Guru of the Long Snap

Abstract: AUBURN, Mass. — Chris Rubio was dissecting the art of long snapping for the benefit of 23 teenagers and their parents on an unseasonably cool morning last month. He used words like “balance” and “extension” as he dabbled in the minutiae of a craft that he considers a science. “What’s he going to do after this?” Rubio asked his audience as one of his campers demonstrated the proper technique for hiking a football between his legs at an alarmingly high rate of speed. “He’s going to sit down on the toilet. There it is. Oh, this is gorgeous.” Rubio, 38, who has a goatee and the stocky build of a steamer trunk, is one of the country’s foremost instructors of an unusual skill. He spends a good chunk of the year traveling the country to stage clinics like this one at Auburn High School, just outside of Worcester, Mass., where he preached the gospel of long snapping to young players whose abilities are being valued by college coaches now more than ever. “Try sleeping the night before a game without one,” said Paul Chryst, the coach at Pittsburgh. Long snappers have exactly one job: snap the ball on extra points, field goals and punts. And while a long snapper will never win the Heisman Trophy, the role is a trapeze act. The only time anyone notices a snap is when it rockets past the punter or the holder. Anything short of a 100 percent success rate is catastrophic. The very best long snappers, though, can send the ball spiraling in a sharp arc at 52 miles per hour. “A coach once told me that long snapping is like brain surgery,” Rubio said during a quiet moment at his camp, a daylong affair that included on-field instruction, a recruiting seminar and film analysis. “As long as everything goes right, you’re good. You mess up one time, you’re dead.” Not so long ago, college coaches would not have dreamed of putting long snappers on full scholarship. A lineman could moonlight at the position. Why waste a scholarship on a long snapper? Conventional wisdom was that coaches were better off recruiting an extra quarterback, or three. The landscape has changed. Paul Johnson, the coach at Georgia Tech, cited the redshirt sophomore Sean Tobin as the first long snapper he had ever signed to a scholarship out of high school. Johnson knew he would eventually need a replacement for Tyler Morgan , and he could not afford to gamble. Image Chris Rubio demonstrated how to hold the ball in one of his drills and coached a player on his grip. Credit Samantha Alyn Goresh for The New York Times “A bad snap can change the game faster than anything,” Johnson said in a recent interview. Boston College Coach Steve Addazio said innovative punting schemes had also underscored the position’s importance. More teams have adopted spread formations that put a premium on having a long snapper who can sprint downfield and help cover the return. “You need a guy who can snap well but is also an athlete,” Addazio said. “It’s a field-position game. The fewer return yards you give up, the better your starting position is. The better your starting position is, the better chance you have to score.” Rubio, a former long snapper at U.C.L.A., began his business about 10 years ago with Chris Sailer, his best friend from college. Sailer was the team’s place-kicker, so the two have always been especially close. At last month’s camp, Sailer instructed his kickers and punters on one side of the field while Rubio used the other. Rubio was prone to describing Sailer’s students as morons, though it was a calculated move. “Rubio does a good job of making long snappers feel important,” said Clayton Jackson, a Rubio acolyte from Cottonwood Falls, Kan. (population: 903), where he is a senior at Chase County High School. “Before I got involved, you just felt like you were on your own. You didn’t know there were other people who did it. You didn’t know there were people who were supportive.” Rubio is known simply as Rubio. He does not respond to “Chris.” (Even his wife calls him Rubio.) His obsession with long snapping is such that he never watches games live on television, he said. Instead, he records them so he can scan them in three minutes. He skips ahead a lot. “Fourth down, fourth down, fourth down,” he said. The ideal long snapper, Rubio said, has long arms and a substantial backside. “Look at that big old butt,” Rubio said of one camper. “All the power comes from the butt. Boom!” With college scholarships suddenly available, the secret is out: being a good long snapper, or even an adequate one, can pay off. Enter Rubio, who is something of a power broker. Each camper receives a ranking, which Rubio posts on his Web site. Because long snapping is such an esoteric skill, many college coaches lean on Rubio’s rankings as a primer for recruiting. Image Clayton Jackson, on floor, and Zach Hubbard faced off to determine the long-snapping champion at a Chris Rubio camp last month in Auburn, Mass. Credit Samantha Alyn Goresh for The New York Times This is not something Rubio attempts to shield from his campers, or from their parents. In fact, he broadcasts it. While his camps are primarily about instruction, he said, they also provide an opportunity to get noticed by someone who has connections. “Maximum exposure,” Rubio calls it. One parent asked Rubio if it was too late in the recruiting process for a college to offer a scholarship to his son, a senior. “Absolutely not,” Rubio said. “You’re being seen by me now, and coaches are going off my lists.” Bill Vaughn, whose 14-year-old son, Jake, was attending his second Rubio camp in two weeks, found that other parents were frosty toward him until they learned that Jake was only a high school sophomore. He was not vying for a scholarship, at least not yet. “After that, they opened up to me a little bit more,” Bill Vaughn said. Rubio said campers often asked how frequently they should see him. The short answer: there is no such thing as too much Rubio. “Right after a lesson, I’ve got you all cleaned up,” he said. “You’re a big boat. I’m going to set you off to sea. The longer you wait to come back to me, the more barnacles and crap I need to clean off before I can add the flames and the new engines and stuff like that.” There is an economic side to the equation, of course. Long snapping is Rubio’s livelihood, and he typically charges each of his campers about $300 to attend his camps. Many of the boys who traveled to Auburn came from out of state, and the entire enterprise can get expensive in a hurry. Rubio organizes roughly 35 camps over the course of the year. He also offers private lessons at his home in Lewiston, Idaho. “When you go to a Rubio camp, you get Rubio,” Rubio said. “And that’s a big-time thing. If you’re paying top dollar, you better get Grade A meat.” Rubio’s path to self-styled guru happened more or less by accident. As a teenager growing up outside Los Angeles, he was a quarterback until he reached high school. The problem, he said, was his size — specifically, the 270 pounds he was hauling around on his 6-foot-2 frame. His coach turned him into a lineman, but Rubio saw little action as a sophomore. He said he was not particularly enamored with his role or with his coach. Image Mary Jackson, Clayton’s mother, worked with him on another drill. Credit Samantha Alyn Goresh for The New York Times “He was a yeller,” Rubio said. “I’m not a yeller.” The following summer, Rubio was throwing the football around when a friend decided to snap a few from 15 yards. Rubio tried it and liked it. He seemed to have a natural feel for the skill. He spent the next two seasons as his high school’s long snapper and drew mild interest from college coaches. He enrolled at U.C.L.A., where he earned a spot on the team as a walk-on. Everything that Rubio understood about the position was self-taught, he said. He studied video and devised drills for himself in his dorm room. As a sophomore, Rubio began to wonder why Terry Donahue, the team’s head coach, had never said a word to him. Did Donahue even know his name? Rubio said he finally worked up the nerve to ask. “Rubio,” Donahue told him, “if I never speak to you again, you’ve done a fine job.” Donahue never spoke to him again, a fact Rubio regards as a point of pride. These days, Rubio markets the entire Rubio experience as entree into the long-snapping fraternity. Each camper gets his e-mail address and cellphone number — “If I don’t respond right away, I’m either on a plane, sleeping or at a camp,” he said — along with an evaluation and that all-important ranking. The country’s top-ranked senior, according to Rubio, is Tanner Carew, a 6-foot-2, 215-pound wizard from La Verne, Calif., who has orally committed to play at Oregon on a full scholarship. Carew said he had attended more Rubio camps than he could remember. “Colleges look at his rankings,” Carew said in a telephone interview. “He knows people. I wouldn’t be in this position without him.” Last month’s camp concluded with an accuracy contest. The finals pitted Jackson against Zach Hubbard, a 6-foot-5, 240-pound senior from Tampa, Fla., who had arrived that day hoping to improve his Rubio ranking. Hubbard said his goal was to use long snapping to enhance his college choices and then parlay it into a career. “I want to make $800,000 doing nothing in the N.F.L.,” he said. After ousting Jackson, Hubbard was happy to settle for a Camp Champion T-shirt. Rubio was off to his next stop in Chicago.

College Sports
Football
College football


Zvonareva Stands in Way of Clijsters’ Title Defense at U.S. Open

Abstract: Kim Clijsters has an opportunity Saturday night to do what no woman has done since 2001: successfully defend her United States Open title. Although Clijsters is the defending champion, the No. 2 seed and has beaten her opponent, Vera Zvonareva, twice already this year, this could be a very competitive match. No one doubts that Zvonareva has the game to win a Slam event. But she can often lose focus, as she did at the Open last year in spectacular fashion against Flavia Pennetta. That version of Zvonareva has not made an appearance here. But on Saturday, Zvonareva will be playing on her favorite surface in prime time, a position she has never been in before. And while Caroline Wozniacki, her semifinal opponent, has built her game around placement, spin and variety, Clijsters is about hitting the ball hard, really hard. In other words, Clijsters will be able to hit past Zvonareva in much the same way she did to beat Venus Williams in the semifinals. The marquee men’s semifinal pits Roger Federer against Novak Djokovic. Every year here it seems that Federer’s road to the final goes through Djokovic, and 2010 is no exception. For the fourth straight year, the two will meet in Arthur Ashe Stadium, with the winner gaining a place in Sunday’s final. Each of their three previous matches has been competitive, but each has ultimately ended in a Federer win. Is 2010 the year Djokovic breaks through? If this were the vulnerable Federer of earlier this year, Djokovic would have a good chance. But so far in the tournament, Federer, a five-time Open champion, has been dominant. Against Robin Soderling, Federer played as if the near gale-force winds were blowing only on his opponent’s side of the court. He had 18 aces and put 64 percent of his first serves in play, incredible statistics given the conditions. Not only has Federer not lost a set so far, only one player, Jürgen Melzer, has even come close to winning one. Djokovic has a chance, but only if Federer suddenly reverts to the shaky form he displayed earlier this year. The other semifinal pits Rafael Nadal against Mikhail Youzhny, who is having his best Open as a professional. Unfortunately for him, Nadal is, too, which makes it hard to see this match as anything but an amusing prelude to what should be an epic Nadal-Federer final showdown. Youzhny is a former top-10 player who, after a couple of years of foundering, seems to have rediscovered his game. A crafty, consistent baseliner who can finish points at the net, he is the sort of player who might have given Nadal trouble on hardcourts in previous years. But through five matches, Nadal has been nearly as dominant as Federer, reaching the semifinals without dropping a set and seeming to get stronger as his competition improved. If Nadal continues to play as well as he has been, he should have no trouble getting past Youzhny and into his first final here.

United States Open (Tennis)
Tennis
Clijsters Kim
Zvonareva Vera
Federer Roger
Soderling Robin
Nadal Rafael
Youzhny Mikhail


BMW Cuts Jobs at Plant That Makes the Mini

Abstract: BMW , the German luxury car maker, announced Monday that it would eliminate 850 jobs at a plant that makes the iconic Mini car in Oxford, England, in response to the slump in demand. At the beginning of March, the Oxford plant will switch to two shifts a day from three, BMW said in a statement, operating five days a week instead of seven. “The company regrets that this change will result in the release of around 850 agency workers from the business,” BMW said in the statement. Mini cars are made at three plants in Britain — Oxford, Hams Hall and Swindon — which together employ 6,300. The Hams Hall plant also makes engines for the BMW group. The carmaker said it had also identified 150 workers at another plant in Swindon who would be offered a transfer to Oxford. The Mini workers had returned to work on Jan. 5 after an extended four-week Christmas holiday. “Sacking an entire shift like this, and targeting agency workers who have no rights to redundancy pay, is blatant opportunism on BMW’s part and nothing short of scandalous,” Tony Woodley, the joint general secretary of Unite, the biggest union in Britain, said in a statement. Mr. Woodley said the union would oppose the cuts and would “also be keeping up the pressure on our government to do more to protect jobs in this country.” The carmaker is the latest in Britain to announce plant closures and job cuts. Honda has closed its plant in Swindon for four months from February to May. Nissan Motor said in January that it would cut 1,200 jobs at its plant in Sunderland. At the same time, governments are taking steps to try to ease the pain of restructuring. Last month, Britain offered auto manufacturers and suppliers access to £1.3 billion, or $1.9 billion, in loan guarantees from the European Investment Bank, topped with an additional £1 billion from the Treasury, the business secretary, Peter Mandelson, said. The British auto industry adds about £10 billion a year to the economy and employs more than 800,000. But government aid to automakers is more controversial in Britain than in other countries because many manufacturers are foreign-owned. For example, Jaguar Land Rover, which employs 15,000 in Britain, is owned by Tata Motors of India, while General Motors owns Vauxhall. The governments in France, Germany, Italy and Spain have also recently announced aid plans for the auto sector. And Washington announced late last year a $14 billion plan to help G.M. and Chrysler. The classic Mini was first released in 1959 by the British Motor Corporation, the former state-owned automaker, and was subsequently sold under the Austin brand. Its small size and unusual design, with its wheels pushed all the way to the corners, helped make it the best-selling British car by the 1970s. BMW bought Mini in 1994 from the struggling British carmaker Rover and subsequently remodeled it and re-released the car in 2001. BMW sold Rover in 2000 but retained Mini as well as some other parts of the company. For the 10 months to October 2008, BMW said Mini sales climbed 10.5 percent, to 202,302 around the world. For January, Mini sales were down 34.5 percent from a year earlier, although BMW attributed this in part to a lack of availability of the Mini Convertible, which went out of production in mid-2008. A new model is scheduled to be released by late March. But BMW said this month that business globally had “deteriorated sharply again” in the fourth quarter, leading full-year revenue to drop 5 percent, to 53.2 billion euros. In January, BMW said it was cutting hours for 26,000 workers to reduce production by 10 percent. It had already cut its work force by 7 percent last year, to 100,041 employees at the end of the year. At Mini, 380 workers were laid off before Christmas.

Bayerische Motorenwerke AG
Mini
Automobiles


The Dilemma of Aging Nuclear Plants

Abstract: PARIS — From the time the world’s first commercial nuclear power plants were switched on in the late 1950s, installed generating capacity rose rapidly over two decades. It leveled off in the 1980s as new building programs were scrapped in the wake of the accident at Three Mile Island, among other factors. Contractors generally designed plants to last for 40 years — a standard enshrined in the United States in the adoption by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or N.R.C., of a 40-year licensing regime. A large part of the world’s installed nuclear power capacity is now coming to the end of that designed life span. Caught between approaching retirement deadlines and public opposition to new plants, industry operators are pushing to extend the life of their plants to 60 or even 80 years — and this despite problems of premature aging of major components that have already obliged many to replace their plants’ steam generators at heavy capital expense. Running plants longer is one way to recoup the extra cost and raise returns on investment over the full life of the plant. But it has safety implications. The 40-year life span was a design specification, said Guillaume Wack, director for nuclear plants at the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, or A.S.N., the French nuclear regulator. “It’s like a car,” Mr. Wack said in an interview. “The manufacturer says it will run for 100,000 kilometers” — 60,000 miles — “and last two years. That’s the theoretical life. After that, it depends on how you run it. If you drive carefully with regular checkups, it could last much longer. If you drive recklessly and don’t maintain it, it will wear out more quickly.” Extending plant life rests on the premise that operators run their plants abstemiously. But utilities, under pressure to maximize short-term profit, are constantly tempted to operate at high output, raising the burn-up of nuclear fuel. Since the 1970s, regulators and operators have identified premature aging problems including vibrations in pipes, with consequent cracking, leaks and ruptures that in turn cause severe corrosion, leading to worse leaks and ruptures. Some of these result from high fuel burn rates, Mr. Wack said. Stopgap measures like plugging some of the thousands of tubes in the steam generator are allowed by regulatory bodies. But no more than 20 percent can be plugged without impeding the circulation of the steam — and less in some cases — before the generator has to be changed. The problem is further complicated by the fact that each reactor heats three or four generators. Anything done to one must also be reproduced on the others in order to avoid pressure imbalances: If one generator has to be changed, all the others must be swapped out, Mr. Wack said. Most plants worldwide have, in fact, already replaced their generators, at a cost of around $50 million for each new generator, after operating for 20 years or less, according to Steve Kerekes, press officer for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby group. While extending the operating life beyond 40 years may help to amortize that cost, it intensifies another problem — finding replacements for other components. Manufacturers are few, and the backlog for many parts is long. The French company Areva, the world’s largest supplier of nuclear products and services, has, for example, traditionally supplied Électricité de France, the state-run utility that operates the world’s largest nuclear park. But because of rising demand, E.D.F. is now going farther afield, ordering equipment from Mitsubishi of Japan. Gérard Petit, a senior safety adviser at E.D.F., says this is more a business cost issue than a safety one: The reactor vessel in which the nuclear reaction takes place, like the containment building in which it is housed, is built to last, he says. “The problem is to keep everything else at the same level.” Still, there is no proof that the reactor vessel or the containment building is sufficiently robust to last beyond 40 years. Cracks in vessel heads, the lids that cover reactor vessels, were discovered in various reactors around the world as long ago as 1991, French and U.S. regulatory documents show. That led E.D.F. to decide to change the heads on most of its reactor vessels — a replacement program that is ending just this year, Mr. Petit said. Replacement heads cost about $5 million each, Mr. Kerekes said. U.S. operators, on the other hand, did not systematically make the change. As a result, corrosion of a cracked lid at the Davis-Besse plant, in Ohio, came within a centimeter, or less than half an inch, of causing a serious coolant leakage accident in 2002, according to an N.R.C. report. In addition, N.R.C. documents show, design flaws identified in 1991 raise the specter of possible long-term fatigue degradation in the reactor vessels themselves due to the heat and high radiation to which they are subjected. A leak in the reactor vessel would result in a core meltdown — the most serious accident possible — with an inevitable release of radioactive materials, Mr. Wack said. This year, some plants in the United States will hit the 40-year mark but will continue to operate under licenses that have already been renewed. An elaborate and complex U.S. license renewal program introduced by the N.R.C. in 1991 was scathingly criticized in 2007 by the commission’s in-house safety auditor, the Office of the Inspector General, for lacking proper documentation and failing to independently verify operator-supplied data. In response, the review process was revised and expanded. But the license renewals of 52 plants — half the U.S. nuclear park — that were already processed before the revision will not be re-examined, said Travis Tate, a senior official in the commission’s license renewal division. Reconsideration was not needed, Mr. Tate said, because the revisions merely “clarify the scope of the inspections and reviews necessary,” without calling into question the adequacy of the previous process. Also, Mr. Tate said, failure to implement an appropriate age management program would not be a ground for denying a new license. It would simply become a future operating issue, along with other commitments required by the N.R.C for license renewal. As long as relicensed plants operate without accidents, the regulatory commission will have met its obligation to ensure that operators run their plants safely, he said. This position has prompted some concern, not least because relicensing approvals have been granted in several cases as much as 20 years before the original licenses expired. Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, in opposing the 2001 renewal of two licenses for the Catawba, South Carolina, nuclear plant, due to expire in 2024 and 2026, asked how the regulators could be certain that the plant would meet requirements that far ahead. In fact, the N.R.C. relies for its decisions on operator-supplied computer models and projections. The problem with those, said Mr. Petit, the E.D.F. safety adviser, was that they might “look good on paper, but you never really know until you actually try it.” In France, which has 58 reactors, plants are submitted to relicensing inspections every 10 years. The first of the 30-year inspections began this year. The inspections, by the A.S.N., take two to three months compared with a typical one-month renewal inspection by the U.S. regulatory agency. But even that does not necessarily mean that French plants operate more safely. Efforts by E.D.F. to cut costs by centralizing procurement have led to a years-long dearth of spare parts on the ground, said Pierre Wiroth, who until he retired in July was for seven years E.D.F.’s inspector general, or top safety official. E.D.F. reports around 750 minor “events” every year, classifying them according to an established grid, and a third are subsequently upgraded to a more serious level because they are recurrent, Mr. Wiroth said. In addition to the slow replacement of worn and aging parts, obsolescence is a growing problem. Many control room commands — a nuclear plant’s nerve center — rely, said Scott Burnell, press officer for the U.S. regulator, “on technology that society has moved beyond.” The technology is typically analog rather than digital because “with analog, we have a lot of experience” and know how it functions, he said. But the downside of that is that graduates coming out of engineering schools are no longer familiar with analog technology. Areva and other suppliers are pushing to replace analog with digital systems, perhaps partly because they can charge more for new technology, Mr. Wack said. But that also raises an issue of reliability, said Mr. Burnell. “With the digital system, instead of having dedicated wires going to a particular place, you can have a small-scale version of Internet where you can have a single set of wires going all around the plant.” That could raise the risk of bugs in the system and complicate problem-solving, he said. Meanwhile, as more and more nuclear engineers reach retirement age, finding replacements to run the plants is problematic. “When you’ve been trained on the latest technology, the idea of working on outdated equipment or retraining is unappealing,” Mr. Wack said. Retiring engineers are increasingly being replaced by outsourcing deals with subcontractors, whose qualifications and competence are less rigorously controlled, said Elizabeth Pozzi, an operating technician at the Dampierre nuclear plant, near Orléans, and a local union official. “In the field, it seems that keeping the plant on line is more important than safety,” Ms. Pozzi said. A report by Mr. Wiroth last year warned E.D.F. that it should better plan, carry out and supervise subcontracted work. E.D.F., said Ms. Pozzi, is “not doing anything illegal, but they’re using every loophole to push the maintenance boundaries as far as possible. If that’s already the case at 30 years, what will it be like at 60?” In 2006, the attorney general of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, requested that the N.R.C. not renew the license for the Indian Point nuclear power plant, located 34 miles north of New York City, when it expired in 2013. “At Indian Point nuclear power plant, operators have compiled an unacceptable record of abject, repeated, multiyear failure to effectively address vital safety and security issues,” he said in testimony to Congress, a view shared by the regulator’s own safety auditor in a 2000 report. Mr. Blumenthal also cited growth in the region’s population since the plant opened as a reason to shut it. Two months ago, the N.R.C. issued a safety evaluation report for the plant as part of the renewal process. Of the 87 parts of the reactor vessel and related elements examined, all but three showed aging damage, as did 39 out of 44 steam generator components and 57 of 59 structural elements. Still, the report concluded that Indian Point met regulatory standards for license renewal.

Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant (NY)
France


Republican’s Tax Plan Awkwardly Aims at Rich

Abstract: Tax the rich. What do you think a Republican congressman would say about a tax proposal that contained numerous provisions to take away benefits from some taxpayers simply because they made too much money? The proposal in question would force some high-income taxpayers to pay taxes on municipal bonds that have so far been tax-free. They would lose the tax break available to others when they sell their homes. They would have to pay taxes on the value of their employer-provided health insurance and would lose the deduction for contributions to 401(k) retirement plans. Furthermore, everyone who has taken advantage of the “carried interest” tax dodge that lets private equity partners treat their pay as capital gains would lose it. That provision allowed Mitt Romney to pay an effective tax rate of less than 15 percent on millions of dollars. This particular proposal would also hit high-income taxpayers by phasing out some deductions and other tax provisions for couples making more than $450,000. Other benefits would vanish for those making more than $517,500. The interplay of all these complicated provisions would — for a few taxpayers — lead to marginal tax rates as high as 67 percent. If this were President Obama’s tax proposal, you can be assured that there would be cries about “class warfare.” But it’s not. Instead, it describes some of the proposals in the Tax Reform Act of 2014 proposed last week by the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican. The Camp proposal seems unlikely to go anywhere, in no small part because the House Republican leadership has gone out of its way to distance itself from the proposal, praising Mr. Camp for his diligence and calling it worthy of consideration but not getting close to an endorsement. The proposal is fascinating, as much for what it does and does not contain as for its inability to accomplish either of Mr. Camp’s two stated goals. He promised a greatly simplified tax code but instead clutters it up with detailed ways to only partly confront assorted tax advantages that were handed out to various groups over the years. The summary of the bill takes up 194 pages. He wanted to reduce the top tax rate to 25 percent but could not do that without taking away many more tax goodies than he does. So he has a special 35 percent bracket that applies to couples with incomes of more than $450,000 but picks and chooses what income above that level is taxable. Municipal bond interest can be taxed at a 10 percent rate, but there is no extra tax on manufacturing income. There is also a special tax on big banks. That is something you might expect from a liberal Democrat, and there are reports that some Wall Street organizations are so angry they are threatening to withhold donations to Republican candidates this year. There was a time when any proposal by the Ways and Means Committee chairman would be viewed as a blueprint for legislation that would most likely become law. In those days, chairmen sometimes seemed to serve forever, and they knew how to work across the aisle to get deals done. Wilbur Mills, an Arkansas Democrat, was committee chairman from 1958 to 1974, during five presidential administrations. In the press, it often sounded as if his title were truly “Powerful Chairman.” He had the power to grant, or withhold, tax provisions that individual members sought for favored constituents. A legislator who offended him might face problems for years. Only scandal could bring him down, and it did. There were two episodes involving alcohol and a stripper who went by the name of Fanne Foxe , and he was forced to give up his chairmanship. Mr. Camp, on the other hand, is a lame duck. Next year, under the rules of the House Republican Caucus, he will have to step down after four years as chairman. I had hoped that his eagerness to accomplish something would overcome inertia, but it appears it will not. The last thing the House Republican leadership wants is votes that will call attention to splits within the party. Seniority no longer calls the shots when new chairmen are named, and the campaigning to replace Mr. Camp is already underway. One man who wants the job is said to be Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who was Mr. Romney’s running mate. In the talk about tax reform, there has been a general agreement that top rates should be reduced and loopholes closed, something Mr. Ryan has loudly endorsed. But there has been a great reluctance to get specific. This proposal does get specific, and in doing so it makes clear that much more needs to be done to reduce tax preferences and loopholes if we want both to finance the government and to lower tax rates. Within the community of tax policy wonks, the Camp proposal has garnered admiring reviews just by providing something to analyze. “In a world where policy makers actually wanted to make policy, it would be a good starting point for discussion,” said Len Burman, the director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and a professor at Syracuse University. Even with the efforts to soak the rich, Mr. Camp comes up well short of making the proposals revenue-neutral, although some artful dodges enable him to claim that is true over the next 10 years. To make the limited progress he does, Mr. Camp has to attack many tax preferences. Some are easy (did you know that for some reason the National Football League is tax-exempt?), but many are not. Americans who work overseas lose a tax break. The tax credit for buying electric cars goes away. So does the credit for adopting a child. A lot of tax provisions to provide aid for higher education costs are consolidated. The dodge of avoiding taxes through a “like-kind” exchange would end. Clever ways that some self-employed people have found to avoid paying payroll taxes on their income would be barred. He would change the way we save for retirement, something that prompted outrage from the retirement industry. He would do that by limiting the amount of pretax money that can be saved. Traditional individual retirement accounts would vanish (for new contributions, that is.) The amount of pretax money that could go into 401(k) accounts would be reduced. Instead, Roth I.R.A.s would be encouraged and made available to high-income taxpayers who cannot use them now. The money you put into a Roth I.R.A. is money on which you have paid taxes. But it then accumulates tax-free and you don’t pay taxes on the money you withdraw after you retire. Normal I.R.A.s, like 401(k) accounts, produce taxable income when it is withdrawn after retirement. Similarly, the bill would put an end to so-called deferred compensation at many companies, where the money is put into a savings plan but not paid out until years later, when the employee may be in a lower tax bracket. The effect would be to raise tax revenue now and reduce it in the later years when the deferred compensation would have been paid. There is no logical reason employees should be taxed on the money they are paid but not on the value of the fringe benefits the employer provides. Mr. Camp touches that on the margin, with the provision on extremely wealthy people, but not for the rest of us. He reduces the mortgage interest deduction, but only for those with the most expensive homes. The bill also would force companies to take depreciation expenses over a longer period. That makes sense economically, but it would also push corporate taxes up in the next few years, though not over the long term. All of those things combine to make the estimate that the bill is revenue-neutral suspect. It may be neutral over the 10-year period they count, but not over a longer period. It is good to see some specifics. It is too bad that nothing is likely to come from it. “Tax reform is never going to happen without bipartisan cooperation,” said Mr. Burman, who worked on the Tax Reform Act of 1986 as an economist in the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis and later served as a senior Treasury Department official under President Bill Clinton. “A significant number of people in both parties will have to believe getting things done is more important than scoring points.”

Federal Taxes
David Camp
US Economy
Republicans
Tax
HNWI,Wealth,Billionaires,1 Percent


A Charm to Take Little Pixies Off the Web and Home to Play

Abstract: Everything these days seems to have some kind of computer chip — car keys, credit cards and now your daughter’s charm bracelet. A collaboration between the Walt Disney Company and the toy maker Techno Source, Clickables are a line of toy jewelry items made to interact with Disney’s Pixie Hollow Web site. Clickable toys connect to your PC and allow your child to interact with and download certain elements on the Pixie Hollow site, like fairy images, for offline viewing. The bridge between online and offline activity is a special charm that can also be played with separately, away from a computer connection. The charms are sold in sets of three for $6, but using them requires the additional purchase of a special USB dock that comes in the form of a bracelet ($20) or a jewelry box ($30). Your child will have to be adept at creating passwords, managing an online account, downloading and installing software on your Windows computers and managing a USB connection. Hey, perhaps this is educational after all. WARREN BUCKLEITNER

Computers and the Internet
Toys
Disney Walt Co


The Royals' Terrance Gore Excels as a Pinch-Runner

Abstract: KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Clusters of reporters pushed and nudged for elbow room in a packed Kansas City clubhouse Wednesday night in the aftermath of the Royals’ 7-2 win over the San Francisco Giants. The victory reinvigorated a fan base that had been shaken by the Royals’ loss in Game 1 of the World Series. Reporters flocked around Lorenzo Cain and his always quotable outfield partner, Jarrod Dyson. They hovered near first baseman Eric Hosmer. Seemingly oblivious to the flurry of activity, Terrance Gore changed into his civilian clothes. Gore, whose role on the Royals is to create havoc on the basepaths, had just achieved two milestones: He had appeared in his first World Series game and had scored his first Series run. “It feels pretty good,” Gore, 23, said as he dressed. “It’s amazing, actually.” Gore’s big moment in Game 2 came in the bottom of the sixth inning after Billy Butler singled to give the Royals a 3-2 lead. Gore, one of the fastest runners in baseball, replaced Butler. The two have become something of a tandem, with Gore often being sent into the game to pinch-run for Butler, the bulky designated hitter who outweighs the 165-pound Gore by about 80 pounds. So Gore was on first base. Down at second was Hosmer. After they both advanced on a wild pitch, they came around to score on a double by Salvador Perez. As they crossed home plate, Hosmer looked back at Gore and said, “Good job, G Baby.” “When I got out there, I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m in the World Series,’ ” Gore said. “I was just telling myself, ‘Don’t run over Hos.’ ” He added: “But now, it’s actually just coming down to me: Wow, I really just played in the World Series.” Gore’s journey to this point began in Macon, Ga. He was 5 years old, maybe 6, and was playing left field in a T-ball league. “Some kid hit the ball to right field, and you could see me from left field go all the way to right field before the kid in right field got the ball,” Gore said, laughing. “And then I got the ball and ran all the way to home. I almost had him, but I couldn’t get him. So I threw the ball at him.” That was the first hint of speed. The real revelation came when he was a high school junior. Gore, who is 5 feet 7 inches, never had a growth spurt. He had a speed spurt. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I literally got out of bed, and I was so much faster than everyone else.” Although Gore played high school football, he never seriously considered playing the sport in college. Basketball was unrealistic. “Baseball has always been my No. 1 priority,” he said. “My heart was always with baseball. Always.” After playing baseball at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, Fla., Gore was picked in the 20th round of the 2011 draft. Then came a climb through the minors that was anything but rapid. There were stops in Burlington, N.C.; Lexington, Ky.; Wilmington, Del.; and Omaha. Gore, an outfielder, did not hit much, but he could run. And by the end of August, he was with the Royals, the call-up coming just as he was re-evaluating his career. “Guys in the minor leagues probably thought, like I thought, I’m in hiatus; there is not a chance I’m going to get to the big leagues,” he said. “Now they see me and can figure, ‘He got there; I can get there.’ ” The Royals, of course, didn’t want Gore’s bat; they wanted his legs. They wanted him to amplify an already potent running attack. Gore stole a base in his major league debut on Aug. 31 and stole four more bases in September. In the playoffs, he stole a base against the Oakland Athletics in the American League wild-card game and stole two more against the Los Angeles Angels in a division series. After nearly two months in the majors, he has eight stolen bases without being caught, one at-bat, no hits and seven runs scored. All but one of the steals came when he was pinch-running for Butler. Gore is sharing a dream that resonates to Macon and to Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, Mo., where his older brother, Staff Sgt. Dexter Gore, is stationed. “Watching him go from this little brother who I picked on and played with to being a major league baseball player is pretty incredible,” Dexter Gore said. Outside the Royals’ clubhouse on Wednesday night, their mother, Theresa Gore, was among those waiting for Terrance to make his appearance. She said she was still having a hard time wrapping her mind around his achievement. “Sometimes I have to ask, ‘Is this really real?’ ” she said. Her son is no longer anonymous. He walked into a mall here recently and saw a collection of “That’s What Speed DO” T-shirts. “I actually saw my face on one of them,” Gore said. “I was like, ‘How is my face on a shirt I don’t even have?’ ” Welcome to the life of a celebrity. His unexpected rise symbolizes the exuberance of a franchise that has returned to the playoffs after a 29-year absence. While he appreciates the attention, he hasn’t fully absorbed it. “I’m just a regular guy from Macon, Ga., who can run a little bit,” Gore said. There is a part of him that still sees himself as that speedy T-ball left fielder who ran down a ball in right field and then chased the runner home.

Baseball
Terrance Gore
Kansas City Royals
World Series


Brown Hasn't Stopped Believing

Abstract: MY favorite slogan from the 1960's is Adam Clayton Powell Jr.'s exhortation: "Keep the faith, baby." More than "I have a dream" or "Power to the people," "Keep the faith" is hip, timeless wisdom that embraces perseverance, toughness and hope in a brighter tomorrow. The Knicks family -- all you who have suffered since November and will continue to suffer until April -- should adopt this slogan as your mantra. You're going to have to keep the faith. The Knicks (15-37) are young, demoralized and, on many nights, disoriented. But nights like last night offer a glimmer of hope when the Knicks play well from start to finish and actually win. The blame game is played at no higher level than in New York: we climb over each other for credit and are quick to point fingers. Madison Square Garden is up to the rafters in accusations, but for now, let's just deal with the Knicks. Most of the blame for their woes has been aimed at Isiah Thomas, the team president. In fact, the responsibility for victories and losses falls on Larry Brown. From November to April, Brown is the maestro, the alchemist. He is the master teacher and Hall of Fame coach who can beat you with his players, then turn around and beat you with your own. We'll deal with Thomas's performance at the season's end. "We're 14-30-something and playing terribly, and nobody talks about people being out, nobody talks about how young this team is," Brown said yesterday. "But it's my responsibility. I've said 100 times: I got to coach them better, and I believe that. You can look at my track record: I've been in a lot of situations like this but not in this environment. The reality is that there's enough blame to go around." I'll give Brown and Thomas the benefit of the doubt. Thomas won an N.C.A.A. championship at Indiana and won two N.B.A. championships with the Detroit Pistons. He has run the Continental Basketball Association, had an ownership share with the Toronto Raptors and coached the Indiana Pacers. Brown won an N.C.A.A. championship at Kansas and an N.B.A. championship with the Pistons. Between them they have an idea of what it takes to win. These Knicks are part of an evolving picture. "I'm hopeful that this thing gets over, because it's never any fun to go through a period like this and read your names in the paper," Brown said. "You lack confidence. It's a hard thing to fight through, but that's the reality -- we've lost all these games and we just got to fight back." Every losing season needs a face, and the face of the Knicks' free fall has become Eddy Curry, a 6-foot-11 center. Curry was the fourth pick of the 2001 draft. The Knicks obtained him from the Bulls for a 2006 first-round pick and a package of players and other picks. Thomas gambled that the 23-year-old Curry had an ocean of talent he hadn't begun to tap; Curry feels he has been letting the organization down, and to an extent he has. But there are nights like last night against Toronto when you can see a glimmer of potential. Curry was a beast inside, scoring 18 points, including a much-needed basket with 30.6 seconds left that gave the Knicks a 96-93 lead en route to a 98-96 victory. "I try to talk to him all the time," Brown said. "Obviously, when we traded for him there was the talk that, 'Hey, you're getting a young center who's the future of your team.' I can see that he's taking a lot of this pretty hard, that he feels a responsibility for the problems we're having. And I tell him all the time, this is about 15 guys and a coaching staff, it's not about one guy, and he's just got to keep trying to get better. He's got to keep competing and not give in." Brown said: "The thing I got to make him understand -- he's 22 years old. I told him every day it's like his freshman year. He's in a market that they look at him and realize what we gave up and the expectations are pretty great. "It's tough, but I do believe there's a real chance here, and I like that, I like that the expectations are high. I like that they love this sport here and expect excellence. That's why you're so miserable. Not that you're not miserable in other places that you coach, but coming here I felt like if we ever played the right way, an appealing way, it would help our sport, because there is no better place to do it than in New York." Before Brown left yesterday's shoot-around, he said he looked forward to the last two months of the season. The pattern for many of Brown's teams is that by midseason either everybody has bought in or been shipped out. It will be curious to see what happens to these Knicks. I'd be surprised if they continue to be terrible. Expect effort but not miracles. "As a player you got to keep believing that things are going change," Curry said after last night's game. "If we give up, it's only going to get worse. We always got to believe that things are going to change." Keep the faith, baby. Sports of The Times E-mail: wcr@nytimes.com

TORONTO RAPTORS
NEW YORK KNICKS
NEW YORK KNICKERBOCKERS
BROWN LARRY
SPORTS OF THE TIMES (TIMES COLUMN)
COACHES AND MANAGERS
BASKETBALL


WikiLeaks Founder Said to Fear ‘Illegal Rendition’ to U.S.

Abstract: LONDON — Lawyers for Julian Assange , the founder of the WikiLeaks antisecrecy group, said on Tuesday that they would oppose his extradition to Sweden because he might subsequently face “illegal rendition” to the United States, risking imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or even the death penalty. They made the assertion in defense documents released after Mr. Assange made a brief appearance in a British high-security court for a largely procedural hearing concerning his resistance to demands for his extradition to Sweden, where he has been accused of sexual misconduct. The documents for the first time publicly named the two WikiLeaks volunteers who have accused Mr. Assange of forcing them to have sex with him without a condom in Sweden last August, in one case while the woman was asleep. In keeping with Sweden’s policy of anonymity for those involved in such cases, they had been referred to only as Ms. A and Ms. W. Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the Swedish prosecutors’ office, could not immediately say whether the disclosure of the women’s names was a crime, but she said that possibility would be investigated. Jennifer Robinson, one of Mr. Assange’s London lawyers, said that the inclusion of the women’s names in the defense documents was an oversight that would be corrected. The court scheduled the extradition hearing for Feb. 7-8. The sexual accusations, which Mr. Assange denies, have overlapped with the WikiLeaks publication of about 2,000 State Department documents — from a trove of about 250,000 in its possession — exposing confidential or secret communications to broad scrutiny on its Web site and in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian in Britain , Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. “Our work with WikiLeaks continues unabated, and we are stepping up our publishing for matters relating to Cablegate and other materials,” Mr. Assange said after the 10-minute hearing, using his group’s term for the State Department documents. “Those will shortly be appearing through our newspaper partners throughout the world,” he said, without elaborating on the content. In recent weeks, the flow of documents has slowed to a trickle. Mr. Assange was jailed in Britain in early December after a Swedish prosecutor issued a European arrest warrant seeking his extradition to be questioned about the sexual accusations. He was released on $370,000 bail nine days later, on Dec. 16. In a 35-page outline of their case against extradition, released on the WikiLeaks Web site, Mr. Assange’s lawyers said, “It is submitted that there is a real risk that, if extradited to Sweden, the United States will seek his extradition and/or illegal rendition to the U.S.A., where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantánamo Bay or elsewhere.” The document also cited statements by calling for the execution of those who leaked the State Department documents. “Indeed, if Mr. Assange were rendered to the U.S.A. without assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out, there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty,” the lawyers said. Mr. Assange’s lawyers released their outline within minutes of the court hearing. They said they would also argue that Swedish law did not permit their client to be extradited on “the mere suspicion” that he had committed a crime. The lawyers argued that Swedish prosecutors had said publicly that they were seeking his extradition solely to question him about the sexual misconduct accusations. The defense said Mr. Assange had been “the victim of a pattern of illegal or corrupt behavior” by Swedish prosecutors, whom they accused of making a series of procedural and other errors in their handling of the case. Previous hearings have been held in central London courts. But the one on Tuesday was set for the Belmarsh high-security court in the southeast of the city, which often handles terrorism cases. Britain’s court service said the move was intended to accommodate reporters and camera crews who had scrimmaged for position at the other courts. Wearing a gray duffle coat over a dark suit and tie, Mr. Assange arrived with his British lawyer, Mark Stephens. Once in court, he gave a thumbs-up to associates in the public gallery. The WikiLeaks disclosures have angered officials in Washington, and Justice Department officials are seeking to determine whether they can bring charges against him. Prosecutors have gone to court to demand Twitter account records of several people linked to WikiLeaks, including Mr. Assange, according to the group and a copy of a subpoena made public on Friday. The subpoena is the first public evidence of a criminal investigation, announced last month by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., that has been urged by members of Congress from both parties but is fraught with legal and political difficulties for the Obama administration. It was denounced by WikiLeaks, which has so far made public only about 1 percent of the quarter-million diplomatic cables in its possession. It has threatened to post them all on the Web if criminal charges are brought. When Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, was released from jail last month, his bail conditions required him to stay in Ellingham Hall, a luxurious house on a 650-acre estate in eastern England; wear an electronic tag; and report to local police officers every day. He has described the conditions as “high-tech house arrest.” He recently said he had signed deals to publish an autobiography that, he told a British newspaper, might be worth $1.7 million. On Tuesday, the court agreed to allow him to move to central London for two days during the full extradition hearing next month. He will be staying at the Frontline Club, founded by Vaughan Smith, the owner of Ellingham Hall.

Assange Julian P
Wikileaks
Great Britain
Sweden
Extradition
International Relations


Uproar Over Allowing Weldon Marc Gilbert, Rape Suspect, to View Pornography

Abstract: TACOMA, Wash. — When Weldon Marc Gilbert was a wealthy jet pilot, prosecutors say, he spent much of his time and money manipulating young boys. He used his high-priced toys, including a sea plane, a helicopter and a boat, to lure them, they say, then molested them and beat them. He captured much of the sexually explicit action with his video camera. Mr. Gilbert created more than 100 videos of the boys, sometimes turning the camera on himself. In 2009, he pleaded guilty in federal court to 31 counts of producing child pornography involving 17 victims and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. While Mr. Gilbert sits in jail here, he is preparing for another trial next month, this time on state charges of rape and molestation. In this case, he is acting as his own lawyer. And as such, he is allowed to review the evidence against him — including the pornographic videos — and watch them as often as he likes. Restricting his access could result in a mistrial. Local law enforcement officials are furious, but there is not much they can do about it. “It’s absurd and maddening,” said Mark Lindquist, the prosecutor for Pierce County, which includes Tacoma, where the state trial is to begin Sept. 19. While defendants normally can view evidence against them, Mr. Lindquist said, they are not usually allowed to possess it, particularly when it is contraband like pornography. “Defense attorneys typically ask to see some portion of the pornography that will be used as evidence, review a nominal amount of it and leave,” Mr. Lindquist said. “I have never had a case where a defense attorney wanted to possess the pornography. We don’t turn cocaine over to defendants for them to personally check out.” After a local television station, KOMO, reported the situation last month, there was a public protest at the jail here where Mr. Gilbert is being held. Many state legislators have vowed to change the law but they cannot do so in time to affect Mr. Gilbert’s case. Mr. Lindquist said his office would draft language that would “pass constitutional muster,” though he expects challenges from defense lawyers concerned about the rights of defendants. Unlike most inmates, who follow their lawyers’ advice not to discuss their cases with the news media, Mr. Gilbert, 50, who flew for U.P.S., is speaking out from behind bars. He sent a four-page handwritten letter to Mr. Lindquist early last month, denouncing him and others for stirring up the outcry against him. He blamed officials for giving the public the impression that he was reviewing the tapes for his own prurient interests and noted that this was “ludicrous” since he had to look at them in a separate room monitored by corrections officers and with his private investigator present. He told Mr. Lindquist to drop the charges because he was not guilty. He also suggested that Mr. Lindquist was pursuing the case for his own political advantage. “Who, beside yourself, benefits from the second round of prosecution?” Mr. Gilbert asked. In response, Mr. Lindquist said he did not give “a free pass” to criminals just because they were already serving time. Then last week, Mr. Gilbert gave a jailhouse interview to KOMO, demonstrating, perhaps, why most lawyers tell their clients to stay silent. “This whole issue should have never happened,” Mr. Gilbert told KOMO. “I caused it. I’m guilty of it. I truly wish I could have taken it back. What I saw is a lot of fun, reliving the teenage years, absolutely loving my time around these young men.” But, he added, “Wrong behavior, shameful behavior is not necessarily the same as illegal behavior that deserves a life prison sentence.” Federal prosecutors have described Mr. Gilbert, who lived in an expensive house in Lake Tapps, just east of Tacoma, as a “master manipulator” who would groom his victims to gain their trust before abusing them. “Gilbert saw each of the dozens of boys that he sexually abused as sex objects he could obtain by giving them things,” federal prosecutors wrote a few years ago. He gave them money, cellphones, flying lessons, trips overseas, strippers and alcohol, they said — even help with their homework. “His sexual sadism and his fascination with boys was the center of his life,” they wrote. John Henry Browne, a lawyer from Seattle who represented Mr. Gilbert on the federal charges and helped arrange the deal under which Mr. Gilbert pleaded guilty, is acting as standby counsel in the state case. He said in an interview that Mr. Gilbert was exercising his constitutional rights and that they should be protected. Mr. Browne also said that he — and Mr. Gilbert — had watched the videos a few years ago in preparing for the federal case. He said 90 percent of them were “silly” and described them as “birthday spankings.” The remaining 10 percent, he said, were “problematic.” A Pierce County Superior Court judge has ruled that in any pretrial interviews Mr. Gilbert cannot directly ask questions of the young men involved, some of whom were under 16, the age of consent, at the time of the episodes, which began in 2001. Mr. Lindquist is asking that during the trial Mr. Gilbert be barred from directly cross-examining them on the witness stand. But Mr. Gilbert argued in his television interview that he would be more sensitive in his questioning than anyone else because he knew the young men. “The last thing I want to do is embarrass and humiliate them,” he said.

Sentences (Criminal)
Decisions and Verdicts
Pornography
Sex Crimes
Men and Boys
Child Abuse and Neglect


Giants’ Postseason Hopes Are in Jeopardy After Loss to Packers

Abstract: GREEN BAY, Wis. — Tailback Brandon Jacobs received a handoff from quarterback Eli Manning and took off running the way the Giants needed him to if they were going to win a critical game in December. Jacobs, a human Hummer, crossed into Green Bay Packers territory in the third quarter Sunday and kept going for a 21-yard gain that turned into a microcosm of another devastating loss. While being tackled, Jacobs was stripped of the ball, and as it bounced free, the Giants’ grip on the playoffs became looser. So too, perhaps, did Coach Tom Coughlin’s grasp on his job. Tight end Kevin Boss tried to pick up the ball instead of falling on it and came away empty-handed. Safety Nick Collins recovered the fumble for the Packers, who went on to hand the Giants a 45-17 loss by capitalizing on six Giants turnovers, including four interceptions by Manning. By the time of Jacobs’s turnover, Coughlin had run out of answers. In desperation, he challenged the fumble, which was upheld. “I didn’t have a whole lot of evidence,” he conceded, “but it was an opportunity.” In general, Coughlin added: “There’s no denying what took place. The facts are the facts. They’re responsible for it. I’m responsible for it, and so we have to live with it and turn around and line up next week.” During a speech he delivered at a players-only meeting last week, Manning suggested that the sun would come up for the Giants on the Sunday after their 21-point fourth-quarter collapse against the Philadelphia Eagles in a 38-31 defeat. The warming trend was literal, not metaphorical. The temperature at Lambeau Field was 25 degrees with a negligible breeze, conditions that were downright tropical compared with the minus-23 wind chill three seasons ago when the Giants, led by Manning, beat the Packers in overtime in the N.F.C. championship game. In the end, this was the dawning of a new season for the Packers (9-6), who kept alive their playoff hopes. The Giants (9-6) can still emerge from the darkness of their third two-game losing streak of the season, but they no longer control their postseason destiny. They need to win their regular-season finale against the Washington Redskins and receive plenty of help: they need the Packers to lose or they must finish in a three-way tie with the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Although there may be brighter days immediately ahead for the team, Coughlin’s long-term security took a turn for the bleak. It was not just that the Giants lost but how discombobulated they appeared in the process: they never led and were outscored in the second half, 24-3. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who had missed the previous game after sustaining his second concussion of 2010, sliced and diced the vaunted Giants defense for 404 yards passing, and Green Bay’s offense netted 515 yards. Rodgers, who completed 25 of 37 passes and threw for four touchdowns and no interceptions, was as sharp as the Giants’ defense was not. A miscommunication in the secondary resulted in the first touchdown, an 80-yard pass play from Rodgers to Jordy Nelson, whom he hit in stride. Nelson was able to slice through the secondary because one safety, Antrel Rolle, was in zone coverage and the other, Deon Grant, was playing man-to-man. The reception, the longest of Nelson’s three-year N.F.L. career, upset Coughlin, who stood with his gloved hands on his hips and a sour look on his face. On the Giants’ ensuing possession, Manning, who passed for 301 yards, made an error that had to be equally as hard for his coach to digest. Throwing into a thicket of green-and-gold jerseys, Manning had his pass intercepted by cornerback Tramon Williams. That set up the Packers’ second touchdown, a 3-yard pass from Rodgers to James Jones. Manning led the Giants back with two quick scoring strikes. The first, to Hakeem Nicks, covered 36 yards; the other was an 85-yard pass to Mario Manningham that tied the score at 14-14. The momentum gained by the Giants did not snowball; cornerback Terrell Thomas made sure of that by slapping Packers receiver Donald Driver on the helmet at the end of a 6-yard pass play. Thomas drew a personal foul that gave the Packers the ball on the Giants’ 16. Rodgers completed an 8-yard pass to Jones, then called the number of fullback John Kuhn, who ran it in for the first of his three touchdowns. Rodgers sustained his second concussion on Dec. 12 against the Detroit Lions when he stubbornly tried to scramble for more yards instead of sliding to avoid contact. The first time Rodgers was flushed out of the pocket Sunday, deep in Giants territory on the Packers’ third possession, he took off running, and everybody who had a rooting interest in the game held his breath. Green Bay fans did so because the Giants’ defense has knocked six quarterbacks out of games this season, at least briefly. Giants fans did so because Michael Vick’s 130-yard rushing effort for the Eagles the previous week was a nightmare not easily laid to rest. Rodgers ran for 15 yards before sliding at the 6, an act that earned him an ovation from the crowd of 70,649. “He played very well,” Coughlin said of Rodgers, adding, “I thought his accuracy was outstanding, and he had good control of what they were trying to do.” For the Giants, there seemed no end to their suffering. They were not able to fly home, their flight grounded Sunday night by the snowstorm in the New York metropolitan area. After the game, Jacobs was going nowhere in a hurry. As he strode toward the locker room exit, wheeling his carry-on luggage behind him, Jacobs was asked if he had any response for those who will pin this loss on Coughlin. “I ain’t got nothing to say about that,” he said. “They can put it wherever they want to.”

New York Giants
Green Bay Packers
Football


Sect’s Children to Stay in State Custody for Now

Abstract: SAN ANGELO, Tex. — A judge on Friday ordered that all 416 children seized by Texas authorities in the raid on a polygamist religious sect be held in protective custody by the state pending further investigation into whether they had been abused, or were at risk of abuse in their community. After hearing two days of testimony, the judge, Barbara Walther, issued a terse statement from the bench at Tom Green County Court saying that she had also ordered maternal and paternal testing on all the children, who range in age from infants to 17-year-olds, and expedited DNA and fingerprint testing of their parents as well. Judge Walther emphasized that her decision was preliminary and that “a safe environment” for the children was paramount, now and in the future. The next hearing to update the status of the children and the investigation will be held on or before June 5, the judge said. The case, arising from a raid beginning April 3 at the Yearning for Zion ranch , about 45 miles from here in the small town of Eldorado, has gripped legal experts and child welfare authorities for its scale — the largest raid on a polygamist group in more than 50 years — and for the tangle of law and logistics raised by the questions of custody and religion. The ranch, really a self-contained community, has been operated since 2003 by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , or F.L.D.S., which broke off from the mainstream Mormon Church when the Mormons disavowed polygamy more than a century ago. But questions about the raid itself and what prompted it have continued to deepen as well, even as the first round of hearings was resolved. On Friday, the Texas Rangers said in a statement that they were investigating a Colorado woman, Rozita Swinton, 33, as a “person of interest” in calls placed to a crisis center hot line here in late March. The authorities have said they launched their raid after a girl’s phone call to an abuse hot line. They said that she gave her name as Sarah and that she said she was 16, pregnant and being abused by her 50-year-old husband. But they have been unable to locate the girl after two weeks, and the F.L.D.S. families have said they think the call was a hoax. The police statement on Friday said items found in Ms. Swinton’s Colorado Springs home through a search warrant produced “several items that indicated a possible connection between Swinton and calls regarding the F.L.D.S. compounds.” Ms. Swinton has an unlisted number, and other efforts to reach her were unsuccessful. The judge’s decision to continue holding the children for now produced a mostly quiet reaction outside the courthouse. A lawyer for four of the mothers, Tim Edwards, said that his clients would comply with the court’s orders and “do everything in our power to turn the situation around and return the children back to their parents, which we firmly believe it is in their best interest to be.” A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Marleigh Meisner, said she thought the judge had done a good job, and emphasized that the raid had not been about religion. “This is a situation that involved the protection of children,” Ms. Meisner said. “This is about children, keeping children safe from abuse and neglect.” The families and their lawyers, almost from the beginning, have said the complete opposite: that the raid was all about religion. And in making their argument to Judge Walther on Friday, they kept with that message. Lawyers for the families said the state’s justification for the raid was flimsy and tainted by bias against the F.L.D.S. community. Evidence that older men had married or had sex with girls as young as 15 — in violation of Texas law, and a core plank of the state’s decision to remove the children — was inconclusive, they said. That a teenage girl becomes pregnant is by itself not evidence of child abuse, they said, let alone an indictment of the entire community where she lives. “C.P.S. is trying to put the church on trial,” said Rod Parker, a lawyer and spokesman for the church, referring to the Texas Division of Child Protective Services. “In reality what it’s turning into is that C.P.S. is on trial for their high-handed and precipitous tactics in removing these children.” The first witness for the families, William John Walsh, who described himself as a theological expert, said the church did not hold as part of its written theology that under-age girls should marry older men. The church’s prophets, Mr. Walsh told the court, decide when a couple is ready, but the liturgy itself takes no position. Mr. Walsh said the breakaway sect did not teach, “ah, let’s marry an under-age girl.” The second witness, a mother from the community, Merylin Jeffs, 29, told Judge Walther that she was willing to move away from the ranch if necessary to protect her 7-year-old daughter, Marva. Ms. Jeffs said she and Marva had never been separated until the raid. Ms. Jeffs said she would not allow her daughter to marry before age 18, “no matter the consequences.” Neither side presented detailed evidence about the individual children seized in the raid. “There is a culture of young girls being pregnant by old men,” said Angie Voss, an investigator with Child Protective Services, who participated in the raid and interviewed girls at the ranch. Ms. Voss told the court she found evidence that “more than 20 girls, some of whom are now adults, have conceived or given birth under the age of 16 or 17.” Judge Walther was not asked to determine final custody for the children. Under Texas law, further hearings must be held in 60 days — the June 5 hearing date in this case — and then again at six months if a child is removed from the home. In that case, a trial, possibly by a jury, would decide final custody after a year. Though this is hardly an ordinary case, data from the Texas child protective system show a preference for keeping children in the care of families or relatives. In about two-thirds of custody cases, children ultimately return to families or relatives, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Austin. Children from roughly the remaining one-third of cases end up in long-term foster care or are adopted. But the center’s executive director, Scott McCown, a former judge, said the percentages of children returned to families were lower in abuse cases, and lower still in instances of sexual abuse.


Hospital Plans to Build Over F.D.R. Drive, but Foes Fear Traffic and a Ruined View

Abstract: To the opponents of a $235 million construction project on the Upper East Side planned by the Hospital for Special Surgery, traffic congestion, horn-honking and vehicle emissions in their neighborhood are already intolerable. They say trucks loading supplies or removing trash at the prestigious 145-year-old hospital are unable to fit into loading berths, so they block the street, creating gridlock. “Traffic is idling — and air quality is already worsening in the whole neighborhood,” said Dennis C. Alex, who has led residents of a nearby apartment building at 530 East 72d Street in opposing the new construction. “And now,” he added, “they want to build yet another giant building with more trucks and more traffic.” That structure is the hospital’s River Building, a planned 12-story outpatient center on a deck over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive between East 71st and 72d Streets. The hospital also plans to add three floors to its existing building just to the south. The controversy is yet another demonstration of the friction that institutional expansion engenders in the city’s compact residential neighborhoods. This time the battleground is in the northern portion of Bedpan Alley, the two-mile string of medical and research complexes at the far East Side of Manhattan, and the institutional combatant is the celebrated Hospital for Special Surgery, which performs more than 20,000 operations a year. The hospital was recently named the nation’s top hospital for orthopedic medicine for the second year in a row by U.S. News & World Report. Several of the hospital’s doctors are the physicians for city sports teams, and two staff members have been invited to minister to United States athletes at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. And the proposed River Building’s architecture and design firms recently won a design excellence award in a ceremony presided over by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at the 26th Annual Art Commission Awards in Manhattan. “We are at capacity here, and the need is growing,” said Deborah M. Sale, an executive vice president at the hospital, at 535 East 70th Street. She said that aging baby boomers, new surgical techniques and the hospital’s renown were swelling its patient ranks. Though opponents say that an outpatient building could be constructed somewhere else in the neighborhood, Ms. Sale said the hospital had fruitlessly pursued alternative locations nearby. “The real-estate market made it impossible,” she said, adding that building over the F.D.R. Drive “is currently our only option.” Many opponents of the building live in two structures overlooking the East River: 530 East 72d Street, a 21-story white-brick postwar cooperative called the Edgewater, and the so-called “black and whites,” a row of charming five-story 1894 walkups from 527 to 541 East 72d Street. Their name is derived from the houses’ distinctive brick exteriors, painted black with white trim. Critics charge that the River Building will make the neighborhood increasingly unlivable. “When is enough enough?” asked Sarah Dudley Plimpton, who was married to the author George Plimpton until he died at age 76 in 2003. She has lived in the black-and-whites since 1976, “but George was here since 1959,” she said, “when it was a sleepy neighborhood. George loved it the way it was.” He lived in 541 East 72d Street and edited the Paris Review from an office there. She has helped organize a group of about 100 opposing the project. Although generations ago the neighborhood was an enclave of tenements, cigar factories and malt houses, “it used to be like TriBeCa here,” Ms. Plimpton said. “Then they threw up high rise after high rise. Adding another building would be impossible. Medical personnel, garbage trucks, ambulances, many more people, all in this fragile little area.” In arguments before the New York City Planning Commission, opponents have claimed that the River Building would violate codes that protect residential areas, and say that the building would be inconsistent with the city’s effort to encourage access to the water. Specifically they charge that the new building, which would rise 168 feet over the roadway, will alter a rare public view from the crescent-shaped, 10-bench overlook park at 72nd Street and the East River. Currently visible is the entire sweep of the river from the Triborough Bridge south to the Queensboro Bridge. Ms. Plimpton said the River Building would “close off the river panorama forever,” chopping it in two. Ms. Sale said the hospital “has tried to be sensitive to that issue,” explaining that its architects tried to accommodate the residents of the Edgewater by setting the building back from East 72nd Street, reducing the surface area of its floors. “It would be lovely if it were possible to preserve all the views in many neighborhoods in Manhattan,” Ms. Sale said, “but it isn’t possible.” Some opponents acknowledge that they have a self-serving motive: the protection of their river views, and the value of their apartments. “I get what I deserve, here in Manhattan,” Mr. Alex said of the transience of scenic vistas. “But that’s not the issue. They aren’t complying with the rules that govern residential neighborhoods.” The hospital’s environmental impact statement says that the project will produce “no significant traffic impacts,” but opponents have argued before the commission that traffic congestion already exposes the local community to “increased potential exposure to hazardous substances.” The opponents argue that the hospital’s loading docks are traffic-jam instigators, since they do not have the dimensions common for such facilities. One berth on East 71st Street is blocked by a trash compactor on a concrete slab. Another, nearby, which the hospital says accommodates two standard trucks, is not big enough to fully contain even one. “So the hospital has turned 71st Street itself into a loading bay,” Mr. Alex said. “Trucks are constantly parking in the middle of the street.” This brings about a Rube Goldberg-like chain of nasty consequences, he said: Traffic blocked by the trucks creates gridlock at the East 71st Street exit from the F.D.R. Drive down the street, then backs up for long distances on the highway’s exit road. Those cars in turn block the entrance to the F.D.R. Drive two blocks northward at East 73d Street, spilling gridlock into the neighborhood. Ms. Sale said the hospital’s loading docks “are in compliance with the law.” Of the traffic bottleneck on East 71st Street, she said, “I don’t believe this institution is the sole cause of that condition.” She added that the hospital had been trying to schedule deliveries to prevent overlapping, and has attempted to divert trucks to East 70th Street to minimize disruption, adding, “We feel we can manage this.” But the current design of the River Building has no new loading docks planned because the structure “will not add a significant number of trucks per day,” she said. The Planning Commission is expected to issue its ruling on the proposed building soon; then it will go to the City Council. The local community board voted in favor of the River Building plan in May, and the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, has also announced conditional approval of the project. There are also neighbors who welcome the River Building. To M. Barry Schneider, president of the East Sixties Neighborhood Association, which counts some 800 members east of Third Avenue, the hospital “has made a compelling case,” he said. “They need new space.”

Hospital for Special Surgery
Building (Construction)
Upper East Side (NYC)
Roads and Traffic
Hospitals


UConn Wins Record Fourth Straight Title

Abstract: INDIANAPOLIS — Before Breanna Stewart had even played a game for Connecticut, she said her goal was to win four national titles in her four years. By that point, the Huskies had won seven championships, but for all the stars who had cycled through the program, none of them — not Sue Bird or Swin Cash, not Diana Taurasi or Tina Charles or Maya Moore — had been able to win four straight. In fact, no women’s team in history had. As UConn raced through this season, however, Stewart’s ambition began to look more like an inevitability. And with 24 points, 10 rebounds and 6 assists on Tuesday night, she made it official, lifting the Huskies to an 82-51 win over Syracuse in the N.C.A.A. tournament final at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Stewart was named the Final Four’s most outstanding player, and even that was not a surprise: She had won the same honor in each of her previous postseason appearances. Video The University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team held a press conference following their fourth consecutive title win. Coach Geno Auriemma attributed the team’s continued success to his players. Credit Credit Aj Mast/Associated Press No player had accomplished that feat, either. No player had won even three. Aiding Stewart’s quest were two fellow senior stars: Morgan Tuck, who had 19 points, and Moriah Jefferson, who had 13. They leave Connecticut (38-0) having completed the sixth undefeated season in team history, with a 75-game streak over all. The Huskies went 151-5 over their four years — the most wins over a four-year stretch in N.C.A.A. history. “There’s three ingredients that go into this kind of success: 1-2-3,” Coach Geno Auriemma said on ESPN’s broadcast as he pointed to Stewart, Jefferson and Tuck. “I’ve never been around a better group of great players that really love the game.” As the seniors left the court together, Jefferson said later, “we just kept saying, ‘Oh, man, oh, man, four in a row.’ ” Tuck is widely expected to enter the W.N.B.A. draft, but she still has the opportunity to pursue one more title: She has an extra year of eligibility, having gained a medical redshirt for her sophomore season. Asked on ESPN’s broadcast after the game if she planned to leave UConn, she awkwardly laughed before Stewart rushed over and shouted, “It’s a secret!” Soon after, it was revealed that the long, brown box that Stewart had carried into the locker room before the game had contained a Marine’s sword. Stewart, Jefferson and Tuck used it to tap one another on the shoulder and ceremoniously knight themselves. Breanna Stewart Completes Her Run of Dominance Breanna Stewart’s four-year record with UConn was 151-5, and every victory but one was by 10 or more points. “Our three seniors have done something incredibly special,” Auriemma said, adding, “I can’t describe what this is like, but if you ever felt like you loved something more than anything in the world, that’s what this feels like.” The victory was meaningful for another senior, too: Briana Pulido, who joined the team as a walk-on but scored the final points of the game, sinking a jumper with about 13 seconds left after UConn’s starters had been pulled. The title secured a record for Auriemma, who, with his 11th title, surpassed the U.C.L.A. legend John Wooden for the most in college basketball history. Auriemma has never lost an N.C.A.A. championship game. Asked about his passing Wooden, Auriemma said: “First thing I thought about was last night, there was something like 20 of my former players all in one room, and I remember taking a step back and saying, ‘This is unbelievable.’ With 11 championships, there’s been a lot of great players I’ve been able to coach.” Stewart grew up in North Syracuse, minutes from Syracuse’s campus, and on Monday, she said it was fitting to end her college career against the Orange, whose games she frequently attended throughout high school. Image Connecticut’s Morgan Tuck shooting against Syracuse’s Briana Day in the first half of Tuesday’s game. Credit Michael Conroy/Associated Press She also said she was proud of their tournament run. But on Tuesday, it was her job to stop them. Syracuse, which had never reached the round of 16, made its surprising journey to the final with high-pressured defense and volume 3-point shooting that neutralized traditional powers like seventh-seeded Tennessee and top-seeded South Carolina. On Sunday, the Orange made a Final Four-record 12 3-pointers in an 80-59 rout of Washington. But they were 24-point underdogs against UConn, and from the start, it was obvious why. Syracuse’s full-court press was made largely obsolete by the Huskies’ speed, and UConn’s own full-court press, which helped it force eight first-half turnovers — a jarring turn of events for Syracuse, which had had the top turnover margin in the country. At one point in the second quarter, Stewart snagged a rebound and tossed a precise outlet pass to Kia Nurse speeding down the floor for a layup. As Syracuse called timeout and the UConn players jogged back to their bench, Stewart shouted at her teammates, “Let’s go,” spiced with an expletive. They led by 23 at the time. Syracuse, which made only 2 of 12 3-point attempts in the first half, trailed by 50-23 at the break, having been on the wrong side of three runs of at least 9-0. On the rare occasion the Orange converted a long-range attempt — they finished 2 of 19 — the Huskies had an equally decisive answer, and they stretched their lead to 33 points in the third quarter before Syracuse closed the gap with a 16-0 run. Image Morgan Tuck (3), Kia Nurse (11) and Breanna Stewart at the end of Tuesday’s game. The Huskies finished 38-0. Credit Michael Conroy/Associated Press UConn again extended its lead in short order, though. After playing 38 minutes, and emerging from that 16-0 run unscathed, Stewart took her final order from Auriemma, who was frantically signaling to his players to call timeout. Leaving the court, Stewart jumped into a group hug with Jefferson and Tuck, closing in on that championship she had dreamed of. “This is the perfect ending for all three of us,” Stewart said, adding, “There’s no other way to end it.” On the floor, Bird, Charles and Moore were among the former Huskies to join the celebration. They had each won multiple championships in their college days — but not four. “Now there’s nothing else,” Stewart said. “We did exactly what we wanted.”

College basketball
Records and Achievements
Geno Auriemma
Breanna Stewart
Coaches
NCAA Women's Basketball
Syracuse University
University of Connecticut


Robert B. Cohen Dies at 85; Founded the Hudson News Chain

Abstract: Robert B. Cohen, whose chain of Hudson News shops at airports, bus terminals and railroad stations across the country has offered untold numbers of people a respite from the tedium of travel, died on Feb. 1 at his home in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 86. The cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a Parkinson’s-like neurological disorder, according to his son James, who succeeded his father as president of the company. Mr. Cohen was president of the Hudson County News Company, a major newspaper distributorship, when it went into the retail field in the mid-1970s by taking over a bankrupt newsstand at the Newark airport. In those days, newsstands at passenger terminals were almost all closetlike operations with a handful of publications on the shelf below the cash register. Mr. Cohen envisioned a more welcoming place, and in 1987 the company opened a large, brightly lit store at La Guardia Airport. Its wide aisles, with hundreds of magazines and newspapers, some in foreign languages, fully displayed rather than fanned on top of each other, became the company standard. The one at Grand Central Terminal is approximately 1,000 square feet. There are now about 600 Hudson News outlets across the country. Some have cafes. In 2008, Hudson News was sold to Dufry, a company based in Switzerland that is one of the largest owners of duty-free stores in the world. James Cohen is no longer president. Before going into the newsstand business, Robert Cohen built one of the largest newspaper distributorships in the country, serving the New York and Boston areas. In 1985, in partnership with The New York Times, he acquired the Metropolitan News Company, the distributor of The Times and The Wall Street Journal. He later acquired Newark Newsdealers, also in partnership with The Times. His interest in the companies was sold to The Times in 1994. Mr. Cohen had legal troubles in 1981 when, after a federal investigation, he pleaded guilty to making $37,000 in payoffs to officials of the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union in exchange for favored treatment. He was fined $150,000. Robert Benjamin Cohen was born in Bayonne, N.J., on May 26, 1925, to Isaac and Lillian Goodman Cohen. His father, who once operated a newsstand and a home-delivery route in Brooklyn, started what was then called the Bayonne News Company in the early 1920s. Robert Cohen joined the business after graduating from New York University in 1947, the same year he married Harriet Brandwein, who survives him. Besides his wife and his son, Mr. Cohen is survived by his sister, Rosalind Stone, and six grandchildren. His daughter, Claudia Cohen, who wrote the gossip column, “I, Claudia,” for The Daily News of New York in the early 1980s, died of ovarian cancer in 2007 . His son Michael died in 1997. Mr. Cohen, who also owned a home in Englewood, N.J., owned racehorses. One of them, named Hudson County — for which Mr. Cohen had paid $6,700 — finished second to Cannonade in the 1974 Kentucky Derby.

Cohen Robert B.
Newspapers
Deaths (Obituaries)
Shopping and Retail
Cohen Robert B


South Sudan: U.N. Base Attacked

Abstract: A group of people dressed in civilian clothes pretending to be peaceful protesters who wanted to deliver a petition forced their way into a United Nations base sheltering about 5,000 civilians on Thursday and opened fire, United Nations officials said. At least 20 people were killed and 60 were wounded in the attack on the base in Bor in Jonglei State, a United Nations official said. The exact number of people killed or wounded was not immediately clear, said a United Nations spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric. Two United Nations peacekeepers were wounded repelling the armed mob, he said. More than one million people have fled their homes since fighting erupted in the South Sudan in December between troops backing President Salva Kiir and soldiers loyal to Mr. Kiir’s ousted vice president, Riek Machar. Thousands of people have been killed and tens of thousands have sought refuge at United Nations bases around the country.


Nasa Watches Weather for a Landing Site

Abstract: NASA watched the weather in three time zones as it struggled to pick a landing site for the space shuttle Discovery. The agency plans to bring the ship home today. But showers were in the forecast at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and crosswinds were expected at the next-best option, Edwards Air Force Base in California. At the third-best choice, White Sands, N.M., the weather looked favorable, but that could change and New Mexico is considered inconvenient for transporting the shuttle back to Florida. NASA said that if one of the sites had favorable weather today, it would bring the shuttle home. The shuttle does not have enough fuel to remain in orbit beyond Saturday.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration


Google to Test Bubble-Shaped Self-Driving Cars in Silicon Valley

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — The world is one step closer to the day when people can, in good conscience, drive to work while sipping coffee, texting with a friend and working on a laptop computer. On Friday, Google announced that sometime this summer several prototype versions of its self-driving cars are set to hit the streets of Mountain View, Calif., the search giant’s hometown. The move is still just another round of testing but it is a significant step toward a pilot program in which regular consumers could ride in self-driving cars. Google has long been testing its self-driving car technology with a fleet of Lexus sport utility vehicles that have driven about a million miles on public roads, and that continue to put in 10,000 miles each week. Traditional automakers are also pushing the envelope of driverless tech with on-the-road testing of their own autonomous prototypes, and the industry predicts that by 2020 those dreams could come true. Getting there is now much more about software than hardware. The systems of radar, lasers and cameras currently used by Google and automakers have grown so sophisticated that the vehicles can easily monitor the road in all directions — even beyond what the eye can see. The tough part is figuring out what to do with all that information. In essence, the cars need an electronic brain that knows how to drive in a world where human drivers, as well as pedestrians and bicyclists, often do unpredictable things. They also need to understand regional differences. Drivers in Boston, for instance, often behave differently than those in Atlanta or Los Angeles, where unspoken rules of the road and cultural cues can vary. City environments are particularly challenging, and require software with much more flexibility and power. That’s one of the reasons Google (and its rival, Apple) hope their software acumen can help them solve the puzzle. And now that Google will be testing its new bubble-shaped cars on public roads near its Mountain View headquarters, it’s getting one step closer to honing its predictive technology for urban settings. Video The first autonomous vehicle Google has made will hit public roads in northern California for tests this summer, reports Phil LeBeau of CNBC. Unlike the fleet of self-driving Lexuses that are already on the road, Google’s prototype, which looks like a golf cart with doors , is designed to be a fully autonomous car in which people get in, set their destination and relax as the car does the work. The prototypes cannot go faster than 25 miles per hour and, for now, have a steering wheel and pedals so that a “safety driver” could take over. The steering wheel is a legal requirement, but Google’s plan is to take the driver out of driving completely. Earlier this year, during a presentation at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Astro Teller, head of the Google X research division that created the self-driving car, said that in autumn 2012 the company started allowing Google employees to take the Lexus version home and self-drive on the freeway, so long as they kept paying attention in the event of an emergency. Despite this, the employees got used to self-driving and stopped paying attention. “The assumption that humans can be a reliable backup for the system was a total fallacy,” Mr. Teller said in the presentation . “Once people trust the system, they trust it.” Google realized the best thing to do “was to make a car that has no steering wheel, that has no brake pedal, that has no acceleration pedal — that drives itself all the time, from point A to point B, at the push of a button.” Of course, nothing is accident-proof. Earlier this week, Chris Urmson, director of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, disclosed that self-driving cars had been in 11 “minor accidents ” in which there was only light damage and no injuries, and that “not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident.” This included seven rear-end collisions, a couple of wrecks in which cars were sideswiped and one crash in which the self-driving car was hit by a driver who rolled through a stop sign. The challenge of city driving is one reason driverless technology has first arrived on highways. In the coming months, Tesla Motors has promised to introduce an “autopilot” feature that can take over highway driving in certain conditions. Next year, other automakers will do the same, such as General Motors’ “Super Cruise,” which will allow hands-off-the-wheel, foot-off-the-pedals highway driving. Parking is another area that is poised for an overhaul. Companies like Ford already offer cars that pull into parking spaces automatically. The French supplier Valeo, which works with multiple automakers, is now working on technology aimed at parking garages where you can pull up to a garage and get out, leaving your car to find an available space and park itself. When you’re ready to leave, the car acts like a robotic valet as it unparks and meets you out front.

Google
Driverless Cars,Self-Driving Cars