Charms of Paris Tempt a Busy President

Abstract: PARIS — Yes, President Obama insisted, he loves Paris. As he took questions from a few French television and newspaper reporters over the weekend, with President Nicolas Sarkozy at his side, Mr. Obama was asked why his visit here was such a whirlwind with so little time to linger. “Does that mean that Europe is not on your priority list?” a reporter asked. “What it means is that I have a very tough schedule,” Mr. Obama replied. “I would love nothing more than to have a leisurely week in Paris, stroll down the Seine, take my wife out to a nice meal, have a picnic in Luxembourg Gardens.” He laughed, almost losing himself in the idea of it all, before adding, “Those days are over — for the moment.” But as he ruminated on the question, his mind wandered forward to the future pleasures of civilian life. “At some point, I will be the ex-president,” Mr. Obama said, “and then you will find me in France, I’m sure, quite a bit, having fun.” But before flying home on Sunday, ending a trip that began four days earlier in Saudi Arabia, he indulged in a foretaste of unofficial tourism. With his wife, Michelle , and daughters, Sasha and Malia , Mr. Obama spent his final hours whipping through the city’s A-list attractions. They toured the Notre-Dame Cathedral, where the president lighted a candle as a children’s choir sang. They dined at La Fontaine de Mars, a casual neighborhood bistro near the Eiffel Tower (Mom and Dad only — it was past the girls’ bedtime). And they made a morning visit to the Pompidou Center , the modern art museum famous for its colorful — and curious — architecture, where they went to the top for a panoramic view of Paris. As their motorcade raced through the city, the Obamas passed the Champs-Élysées and the Place de la Concorde, then crossed the Seine into the Latin Quarter. Paris was the only stop on the four-country trip where his family accompanied him, but even alone, Mr. Obama made time for a few tourist outings, doubling as local photo opportunities. A particular favorite seemed to be in Giza, Egypt, where he spent more than an hour and a half marveling at the Great Pyramid. After delivering a speech to the Muslim world at Cairo University, he traded his suit for light khaki slacks, a blue polo shirt and running shoes. (Not everyone on his staff got the memo, which left David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, trying to keep pace on the narrow pyramid steps in his dress shoes.) “This thing’s huge,” Mr. Obama said in amazement. Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, took a camel ride in the more-than-100-degree heat, as did Valerie Jarrett, a senior presidential adviser. When the president learned of it, he seemed interested, too, until he glanced over at the pack of reporters and photographers who were standing watch. “If you weren’t here,” Mr. Obama said, “I’d get on a camel.” He went down a narrow staircase to an underground tomb, where hieroglyphics covered the walls. He closely studied one particular etching, which seemed to resemble one of his most often caricatured features. “Hey, that looks like me,” Mr. Obama said. “Look at those ears!” Tours of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx can take hours. But already late for a flight to Germany, he declared, “I guess we’ve got to go back to work.” So far, Mr. Obama has taken four international trips as president. He asks his schedulers to pencil in at least a bit of time for him — and his entourage — to go sightseeing. Gone are the days when he can simply go on his own. (It was only four years ago when Mr. Obama made his first foreign trip as a senator, walking through Red Square in Moscow, where he blended in with the tourists.) Here in France, though, his outings did not strike the news media as sufficient, which is what led to the question on Saturday at a news conference with Mr. Sarkozy after a meeting in the northern city of Caen. Mr. Obama spent nearly as much time on his tourism answer as he did on questions about the Middle East and North Korea. “My main issue has to do with the fact that when I take these foreign trips, it’s to get business done, because I also have an economy where the unemployment rate is 9.4 percent,” Mr. Obama said. “We still have to pass financial regulations that will prevent the kind of crisis that we’ve seen from happening again. That all requires a lot of work, and so my travel schedule is always limited.” And no, Mr. Obama continued, the fact that he had lunch, and not dinner, with Mr. Sarkozy should not be interpreted as a snub. With Mr. Obama’s family joining him, his aides explained, there was no time for dinner. “I think it’s very important to understand that good friends don’t worry about the symbols and the conventions and the protocols,” Mr. Obama said. “Since I know I can always pick up the phone and talk to him, it’s not necessary for me to spend huge amounts of time other than just getting business done when I’m here.” Mr. Sarkozy, too, insisted that he was not troubled. “Do you think that we don’t have enough on our plate to do without spending time to have our pictures taken?” Mr. Sarkozy told the reporters. “Do you think our prime concern is what glossy magazine we’ll be pictured in, or what restaurant we’re going to go and spend an evening in, or whether we spend an extra night here or not?” He noted that it was the second Paris visit by Mr. Obama in less than a year. Mr. Obama passed through last July during a European trip. The brevity of that visit — four hours, including two motorcade rides — also was raised during a Sarkozy-Obama press conference then at the Élysée Palace. “It’s unusual for a presidential candidate to be out of the country for more than a week,” Mr. Obama explained at the time, not directly mentioning the political peril back home for a candidate accused of elitism to be seen spending a lot of time in a country famous for Bordeaux and Camembert. “I assure you that I look forward to coming back and spending much time here.” And this time, he stayed for dinner.

Paris (France)
Obama Barack
Obama Michelle
Obama Malia
Obama Sasha


An App That Helps Drivers Earn the Most From Their Trips

Abstract: When Steve Smith began driving for Uber and Lyft several months ago, he concentrated on picking up passengers near his Walnut Creek neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area. “At first I thought I was earning money,” says Mr. Smith, who also works in the oil industry. But then he signed up for SherpaShare, a free analytics site that helps ride-hailing drivers calculate their real incomes. He discovered that his net pay was much lower than the $20 an hour he had estimated. “I was probably making $10 an hour in Walnut Creek, if I took into account my total travel time,” Mr. Smith says. Lyft and Uber market themselves as frictionless routes to high-paying work. Lyft’s application page entices would-be drivers with the promise “Make up to $35/hr driving with Lyft.” Uber has asserted that the median yearly income for drivers with UberX, the company’s lowest-priced service, is “ more than $90,000 ” in New York and “more than $74,000” in San Francisco. But those rosy outlooks tend to refer to the higher end of their driver pay scales and elide details like the cost of gas, car payments, insurance, depreciation and self-employment taxes. With SherpaShare, drivers can input their daily incomes, number of fares, working hours, expenses and mileage to obtain not only more concrete information on their net pay, but also insights into the driving patterns that are most profitable for them. In Mr. Smith’s case, he understood after examining his SherpaShare charts that Walnut Creek, though convenient, was his least profitable terrain. “I realized I was spending a lot of time waiting, and I could earn a lot more by going to another area,” he says. “As soon as I was working in Oakland and Berkeley, I was making $20 to $25 an hour — and San Francisco added another $10 an hour.” Irregular Work Over the last five years, with the advent of the sharing economy, hundreds of thousands of people have rented out their homes, their cars, their parking spaces or themselves for short-term contract work through virtual marketplaces. The sites and apps act as brokers, taking commissions on the transactions. The companies typically treat the people who find gigs through their platforms as independent contractors who are not entitled to standard employee benefits and may be fired at will. (Some drivers in California are suing Lyft and Uber contending that their drivers should be classified as employees.) Image The SherpaShare app, left, tracks income from ride companies. Credit Carlos Chavarra for The New York Times Venture capitalists see big opportunities in the business model. Uber has raised about $6 billion in venture financing and is valued at more than $40 billion ; Lyft is valued at $3 billion. Investors see the potential for these kinds of companies to take on sectors like mail and courier services and grocery and meal delivery services now dominated by Amazon and GrubHub. The novice freelancers attracted to this work often overestimate their potential income, employment researchers say. Contingent workers may also be unprepared for virtual labor marketplaces that frequently change their compensation rates and vary the incentives they use to encourage people to work certain schedules. “One of the things that I think that workers, young and old, value is having some certainty and control over both hours and earnings,” says Thomas Kochan, a professor of work and employment research and engineering systems at the MIT Sloan School of Management who is teaching an online course this semester on the future of work . “When you take that away,” he says, “you create enormous uncertainty and stress.” Over the last year, start-ups like Peers , an organization for independent contractors; Even, an app intended to help create a steady income flow from workers’ irregular paychecks; and SherpaShare have sprung up to help people navigate the financial complexities of so-called gig work. “We realized the biggest challenge was that drivers didn’t understand how much they needed to pay for fuel, car maintenance, depreciation and tax,” Ryder Pearce, a co-founder of SherpaShare, said recently at the company’s San Francisco office. Although ride-hailing apps compensate drivers for “trip hours,” the distance and time they drive with passengers in their cars, SherpaShare has found that its users typically spend around half their on-call time waiting for the next fare or driving to a fare, uncompensated minutes that substantially lower their net hourly pay. “So if you earned $20 to $25 an hour, you might actually be making $10,” Mr. Pearce says. He and his co-founder, Jianming Zhou, met at an event for start-up entrepreneurs in early 2014. They each had experience in travel and transit — Mr. Pearce as an urban planner who had developed bicycle paths and street zones for pedestrians in New York City and Mr. Zhou as a software engineer at location-based start-ups and the founder of a travel-planning site. SherpaShare’s founders say their service now has more than 10,000 active users including drivers who work for Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, and for food delivery services including Postmates, Fluc and DoorDash. About two-thirds of those users work for more than one service, Mr. Zhou says. Image Ryder Pearce, the co-founder of SherpaShare. Credit Alexis Cuarezma for The New York Times “We want to become a financial layer for those services,” he says. “We are giving the picks and shovels to these drivers who haven’t had any support.” To understand the challenges drivers face and the financial analysis that could help them, Mr. Pearce and Mr. Zhou occasionally drive for Lyft and Uber. This year, the two produced a short video for drivers explaining how they could use their SherpaShare data to complete their tax forms. For now, SherpaShare is free for individual drivers, but the start-up, based in Menlo Park, Calif., plans eventually to charge for additional services. The site collates the income reports drivers receive from ride-sharing apps — along with expenses like gas — and displays the data in pie charts and graphs, enabling people to compare their gross and net weekly pay or their Lyft income to their Uber income. Users can also compare their daily average income and average number of trips to the daily driver averages in their own city. Running the Numbers Freelance driving has proved to be a popular occupation. By the end of 2014 in the United States, more than 160,000 people, slightly more than Amazon employs worldwide, worked as Uber drivers. “The flexibility really jumps out,” David Plouffe, Uber’s senior vice president for policy and strategy, said in an interview early this year. “There’s really nothing like it in our economy where a person has complete control over their work hours.” Drivers who find gigs through virtual labor marketplaces, however, often have control over little else. Uber and Lyft, for instance, each set the rules and rates for drivers who use their apps and typically take a 20 percent commission on fares. The apps also offer complex incentives to drivers — with reduced fare pricing during certain promotions , increased fares for certain neighborhoods during peak commuting hours and bonuses for people willing to drive for 30 hours a week or more. A spokeswoman from Lyft says the company has given its drivers tools to put them “in control of creating a schedule that works best for them.” Those tools include weekly earnings forecasts and real-time earnings updates. At Uber, drivers can sort their earnings over different time frames — a day, week, month or year — and examine their entire trip history, a spokeswoman for that service says. Even so, some drivers say that, when they do the math, they have found that they earned less than they had expected. Image Jianming Zhou, the other co-founder of SherpaShare, met Mr. Pierce in early 2014. Today, their company has more than 10,000 active users including drivers who work for Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, and for food delivery services including Postmates, Fluc and DoorDash. Credit Alexis Cuarezma for The New York Times Niki Payne is a writer and social media consultant in Los Angeles. A few of her clients occasionally pay late, she says, and she wanted to build up a financial buffer, so she recently started driving with Lyft. When she heard a few weeks ago that Uber was offering a $500 bonus to attract drivers from competing services, she signed up to drive with Uber, too. During the week of April 13, she made 22 trips for Lyft over the course of 35 hours and ended up making $311.40 in tips and fares after Lyft took its commission, she says. During the week of April 20, she tried to earn more by making herself available to drive for about 41 hours so she could qualify for Lyft’s 10 percent bonus. Although she made a little more, $321.66 after the Lyft fee, her pay actually declined to about $7.85 an hour from about $8.90. And that was before she factored in taxes or her weekly extra gas cost of about $50. The minimum wage in California is $9 per hour; but it applies to company employees, not independent contractors. In the past, Uber and Lyft experimented with hourly earnings guarantees for drivers who met certain conditions, such as accepting 90 percent of ride requests and completing at least one trip an hour, in Uber’s case. Some drivers, however, say they did not like that incentive because it made it nearly impossible for them to work for multiple services at once. Ms. Payne said that she welcomed the extra income and intended to keep driving, but that she had decided to stop chasing the extended-hour bonuses. “I’ve been keeping track of all of this to see if it’s worth it for me,” says Ms. Payne, who does not use SherpaShare and manually records her driver earnings in spreadsheets. “When I put in much more effort, I didn’t make much more money.” Uber driver data has shown a similar pattern. UberX drivers who worked 16 to 34 hours a week typically made $18.08 an hour, while those who worked more than 50 hours a week typically made $17.13 an hour, according to a company-financed study that paid drivers to participate. Drivers who use SherpaShare say they find it easier to predict their incomes and to compare the companies’ public statements on driver pay with their own earnings. “If you drive for multiple platforms as I do, it’s difficult to keep track of your earnings and related information like the number of rides I’ve completed per company,” says Carlos Silva, who has been driving for ride-hailing services in the San Francisco area for more than a year. “Since I started using Sherpa, with a tap I can see detailed information on how I am doing, how much I’m making.” This month, SherpaShare introduced a mobile app that calculates total mileage and driving time, from the moment drivers first leave home to pick up a passenger to the moment they turn off their ride-hailing apps for the day. Once the company can automatically factor in idle time, Mr. Zhou says, drivers may discover that their true hourly pay is lower. But at least they will be able to make data-based choices about their future gig work.

SherpaShare
Car Service
Jianming Zhou
Ryder Pearce
Lyft
Uber
Mobile Apps
Income
Jobs
Price


Iraqi Militants Kill 26 in Raid on Baghdad Building

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Gunmen stormed an apartment complex in Baghdad on Saturday night and killed at least 20 women and six men, according to the Interior Ministry. The apartment complex is known for prostitution and in the past prostitutes have been the targets of extrajudicial killings there by Muslim extremists. It was not clear if that was what happened this time. However, if the targets were prostitutes, it is unlikely that would cause the kind of backlash that a large-scale sectarian killing would. Still the attack, and the fact that at least initially the perpetrators seemed to vanish without a trace, raised the specter that amid the chaos sweeping the country, gunmen feel they can act with complete impunity even in the capital. Almost at the same time, a television station associated with Sunnis broadcast what it said was a recording by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a fugitive who was Saddam Hussein’s vice president and a senior figure in the Baath Party. Intelligence experts here have predicted an unleashing of anti-government cells and some wondered on Saturday if Mr. Douri’s message was the signal for the cells to begin to fight. “The liberation of Baghdad has become close or closer,” the man reported to be Mr. Douri said in a statement full of support for the insurgency that has swept through large parts of northern and western Iraq. “Half of Iraq’s land is outside of the government’s control.” The statement was also notable because it appeared to run counter to reports that the insurgency could be weakened by friction between the main insurgent group and Mr. Douri’s group of former loyalists to Saddam Hussein. Mr. Douri is the founder of the Men of the Army of the Naqshbandia Order, a group of former Baathists that has taken an active part in the recent battles against the Iraqi government. The broadcast heaped praise on the main Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. “What happened in Nineveh and Tikrit is the greatest day ever in Iraqi and Arab history,” the man reported to be Mr. Douri said, referring to the ISIS takeovers, which were carried out with the help of a number of insurgent groups, including the Naqshbandia Order. He blessed all the groups, but above all “the heroes and knights of Al Qaeda and ISIS,” adding, “I send them warm greetings full of love.” The fighting for small patches of territory continued on Saturday. Security forces regained control of a military base that ISIS had taken over in an area northeast of Baghdad. It remained unclear if the militants might be regrouping to try to grab back the base. Seventeen militants and six members of the security forces were killed in that fighting in Diyala Province, according to a doctor at the provincial hospital, which received the bodies. “There are no civilians in the area,” said a man who lives near the area and could hear the fighting, but asked not to be quoted by name because he feared one side or the other would find out. “It’s a war zone, only ISIS and the army are there and the army is not really an army,” he said, explaining that many of those participating in the fight are Shiite militia members. Other locals said they too believed that militias were now heavily involved in the fighting in Diyala. This fight, locals said, included members of the Asaib al-Haq militia and the Peace Brigades, a new group of volunteer fighters started by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. South of Baghdad, in Babil Province, the southern front of the fighting against Sunni extremists remained difficult for the Iraqi military. After four police officers were killed, the army went in to retrieve the bodies and was ambushed by ISIS fighters who killed four of them, according to the operations command in Hilla, the provincial capital. In developments elsewhere in the country, officials raised the death toll from Friday’s suicide bombing in Kirkuk to 28 from 13. As the military showdowns continued, the country’s political parties were still attempting to form a new government after elections in April, with the parties saying they would go to the Parliament on Sunday to make another effort. The divide between the country’s ethnic and sectarian groups has deepened since the elections, and so far the parties have been unable to bridge the gaps. It seemed unlikely that the parties would be able to quickly smooth over their differences. In an interview on Saturday Dafar al-Ani, the spokesman for the largest Sunni bloc, said that he thought the Sunnis needed two or three more days to agree on their nominee for the speakership. Approving a speaker is the first step in forming a government, according to the Constitution. Then within two weeks, the Parliament must vote on a president and within a month of that, a prime minister. The United Nations envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov issued a statement Saturday saying that “failing to move forward on electing a new speaker, a new president, and a new government risks plunging the country into chaos.”

Iraq
Sunnis
Shiite
Baghdad
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki


Ronaldo Lifts Real Madrid to Win

Abstract: Cristiano Ronaldo helped Real Madrid win at Schalke, 2-0, in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 match. Ronaldo scored on a header in the 26th minute and also set up Marcelo for Madrid’s second goal, in the 79th. Madrid stretched its Champions League winning streak to 10 games, having scored 27 goals and conceded three in that span. In the night’s other match, Danilo scored on a late penalty kick to earn Porto a 1-1 draw at Basel.

Soccer
UEFA Champions League
Cristiano Ronaldo
Real Madrid
Schalke 04 Soccer Team


Fox and NBC Strut New Shows to Marketers

Abstract: NBC and Fox opened the television upfront week for the 2014-15 season with presentations on Monday that were long on new series, long on new strategies, and just long in general. But a lot of the length of those events had to do with the amount of new programming the networks are looking to sell to advertisers during negotiations that take place ahead of the fall season (hence the term “upfront”). A major reason for the proliferation is a desire to offer viewers new fare 52 weeks a year rather than only during the traditional nine-month season from September through May. “June is just as important as January,” Kevin Reilly, entertainment chairman of Fox Broadcasting, said as he briefed reporters on his new lineup. NBC announced 12 new weekly series, five dramas and seven comedies. That does not count the “event shows” — a newish term for a limited-run show or mini-series — that NBC plans to introduce, including “A.D.,” a multipart dramatization of the New Testament, and a live musical version of “Peter Pan” on Dec. 4 that will serve as a follow-up to the hit live musical version of “The Sound of Music” in December 2013. At the NBC presentation at the Jacob K. Javits Center, which ran almost two hours, the network also announced that it had obtained the rights to another musical, “The Music Man,” which will be broadcast live during 2015. Fox recently announced that it would broadcast sometime this year a live version of the musical “Grease.” NBC’s new dramas for 2014-15 will tilt heavily toward covert action, in a decision seemingly inspired by “The Blacklist,” the drama with James Spader that became a hit in the 2013-14 season. It is “the No. 1 new show” of any introduced last fall, Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC’s entertainment division, said a couple of times during his remarks. The drama lineup includes “State of Affairs,” about a C.I.A. adviser, played by Katherine Heigl; “Odyssey,” starring Anna Friel, about a survivor of a terrorist attack in the Middle East escaping a corporate conspiracy; and “Allegiance,” about a young C.I.A. agent who learns his parents were once Russian spies. NBC will also have “Constantine,” a drama with a comic-book hero fighting devils, as well as a police procedural with heart, “The Mysteries of Laura,” starring Debra Messing. In comedy, where NBC has virtually no holdover successes, the network will try two romantic sitcoms in the fall, “A to Z” and “Marry Me,” as well as “Bad Judge,” a star vehicle for Kate Walsh (“Private Practice”) as a jurist of questionable character. The other new NBC comedies will appear later in the year: “Mission Control,” about NASA in the 1960s; “Mr. Robinson,” with Craig Robinson of “The Office”; “One Big Happy,” about a modern family composed of a gay mother, a straight father and his new wife; and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” a comedy created by Tina Fey about a young woman experiencing the world after living in an underground bunker. Image Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, called “The Blacklist” the No. 1 new show of the past season. Credit Paul Drinkwater/NBC In midseason, NBC will move “The Blacklist” to its desolate night, Thursday, at 9 p.m., at which point “State of Affairs” will inherit the “Blacklist” time slot of 10 p.m. Monday. The decision to use an hourlong drama on Thursday ends NBC’s recent efforts to revive its “Must See TV” comedy block there. Fox made some news when Mr. Reilly disclosed that the hours devoted to “American Idol” would be scaled back next season to about 37 from almost 60 this season. During its event at the Beacon Theater, Fox executives provided a telling commentary on how far its once titanic hit “American Idol” had fallen out of favor. In an hour-plus presentation, “Idol” was mentioned exactly once — and that was in passing, as the show Fox would pair up at midseason with its new drama about the hip-hop business, “Empire.” That and some poor ratings during 2013-14 created slots for a lot of new programs, and Fox responded with 10 new weekly series and two it is calling event series as the network works on “eventizing” its schedule, as Mr. Reilly put it. Five new shows are dramas, led by the network’s biggest bet : “Gotham,” a Batman origins series. The other ambitious idea is “Empire.” Fox also has a drama about teenagers coming of age in a hospital setting, “Red Band Society.” One Fox drama will go way back for stories: “Hieroglyph,” which will explore palace intrigue at the time of the pharaohs. A new police series, “Backstrom,” will star Rainn Wilson of “The Office” as an offbeat detective. In comedy, Fox has high hopes for “Mulaney,” starring the stand-up John Mulaney, which will be paired on Sunday with a returning sitcom, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” ending several years of Fox’s Sunday lineup being devoted entirely to animated comedy. There will be a new animated series, “Bordertown,” about families on either side of the United States/Mexico border, along with two live-action sitcoms, “Weird Loners,” about four misfits in Queens, and “The Last Man on Earth,” with Will Forte as the sole surviving human. Fox is also adding a reality series, “Utopia,” about a group of contestants trying to form a society in a remote location. For its first few weeks, “Utopia” will appear twice weekly, on Tuesday and Friday. The event series Fox announced are “Gracepoint,” a remake of the hit British drama “Broadchurch,” and “Wayward Pines,” a thriller starring Matt Dillon. There were also presentations on Monday from companies with programming for Hispanic audiences: Azteca America, part of the Mexican broadcaster TV Azteca; beIN Sports, offering channels devoted to soccer in English as well as Spanish; Estrella TV; and NuvoTV, owned by SiTV Media. On Tuesday, the second day of the upfront week, there are presentations planned by two divisions of Walt Disney, ABC and ESPN, and three companies with programming aimed at Spanish-speaking viewers: Discovery U.S. Hispanic; Telemundo, which like NBC is owned by Comcast; and Univision Communications.

NBC
Fox Broadcasting
advertising,marketing
TV
Robert Greenblatt


BlackBerry, Aiming to Avoid the Hall of Fallen Giants

Abstract: FORGET the Union — what’s the state of the BlackBerry? Research in Motion , maker of BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, sent its co-chief executives packing last week and replaced them with Thorsten Heins, who had been RIM’s chief operating officer. How would he characterize his employer? “We make the best communications devices in the world,” said Mr. Heins, who met with editors and reporters from The New York Times on Friday. Not everyone feels the same way. Over the last year, RIM’s share price has plunged 75 percent. The company once commanded more than half of the American smartphone market. Today it has 10 percent. RIM has two, maybe three ways forward. The first — the one that Mr. Heins is clearly aiming for — is a triumphant comeback after a near-death experience. Think Apple and its iMac. RIM is on the verge of upgrading its PlayBook operating system — now with, among other things, e-mail, a feature that the original PlayBook bafflingly lacked — and will release the BlackBerry 10 OS this year. Behind Door No. 2 is a gradual decline and diminution as rivals like Apple, Google and Microsoft devour most of the market; to some degree, they already have. BlackBerry would keep the scraps — a small but dedicated following of corporate and government customers who want its proprietary messaging and security features. Then there is the third option: oblivion. The road of progress is littered with the corpses of fallen titans. Objects that once seemed as indispensable as the companies that made them have been mercilessly superseded — as seen below. And RIM ought to know: with mobile devices like the BlackBerry 957, it helped to extinguish the pager era. SONY WALKMAN (1979-2010) Before the Walkman, “personal audio” meant holding a transistor radio to your ear. Sony’s invention created an entire category of devices and helped make the company the technology leader of the 1980s. New models (Thinner! Auto-reverse!) were eagerly anticipated, the LP was relegated to the attic and tender moments spent listening to mix tapes from that certain someone proliferated across teenage bedrooms. Sony seemed incapable of putting a foot wrong. It successfully moved the brand into compact discs with the Discman, then bought record labels and movie studios to bring about that illusory marriage of technology and content. When the digital revolution hit, Sony was too beholden to its proprietary formats, as well as to the inertia inside its media companies. Enter Apple and the iPod. PAGERS (BORN 1951) At first, pagers were attached to people who worked in fields where lives were on the line. That usually meant doctors, though the group expanded in the late 1980s to include drug dealers. Early beepers displayed only numbers, giving rise to a numerical lexicon that included codes like 911 (call me back immediately) and 07734, which resembles “hello” when read upside down. Pagers briefly gained fame in early 1990s hip-hop, showing up in songs like “Skypager,” by a Tribe Called Quest. The pager’s fall was attributable to the disruptive and destructive powers of another technology: the mobile phone. Why beep when you can talk? And a pager message is so tiny that it makes a tweet look like “The Iliad.” The beeper does live on, in limited circles: its network remains more reliable than cell networks, making it useful to E.M.S. and other rescue workers. PALM PILOT (1997-2007) Filofax brought personal organizers to their analog apogee in the early ’90s, but Palm brought them into the digital age. Palm Pilots were dazzling when they first appeared: all of your contacts, calendars and notes in one slim, pocket-size device. A touch screen, which required a stylus, made navigation easy. And you could add software, bought through an online store. Want a Zagat guide to go along with your personal data? No problem. In later years, Palm even added telephone features, creating a compelling, all-in-one gadget. Despite boardroom dramas that affected the company’s name and its ownership, Palm’s reputation as a source of innovative hardware and software endured until Jan. 9, 2007. Why that date? That’s when Apple introduced the iPhone. POLAROID INSTANT CAMERAS (1948-2008) Edwin Land’s invention of instant-developing film in 1948 put a darkroom inside a handheld camera. That achievement gave his Polaroid Corporation a distinct advantage over traditional film cameras. By 1980, Polaroid was selling 7.8 million cameras a year in the United States — more than half of all the 15 million cameras, instant and traditional, sold that year. In 1985, it won a major patent-infringement suit, forcing Kodak to abandon its own instant-camera efforts. The victory was short-lived. The late ’80s brought the rise of the digital camera. By 2000, digital cameras began appearing on cellphones, placing cameras in millions of pockets. Polaroid declared bankruptcy for the first time in 2001 and stopped making instant film in 2008. Kodak declared bankruptcy on Jan. 19. ATARI 2600 (1977-c.1984) It wasn’t the first game console, but the Atari 2600 brought video games into the home and popular culture. Over its life span, more than 30 million were sold. Pong, Combat, Pitfall and Frogger soaked up children’s afternoons. Then came the PC, which could play games and do much more. Atari rushed out games, assuming that its customers would play whatever it released. They didn’t. Millions of unsold games and consoles were buried in a New Mexico landfill in 1983. Warner Communications, which bought Atari in 1976 for $28 million, sold it in 1984 for no cash.

Blackberry (Handheld Device)
Smartphones
Research In Motion Ltd
Heins Thorsten
Palm
Polaroid Corp
Atari
Sony Corporation


Mississippi: ID Law Signed, but Remains in Limbo

Abstract: Gov. Phil Bryant on Thursday signed a bill requiring voters to show photo identification, but it is unclear whether it will become law. Because of Mississippi’s history of racial discrimination, the state is required to get federal approval for any change in election laws or procedures. The Justice Department in recent months has rejected voter identification laws from Texas and South Carolina. The state N.A.A.C.P. is asking the department to reject the law, saying it could disproportionately create hardships for poor, elderly or minority voters who might be less likely to have a photo identification. No black officials attended the bill signing ceremony. Mr. Bryant was surrounded by several fellow Republicans and some Tea Party members. Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said he did not expect the new law to be in place for the Nov. 6 elections.

National Assn for the Advancement of Colored People


Christie Seeks More Schools Just for Those With Autism

Abstract: Gov. Chris Christie has proposed creating additional specialized public schools for educating children with autism in New Jersey, a departure from the current practice in many communities of integrating those children into neighborhood schools. The governor proposed creating “centers for excellence” in every county, suggesting that such schools could save money for districts and ensure a higher quality of instruction. He told the audience at a town-hall-style meeting in Paramus on Thursday night that “the start-up costs of these programs, if you do it district-by-district, are mind-blowing and the quality is variable.” Parents and advocates are split over the idea of creating specialized schools for children with autism, reflecting a larger debate nationally over whether those children are best served in separate programs or in general-education classes. Critics of the idea say that children with disabilities gain valuable academic and social skills from interacting with their peers without disabilities, and also develop closer ties to their communities. “We’re horrified at this suggestion to have another segregated setting for children with autism in every county in New Jersey,” said Diana Autin, executive co-director of the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network , a nonprofit group that assists families. “It would also send a message to parents that children with autism can’t be included.” But Linda Meyer, executive director of Autism New Jersey , a nonprofit advocacy and educational group, said Mr. Christie’s proposal for specialized autism schools would provide a much-needed alternative for some families. Many districts, she said, lack the staff, training and resources to educate children with autism. “What I see is the governor has a vision to expand the continuum of options for our students,” Dr. Meyer said. “There are currently not enough high-quality school options for children with autism. Not every child is being educated in an effective program.” The number of New Jersey students classified as having autism has grown rapidly, to 13,358 in 2010 from 8,490 in 2006, according to state education statistics. Mr. Christie’s proposal would reverse recent state efforts to encourage districts to develop their own autism programs. For instance, in 2007 the Corzine administration awarded $15 million in grants to 55 school districts to establish or expand existing autism programs. More than three-quarters of New Jersey’s 21 counties already have separate special-education schools, including several that specifically serve children with autism; these schools are financed by county taxes and tuition fees paid by the districts sending the children. But some of these schools have been criticized by parents as failing to provide more effective instruction than their home districts. Renay Zamloot, a parent who is an advocate for students with disabilities, said the most effective schools for children with autism tend to be expensive to run because they have highly trained and experienced staff members and low staff-to-student ratios, to provide intensive, individualized services. “I’m concerned that the motivation for these schools is purely financial,” Ms. Zamloot said of Mr. Christie’s proposal. “It could lead to a whole population of students being deprived of the intensive, data-driven services that they require to make meaningful progress.” The governor’s office and the state Education Department did not provide details about Mr. Christie’s plan.

Autism
Education (K-12)
Christie Christopher J
New Jersey


Napping in Public? In Japan, That’s a Sign of Diligence

Abstract: In most countries, sleeping on the job isn’t just frowned upon, it may get you fired. But in Japan, napping in the office is common and culturally accepted. And in fact, it is often seen as a subtle sign of diligence: You must be working yourself to exhaustion. The word for it is “inemuri.” It is often translated as “sleeping on duty,” but Brigitte Steger, a senior lecturer in Japanese studies at Downing College, Cambridge, who has written a book on the topic , says it would be more accurate to render it as “sleeping while present.” That, she said, captures Japan’s approach to time, where it’s seen as possible to do multiple things simultaneously, if at a lower intensity. So you can get credit for attending that boring quarterly sales meeting while also dreaming of a beach vacation. Inemuri is most prevalent among more senior employees in white-collar professions, Dr. Steger said. Junior employees tend to want to stay awake all day and be seen as energetic, and workers on assembly lines can’t just nod off. Both sexes indulge in inemuri, but women are more likely to be criticized for it, especially if they sleep in a position that is considered unbecoming, Dr. Steger said. Inemuri has been practiced in Japan for at least 1,000 years, and it is not restricted to the workplace. People may nap in department stores, cafes, restaurants or even a snug spot on a busy city sidewalk. Image A 2015 study found that 39.5 percent of Japanese adults slept less than six hours a night. Credit Ko Sasaki for The New York Times Sleeping in public is especially prevalent on commuter trains, no matter how crowded; they often turn into de facto bedrooms. It helps that Japan has a very low crime rate. “It’s very unlikely, if you are sleeping on a train, that someone would try to rob you,” said Theodore C. Bestor, a professor of social anthropology at Harvard University. Sleeping in social situations can even enhance your reputation. Dr. Steger recalled a group dinner at a restaurant where the male guest of a female colleague fell asleep at the table. The other guests complimented his “gentlemanly behavior” — that he chose to stay present and sleep, rather than excuse himself. One reason public sleeping may be so common in Japan is that people get so little sleep at home. A 2015 government study found that 39.5 percent of Japanese adults slept less than six hours a night. An unwritten rule of inemuri is to sleep compactly, without “violating spatial norms,” Professor Bestor said. “If you stretched out under the table in the office conference room, or took up several spaces on the train, or laid out on a park bench,” he said, that would draw reproach for being socially disruptive. Dr. Steger pointed out that closed eyes may not always equal shut-eye: A person may close them just to build a sphere of privacy in a society with little of it. That’s part of why Dr. Steger said she could imagine inemuri waning in Japan. These days, smartphones can transport people to their own private zones with their eyes wide open.


In Speech, Little Time Spent on National Security

Abstract: WASHINGTON— President Obama spent exactly nine minutes on national security issues in the first State of the Union speech of his presidency, promising Americans that he would fight terrorism and warning Iran that its leaders will face “growing consequences” if they continue to ignore international calls to rein in their nuclear ambitions. In a speech dominated by domestic issues — namely the economy, healthcare and jobs — Mr. Obama spared little time for the subject of America’s relations with the world. He made no mention at all of stalled Middle East peace proposals, nor did he mention the brewing turmoil between the United States and its biggest global economic rival, China over internet freedom. In fact, the only mention he made of China was when he cast Beijing in the role of economic threat to the United States. For instance, Mr. Obama said there was no reason why Europe and China should have faster trains than the United States. He said that China isn’t waiting to revamp its economy (nor India or Germany). “These nations aren’t playing for second place,” Mr. Obama said. “They are making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.” He pledged to double American exports over the next five years, through a National Export Initiative, but offered few details. The President made glancing references to the two wars which he inherited—and in both cases, promised that American troops will soon come home. “We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August,” Mr. Obama said. “Make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.” Mr. Obama issued no challenges to any foreign leaders, continuing his break from his predecessor, President Bush, who often used State of the Union speeches to delineate the differences between America and its international foes. Rather, Mr. Obama struck a more conciliatory tone on national security. He seemed to offer an olive branch to Republican critics at home who have accused him of putting civil liberties ahead of American security. “Sadly, some of the unity we felt after 9/11 has dissipated,” Mr. Obama said. “We can argue all we want about who’s to blame for this, but I am not interested in re-litigating the past. I know that all of us love this country.” He urged Americans to “put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough. Let’s reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values.” In recent weeks, Republicans have stepped up attacks about the administration’s decision to try some terror suspects in civilian courts, and about the intelligence breakdowns preceding the failed airline bombing on Christmas Day. On Wednesday, the President defended his counterterrorism record, saying that “hundreds” of militants from al Qaeda and affiliated groups who had been killed or captured over the past year—”far more than in 2008.” The Obama administration has accelerated the C.I.A.’s campaign of drone attacks inside Pakistan, which top administration officials credit with killing off several top Qaeda planners, including Saleh al-Somali, who was killed in September. White House and intelligence officials argue that al Qaeda’s ranks inside Pakistan have been depleted, one reason that the terror group’s affiliate in Yemen has in recent months taken a more active role in striking against the west. American officials believe that Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, the Nigerian man arrested after the failed Christmas Day bombing, was working with operatives from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate group. The United States has dispatched special operations troops to Yemen, and has given Yemeni officials intelligence information in recent weeks that has led to several strikes against militants in the country. On Wednesday, one senior administration official estimated that 20 percent of the 300 to 400 al Qaeda operatives in Yemen have been killed over the last several months. On Iran, where the administration would like to get an economics sanctions package through the Security Council but is facing the usual objections from China in particular, Mr. Obama, again, had little to say. He opted simply to call Iran’s Islamist regime “more isolated.” He warned: “As Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: they too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise.” David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and foreign policy expert, said Wednesday night that he “can’t recall a state of the union that devoted less time or attention to foreign policy issues than this one.” Mr. Rothkopf, author of a book about the National Security Council, said that Mr. Obama has gauged that Americans right now are “wounded and looking inward.”

Obama Barack
State of the Union Message (US)
International Relations
Speeches and Statements


Britain: Fortifying the Falklands

Abstract: Britain plans to add two transport helicopters and an enhanced communications system to its defense systems on the Falkland Islands. The islands in the South Atlantic are claimed by both Britain and Argentina. They fought over the islands in 1982. Britain plans to spend roughly $268 million in the next decade to improve facilities on the islands.


Carpenter Leads at Indianapolis Shootout

Abstract: Ed Carpenter posted the fastest time early in Saturday’s qualifying, and then did it again late in the afternoon to take the top seed into Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 pole shootout. ■ Jimmie Johnson, the six-time Sprint Cup champion, won the 35-39 age group at a triathlon in Kings Mountain, N.C., hours before driving in the Nascar All-Star race.


Indian Police Arrest 2 in Mumbai Investigation

Abstract: MUMBAI — Police in New Delhi and Calcutta arrested two people on Friday night and are investigating whether they helped procure SIM cards that terrorists used to make calls during their attacks last week in Mumbai, said Javed Shamim, a deputy commissioner of police in Calcutta. Both men, Tauseef Rehman, a native of Calcutta, and Mukhtar Ahmed, originally from the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, are charged with fraud and criminal conspiracy for using false documents to buy subscriber identity module, or SIM, cards. Mr. Rehman was arrested in Calcutta and Mr. Ahmed in New Delhi. Mr. Shamim said that both men were in Calcutta in October when Mr. Rehman used a dead relative’s photo identification to purchase the SIM cards. He then activated them and either gave or sold them to Mr. Ahmed, he said. Mr. Shamim emphasized that no definitive links to the attacks in Mumbai had been established by the police. Rakesh Maria, a joint commissioner with the Mumbai police, said on Friday that police had recovered seven mobile phones, in addition to three global positioning system handsets and one satellite phone, that they believe the terrorists used. The police traced the SIM cards used in the Mumbai attack to Mr. Rehman in Calcutta, Mr. Shamim said. The police then forced Mr. Rehman to call Mr. Ahmed and ask him his location. This allowed them to find and arrest him in New Delhi, Mr. Shamim said. Mr. Ahmed is believed to be a member of a local police force in the city of Srinagar, in Kashmir, but Calcutta police have not verified this, according to Manab Bandopadhy, a spokesman for the Calcutta police. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani-based militant group that Indian and United States officials have said they believe was behind the attacks in Mumbai that killed 163 people, has long been focused on trying to wrest Kashmir from Indian control and has had a history of infiltrating militants into that state, sometimes with support from members of the local population. Mumbai police said last week that they were searching for anyone here or elsewhere in India who might have aided the attackers. These arrests are the first thought to be connected to the case outside that of the single surviving gunman, a Pakistani citizen identified by the police as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, who is now in custody in Mumbai. The police have said that only 10 terrorists carried out the Nov. 26 attacks and that all came from Pakistan. This is the first sign that they may have had help from Indian nationals. An Indian man, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, currently in jail in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh may also be linked to the terrorists who attacked Mumbai. Mr. Ansari, who was detained in February, allegedly scouted targets in Mumbai for another Lashkar-e-Taiba plot. That plan was foiled when he and five co-conspirators were captured in connection with an attack on a police training camp in the city of Rampur that took place last New Year’s Eve. Mr. Ansari told the police in Uttar Pradesh that he had been in contact with two Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders, Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, and a man known alternately as Yusuf or Muzammil. These two men also directed the Mumbai attacks that hit a train station, two luxury hotels, a restaurant and a local Jewish community center, according to Mumbai police. Mr. Lakhvi and Mr. Muzammil were in contact with the attackers by phone throughout the assault, Indian investigators say. In an additional development, an explosive device was found at a hospital in Nagpur, in the Indian state of Madya Pradesh, according to Pravin Dikshit, the police commissioner there. The bomb was being defused and the hospital had been evacuated, Mr. Dikshit said. He declined to provide any further details and it was unclear if the bomb was linked in any way to the Mumbai attacks. The terrorists in the Mumbai attack each carried an 8-kilogram bomb which they planted at various locations throughout the city, according to the police. Seven of these exploded and two were defused on the night of the attack, the police said. A 10th bomb was discovered on Wednesday afternoon in one of the city’s main train stations, where two terrorists, including Mr. Kasab, had also opened fire on passengers. The station had been reopened for almost a week before the bomb was discovered during a routine search. The police now say that all of the bombs are accounted for, but stories in the Indian press have disputed this.


The High Line Park Is Elevated. Its Crime Rate Is Low

Abstract: The images on Christine C. Quinn’s television a few years ago would seem to have been a worst nightmare for everyone — including her — involved in a highly anticipated new attraction for tourists and locals. The cameras were filming up on the elevated train line in Chelsea, which was soon to be called a “park in the sky,” and showed the sprawled body of a woman, murdered and dumped there. Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker, recalled the scene this week, not with a shudder, but with a broad grin. “ ‘ Law & Order: S.V.U. ,’ ” she said. “My favorite!” On Tuesday, She stood somewhere in the vicinity of the spot on what is now the High Line , at the ribbon-cutting of its new extension. “The body was up here,” she said with pride. That is when she knew: “We had made it.” The High Line park turned two years old this month, commemorating the occasion by doubling its length to about a mile, from Gansevoort Street to West 30th Street. Among the many facts and figures people keep track of in this much-studied park, essentially found space on a crowded island, are statistics that tell whether crime has found it, too, and the numbers are in. Or more accurately, the number is in: zero. The police, the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and the founders of the High Line all say there have been no reports of a major crime — assault, larceny, robbery, worse — since its opening. “Are you disappointed?” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly asked on Tuesday. Certainly curious. Not a single stick-up? No fights? How many other mile-long sections of New York City are this safe? The questions come not long after someone opened fire Thursday on the Brighton Beach Boardwalk after what some witnesses described as a perceived dirty look toward gang members. Apples and oranges, yes — Crips have shown little interest in the High Line, and the drinking that is said to have fueled the Boardwalk shooting is forbidden there. But the tale of two walkways suggests that what the newer one is doing to curb crime is a combination of passive and active, design and deterrence. It is strenuously policed. Parks Enforcement Patrol officers walk the High Line all day. They have written, as of Wednesday, 362 summonses for quality-of-life infractions, roughly one every other day. A vast majority were for drinking. Others were for dogs and bicycles, also forbidden. Officers and employees in the park, who are not permitted to be quoted by name, said the total could be quite higher. Most people get off with a warning. By comparison, officers in Central Park wrote 3,275 summonses in the past two years, nine times as many written in the High Line, but Central Park saw 19 times as many visitors last year. The police have taken two complaints at the High Line, a spokeswoman said: one in March for graffiti on a staircase and one, just Wednesday, from a man who said he had lost his wallet but did not think it had been stolen. Other features of the High Line keep crime out with obstacles as obvious as a padlock and as subtle as the psychological effect of a nearby window. Most of all, there is the design itself, essentially a chute with a handful of entries, all closely watched. “You see the cameras up there,” Mr. Kelly said, pointing. “This is a much more controllable space. You know who’s going in and who’s coming out.” A thief would have to plan carefully for a getaway, using one of the staircases or elevators. “It’s not like you can jump off,” Ms. Quinn said. “Well, you can, but it’s not going to end well.” Those access points are locked up at 11 p.m. in the summer, perhaps the greatest preventer of crime. Other city parks are “closed” at night, but that does not stop people from entering. At the High Line, trespassing, while not unheard of, is rare, usually somebody dropping in from an adjacent building. And those buildings are extremely adjacent. The park’s designers turned to the late, great Jane Jacobs for guidance on keeping out crime, adopting her “eyes on the streets” theory, in which windows facing the street bring a feeling of security. Several buildings, including new ones like 245 Tenth Avenue , which partially leans toward the park, seem close enough to high-five someone inside. “Empty parks are dangerous,” said Joshua David, one of the founders of Friends of the High Line. “Busy parks are much less so. You’re virtually never alone on the High Line.” Police officers patrol the High Line sporadically. Most of it falls in the 10th Precinct. An officer from that command strode north on the High Line Thursday afternoon. He said he was heading toward the new Section 2, which he wanted to check out in case of an emergency someday. And, he added, “it’s a nice walk.”

High Line (NYC)
Crime Rates
Manhattan (NYC)
Parks and Other Recreation Areas


Laid-Back Manning Fires Up His Critics

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Nov. 26 — After the Giants lost to the Vikings on Sunday afternoon — largely because of three interceptions returned for Minnesota touchdowns — quarterback Eli Manning was asked if he was angry, shocked or embarrassed. “Just disappointed,” he said. Just like that, as if the onslaught of criticism needed fanning, Manning’s detractors had more fodder. The 41-17 loss might have been the worst game of his four-year career. But when it ended, Manning dissected it the way he always does — little emotion, flat voice and no display of remorse. Manning’s “Easy Eli” persona, seemingly well adapted for the ups and downs of the N.F.L, is increasingly viewed by some as a leadership flaw. Such discussions, on talk radio and on the Internet, flourished again after the game. Manning has become the rare quarterback who is critiqued nearly as much for how he responds to performances as to the performances themselves. “That is him, and that is good enough for me,” Coach Tom Coughlin said Monday. “That is the way he handles everything. He doesn’t get real excited about things when he does them very, very well, and he has had some very, very good games here. Don’t forget about that, either. He has the whole support of the locker room.” Few games are decided by one player as much as Sunday’s loss was. Four passes were intercepted. The only one not returned for a touchdown was carried to the Giants’ 8-yard line. The Vikings scored on the next play. When the game ended, Coughlin stated the obvious, that teams rarely win by handing an opponent 28 points. When a reporter used the word “disappointed,” Coughlin said it was “not a strong enough word.” But it was for Manning. He has cultivated an even-keeled persona on the field — “I try to not let the defense see you down and frustrated,” he said Monday — and off the field. “I figure if I start going crazy and getting wild, it is just going to make everybody else go into a tantrum,” Manning said. “And I’m trying to keep everybody calm.” No player controls the fate of the Giants (7-4) more than Manning. His play will impact the team’s championship aspirations, and Coughlin’s future. Unfortunately for the Giants, Manning’s statistics are stuck on a plateau of mediocrity, with passer ratings of 75.9 in 2005, 77.0 in 2006, and 75.0 this season, ranked 24th in the league. Unfortunately for those who prefer that quarterbacks emit more emotion, that has not changed, either. “It may appease some of the people who have their vision of what they want a quarterback to be or to say or to do,” center Shaun O’Hara said after the game. “But in reality it doesn’t fix anything.” The Giants seem to believe that the perception of Manning held by the outside world has no bearing inside the insulated walls of the locker room. “One of his best qualities in a tight situation is the fact that he is calm, and now it’s a negative?” guard Chris Snee said. “He is who he is.” Manning spent 30 minutes Monday patiently answering questions in front of his locker. Many pried into his personality, and his voice did not rise and his expression rarely changed. A 25-person scrum slowly evaporated until he was left standing alone. Most of his teammates were long gone. “He is very strong, he is very principled,” Coughlin said. “He is a guy that will never shy away from taking responsibility.” The tide of Manning criticism rises and retreats with the week-to-week successes and failures of the Giants. The team is used to it. What seems different, however, is the realization that the Giants are a notch or two below several other contenders, and are showing few signs that they are capable of leapfrogging them. They are unlikely to pass the Cowboys (10-1) to win the National Football Conference East, but also stand two games in front of a bevy of other wild-card contenders in the conference heading into Sunday’s game against the Bears (5-6) in Chicago. Another victory or two would probably land the Giants in the playoffs, where they would face a road game against a division champion on the first weekend. Manning, as the face of the franchise, has come to symbolize its current status, and he may be viewed as a governor for the franchise’s larger aspirations. Coughlin would not be pulled into such a big-picture discussion Monday. “You can’t just take the one game,” Coughlin said. “You are going to have to stand back and look at the season and see where we go from here. I told the team yesterday that this is the real test right now. I said something about it at halftime and I said it after the game — that it is not about a man and the fact that he gets knocked down. It is what he does after he gets back up.” Coughlin used “he” generically, but it is obvious which player needs to rise after Sunday’s knockdown. Coughlin framed this season with a “talk is cheap” slogan in July, and he certainly does not worry about what Manning says or how he says it. He just worries about how he plays. That is Manning’s concern, too, although the lines between how he plays and how he reacts are beginning to blur. After Manning answered as many questions about his postgame news conference as he did about his interceptions, a reporter asked Manning if he found the focus surprising. “The postgame press conference isn’t the problem,” Manning said, good-naturedly. “It’s what’s happening on the field that needs to be corrected. I don’t need to watch film of my postgame press conference. I guess I’ll start doing that now.”

New York Giants
Manning Eli
Football
Coughlin Tom


Premier League’s Festive Slog: Adored by Fans, Endured by Players

Abstract: As a player, Graeme Le Saux would flick straight to December when he received the Premier League schedule for the coming season. His teammates tended to be more concerned with which rival they would face on the campaign’s opening day, or working out when the season’s big derby matches were, or checking whether their last game fell at home or on the road. Le Saux always had one priority: to find out whether the list was naughty or nice. “The key thing was whether Christmas had been kind to you,” he said. “If you had two home matches, or did not have to travel far, that made a massive difference. It kind of makes or breaks Christmas. It was the first thing I looked for: Where are we on Boxing Day?” It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day to English soccer. It is a connection to a longstanding tradition, one that dates back more than a century. It is a core tenet of the ultramodern Premier League’s international branding, a chance to reassert its popularity when most of its peers go into hibernation. It is a source of immense pride, a central pillar of the league’s identity as the toughest on the planet, the festive slog through three games in what can be as little as seven days, seen as proof of just how uniquely mentally and physically draining it is. To most, it is sacrosanct; the idea of not playing on Boxing Day, New Year’s Day and various points in between is seen as somewhere between anathema and heresy. Image Fabian Delph of Manchester City during his team’s Premier League match at home against Sunderland on Dec. 26, 2015. Credit Jan Kruger/Getty Images The week’s popularity bears that out: Even in the Premier League, where most seats in most stadiums are sold on most match days, what soccer’s executives call the occupancy rate notches even higher over the holiday period. Last year, for example, 96 percent of seats were sold over the course of the Premier League season. On Boxing Day, that went up to 98 percent. The next round of games was played less than 72 hours later. Stadiums across the country were at 98 percent capacity then, too. The love affair is not just local. The Premier League games broadcast over Christmas and New Year’s are regularly among the most watched of the entire season across the world. Rivals, most notably France’s Ligue 1, believe it gives English soccer a competitive advantage in the global battle for viewers. Jean-Michel Aulas, the president of Olympique Lyon, for one, has suggested France would do well to reconfigure its league calendar to incorporate a Dec. 26 fixture. English soccer’s holy week is looked on with envy and admiration worldwide. Except, perhaps, for those inside it. To millions of fans, Boxing Day and the games that follow are a staple of the calendar, a high point of the year. To those tasked with providing the entertainment, though, it is less a period to be enjoyed and more one to be endured. For managers, of course, the next 10 days or so will be spent fretting, biting their nails as their million-dollar assets are put through such strain, fearing that their seasons, so carefully plotted, might be broken simply through exhaustion. Sports in 2016: Winners, Losers and Cheaters From a baseball player turned hit man to the amazing ability of Simone Biles, a look at some of the most compelling stories of the year. “It is really tough,” Ronald Koeman, the Everton manager, said. “The big teams have more players of the same level, so maybe they can make more rotations. The TV channels pay good money, the stadiums are full, it is a great competition. I don’t have any problem with any of that. But it is my opinion that individual players need a break.” There is now a groundswell of opinion within English soccer that Koeman is right; the majority of Premier League clubs would support some sort of winter break, and the Football Association, which governs the English game, is broadly behind the idea, too. If and when it is introduced, though, the assumption is that a hiatus would come after the Christmas week fixtures. This week is too special to be touched. “If we ever do have a midseason break, it won’t be over this period,” Mark Hughes, the Stoke City manager, said. “It will be sometime in January. I can see the sense in that. I don’t think anybody, really deep down, wants to change the Christmas period, because it is unique to this country.” To the players, the physical demands are only part of the problem posed at this time of year. “The only game you play over Christmas when you are 100 percent fit is the first one,” Le Saux said. “Even then, you are naturally very conservative, because you know you won’t have much time to recover. “If we were winning comfortably on Boxing Day,” he continued, “I’d always think: ‘I won’t make that run forward now.’ You start saving energy straightaway, really, just to get through it, which raises the question whether fans are actually getting value for money in the performances.” Though the promise of a winter break at the end of it might alleviate the physical concerns, the mental challenge would remain. The pictures that players paint of their Christmases verge on the bleak. When he was at Manchester United, the striker Danny Welbeck described having to spend Christmas night on his own in a hotel room waiting for a Boxing Day game as among “the worst parts” of being a professional. Joey Barton, who rejoined Burnley this week, once wrote that he had spent Christmas watching “enviously” as his family “ate turkey and drank wine.” It can be especially difficult for foreign players, of course, who are unused to the Premier League’s endless rhythm. “I can’t say any of them enjoy it; they think we’re nuts,” Hughes said. That, certainly, is the verdict of Thomas Müller, the Bayern Munich forward. Playing three games in a week when you could be resting at Christmas? “It’s crazy,” he said. Indeed, for all that recent additions to the league tend to eulogize the Christmas period, a vast majority of players are — at best — ambivalent about it. Hughes acknowledged that while he enjoyed the games, he was less enthused by having “to come in to train while everyone else is enjoying themselves.” Few players in the Premier League will enjoy much of a break over Christmas. Most clubs gave their squads some time off at the start of last week, a couple of days to spend with their families and to rest before the most arduous period of the season. Only one of the elite teams — Tottenham Hotspur — will be at home on Christmas Day. For the rest, it is work. Clubs vary when they train: Some will ask their players to come in a little earlier, so they can enjoy lunch with their families; others prefer to train in the afternoon, giving players the chance to spend the morning with their children. In some places — including Newcastle United — democracy takes hold: Manager Rafael Benítez tends to ask his players what they would prefer, then goes with the majority verdict. Later, players for whom the Christmas schedule has not been kind will set off for away trips in the early evening, spending the night in a hotel. Increasingly, that is true of teams playing at home, too, as the tendency to gather players together on the eve of a match catches on. Having to be absent from families leads, in Le Saux’s words, to feeling “guilty for not being around.” That, he conceded, “comes with the territory,” a punishment for the privilege of playing professional soccer. And it could be worse: Until 1959, English clubs played back-to-back games, home and away against the same opposition, on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. As far back as 1919, Hull City played on Dec. 25, 26 and 27. It lost the first two games to Spurs, but then beat Wolves, 10-3. No wonder soccer at Christmas caught on.

Soccer
Boxing Day
Premier League
Christmas


BP Will Plead Guilty and Pay Over $4 Billion

Abstract: HOUSTON — BP , the British oil company, said on Thursday that it had agreed to pay $4.5 billion in fines and other penalties and to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges related to the rig explosion two years ago that killed 11 people and caused a giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In a rare instance of seeking to hold individuals accountable for company misdeeds, the Justice Department also filed criminal charges against three BP employees in connection with the accident. “This is unprecedented, both with regard to the amounts of money, the fact that a company has been criminally charged and that individuals have been charged as well,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a news conference in New Orleans to announce the settlement . The government said that BP’s negligence in sealing an exploratory well caused it to explode, sinking the Deepwater Horizon drill rig and unleashing a gusher of oil that lasted for months and coated beaches all along the Gulf Coast. The company initially tried to cover up the severity of the spill, misleading both Congress and investors about how quickly oil was leaking from the runaway well, according to the settlement and related charges. While the settlement dispels one dark cloud that has hovered over BP since the spill, it does not resolve what is potentially the largest penalty related to the incident: the company could owe as much as $21 billion in pollution fines under the Clean Water Act if it is found to have been grossly negligent. Both the government and BP vowed to vigorously contest that issue at a trial scheduled to begin in February. Under its deal with the Justice Department, BP will pay about $4 billion in penalties over five years. That amount includes $1.256 billion in criminal fines, $2.394 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for remediation efforts and $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences. The criminal fine is one of the largest levied by the United States against a corporation. BP also agreed to pay $525 million to settle civil charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it misled investors about the flow rate of oil from the well. In addition, the company will submit to four years of government monitoring of its safety practices and ethics. “All of us at BP deeply regret the tragic loss of life caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident, as well as the impact of the spill on the Gulf Coast region,” Robert W. Dudley, BP’s chief executive, said in a statement . “We apologize for our role in the accident, and as today’s resolution with the U.S. government further reflects, we have accepted responsibility for our actions.” A broader settlement that would have resolved the Clean Water Act claims failed to win agreement from some parties, in particular the state of Louisiana. BP and the government now intend to go to trial on those claims in February. The government charged the top BP officers aboard the drilling rig, Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, with manslaughter in connection with each man who died, contending that the officials were negligent in supervising tests to seal the well. Prosecutors also charged David Rainey, BP’s former vice president for exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, with obstruction of Congress and making false statements for understating the rate at which oil was spilling from the well. As part of its plea agreement, BP admitted that, through Mr. Rainey, it withheld documents and provided false and misleading information in response to the House of Representatives’ request for information on how quickly oil was flowing. While Mr. Rainey was publicly repeating BP’s stated estimate of 5,000 barrels of oil a day, the company’s engineering teams were using sophisticated methods that generated significantly higher estimates. The Flow Rate Technical Group, consisting of government and independent scientists, later concluded that more than 60,000 barrels a day were leaking into the gulf during that time. Lawyers for all three men charged denied that their clients had committed any criminal wrongdoing. “This is not justice,” Mr. Kaluza’s lawyers, Shaun Clarke and David Gerger, said in a statement. “After nearly three years and tens of millions of dollars in investigation, the government needs a scapegoat.” Mr. Holder, the attorney general, said that the government’s investigation was continuing and that other criminal charges could be filed. Under the settlement announced on Thursday, BP agreed to plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect related to the deaths in the explosion. The company pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act and one misdemeanor violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It also agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of obstruction of Congress over its statements about the flow rate. Shelley Anderson, whose husband, Jason, died in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, said she was happy to hear about the settlement. “I think it’s a good thing that BP has owned up to their responsibility,” she said. But Ms. Anderson said the agreement did not change her own situation. “Everybody has asked about closure, closure, closure,” she said. “It’s not necessarily closure for us, because we still live every single day. We get up every single day and do it again. Life goes on.” BP has repeatedly said it would like to reach a settlement of all claims against it if the terms were reasonable. The unresolved claims have been weighing on the company’s share price. On Thursday, BP’s American shares closed at $40.30, up slightly on the day and down about 34 percent since the accident. The settlement is “one less thing to be negative on BP about and a minor step in the right direction toward the rehabilitation of BP,” said Iain Armstrong, an equity analyst at the investment manager Brewin Dolphin in London. But he added that there were still concerns about the remaining claims, and that “lawyers might yet have their day at court.” As part of Thursday’s announcement, BP said it was increasing its reserve for costs and claims related to the spill to about $42 billion. Brian Gilvary, BP’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts that the board weighed the settlement struck with the government against the prospect of a much wider criminal indictment that would have involved more people in the company. “A criminal indictment would have been a huge distraction,” he said. BP said that before Thursday’s announced payments, it spent more than $14 billion on operational response and cleanup costs and $1 billion on early restoration projects, and paid out more than $9 billion to individuals, businesses and government entities. In March, BP agreed with the lawyers for plaintiffs to settle claims of economic loss, including from the local seafood industry, and medical claims stemming from the oil spill. The company said it expected that settlement to be an additional $7.8 billion, which it will pay from a trust it set aside to cover such costs. Until this week, the only BP employee to be arrested and indicted was a low-level engineer, Kurt Mix, who has been charged with obstruction of justice for deleting text messages about company estimates of the flow rate from the spill. The government has asserted that in October 2010, Mr. Mix, of Katy, Tex., deleted from his smartphone a string of more than 200 messages with a supervisor about the flow rate estimated at the time of a failed effort to contain the spill. He is also accused of deleting a second string of messages with a contractor in August 2011. Mr. Mix has pleaded not guilty to both counts of impeding a grand jury investigation, saying that the deletions were routine and that other records of the communications still existed. David Yarnold, chief executive of the National Audubon Society, said Thursday’s settlement “matches the unprecedented offense BP committed.” “But BP needs to compensate the Gulf Coast in the form of civil damages,” he said. “The rule has to be: You break it, you buy it.” The company could still face billions of dollars in penalties under the Oil Pollution Act or the Clean Water Act. This possibility has spurred political jockeying between the Obama administration and Gulf Coast politicians who want to maximize the amount of money the states receive to help local communities affected by the spill. Under the Clean Water Act, fines could range from $1,100 for every barrel spilled through simple negligence to as much as $4,300 a barrel if the company were found to have been grossly negligent. With an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled in the accident, the company faces liabilities of as much as $5.4 billion to $21 billion. Gulf Coast lawmakers passed legislation called the Restore Act last summer under which 80 percent of fines paid by BP under the Clean Water Act would go to gulf communities. The Justice Department could also levy fines under a provision of the Oil Pollution Act, in which case BP would face a bigger penalty — more than $31 billion — to repair damages. But BP would be allowed to take a tax deduction for damages paid, and federal agencies would control how the fine money was spent. While the government will no longer be able to hold the threat of criminal charges over BP in negotiations about a civil fine, its quiver is not empty. Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studies corporate prosecutions, said the government could still invoke the threat of “debarment,” or disqualification from getting federal contracts. Although debarment is rare, he said, “that could be a very large blow both to reputation and to business BP does with the federal government.” Two other companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico accident, the rig operator Transocean and the cement contractor Halliburton, also face potential civil and criminal liabilities. Representative Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who was chairman of the House committee that received false information from BP about the spill rate in 2010, said: “The Obama administration and the Department of Justice have held BP to the highest level of accountability that the law allows, including for their lies to Congress. Now it is up to Congress to enact laws that raise both the safety standards for offshore drilling and the liability cap for companies that still spill.”

BP Plc
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)
Justice Department
Clean Water Act
Kaluza Robert
Rainey David
Vidrine Donald


Day Care Fire Prompts Investigation in Texas

Abstract: HOUSTON (AP) — A state agency is investigating whether a woman left seven preschoolers alone in her home day care center before a fire broke out, killing four of the children, including one who died on Saturday, and injuring the others. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which licenses day care centers, is investigating other possible violations as well, including whether the number of children in the home exceeded the state limit, a spokeswoman, Gwen Carter, said on Friday. State regulations allow no more than six children under preschool age — generally considered 5 years or younger — to be cared for in any 24-hour period in registered child-care homes, Ms. Carter said. Geoffrey Deshano, 18, who lives near the day care center, said he and a friend saw its operator, Jessica Tata, 22, arrive in a minivan on Thursday and then run out of the home screaming for help about 10 to 20 minutes later. Mr. Deshano and John Chestnut said they were standing outside and did not see Ms. Tata take any children from the vehicle before going inside the house. Mr. Deshano said he heard Ms. Tata scream, ran toward the house and saw some grocery bags at the front door. He said he saw a little boy inside and broke a window but could not pull the child out. Ms. Carter said her department was working with other agencies investigating the fire but declined to discuss details. Ms. Tata worked alone in the day care center, Ms. Carter said. No problems had been reported since the day care was licensed a year ago, but it was cited before it opened for not having a fire extinguisher or a carbon monoxide detector. Records show that the deficiencies were corrected, and Ms. Carter said staff members saw the fire extinguisher last year before the license was granted. A spokeswoman for Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston said a child who had been in critical condition there since the fire died Saturday. Two others children — one in critical condition and the other in good condition — were still at Memorial, said Jennifer Hart, a spokeswoman. Two other children were in critical condition at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Galveston, said Jo Anne Zuniga, a hospital spokeswoman.

Children and Youth
Day Care Centers
Fires and Firefighters
Education (Pre-School)


First World Series Replay Gives Yankees’ Rodriguez a Home Run

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — Alex Rodriguez hit a fly ball that crashed off a television camera that was partially hanging over the right-field fence. Was it a homer or not? If there is some controversy or some drama around the Yankees , Rodriguez is usually immersed in it. “Well, it’s only fitting, right?” Rodriguez said. It was only fitting that Rodriguez’s first World Series homer did not become official until after the umpires used the instant replay system in the postseason for the first time ever and reversed a call. Rodriguez’s two-run homer in the fourth inning provided the first runs off Philadelphia’s Cole Hamels, but they were not the last. After Rodriguez helped energize the Yankees, they scored three more runs off Hamels in the fifth and barreled to an 8-5 win over the Phillies in Game 3 of the World Series. The Yankees lead the series two games to one and need two more victories to win their first title since 2000. On a night when Andy Pettitte tossed six innings and also slapped a run-scoring single, the most memorable play of the game was Rodriguez’s homer that took a few minutes to be ruled a homer. Replays indicated that the umpires made the correct call. Rodriguez explained how he needed to swing at strikes Saturday, which he believed was the solution to being a successful hitter again. Rodriguez was so obsessed with swinging at strikes that he used nine variations of that talking point during a three and a half minute interview Friday. When Rodriguez swung at an 0-1 strike from Hamels, he lifted a fly ball into the right-field corner. The ball slammed off a camera that was near the foul pole and was partially in the field of play. Initially, Rodriguez stopped at second base. He had a double, not a two-run homer. Not yet. But Rodriguez called time out and twirled his finger to indicate that he felt the shot was a homer. Manager Joe Girardi came on to the field and argued the call. The umpires conferred and then four of the six umps left the field to watch the replays. They returned in less than a minute, changed their call and determined that Rodriguez’s ball was a homer. “A big hit for us,” Girardi said. “A big hit for us because it really got us going.” Gerry Davis, the crew chief, explained how the umpires tour the field and review the ground rules before the first game of a series at a ballpark. Since the umpires do not control how the camera operator moves the camera, Davis said any ball that hits the camera is a homer. Jeff Nelson, the right-field umpire, had ruled that Rodriguez’s ball was not a homer and said he thought it hit “the top of the fence.” After Girardi said the Yankees thought the ball hit a fan, the umpires decided to watch the replays. Once the umpires saw the ball strike the camera, Rodriguez soon had a two-run homer. “I think it woke our offense up a little bit,” Rodriguez said. “It felt really good, and it was a little weird to have the first home run and the replay and the whole nine yards. But two big runs for us early on.” Rodriguez, who had been 0 for 8 with six strikeouts before the homer, has now been involved in two firsts with replay. After the system was introduced 14 months ago, Rodriguez hit the first ball that caused the umpires to test it. His shot off Tampa Bay’s Troy Percival zoomed down the left-field line and collided with a catwalk. It was called fair. After a review, it was still called fair. “There are 800 players in the big leagues, so what are the odds that I’d be involved in this, 2 to 1?” Rodriguez said in September of 2008. “How do I get myself into this? What are the odds Rodriguez would be the first player involved with replay in the World Series? Maybe they were 2-1, too. Rodriguez has been a major story in the postseason. He dominated the first two rounds in powering the Yankees to the World Series and he vanished in the first two games against the Phillies. Before Game 3, Rodriguez refused to get too analytical about his two-game slump. Rodriguez did not compliment Cliff Lee or Pedro Martinez for throttling him. Instead, Rodriguez calmly and repeatedly discussed what he needed to do. “I think what I’m doing is pretty simple,” Rodriguez said. “I’m swinging at balls that are out of the strike zone. Those balls, you got to lay off them. The basic thing is swing at strikes. If not, pass the baton and go to first.” When Rodriguez was asked if Philadelphia’s pitchers were attacking him differently than the Minnesota Twins or the Los Angeles Angels did in October, he shook his head and dismissed that notion. Rodriguez explained the Phillies were throwing him inside fastballs and breaking stuff on the outside, which he said is what “every pitcher has done for the last 15 years.” Hamels drilled Rodriguez in the left triceps with his first pitch in the second so Rodriguez did not see a strike. In Rodriguez’s next at-bat, he swung and missed at a changeup and hammered Hamels’s fastball for the homer that took a while to become official. Rodriguez’s six homers tied Bernie Williams (1996) for the most by a Yankee in one postseason. Rodriguez, the highest paid player in baseball history and a player who the Yankees need to produce runs, said that walking four times in four at bats would be the “perfect day” for him. It seemed like an unusual remark, but then Rodriguez also mentioned how that patience could help him. “And then make them come to you,” Rodriguez said. “And, when they come to you, make them pay.” Hamels challenged Rodriguez and Rodriguez made him pay. He clubbed his first World Series homer, one that he will always have preserved on videotape. The replay is what confirmed that Rodriguez’s homer was a homer.

Baseball
World Series
Umpires
Rodriguez Alex
New York Yankees
Philadelphia Phillies


A Computer Brightens a Woman’s World — Neediest Cases

Abstract: Mary Dunn found her first computer in the garbage at her building in Hell’s Kitchen around 1990. She borrowed a monitor from a friend, and slowly taught herself how to use the machine. “The worst thing that can happen,” she said, shrugging, “is you have to turn it off and start all over again.” The computer is Ms. Dunn’s portal to the world. She has been legally blind — her vision is badly blurred — since childhood. She can, however, see a large computer screen. Every day, she spends a good eight hours browsing the Internet — sometimes more. Ms. Dunn also has spinal stenosis , a narrowing of the spaces in the backbone that puts pressure on the cord and nerves. Often, when the pain in her lower back becomes too much at night, she gets out of bed to surf the Web. “When I get horizontal, the pain center shifts and the pain builds up, up, up, and I scream and jump out of bed,” Ms. Dunn said. The ailment causes her to bend forward when she walks, stepping gingerly, her gaze cast downward. Ms. Dunn, who turns 72 on Dec. 10, lives in a cramped apartment on the first floor of a low-income co-operative in Manhattan. She moved into the apartment with her mother and older brother in 1943, after her father died of pneumonia. At 14, she dropped out of school to take a job — “at Woolworth’s, of course,” she said. She worked at a couple of other stores until, in her early 20s, she quit her next job to care for her mother, who had colon cancer, and to take over as superintendent of the building. Her mother died in 1965. “I was very withdrawn,” Ms. Dunn said. “You can imagine.” Eventually, she began managing more than a dozen buildings in the neighborhood, relinquishing the work gradually, and ending it last year. Today, Ms. Dunn, who has never been married, lives alone. A large computer monitor is perched high on a wooden desk beside her front door, which opens onto a room piled with shelving, storage containers and leafy green plants. As she talked one Tuesday evening, slowly twirling in a red desk chair, she clicked away on eBay, where she buys all of her clothes — and her plants. Ms. Dunn can name every one of the specimens crowding the metal storage unit that houses them. Over the years, she has belonged to more plant societies than she can name, celebrating hostas, vermilions, African violets and cacti. She was president of the local branch of a society for indoor plants. She recalls taking the train to the Bronx every Saturday morning for meetings of the New York Fern Society. “I’ve been into plants all my life,” she said. But there are no trips to the Bronx anymore. Her spinal troubles make walking difficult. She had a hip replacement about a year ago and has been through two bouts of cancer. Other than her social worker, her psychiatrist, her two home health aides and the occasional neighbor, Ms. Dunn has few visitors. But during her many years in the building, she has seen a lot of people come and go. “We’ve lost a lot of old timers,” she said. “But even the young people come in with their troubles. I’ve always been here to advise people.” Ms. Dunn lives on $160 a month in food stamps and $899 in Social Security benefits. She also has Medicare and supplemental health insurance, but life’s little fees add up. She pays $310 a month in maintenance. On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, she woke to find water streaming out of the bathroom and forming a puddle on her bedroom floor. It cost her more than $800 to fix a broken pipe and stop the leak. “When I finish paying that off, I’ll start saving for a new vanity,” she said. When her large-screen computer monitor stopped working in January, Ms. Dunn had to revert to an older, smaller screen that she could barely see. Her social worker at the Service Program for Older People, which offers mental health and other supportive programs, suggested she apply for a grant from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The Service Program for Older People is a member of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies , one of the seven agencies supported by the fund. In the spring, Ms. Dunn received $409.70 from the fund to buy a 27-inch monitor. It allows her to supersize the type on eBay so that she can browse as she has always done — sometimes she also shops for other tenants in her building. “This one,” she said, contentedly clicking away with her mouse and nodding at the screen, “it’s just saved my life.”