen’s annual grant of $680,000, it had a windfall of nearly $3 million from sympathy donors who rushed to its rescue, among them Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, a billionaire who pledged $250,000. “It’s a true show of women standing for women,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “It goes to show you that when women speak out, women win!” said Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader. Yet it escaped no one’s attention that this was a fight of women against women — with supportive men in tow — on an issue that divides the country in half. (A 2009 Gallup poll showed that there are as many American women who oppose abortion as there are American women who support abortion rights.) Conservative congressmen tried to defund Planned Parenthood last year and failed; Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, has started an inquiry charging that the group has used taxpayers’ money on abortions, which would be illegal. Planned Parenthood gets $368 million a year in U.S. government grants, according to its 2008-9 report, and has denied using government funds for abortions. Last week Planned Parenthood escaped a blow once again; indeed, once again, the forces that champion a woman’s right to abortion flexed their muscles to effect. “I think there’s been a chord struck over this issue, this issue of political organizations who are trying to politicize women’s reproductive health,” Ms. Richards said. “This kind of political bullying — I think folks are just saying, ‘Enough.”’ On the other side, the Komen foundation’s reputation suffered a blow. Ms. Brinker, a major Republican donor who built Komen and its Race for the Cure after her only sister, Susan G. Komen, died of breast cancer at age 36, was not accustomed to public defeat. She seemed unprepared for the withering fire she endured last week as she made the rounds of television news programs to explain her decision to drop Planned Parenthood. A masterly publicist and marketer, Ms. Brinker has raised nearly $2 billion for breast cancer research over the years, distributed $93 million in grants to 2,000 community health organizations and marshaled the forces of one of the most successful disease-fighting organizations in the world. She is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, and a former U.S. ambassador who developed Komen over three decades with the financial help of her husband at the time, Norman E. Brinker, the late Dallas restaurateur who was considered the father of modern casual dining. Now, her organization may have suffered lasting damage. She faces thousands of disgruntled anti-abortion Komen donors who, disappointed at her retreat on Planned Parenthood, might turn their back on her and her pink-ribbon monument to the fight on breast cancer. “It’s just sad for everybody concerned,” said Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary for President George W. Bush whose advice Ms. Brinker reportedly sought. “Komen is a great group, but politically speaking, they’re no match for Planned Parenthood.”


Overworking the Workhorse: Risk or Reward?

Abstract: With every pitch Mike Pelfrey throws Friday night against the Phillies at Shea Stadium, the pitching coach Dan Warthen will be one of the more fidgety people in the Mets ’ dugout. Even if the 24-year-old Pelfrey pitches effectively, with little stress, Warthen will still be quite aware that every additional inning he compiles the rest of this season comes with a certain risk. The more Pelfrey pitches, the greater the chances for an injury next year, or a decrease in effectiveness. That is not a notion based on paranoia or fatalistic thinking. Instead, it is based on a theory researched by the Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci and now widely accepted in baseball that says that any pitcher younger than 25 whose total number of innings jumps by more than 30 from the previous season leaves himself susceptible to injury the next year, or at least to a much higher earned run average. Last season, alternating primarily between the Mets and Class AAA New Orleans, the right-handed Pelfrey pitched 152 2/3 innings. Having emerged as a key member of the Mets’ rotation this season, he has already compiled 169 2/3 innings, all on the major league level, with perhaps five starts remaining. If he averages six innings in those starts — a conservative estimate — he will finish with 199 2/3 innings, an increase of 47. But that total will go still higher if the Mets make it to October. “Now, certainly, they’ve done the studies, and 30 to 35 innings is that danger barometer, the red spot,” Warthen said on Wednesday in Milwaukee, standing outside the trainer’s room in the visitors’ clubhouse at Miller Park. “But we’re talking about the playoffs. We’re going to have to test the waters.” Verducci said his theory stemmed from a conversation in the late 1990s with Rick Peterson, who was then the Oakland A’s pitching coach. Peterson believed workload increases exceeding 25 to 30 innings stressed young arms, a theory he took with him to the Mets, who fired him in June. He could not be reached for comment on Thursday. The 30-inning threshold is an indicator rather than a hard-and-fast rule, Verducci said. And there are exceptions, like Detroit’s Justin Verlander, who followed a 56-inning increase from 2005 to 2006 (when he won 17 games and the American League Rookie of the Year award) by going 18-6 with a nearly identical E.R.A. in 2007. But of the seven pitchers Verducci considered at risk for problems going into this season, four have indeed been injured — Ian Kennedy of the Yankees, Cleveland’s Fausto Carmona, Yovani Gallardo of Milwaukee and Toronto’s Dustin McGowan. A fifth, Tom Gorzelanny of Pittsburgh, is having a poor season. Most major league organizations now seem so wedded to the 30-inning principle that Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman is saying that Joba Chamberlain will again begin next season in the bullpen to minimize his increase in innings. In the case of Pelfrey, however, the Mets seem to feel they have no choice. With John Maine on the disabled list, with uncertainty over what an aging Pedro Martínez can give them and with last season’s collapse still in the background, the Mets are leaning on Pelfrey. They do not want to lose out to the Phillies again, which makes it hard to let Pelfrey, the club’s top winner at 13-8, miss a start or two. Mets Manager Jerry Manuel indicated as much last week when he said: “Somebody will have to do something they’ve never done before. Somebody will have to play more games or do more than they’ve ever done before. That’s the price you have to pay.” Manuel said Wednesday that General Manager Omar Minaya had not told him to go easy on Pelfrey. Still, Warthen worries. “When he had those back-to-back complete games at 108 pitches, you start to wonder, are we going too far?” Warthen said, referring to Pelfrey’s victories over Atlanta and Houston last month. Then, in his last start, Pelfrey threw 116 pitches, his second-highest total of the year, in six and two-thirds innings against Florida. “There are some uncharted territories,” Warthen said. “We feel comfortable in that he hasn’t shown fatigue. We’ve backed off all his bullpens. He’s a big, strong kid.” Indeed, Warthen hopes Pelfrey’s large frame (6 feet 7 inches and 230 pounds) and steady mechanics can handle the work. Pelfrey said he now throws only 15 to 30 pitches in a bullpen session, usually on flat ground or uphill, instead of 45 off a bullpen mound, and that he does not throw long-toss as much. “I don’t even feel like I’ve had the same workload as last year,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been a lot more efficient this year. Last year, several times I went out and threw 100 pitches in five innings. It’s a lot harder to do that than to throw 100 pitches in eight innings or so. It’s a lot more stressful, a lot more taxing on your body and arm.” Pelfrey’s innings total is not the only mounting number being scrutinized in baseball. The pitch totals being compiled by Milwaukee’s standout left-hander C. C. Sabathia are also attracting attention. Undefeated since being acquired from Cleveland, Sabathia (9-0, 1.43 E.R.A.) has thrown more pitches this season (3,161) than anyone in baseball except Toronto’s A. J. Burnett (3,198). Sabathia also leads baseball with an average of 109 pitches per start. As a Brewer, Sabathia already has six complete games and three shutouts, the latest his near no-hitter last Sunday in Pittsburgh. The complete games probably stem in part from the Brewers’ shaky bullpen, which one major league scout called the worst of all the playoff contenders, including the Mets. Still, his high number of pitches, and the fact that he has completed games in which the Brewers have had a sizable lead, has led to speculation that the Brewers are milking Sabathia for everything he is worth because they have little expectation of re-signing him when he becomes a free agent after the season. Milwaukee Manager Ned Yost insisted that he carefully watches the 28-year-old Sabathia for signs of fatigue. “I think about it every day,” Yost said. “I really do.” “I understand the rationale of, why’s he in the game when it’s 7-0?” Yost said. “But he’s got a chance for a shutout and a complete game. My concern is that we win, and that C. C. benefits from his talents and abilities. Who would not pay extra for a guy who finishes what he starts?” Still, as the pitches mount for Sabathia and the innings mount for Pelfrey, more than just money is at stake.

Pelfrey Mike
New York Mets
Baseball
Philadelphia Phillies
Sabathia C C


As Stations Are Sold, Debate About College Radio

Abstract: Like many college radio stations across the country, Rice University ’s KTRU and Vanderbilt University ’s WRVU play a broad swath of music — from undiscovered indie bands and obscure blues acts to ’60s garage rock and ’80s postpunk. It’s a mix largely absent from commercial broadcasts, and students active in radio say their stations add distinct voices to their cities’ broadcast landscape. But as colleges across the country look for ways to tighten budgets amid recession-induced shortfalls, some administrators — most recently in the South — have focused on college radio, leading even well-endowed universities to sell off their FM stations. That trend was felt this summer at Rice and Vanderbilt, among the most prominent of Southern universities, stirring debate about the viability of broadcast radio, the reach of online broadcasting and the value of student broadcast programming. “We play music that you won’t find on any other Houston radio station” said Joey Yang, a junior at Rice and station manager for KTRU. “KTRU’s mission is to broadcast exactly what you can’t find elsewhere on the dial.” Scott Cardone, a sophomore disk jockey at WRVU with a two-hour electric blues show, pointed to the potential void in Nashville if Vanderbilt’s FM signal were to be sold. “The community will lose what probably is the last radio station playing anything other than country, Christian or Top 40 in the whole city,” he said. “You can’t hear the music that we play anywhere else.” At the center of public discussion are “student habits” — or whether students are actually tuning in to the universities’ FM signals. In September, Vanderbilt Student Communications, the corporate body that oversees Vanderbilt University media, released a statement announcing it would explore the migration of its student-run radio station to exclusively online programming. The exploration, which was voted on by a board of five at-large students and three faculty members, was a response to “changing student habits and evolving economic challenges,” according to a statement by the group. In August, Rice announced the decision to sell student-founded station KTRU — its 50,000-watt FM frequency, broadcast tower and F.C.C. license — to the University of Houston, for $9.5 million. In a statement, David W. Leebron, the president of Rice, called the station a “vastly underutilized resource.” The announcements at Rice and Vanderbilt highlight a stream of college radio station closings in recent years, including KTXT at Texas Tech University in 2008 and Augustana College’s KAUR in South Dakota in 2009. While officials at both Rice and Vanderbilt emphasize that the stations will continue to broadcast online, Mr. Yang believes the loss of a terrestrial signal will effectively delegitimize KTRU. “As a 50,000-watt station that can be heard all across Houston, there’s a sense of responsibility to the community,” he said. “When you lose a terrestrial footprint in Houston — anyone can put out a signal that’s on the Internet — it takes away the legitimacy of what we’re trying to do.” Despite obvious parallels between KTRU and WRVU, Chris Carroll, director of student media at Vanderbilt Student Communications, draws a stark contrast between the situations at the two universities. At Vanderbilt, he said, “what’s happening, really, is a big public discussion about is this a good idea or not, and there’s no conclusion to that yet.” Rice, he said, made the decision to sell KTRU behind closed doors — without student input. Mr. Carroll, who does not vote on the organization’s board, contends that students just don’t listen to terrestrial radio anymore. “We will pull a random sample of Vanderbilt undergrads — of 500 or so at a time. And what we’ve found is that these students aren’t listening to radio at all. It’s not just WRVU,” he said. Instead, students are listening on mobile devices like smartphones and laptops, both of which are more readily serviced by the Internet, he said. Mr. Cardone acknowledges that WRVU’s audience may be thinner on campus than off, but he believes the station justifies its value as one of the only relevant connections between the students and the city. According to Arbitron, a media and marketing research firm that measures local radio audiences, the station reaches just over 30,000 people each week in greater Nashville. After a tumultuous summer, groups focused on saving the stations have mobilized at both campuses. Both have Web sites — savektru.org and savewrvu.org — and Facebook pages to gather comments and provide updates. Friends of KTRU, a group opposed to selling the station, retained the Paul Hastings firm to represent it, and on Friday, the group filed a petition to deny with the F.C.C., claiming the sale was not in the public interest. At Vanderbilt, Mr. Carroll says the WRVU page on vandymedia.org , an umbrella site for the campus student media, has garnered more than 700 comments. He says he will sort them into common themes before the board reviews them early next year.

Radio
Vanderbilt University
Rice University
Colleges and Universities


Don’t Dismiss the Psychology of the Tax Refund

Abstract: Withholding taxes from paychecks is far from an exact science. If it were exact, refund statistics from the I.R.S. would look a lot different. About three-quarters of the tax returns that the I.R.S. processed last year resulted in refunds. The average refund was more than $2,300. You know what that means: the government had a lock on your hard-earned money, which you could have invested. (Given recent market volatility, though, it’s possible that you’ll be getting better results from the I.R.S. this year.) But let’s not ignore the very powerful psychology of the tax refund. What joy to receive that lump sum and to deposit it into your bank account. (Less than half of taxpayers opt to have their refunds deposited directly, perhaps attesting to the visceral thrill of getting that check in the mail.) If you had instead received an extra $44 in your paycheck every week, would you have looked at it the same way? Although the money was always yours, the refund seems like a windfall.


Templegoers With a Special View of Repentance

Abstract: After 31 years in the pulpit, after postings from the Mexican border to a New England college town, Rabbi Jonathan Gerard retired in 2007 with the notion of spending more time on his private practice as a family therapist. Then, shortly before Rosh Hashana last fall, a colleague in the Reform movement asked him if he would mind taking on a part-time job with a small congregation outside Philadelphia. Somewhat reluctantly, Rabbi Gerard agreed. His new flock numbered only eight, and in certain ways was quite ordinary. The members included a paralegal and a furniture-store owner; only a couple bothered to keep kosher; and the rank and file complained that the congregational president was too bossy. Still, Rabbi Gerard, 62, arrived for that first Rosh Hashana service with a sermon about the akedah, Abraham’s binding of Isaac, a central text in the liturgy, and a chocolate cake baked by his wife, Pearl. It turned out that she had been in the same high school homeroom in Philadelphia as the brother of one of the congregants. Rabbi Gerard also brought some Honeycrisp apples , symbolizing the hope for a sweet new year. The fruit attracted some quizzical glances, the rabbi noticed. Then he realized why. The Honeycrisp hybrid has been widely sold only in the past decade or so, and during that time many of Rabbi Gerard’s worshippers have been in prison. Indeed, his entire congregation consisted of inmates at the State Correctional Institution in Graterford , the largest maximum-security prison in Pennsylvania. Whatever prosaic jobs they once held, what put them in Graterford was what the law calls crime and religion calls sin: murder, rape, assault. Four of the eight are serving life sentences. Even so, the congregation has its own chapel with Torah scrolls, prayer books and memorial plaques. It is officially recognized by the Reform movement (as is a congregation at a federal prison in Minersville, Pa.) and has been functioning since it was founded in 1924 in Graterford’s predecessor institution, the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The sanctuary at Eastern State has recently been restored and certified as a National Historical Landmark. For Rabbi Gerard and his congregation in Graterford, however, religious observance is very much something in the present. And at no other time of year in the Jewish calendar does the role of a Jewish prison chaplain seem more essential. The period from Rosh Hashana through Yom Kippur is known as the Ten Days of Repentance. Tradition and theology call on all Jews, of course, to engage in the soul-searching called heshbon ha-nefesh in Hebrew, and to make amends with repentance (or teshuva), prayer and charity. Yet this particular season of reflection and penitence comes after a banner year of proven or alleged misdeeds by Jews, from Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme to the violations of labor laws at the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa to the arrest of several New Jersey rabbis in a scandal involving political bribery and trafficking in human organs. If Rabbi Gerard’s experience at Graterford sheds any light on how the convicted and incarcerated encounter the High Holy Days, it is light that strikes in some unexpected ways. (Officials at Graterford would not permit interviews with individual prisoners or the release of their names.) Most of the Jewish inmates have come to feel remorse about their crimes, Rabbi Gerard said. One or two continue to profess their innocence. All wrestle with a mixture of remorse and defensiveness. “Their attitude is, they did a terrible thing — the ones who admit it — and they have to pay for it,” the rabbi said. “And they think they’re paying for it too much. They all know people who did worse things and got lighter sentences. So they don’t have a sense of how to do teshuva. They think they’re doing teshuva already.” In different ways, Rabbi Gerard has tried to pierce the armor. In his sermon on Abraham last year, he described the patriarch as a kind of prisoner, the captive of a primitive God who demands human sacrifice. What Abraham discovered was that his God, a different kind of God, would never require such a thing. The homily was a lesson, in a sense, about the Jewish precept that God gives humans free will. Yet in the discussion after the sermon, one of the inmates argued that Abraham had “passed the test” of piety by being obedient enough to nearly slaughter his child. Nobody disagreed. “They’re not as liberal as I am,” Rabbi Gerard said recently, recalling the exchange. In the months leading to this Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Rabbi Gerard has often talked about giving charity, or tzedakah, and about the Jewish injunction to engage in tikkun olam, or healing the world. The prisoners, instead of being bitterly fixated on their own imprisonment, needed to help others. So first the members floated a grandiose idea: raising enough money to build halfway houses for Jewish parolees. Rabbi Gerard guided them to something more realistic. The men are now collecting used prayer books from Reform temples so they can be sent to Jewish inmates throughout Pennsylvania. What Rabbi Gerard has learned, meanwhile, is that when every day is a day of repentance, Rosh Hashana can mean something altogether different. “For them, who have a thoughtfulness about teshuva every time they’re locked into their cells, the holidays are an escape,” he said. “When they come to the synagogue, they’re not in a prison. They’re in a sanctuary. They’re doing the same things Jews are doing all over the world.”

Jews and Judaism
Prisons and Prisoners
Rabbis
Rosh Hashanah


Elections to Be Easier for Voters With an App

Abstract: The election process can, at times, feel impossibly old-fashioned, as evidenced by the return of mechanical lever voting machines for this year’s New York City primaries. But this election season, the city will try to make it easier to register to vote, give money and communicate with campaigns, all from the palm of your hand. On Wednesday, the New York City Campaign Finance Board will unveil NYC Votes, a mobile app meant to boost political participation via smartphones. “We want people to experience the same power and relationship to this ‘store for democracy’ — which is what an election is — that they experience on Amazon,” said Art Chang, a member of the finance board and the founder of Tipping Point Partners, a firm that brings together entrepreneurs and start-ups. The app will allow residents to begin the voter registration process, using account data to fill out the form; the document will still have to be signed by hand and submitted by mail, but the form will be easier to obtain. The app will also allow users to make campaign contributions, using saved data for a quick, Amazon-esque “fast checkout” donation that complies with the city’s strict regulations. The app is being rolled out in phases at www.nycvotes.org . At first, it will feature a countdown to registration deadlines, a location-based look-up for candidates and the ability to check voter registration status. The contributions function will take a few more weeks. The ability to collect donations by smartphone is expected to be of particular use to small campaigns, Mr. Chang said, because data collection and submission that once required a small army of volunteers can be done with a couple of taps on the glass screen of a smartphone. The app will also show donors how the value of their contributions can be amplified by the city’s matching funds program for small contributions; under the city’s voluntary program, small contributions are matched 6 to 1, so the app will show donors of $10 that their contribution could bring the campaign $70. In early July, a preliminary version of the app was released to 30 local campaigns. It was designed and developed by Pivotal Labs, Tipping Point Partners and Method and will be open-source, allowing other developers to improve it or to use it in other municipalities. “One thing we talked about is the idea that putting better digital tools out in the marketplace puts the pressure on the Legislature to change the laws and kind of push these kinds of tools,” said David Lipkin, one of the founders of Method. “To register to vote, you still need a wet-ink signature. If we got past some of that, we might get more tools like this that work better.”

Mobile Apps
Campaign finance
Voter registration
NYC
Election
Smartphone
Campaign Finance Board NYC


Blues Maintain Composure Against Kings With Help of Jay Bouwmeester and Jordan Leopold

Abstract: ST. LOUIS — Jay Bouwmeester is not overly excited about the first Stanley Cup playoff action of his career. Sure, 764 regular-season games over 10 years was an awfully long time to wait. Skating in May is a just reward for the iron man of the N.H.L., who has played 637 consecutive games, including Games 1 and 2 of the Western Conference quarterfinals. But what is he supposed to do, froth at the mouth? “I don’t want people to think I’m out to lunch or anything,” said Bouwmeester, the 29-year-old defenseman the St. Louis Blues acquired from Calgary in an April 1 trade. “I appreciate the chance to be in the playoffs, but I’m no different from anybody else.” Bouwmeester — along with the 11-year veteran Jordan Leopold, a trade-deadline acquisition from Buffalo — rolled like a wave of calm into a town where anxious hockey fans tend to expect crushing defeat. The veterans helped keep the Blues’ emotions in check on the ice during a pair of 2-1 victories to open the series against the defending champion Los Angeles Kings, who swept St. Louis out of the second round last season. All Coach Ken Hitchcock’s team is trying to do now, with Game 3 on Saturday at Staples Center, is keep its composure. In Game 1 on Tuesday, that meant bouncing back after the Kings’ Justin Williams scored a shocking equalizer with 31 seconds to play. “Nobody was freaking out in here,” said wing Alex Steen, who scored the eventual winner, of the locker-room atmosphere before overtime. “Nobody too mad, no one hanging their head. Just a good vibe.” In Game 2 on Thursday, it meant keeping their cool after the frustration of four trips to the penalty box in the opening 10 minutes, leading to an early Kings goal. Image The Blues after a game-tying goal against the Kings’ Jonathan Quick in Game 2 on Thursday. Credit Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images “Once we calmed down and started to do the things we needed to do, we started to really play,” Hitchcock said. “I think, in a lot of cases, the coach’s job at this time of year is to remove the emotion.” The Blues acknowledged being rattled throughout last year’s series with the Kings. They were on their heels, out of position — not to mention angry a lot. “It was awful,” Blues forward David Backes, the team captain, said. But it was not all that surprising to fans of an organization that has one playoff series victory since 2002. The Blues entered last year’s series as the No. 2 seed playing the No. 8 seed and exited it appearing as far as ever from their first Stanley Cup. Backes, who has been with the team his entire seven-year career, sensed a playoff trip slipping away after St. Louis closed March with a three-game losing streak and fell to the ninth position in the West. Challenging teammates, he asked: “What are we going to do, regroup or curl into a ball and give in? We’ve either got to commit to a team game or we’re going away fast.” Then Bouwmeester and Leopold were injected into the lineup. Goaltender Brian Elliott went 11-2-0 to close the regular season and led the league in April in goals against average (1.28 per game) and save percentage (.948). No team killed penalties more efficiently. The Blues rose from ninth in the West to fourth, earning home ice (again) against the Kings. “It’s the best we’ve played since I’ve been here,” said Steen, who arrived in 2008. “We played the way we wanted to throughout the month of April.” That gave the Blues legitimate hope for May and beyond. While they have kept their composure through two playoff games, the Kings, particularly goalie Jonathan Quick, the Conn Smythe winner last season, have come unglued at the worst times. Quick, from behind his net, handed Steen the puck for the Game 1 clincher in overtime. With less than a minute to go in Game 2, he misplayed Barret Jackman’s high shot from just inside the blue line, giving Jackman the first postseason goal of his 11-year career in St. Louis. “Pretty big,” Jackman said. “Emotional. A big thrill.” Many fans here are hoping that this is only the beginning. Backes said he understood why some supporters at Scottrade Center would be more comfortable hiding under their seats than dreaming of hockey in June. “If they’re gun-shy, it’s for good reason,” he said. “But our core group, our talent level, the way our core group is built, it’s all improved. We’ve got a core group that’s going to leave everything on the ice but keep playing smart, too. It’s different. It’s better. And we’ve got something to prove.”

Ice hockey
St Louis Blues
Los Angeles Kings
Jay Bouwmeester
Jordan Leopold


Russians to Face Czechs in Final

Abstract: Pavel Datsyuk’s late goal gave Russia a 2-1 win over host Germany in Cologne and put Russia, the defending champion, into the world hockey championship final against the Czech Republic, which beat Sweden, 3-2, in a shootout.


Yahoo Chairman Is Stepping Down

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo’s chairman, Alfred J. Amoroso, will become the eighth Yahoo director to depart since early last year. He will leave the board on June 25 at Yahoo’s annual shareholders meeting, the company said Thursday. Mr. Amoroso, 63, is giving up the chairmanship immediately, prompting Yahoo to appoint another director, Maynard Webb Jr., to handle the duties on an interim basis. Yahoo indicated it would not add another director after Mr. Amoroso departs, leaving the Internet company with 10 directors. Mr. Amoroso said in statement that he only intended to serve as chairman for a year. Mr. Amoroso and Mr. Webb joined Yahoo’s board 14 months ago when four longtime directors stepped down under shareholder pressure. Yahoo’s co-founder, Jerry Yang, started the exodus when he left the board a month earlier. Finally, late last year, Intuit’s chief executive, Brad D. Smith and the Weather Channel’s chief executive, David Kenny, stepped down. A former accounting executive, Sue James, is now Yahoo’s longest-serving director. She came on board three years ago. The other directors, including Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, have been appointed since February 2012. The rapid turnover probably suits Ms. Mayer, who has been trying to infuse Yahoo with new talent and ideas since she defected from a longtime job at Google to tackle the challenge of turning around one of the Internet’s best-known companies. Although Yahoo’s Web site remains one of the Internet’s top destinations, Web surfers had been visiting less frequently and staying for shorter periods. That problem has made it more difficult for Yahoo to sell the online advertising that generates most of its revenue. Until a slight increase last year, Yahoo’s revenue had been steadily declining since 2008 while rivals such as Google and Facebook reveled in robust growth. Yahoo’s lack of growth exasperated Yahoo shareholders, and led to a reshaping of the board in which the hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb won a board seat, along with two allies, Harry Wilson, a turnaround specialist, and Michael J. Wolf, an MTV executive. Mr. Amoroso became Yahoo’s chairman 11 months ago after the company parted with former chief executive Scott Thompson, over a fabricated academic degree. Ms. Mayer was then hired.

Alfred J Amoroso
Yahoo!
Appointments and Executive Changes


Mostly White Forces in Mostly Black Towns: Police Struggle for Racial Diversity

Abstract: MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — The population of this working-class Cleveland suburb has gone from nearly all white to two-thirds black since its mayor declared more than 35 years ago that he did not know “what a minority is.” But its police and fire departments have not kept pace: The Maple Heights police force today still has only two black officers out of 35; the fire department is 100 percent white. Maple Heights is far from unique. Across the country, police departments still struggle to hire and retain minority candidates — in some cases despite great efforts, in others because of a lack of initiative. But now, the problem has taken on new relevance since the fatal shooting of a young black man last month in Ferguson, Mo., where just four of the 53 police officers are black, according to the police chief. Nationwide, the total number of minority police officers has risen, but they remain heavily concentrated in larger cities, with the numbers falling off sharply in smaller ones, like Ferguson and Maple Heights. Data from a federal survey of police departments in 2007, analyzed for The New York Times by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, found that nearly 400 departments, most with fewer than a hundred officers, were substantially whiter than the populations they served. In these departments, the share of white officers was greater than the share of white residents by more than 50 percentage points. Ferguson and Maple Heights are about the same size, just over 20,000 people, and in both, the black population has surged in recent decades. Both cities have white mayors and largely white political leaderships. And both police departments have fallen far short of reflecting the communities they serve — even as some of Maple Heights’s neighboring police departments have achieved much higher levels of diversity. Critics point to the lack of racial balance in police departments as evidence of systemic racism. But experts say the experiences of the two towns illustrate the obstacles to achieving diversity in law enforcement, even for departments that have made it a priority. “I see all these pundits come on the Sunday talk shows and say: ‘Of course you can hire more black people. Of course they’re not trying,’ ” said Nelson Lim, a senior sociologist at the RAND Corporation’s Center on Quality Policing who has consulted with departments in Los Angeles and San Diego. “But it’s very, very, very difficult.” There is little hard evidence that diversity correlates with better performance, in part because it is difficult to control for complex variables and to know which outcomes, from crime rates to brutality cases, to measure. In fact, one study of a Florida police department found that black officers were more likely than white to use force against black suspects. Image In 1977, Maple Heights agreed to increase minorities in its police and fire departments. But officials did not follow through. Credit Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times A review of court cases going back to the early 1990s revealed only a handful of civil rights or excessive-force cases against the Maple Heights police, two of which involved a white officer who is no longer with the department, and none that involved a fatality like the shooting in Ferguson. Still, it is an accepted tenet of community policing that when departments reflect the communities they serve, they have an easier time building trust and defusing, rather than escalating, tense situations. In Maple Heights, some residents said they would like to see more black officers, while others said that it was the attitude, experience and training of the officer, not race, that mattered. Chris Turney, a home renovator who lives with his wife and two daughters, said it was more important for officers to live in the city. All but one do not. “The police come here, they do their jobs, they don’t try to get to know anybody,” said Mr. Turney, who is black. “The police don’t wave.” Other residents drew a contrast between police attitudes in Maple Heights and neighboring Bedford Heights, where three-quarters of the residents, and nine of 28 police officers, are black. “Bedford’s not going to do you like Maple,” said Carlos Walker, 41, who is black. “You have to do something real stupid for Bedford. Maple, soon as they get behind you, you sweating.” In her 11 years as an officer in Bedford Heights, Detective Ericka Payne, who is black, has often provided backup on calls in Maple Heights. “There are definitely differences in the ways the departments interact with the outside community,” Detective Payne said. “We try to be a little bit more community oriented. Because we are a little bit more diverse, we understand those dynamics and maybe have a little bit more ease dealing with that.” Several Maple Heights officials said the diversity of the police and fire departments had never been a major issue. It is hard to find qualified candidates of any race, said John C. Popielarczyk, who has been with the Maple Heights Police Department since 1990 and the acting police chief since May. Maple Heights, devastated by the foreclosure crisis , has fallen on hard times, and the police force has shrunk. And with most officers staying on the job for 25 years, Chief Popielarczyk said, the opportunity to hire is scarce. Of eight recent hires, two were black. One, the chief said, was fired for cause before his probationary period ended. The Race Gap in America’s Police Departments Hundreds of police departments across the nation have forces with a white percentage that is more than 30 percentage points higher than the communities they serve. The department has advertised in minority newspapers and changed the private company that administers its Civil Service exam in hopes that more minority candidates would pass, he said. But he added: “The real goal of the department is to provide qualified officers who are competent and can provide quality service regardless of race. I don’t think people really care about the color of the officer that responds; they care that the officer responds quickly, is effective, treats them well and is respectful.” The acting fire chief, James Castelucci, said much the same, adding that one promising black candidate withdrew when his current employer offered him more money. The obstacles to diversity are many, Dr. Lim, the sociologist, said. Candidates usually must pass written tests, physical agility tests, psychological tests, polygraphs and background checks, some of which can have a disparate impact on minority candidates. Qualified black candidates are sought after not just by competing police departments, but also by employers in other industries. And some police chiefs have cited a negative attitude toward law enforcement among blacks that hinders recruiting. Police departments have tried all kinds of remedies, from personal trainers to help with physical fitness tests to tailored recruiting. (A RAND survey found that women were attracted to the good salaries in policing, blacks to the profession’s prestige and Asians to the excitement of the job.) But many small departments lack the resources, or the will, to conduct an exhaustive review of their hiring practices. In Maple Heights, job candidates are ranked by how well they score on the written exam, earning bonus points for factors like previous training, military experience and city residency. For each opening, the candidates are considered one by one, in order of their score. Some nearby suburbs like Bedford Heights and Cleveland Heights — where about 40 percent of the residents and 22 of 102 officers are black — do things differently. The chiefs of both departments said officials were allowed to consider the top 10 candidates on the list, which helps them hire more minority candidates. Both chiefs said their cities took an aggressive approach to diversity as early as the 1970s. Cleveland Heights has two types of officer positions, one that requires a Civil Service exam and a college degree, and a lower tier, called basic patrol, that does not. Once a basic patrol officer is hired, the city will reimburse tuition costs, and many eventually earn a degree and work their way to the upper tier. The diversity of neighboring police departments poses a challenge to cities like Maple Heights, Dr. Lim said: “If the leadership, if the police chief, is dedicated to getting more diversity in the work force, how hard is it to figure out how the other department is doing such a good job?” Image Frank Ross said he did not accept the city’s explanations for having few minority police officers. Credit Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times Asked why Maple Heights considered only one candidate at a time, Chief Popielarczyk said: “We’ve always done it that way. My understanding is that that’s how we’re supposed to do it.” Some Maple Heights residents have tried to persuade the city to hire more blacks, forming a committee called the Maple Heights Citizens for Change. In 2012, Elaine Stone, a committee member who runs a blog called the Maple Heights African American Gazette , was digging around and discovered a long-forgotten affirmative action agreement, signed by the mayor, a citizens’ committee and a representative from the federal Justice Department in 1977. In that deal, Maple Heights, at the time about 96 percent white, agreed that within three years minorities would make up at least 4 percent of its police and fire departments. But it soon became clear that the city was less than fully committed to this goal. “I figure we’re all minorities,” the mayor at the time, Emil J. Lisy Jr., told reporters when he was criticized for failing to live up to the agreement. “The first thing is to find out what a minority is, and I haven’t figured that out.” Federal officials threatened to withhold $500,000 in funds, but backed down after the mayor submitted a 65-page response. When Ms. Stone learned about the agreement, she contacted Frank Ross, the only surviving signer of the document. Mr. Ross was a teacher in his 20s when he came to Maple Heights, at a time when real estate brokers steered black customers to a part of town called Presidential Row. He now lives 12 miles away, but agreed to go to meetings of the committee, where he suggested that the group call the Community Relations Service of the Justice Department, the same office that helped broker the earlier deal. Though new discussions were opened between the city and the service, which provides mediation and training to governments, residents feel the talks have stalled. Neither the mayor nor the Maple Heights legal director returned calls for comment for this article, and the service does not publicly discuss its work. Participation by local governments is strictly voluntary. Ms. Stone said economics, not overt racism, had kept the police and fire departments largely white. “There was white flight, but people were trying to hold on to their jobs,” she said. “I can understand you don’t want to give up that job.” Mr. Ross said apathy among black voters was partly to blame for the situation. But he does not accept the city’s excuses. “They’re telling me in 40 years they can’t find any African-American policemen?” he said. “Forty years later — it’s very emotional for me. Forty years later, I’m still dealing with the same thing.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Baltimore Officer Shoots Boy Who Police Say Had Replica Gun

Abstract: A plainclothes police officer shot and wounded a 13-year-old boy who was seen carrying a replica handgun as he walked down a Baltimore street on Wednesday, the city’s police commissioner said. Two plainclothes officers from the department’s intelligence division spotted the boy while they were driving in an unmarked police car, Kevin Davis, the police commissioner, said at a news conference . After the officers stopped and identified themselves as the police, the boy ran with the replica handgun still in his hand, the commissioner said. The officers pursued the boy for about 150 yards, rounding a corner before one of them opened fire, he said. The chief did not say where the boy had been shot but said he was expected to live. The commissioner said that he did not believe the officer who fired acted inappropriately and that he did not know if the boy had threatened the officers or given them reason to believe their lives were in danger. Image Debbie Taylor and her 8-year-old son, Tyion, near the scene where a plainclothes police officer shot a 13-year-old boy on Wednesday. The police commissioner said the 13-year-old boy was carrying a replica handgun. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times Commissioner Davis said he had seen the boy’s replica gun and could not tell the difference between it and a real firearm. He described it as “a dead-on ringer for a Beretta 92 FS semiautomatic pistol.” He said the boy and his mother, who was taken in for questioning, were responsible for making a series of decisions that led to the police chase and shooting. “The mom knew that her young son, a 13-year-old young man, left their home with what the mom describes as a b.b. gun in his hand,” he told reporters. The shooting occurred on the first anniversary of the funeral of Freddie Gray, a young man who died after being injured in police custody and whose funeral was followed by a riot that shook the city. “Today is an important day,” the commissioner said. “It’s not lost on me what April 27 means to this city and what it means to this Police Department and what it means to me personally.” He told reporters that the shooting took place in the context of rising gun violence in the city, where he said gun-related arrests had risen “an astounding 60 percent” this year. He also said there had been “a significant spate of gun violence” in the city over the previous 48 hours.


After Upheaval, Not All Is Well With Thai Youth

Abstract: NA CHUEAK, THAILAND — Three months ago, images of protesters battling the military in the streets of Bangkok seized the world’s attention. Now, by some measures, Thailand is bouncing back: the country’s economy is projected to grow as fast as 7.5 percent this year, and the government is pushing ahead with a program of “reconciliation” with its opponents. But even as Thailand pulls itself back together, there are concerns that deep-seated problems among its young people represent a quieter, long-term threat to the country’s future. Declining education standards — as well as reports of growing violence and drug and alcohol use among the young, which some analysts see as related issues — are contributing to fears that Thailand’s dream of joining the ranks of the world’s most developed countries may be getting more and more elusive. “Our G.D.P. is going up, but our society is sick,” said Sombat Rittidej, the head of the northeastern division of Child Watch, a program that analyzes trends among young people across Thailand. “All the problems, all the vices are correlated,” he said. “When kids drink and smoke it relates to cutting class, dropping out of school, violence, fighting and premarital sex.” Analysts point to a variety of troubling trends. The Thai news media reported in July that the country had the world’s highest number of people addicted to methamphetamines , an illegal stimulant that is especially popular with young people. Experts said that this claim, made by a government official, was impossible to verify but that there was no denying the scale of the Thai drug problem. Methamphetamines have become so prevalent in Thailand that researchers from Yale University are studying whether genetic factors have contributed to the country’s high addiction rates. Meanwhile, young Thais are falling behind in the classroom. According to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a comparative analysis of students worldwide, Thailand’s scores have dipped over the past decade, and the country now ranks in the bottom third of the 36 countries that participated. Its scores are well behind those of Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, which have successfully made the transition from poverty to prosperity. Since 2007, student performance in Thailand’s so-called O-Net national exams has fallen steadily in all five core subjects: Thai, math, science, social studies and English. The range of problems analysts see among Thai youth are on full view here in Na Chueak in northeastern Thailand, where a startling increase in violence among young people belies the serenity of the Thai countryside. Since the beginning of the year, three people have been killed, two who were shot and one who was beaten with poles, in gangland-style clashes between groups of youths. Fighting between young people is so common here that the police are called about 10 times a day, said Chalerm Phuttaisong, a police officer, who lists alcohol, gambling, teenage sex and a general disrespect for the law as the village’s main problems. Doctors in the small district hospital, meanwhile, said that pregnancy and botched illegal abortions were increasingly common among girls as young as 13 years old. At a roadside bar surrounded by paddy fields an hour from Na Chueak, a 19-year-old vocational student, Watcharapong Phumma, said he and his friends went drinking every day from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. He recently pawned his mobile phone to buy beer rather than ask his parents for money. The shy and slight young man did not consider his daily drinking a problem. “Sometimes I’m hung over in the morning, but I never worry about that because I can sleep in class,” he said. Sompong Jitradub, a lecturer in education at Chulalongkorn University, echoes a widely heard lament here that Thailand is falling behind other countries in the region. “We are not going to be able to compete with other countries because our people will be low quality.” “Our country is going to rank at the top of Southeast Asia — in drugs, teenage pregnancy and violence,” said Mr. Sompong, one of Thailand’s leading educationalists. In a country that has demonstrated its resilience in the face of countless military coups and other social upheavals over the years, Mr. Sompong’s predictions might sound overly dire. But they reflect widespread frustration and pessimism about Thai institutions, bred by pervasive corruption and the country’s seemingly intractable political conflicts. At the heart of what might be described as a national angst are the failings of the educational system, a problem that government officials readily acknowledge. “We have a dire shortage of qualified teachers,” said Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij. In June, the Thai news media reported that high school teachers were ordered to take exams in subjects they were teaching — and many failed. The government has announced programs to improve teacher training, but part of the challenge will be luring talented students into the low-paid profession. Government spending on education has tripled over the past decade and a half, yet entry-level teachers still earn less than the equivalent of $300 a month. Critics of the system say a disproportionate amount of the budget goes toward paying salaries and benefits for high-level bureaucrats. Frequent changes of government during the recent political turmoil — there have been five prime ministers in as many years — have created a mishmash of educational policies, teachers say. The upheaval has also helped create what one official describes as an “epidemic” of drug abuse. Tens of thousands of police and military personnel, many of them stationed along the border with Myanmar, where the vast majority of drugs in Thailand are produced, have been called to perform riot control duties during the protests that have flared intermittently since 2006. The drug trade has flourished during the same period, with the number of drug-related cases rising by 63 percent in the two years after the 2006 military coup to 150,000 cases in 2008, the latest full year for which figures are available. The number of people entering drug rehabilitation soared to 120,000 people last year, double the number of 2007. The military coup of 2006 effectively ended the highly effective but highly controversial anti-drug policies of the prime minister removed from office, Thaksin Shinawatra . Human rights groups say around 2,500 people suspected of being drug dealers were killed by the police during the anti-drug campaign. Alcohol seems to dominate the lives of many young people here, especially those in vocational schools. Drinking among teenagers increased sharply with the introduction of relatively cheap beer, teachers and the police say. Per capita beer sales are up 52 percent since 1997. Mr. Chalerm, 44, the police officer, describes a yawning generation gap. “When I was growing up here, there was nothing like this. There was no fighting, drinking. Discipline was better, and people had a sense of duty. And no one had guns.” Much of the violence, which often occurs during holiday festivals or on weekends, breaks out for no apparent reason, Mr. Chalerm said. The police recorded 15,814 cases of alcohol-related fighting among the entire population in Thailand in 2007, the latest year for which data are available, three times the number a decade earlier. In the classroom, surveys and interviews with teachers depict a generation of students endowed with more possessions than their forebears but less interested in schoolwork. Many students drop out. High school graduation rates, at 49 percent, are well below the 90 percent rates in South Korea, and around 80 percent in the European Union and United States. Orrawan Intasida, an English teacher for the past 28 years and a guidance counselor at a rural school in neighboring Kalasin Province, said she once invited Buddhist monks into classrooms of students ranging from 13 to 15 years old to discuss social problems. She asked the students how many had experimented with alcohol or drugs, and she admonished them to be honest in the presence of the monks. “Ninety percent said yes,” Ms. Orrawan said. “Some of the students surprised me — they seemed so well behaved.” Another Orrawan, this one an 18-year-old student at a vocational school here in Na Chueak, said many of her friends were addicted to methamphetamines but that she preferred whiskey and beer. Orrawan, a daughter of rice farmers who gave only her first name, described a life of “countless” fights, sometimes involving knives and guns. Many students cut class and meet at a reservoir to hang out. “If I’m not too drunk, I will head home afterwards,” she said. “But If I am too drunk, I stay at my friend’s house. That way my parents will never know.”

Thailand
Economic Conditions and Trends
Children and Youth
Social Conditions and Trends
Bangkok (Thailand)
Thaksin Shinawatra
Education and Schools
Drug Abuse and Traffic


Heilman (Not Wagner) Keeps Mets on Track

Abstract: There are still 34 games remaining in the Mets ’ season, which, for the most pessimistic of fans, means there are 34 excruciating ways to lose, 34 different things that can go awry. Even with several aspects going their way in yesterday’s 4-3 victory against the Los Angeles Dodgers — Orlando Hernández ’s brilliant performance, Carlos Delgado’s clutch hit, David Wright’s perfect day — perhaps the most curious development involved a pitcher who did not even play. In the top of the ninth inning, Manager Willie Randolph called on Aaron Heilman, not closer Billy Wagner, to uphold a one-run lead. Wagner had told Randolph before the game that he would be unavailable because his arm was going through a dead-arm period. It is not a rare occurrence for pitchers in general, and Wagner said that he had dealt with this issue before. “For me, my control, my velocity is the same,” said Wagner, who had pitched in the last two games, throwing a combined 43 pitches. “It’s just that my arm is a little tired.” Wagner, who has allowed four runs in his last three appearances, has been used frequently recently in nonsave situations. Four times in the last three weeks, Randolph has called on Wagner to pitch the ninth with the Mets leading by four or more runs. Very rarely, if at all, has Wagner ever publicly acknowledged any discomfort or said that he told the coaching staff that he could not pitch. To him, it could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. But asked whether his absence would be for only one day, Wagner remained noncommittal. “I’m not going to worry about it until I get here tomorrow,” he said. The Mets, who lead the National League East by seven games, would prefer not to require a closer’s services tonight when they aim to finish a three-game sweep of the Dodgers, but their last five games have been decided by three or fewer runs. “That’s the way you play down-the-stretch baseball,” Randolph said. “You grind it out, do whatever it takes.” For Hernández, that meant holding the Dodgers, who boast one of the league’s tougher lineups, to four hits and two runs over seven innings. He lowered his earned run average to 3.07. Hernández retired 15 of 16 batters before allowing consecutive home runs to Luis Gonzalez and Russell Martin with two outs in the seventh. Hernández stops losing streaks, extends winning streaks and keeps his team in the game: The Mets have not lost a game he has started since July 4, a span of nine starts. “When he’s in a rhythm like that, he’s beautiful to watch,” Randolph said. A year ago at this time, the Mets shut down Hernández for two weeks with the vague diagnosis of fatigue. Aside from his monthlong stay on the disabled list earlier this season, Hernández has not complained of any maladies and does not seem as if he will have to miss a start the rest of the way. “I’m feeling good,” Hernández said. “I work out every day.” For Wright, grinding out the final six weeks meant reaching base in all four plate appearances, scoring twice and driving in the first run with a third-inning single. Since Tuesday, Wright has gotten on base in 15 of his 19 plate appearances to increase his on-base percentage this month to .529. For Delgado, it meant snapping an 0 for the homestand in a big way, lining a two-run single in the fifth inning. Until that point, Delgado had been hitless in his previous 12 at-bats with runners in scoring position and in his last 19 at-bats over all. “It’s been a while,” Delgado said. Delgado had chances to break that string in his first two at-bats, but he left the bases loaded in the first and left two on in the third, before the Mets rallied off the Dodgers left-hander Eric Stults. He had retired his last seven hitters before walking Wright with two outs. A single by Carlos Beltrán sent Wright to third. When Beltrán stole second without a throw to leave first base unoccupied, the Dodgers elected to intentionally walk Jeff Conine to load the bases for Delgado. The Shea Stadium fans, who had booed Delgado after his last two at-bats, stood and cheered as he was introduced in the fifth, apparently hoping that their positive energy could change his fortunes. “I wasn’t sure that was for me,” Delgado said. Stults grooved a first-pitch fastball that Delgado ripped into center to score Wright and Beltrán and extend the Mets’ lead to 3-0. Delgado clapped when he reached first base, and on his walk to the dugout, Wright, aware of his teammate’s struggles, pointed at him. “For him to come through like that is a burden off his shoulders,” Wright said. Hernández left with the Mets leading, 3-2, and they added a run in the seventh when Conine doubled home Wright. That extra run proved crucial when the Dodgers scored in the eighth against Pedro Feliciano to set up Heilman’s first save since Sept. 30, 2005. He allowed a one-out single but induced a double play from Gonzalez to end the game. “It’s obviously not hard to be a closer,” Wagner said. “He went out there and did better than I would have done.”

New York Mets
Baseball
Los Angeles Dodgers
Hernandez Orlando


Web Site Focuses on Human Rights

Abstract: Chinese-English Web site focuses on human rights The Center for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong has started a new, bilingual Web site called the Human Rights Portal . Created by a research center at the school’s law faculty, the English- and Chinese-language site, which started last week, includes articles, documents, videos, links and guides. Topics discussed include women’s issues, migration, disability, diversity, criminal justice, expression and religion. “We aim to provide easy access to human rights information,” Sharron Fast, an assistant research officer at the center, said by telephone. Much of the material is about Asia, with a focus on Hong Kong. “We want to engage both scholars and students on both sides of the border,” Ms. Fast said, referring to the division between mainland China and Hong Kong. — MARY HUI Pub event to select winner of university research funds Researchers from University College London will present ideas on how to tackle some of the world’s problems to the public at the inaugural Focus on the Positive event on Oct. 30, the university said in a statement. The audience at The Phoenix in Cavendish Square, a pub in central London, will get to choose which of the researchers will get £2,000, or $3,200, to help their work, start a new project or collaborate with a charity. A runner-up will receive £1,000. “Focus on the Positive is a radical way of opening up new avenues of participation in university research,” Steve Cross, U.C.L.’s head of public engagement, said in a statement. At a trial run of the event held in April, Hannah Fry, who works in the mathematics department but whose research was on the causes of the 2011 London riots, won £1,000 to make a film with interviews of young Londoners. — JOYCE LAU Edinburgh Business School to begin classes in Malaysia The M.B.A. program at the Edinburgh Business School of Heriot-Watt University will be introduced to Malaysia next year, the school has said. The first cohort of students will begin the part-time, two-year course in January in a temporary facility in Putrajaya, near Kuala Lumpur, the school said in a statement last week. In 2014, the program is scheduled to move to the Heriot-Watt University Malaysia campus, a £35 million, or $56 million, project that is expected to accommodate 4,000 students. Currently, the M.B.A. can be taken a Hariot-Watt’s main campus in Edinburgh, at a branch campus in Dubai, at home through distance learning, or via the school’s academic partners. — MARY HUI

Bilingual Education
Education
Colleges and Universities
Law Schools
Hong Kong
China