Tiger Woods Ties for P.G.A. Championship Lead

Abstract: KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — On a day with wind so blustery a well-struck 4-iron still traveled only 145 yards and even short putts ended up completely blown off the green, Tiger Woods , his shirt sleeves and pant legs flapping in the gusts, faced down the elements and charged into a three-way tie for the lead of the P.G.A. Championship on Friday. Woods, who shot a one-under-par 71 while the rest of the field was averaging close to 78 strokes for the second round, had the lead outright until he three-putted the 18th green for his second bogey of the day. But Woods finished at four under par, tying him with the first-round leader, Carl Pettersson, and his old rival Vijay Singh , whose 69 was the low score of the day. “We were getting blown around all day,” Woods said. “It was fun, but it was tough. You had to allow for the wind on everything — drives, irons, chips and putts. The wind controlled everything.” For the third consecutive major championship this year, Woods is in or near the lead after two rounds. Woods has broken par in five of the first eight rounds of this year’s four major tournaments. It is the weekend rounds that have been his downfall. In six rounds after the halfway mark at this year’s Grand Slam tournaments, Woods has yet to break par. “I’ve been in this position many times before in my career, not just this year,” Woods said Friday night. “So I’ve been here before. It is the halfway mark, and there is a long way to go. If the weather remains like this, it’s going to be very tough on everyone. “But I’m pleased. Anything under par today is very good, so I feel very confident.” Friday’s conditions included 35 mile-an-hour squalls that staggered scores of golfers marching along the seaside holes of the Ocean Course. Woods stalked Pettersson with remarkably precise putting, needing just 11 putts on his first nine holes. He has needed only 48 putts in his two rounds on the complex and cantilevered Ocean Course greens. Pettersson, who began the day with a two-stroke lead, held off Woods for most of Friday, then bogeyed three of his last four holes to drop out of sole possession of the top spot. Ian Poulter, who shot a one-under 71 Friday, was alone in fourth place, and Rory McIlroy was one stroke back of Poulter after an unsteady 75. The average score of the field climbed nearly five strokes from Thursday, when the weather was hot and the wind calm. But Woods seemed largely unaffected until his final hole. He bogeyed the difficult par-3 eighth hole but was otherwise robotic with his driving and creative with his short game. One chip shot stopped on the edge of the hole. Two short putts circled the circumference of the hole before dropping in. “There were no tap-ins; nothing was safe,” Woods said, smiling. “The wind could have blown a 10-inch putt off line.” While Woods finished just before dark, Singh played in the morning, when the winds might have been the most fierce. Singh’s score nearly left the rest of the morning pairings awe-struck. Ernie Els, the British Open champion, called his round of 75 a good round given the conditions. “I can’t imagine how good a 69 is,” Els said. “For me, it was an act of survival out there.” Singh, 49, conceded they may have been the most difficult conditions he had ever played in. “I don’t think we can handle this for three more days,” Singh said. “Sure, I shot 69, but if I had to go back out and play again, who knows what I’d shoot?” Singh, a two-time winner of the P.G.A., fought the wind, which was often a crosswind, with precise iron play and strategy off the tee. “You made a calculation about how much the crosswind would affect the flight of the ball,” he said. “And once you made your calculation, you had to hit it before the wind changed.” Singh hit 11 of 18 greens in regulation, a success rate of 61 percent on a day when 45 percent was closer to the norm. “Vijay’s ball striking is good — his ball penetrates through even a wind like the one today,” said Phil Mickelson. Mickelson was also that rare player who broke par Friday, even though he missed 8 of 14 fairways. With a one-under par 71, he is one over for the tournament, good enough to keep him in the top 15. Mickelson, who has been slumping, also said he felt confident heading into the final rounds. “It’s a very demanding golf course, but I like it,” Mickelson said. “I’m looking forward to the weekend.” There were many others who did not fare as well in the wind and occasional rain Friday. Graeme McDowell, who was third after the first round, shot 76. Geoff Ogilvy, also tied for third after the first round, shot 78. John Daly followed up his first-round 68 with a 77, and Sweden’s Alex Noren, who shot 67 on Thursday, shot an eight-over 80 on Friday. Prominent players who ballooned high above par and appear to be on the wrong side of the cut line — the entire field had not finished Friday night — were the former world No. 1 Lee Westwood, the United States Open champion Webb Simpson, Rickie Fowler and Hunter Mahan.

PGA Championship
Woods Tiger
Pettersson Carl
Singh Vijay
Golf


Maliki Alleges 7 Cases When Blackwater Killed Iraqis

Abstract: BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 — Iraq brought fresh criticisms of the private security company Blackwater USA on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki saying that his government had registered a total of seven cases in which the company’s guards had killed Iraqis. A lethal shooting on Sunday that involved an American diplomatic convoy and left at least eight Iraqis dead infuriated the Iraqi authorities and has prompted them to threaten to evict Blackwater, the company that provides security for the most senior American diplomats here. On Tuesday, the United States Embassy said all trips outside the Green Zone had been suspended. At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Maliki reiterated Iraq’s intentions to prohibit the company from working in the country, saying the United States should drop it as a protector. “This act, which I call a crime, has created a state of tension and anger among all of us,” he said. “It is better for this company to freeze its activity, and the embassy can drive out with other companies.” The Ministry of Interior has registered seven cases of Blackwater’s guards’ killing Iraqis, including the one on Sunday, he said, without providing details. He said the government was working to rewrite the rules that regulate private security companies, which have immunity from Iraqi law. “This company should be held accountable for these violations,” Mr. Maliki said, “because we will never allow Iraqi citizens to be killed in cold blood by this company that is playing with the lives of the people.” A Blackwater spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday, but the company has previously defended its employees, saying they were responding to an insurgent attack. The State Department, helped by the American military, is conducting an investigation, and American investigators, military and civilian, have been intensively questioning witnesses. Late on Tuesday, an Iraqi official said the investigation would be a joint effort between the governments. Tom Casey, a spokesman for the State Department, confirmed that on Wednesday, saying the commission would have equal representation from the American and Iraqi sides. “The commission’s goal is to make joint policy recommendations, including specific suggestions for improving U.S. and Iraqi procedures regarding government-affiliated personal security details,” he said at a briefing in Washington. Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said that President Bush “was concerned” about the Blackwater shooting, and that “he was glad that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Prime Minister Maliki to express a deep regret for the innocent loss of life.” Several traffic policemen in Nisour Square, the site of the shooting on Sunday, said two sets of American soldiers in two days had come to ask questions. The first came on the afternoon of the shooting. A day later, soldiers in four Humvees drove up to their small building and talked for about half an hour to two witnesses. The policeman who stopped traffic on the day of the shooting to allow the convoy to pass was taken into the Green Zone to speak to embassy workers, one of the police officers said. The officer gave a similar version of events as other Iraqi witnesses, saying the convoy began shooting when a car did not stop. The convoy was leaving a secured military area, driving on the wrong side of the road through part of a traffic circle, and headed in the direction of the airport, said the police officer, who would not give his name. In Baghdad, two prominent lawmakers said Wednesday that they were withdrawing from the moderate, secular political bloc of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Safia Suhail and Hachim al-Hasani, both members of Mr. Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc, said they were quitting because the party’s focus had changed from “looking for a way to reach political agreements” to competing over power. Mr. Allawi has been reaching out to Iraqi political leaders of all sorts, looking for supporters to form an alternate government, saying Mr. Maliki’s government is beyond repair. Mr. Maliki, for his part, expressed disbelief that Mr. Allawi was advocating contacts with former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which is outlawed in Iraq. “I feel bewildered of Ayad’s conduct,” he said. “What does brother Ayad want? Does he want the Baath to return to Iraq?” One American soldier was killed in southern Baghdad on Tuesday, the American military said. In Baquba, a restive city north of Baghdad, the Iraqi Army began a broad operation against Sunni insurgents, an army officer said, killing 13 gunmen.

Iraq
Blackwater USA
Defense Contracts
United States Armament and Defense
Maliki Nuri Kamal al-
United States International Relations
Politics and Government


Ukraine’s Security Services and Rebels Are Said to Be Equals in Torture

Abstract: MOSCOW — A report by two leading human rights groups released on Thursday accuses Ukraine’s Western-backed security services of practicing abuse and torture in a manner similar to that of the rebel groups they are fighting. In the report about disappearances and torture in the Ukraine war, titled “You Don’t Exist,” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International document harrowing abuse by both sides, including waterboarding and the use of electrical shocks. Ukraine has been battling Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east since 2014, with fighting grinding on despite a cease-fire. This week, seven Ukrainian soldiers died in a single day of fighting. The front line zigzags through several towns, so that worries about spies and surreptitious artillery spotters among the civilian population run high in the armies of both sides, and abuse follows, the report said. “People in eastern Ukraine who are being seized and hidden away by the warring sides are at the mercy of their captors,” Tanya Lokshina, a researcher with Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of the report, said in a statement. “It is never legal or justified to seize people off the streets, cut them off from contact with family and lawyers, and beat and abuse them,” she said. Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the Security Service of Ukraine, denies illegally detaining suspects in the conflict. And yet as recently as May, it refused to allow a United Nations delegation investigating reports of torture access to sites where suspects were alleged to be held illegally. During the two-year conflict, much attention had fallen on the abuses of Russian-backed rebels, who routinely rounded up and held in basements civilians expressing pro-Ukrainian views, freeing them after a ransom had been paid or in prisoner exchanges. The report said the Ukrainian security services may have created an “exchange fund” or “currency” of detainees detainees, to trade for supporters in rebel areas, driving the abuse. Nobody wants to be left empty-handed during prisoner exchanges. “This gives rise to serious concern that both sides may be detaining civilians to have ‘currency’ for potential exchanges,” the report said. This practice could constitute hostage taking, a war crime, it said. The rights groups detailed nine instances of detainee abuse on each side, and in nearly all 18 cases the men and women in custody were either freed in a prisoner exchange or at one point objects of negotiation. The Ukrainian domestic intelligence agency probably runs unacknowledged detention centers at sites throughout eastern Ukraine, the report said, in Kharkiv, Kramatorsk, Izyum and Mariupol. One man whom the investigators interviewed, identified only by his first name, Artem, recounted being detained by the Ukrainian authorities, handcuffed to a metal rod on a ceiling and beaten, with demands to tell “everything.” He was also shocked with bare electrical wires on his back and wires were applied to his genitals, although it was unclear whether the current was turned on. He also described being suffocated with a wet mop, or waterboarded. He was eventually traded for a detainee held on the rebel side. The report detailed similar mistreatment by the Russian-backed security services of the two rebel governments, known as the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Svetlana Rozova, a Ukrainian psychologist who works with detainees freed from rebel jails, said in an interview that victims emerge with deep emotional scars. During incarceration by rebel groups, beatings, mock executions and forced menial labor, like digging trenches, are common. Recovery is harder when these detainees learn that they were held, sometimes for months, only for the sake of padding out an exchange deal. “They didn’t understand why it has happened to them,” she said. “They just wanted to run away, and forget all of this, but they won’t be able to forget it soon. They are mentally broken.”

Ukraine
Human Rights
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch
Torture
Russia
Detainees


Officer Who Shot Danroy Henry Gets Police Union Award

Abstract: WHITE PLAINS (AP) — A police union has given the officer who shot and killed a Pace University football player during a disturbance in Westchester County last year its Officer of the Year award. The student’s father, Danroy Henry Sr., called the award insensitive and arrogant. “We simply asked for truth and honesty, and we’ve gotten arrogance,” Mr. Henry said. “Some people see themselves above the law and above simple human dignity.” The Police Benevolent Association of the Pleasantville Police Department said Wednesday that it honored the officer, Aaron Hess, for his dignity and professionalism since the October shooting of Danroy Henry Jr., 20, and throughout his career. Officer Hess fired at Mr. Henry’s car as Mr. Henry drove away from a disturbance that spilled out of a bar in Thornwood after Pace’s homecoming game. Officer Hess was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a grand jury. He said he shot at Mr. Henry after Mr. Henry’s car hit him. Some witnesses disputed that. The Justice Department is reviewing the shooting to determine whether there were any civil rights violations.

Police Benevolent Assn
Hess Aaron
Henry Danroy Jr
Thornwood (NY)
Awards Decorations and Honors
Police


Critics of Health Care Law Outspending Its Supporters on Ads

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Seven months before the core provisions of President Obama’s health care law are to take effect, most television advertising that mentions the law continues to come from its opponents. Since the law’s passage in March 2010, critics have spent a total of about $400 million on television ads that refer to it, according to a new analysis by the Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media, which tracks such spending. Supporters have spent less than a quarter of that — about $75 million — on ads that cast the law in a positive light, according to the analysis. The biggest advertiser in support of the law has been the Department of Health and Human Services , which has run educational ads that mention it. Most of the negative ads have come from Republican outside groups, including Crossroads GPS , which was founded by Karl Rove and other top Republican strategists, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Spending on ads that mention the law dropped steeply after last fall’s presidential election — only about $4 million has been spent since then, according to Kantar, including $2.5 million on ads that are critical of the law and $1.5 million on ads promoting it. Recent negative ads have come from Republican political candidates like former Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who won a special election for a House seat last month, and from conservative advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity. In North Carolina, Americans for Prosperity has a new 30-second ad celebrating “a new day” in North Carolina politics because of “a fresh crop of leaders” who are “bringing conservative reforms.” Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, won election there last fall, giving the party full control in the state for the first time in more than a century. “The threat of Obamacare? Minimized,” the narrator says. Like a number of other Republican states, North Carolina has declined to expand Medicaid as called for under the law. Some of the recent negative ads have next year’s elections in mind. The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, an outside group, ran an ad last month in Lexington and Louisville praising Senator Mitch McConnell for opposing the health care law. Mr. McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, is up for re-election in Kentucky next year. “It’s already causing layoffs,” the narrator says of the law. “Higher premiums are next. Mitch McConnell saw it coming. Leading the fight against Obamacare.” The analysis also counted several recent ads by Newsmax, a conservative media company, promoting the “Obamacare Survival Guide,” a book published by an affiliate of the company. Those ads have run around the country, according to the analysis, at a cost of more than $1 million. Image The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, an outside group, ran an advertisement last month in Lexington and Louisville praising Senator Mitch McConnell for opposing the health care law. Elizabeth Wilner, vice president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, said it was “extremely unusual” for a law to remain the subject of political ads for so long after its passage. She also questioned whether all the advertising has significantly swayed public opinion. Polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation have consistently found Americans to be evenly divided on the law, known as the Affordable Care Act , with slightly more opposing than supporting it. “You could say all the spending on negative ads about the A.C.A. has kept it from becoming more popular,” Ms. Wilner said. “But it certainly hasn’t dramatically changed people’s opinions about it.” The law will require most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty starting in January. The federal government and a number of states are rushing to finish building insurance marketplaces, known as exchanges, where millions of Americans are supposed to be able to buy coverage starting in October. Democrats are worried about potential backlash in next fall’s midterm elections, particularly if there are any problems with the exchanges or other aspects of carrying out the law. Mr. McConnell recently predicted that the law would be the biggest issue in Congressional races next year. But Ms. Wilner said she expected to see more Democratic spending on ads embracing the law — or at least its popular elements — leading up to November 2014. “We know, given what’s coming with the implementation of the law, that it could potentially affect more voters’ decisions in 2014 than it did in 2010 or 2012,” she said. “We will see more Democratic advertising about it, I’m sure. Democrats have to talk about it. It’s being implemented, they can’t ignore it. They’ve got to try to look at the bright side of it.” In all, the Health and Human Services Department has run about $46 million worth of ads referring to the law since March 2010, according to the analysis. It spent about $1.4 million on one ad during open enrollment for Medicare late last year, for example, that told viewers to “check out the preventive benefits you get after the health care law.” The department is planning to begin a broad outreach effort this month that may include more television advertising. Meanwhile, the California Endowment, a private foundation, is running television ads promoting the law in Spanish in that state.


Little Brother, Big Plans

Abstract: In his recently released book, “Hardcourt Confidential,” Patrick McEnroe examined tennis from various vantage points: as a retired player, a longtime Davis Cup captain, younger brother of John McEnroe , general manager for player development with the United States Tennis Association and a television commentator who is working for ESPN at Wimbledon. GREG BISHOP Q. How did the book come about? A. I’d been approached a number of years ago about doing a tell-all book about being John’s brother, basically. I didn’t have any interest in that. Now, having been involved in so many different aspects of tennis, I could see the game in so many different ways. That’s really where it started. Q. Do you have a favorite among the different duties? A. Great question, but not really. That’s why I’ve been able to bounce around and live between different worlds. I go through phases where I love one more than the other. Right now, my full-time job is player development. I’m thinking about that basically all the time. Q. You hired José Higueras to develop and implement a U.S.T.A. coaching philosophy. What are the latest developments? A. José has so much experience. He’s great. The second half of the project, which we’ve been working on a lot recently, is to spread that philosophy to coaches who have a record of developing top American juniors. We’ve reached out and shown them what we’re doing. We offer parameters for coaching high-level junior players. That was lacking. It’s a serious work in progress. Q. How long before the plan yields results? A. I don’t think there’s a definitive answer. You can see some results in the next year or two, with players like Sam Querrey, who we work with full time. To really get a sense of it, it will probably take 7 to 10 years, to be honest. We need to teach kids how to play tennis, not just how to hit the ball. That’s been lacking. Q. Your brother is opening a tennis academy in New York in September. Have you talked with him about it? A. We had a good chat in Paris. Bottom line, we want to be on the same page. I’m happy that he put his hat in the ring. We’ve got our program, and he’s got his, but at the end of the day, it’s all about trying to help tennis. Specifically, to help American tennis. More specifically, to help tennis in New York. There’s absolutely no reason we can’t coexist. Q. You coach the Bryan brothers in Davis Cup, and they are tied with Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde for the most men’s doubles titles in a career at 61. What have the Bryans meant to tennis? A. They’ve done so much for tennis, doubles and the Davis Cup, and it all starts with their passion for the sport. Q. Are they the best doubles team ever? A. It’s hard for me to go there, and I don’t say that with any disrespect to them. The Woodies were a great team. My brother and Peter Fleming. It’s hard to say the Bryans are better, but I will say this: they deserve to be right at the top of the list.

McEnroe Patrick
McEnroe John
Tennis
Books and Literature


Saturday’s College Football Games to Watch

Abstract: 2 AUBURN at 3 MISSISSIPPI STATE 3:30 p.m., CBS The game of the week, again, comes to us from the Southeastern Conference’s West Division. Mississippi State is coming off a convincing victory over Texas A&M that vaulted quarterback Dak Prescott into the Heisman Trophy conversation. Prescott, one of the most dynamic players in the country, has accounted for 19 touchdowns. Comparisons to Tim Tebow have been plentiful: They are similar in size; Prescott wears No. 15 (because of Tebow); and his coach, Dan Mullen, was the offensive coordinator at Florida with Tebow. Remember, it was not until mid- to late October 2007 that Tebow started to appear on experts’ lists on his way to winning the Heisman. Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall is making headlines. The Tigers are the defending SEC West champions and narrowly lost to Florida State in the Bowl Championship Series title game. Marshall was a huge part of that run. Like Prescott, he is capable of beating you with his arm or his legs and is also beginning to pop up in Heisman discussions. On the other side, Mississippi State’s defensive front seven has been a big part of its success. Lineman Preston Smith and linebacker Bernardrick McKinney are impact players with first-round N.F.L. talent. This year, Mississippi State is second to Alabama in the SEC in rushing defense. The secondary, though, is suspect. The Bulldogs are last in the SEC in passing defense, and Marshall will look to take advantage. Auburn is a slight favorite, but expect Starkville to be rocking again (the term “cowbell etiquette” has been bandied about). This will be a very entertaining affair. 9 TEXAS CHRISTIAN at 5 BAYLOR 3:30 p.m., ABC/ESPN2 (Regional) After its upset of Oklahoma, T.C.U. shot up the rankings. Now the Horned Frogs head to Waco, Tex., to take on the Bears, who lead the F.B.S. in scoring, averaging 51 points a game. T.C.U. played in two B.C.S. bowls when it was a member of the Mountain West Conference, but it has struggled in its two seasons in the Big 12. Baylor is the defending champion. This is only the second meeting of top-10 teams in Waco. The last time was in 1956, when No. 8 Baylor lost to No. 7 Texas A&M, which was coached by Bear Bryant. For Baylor, everything starts with its offense, which misfired last week despite a 28-7 win over Texas. Quarterback Bryce Petty has been considered a Heisman contender, but he completed only 7 of 22 passes for 111 yards against the Longhorns. The 2014 Heisman Watch A look at the top players in contention for college football’s highest honor. The Horned Frogs have an experienced defense and have had success defending Baylor’s spread offense. That T.C.U. has a good defense is no surprise, but what is surprising is that T.C.U. is averaging 516 yards of offense a game. On the flip side, Baylor’s defense is much better than it gets credit for, and lineman Shawn Oakman leads the Big 12 with five sacks and is second with seven tackles for a loss. 3 MISSISSIPPI at 14 TEXAS A&M 9 p.m., ESPN The Rebels’ victory over then-No. 3 Alabama was among the biggest in the program’s history. Mississippi is 5-0 for the first time since its 1962 unbeaten season, in large part because of its stingy defense. The Rebels have allowed only four touchdowns, the fewest in the nation. They have intercepted 10 passes and allowed only one passing touchdown, on Aug. 28. Cornerback Senquez Golson leads the SEC with four interceptions, and none were bigger than the one at the edge of the end zone with 37 seconds left last week. The defense allows an average of 10.2 points a game, which leads the SEC and is second to Stanford (8.6) in the nation. This week, it will get a good test against a Texas A&M offense that is averaging nearly 50 points a game. Quarterback Kenny Hill has thrown 21 touchdown passes, but last week, he threw three interceptions and his receivers dropped an eye-popping 11 passes. Mississippi quarterback Bo Wallace played superbly against Alabama, but he has struggled at times. He did not throw an interception last week, but he is still tied for the SEC lead with six. Wallace will have to look out for the freshman defensive end Myles Garrett, who has six and a half sacks, a team record for a freshman and second to Shayne Ray (eight) of Missouri in the conference. 12 OREGON at 18 U.C.L.A. 3:30 p.m., Fox Both teams are coming off losses and have no room for error. The winner is still in good shape in the Pacific-12 Conference race and could even worm its way back into the playoff conversation, but the loser will be all but eliminated from both. Oregon made pivotal mistakes against Arizona last week. U.C.L.A. is coming off a loss to Utah in which quarterback Brett Hundley was sacked 10 times. The Bruins lead the Pac-12 with 22 sacks allowed, but Oregon is second with 15, thanks in large part to a host of injuries on the line. Oregon’s Marcus Mariota (15 touchdowns, no interceptions) was banged up last week, and questions are swirling about his health coming into this one. Despite the loss and his lack of protection, Mariota is capable of making all kinds of plays and is still in the running for the Heisman. 13 GEORGIA at 23 MISSOURI Noon, CBS Georgia running back Todd Gurley, a Heisman favorite, has been suspended indefinitely for a violation of N.C.A.A. rules. Georgia was in the driver’s seat in the SEC East, but now it is wide open, and Missouri could step right in with a victory. Georgia will look to the freshman running back Nick Chubb to fill the void, and while Chubb is certainly a talented player, it remains to be seen if he can carry the load that Gurley has been toting this season. N.C.A.A. Fan Map: How the Country Roots for College Football We’ve published maps showing where fan support for one team begins and another ends for baseball and basketball. Now we’re pleased to offer another one: the United States according to college football fans. The Bulldogs travel to Columbia, Mo., to face the defending SEC East champions, who suffered a shocking upset at home to Indiana earlier this season. The defense looked suspect in that one, allowing the Hoosiers to rack up 241 rushing yards and three touchdowns on the ground. Missouri bounced back the next week with a 21-20 victory over then-No. 13 South Carolina and had a week off to get ready. Georgia’s lone loss was to South Carolina, in its only road game so far. 7 ALABAMA at ARKANSAS 6 p.m., ESPN Alabama tries to get back on track against the Razorbacks, who have not won an SEC game in two years. This season, Arkansas is much improved, but it has the unenviable task of trying to stop a desperate Crimson Tide team. Alabama is the favorite, and anything less than a comfortable victory would be a big surprise. DUKE at 22 GEORGIA TECH 12:30 p.m. Don’t look now, but the Yellow Jackets are undefeated and are ranked in the top 25 for the first time since 2011. Their schedule is hardly daunting, and they will be noticed if they keep winning. TEXAS vs. 11 OKLAHOMA Noon, ABC, Dallas The Red River Showdown was one of the biggest games in college football. Now it barely causes a ripple.

College football
Auburn
Mississippi University
Nick Marshall
Texas Christian University
Baylor University


Fed Minutes Show Some Concern on Economic Outlook

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, marshaled a strong consensus among Fed officials for the momentous decision to raise the central bank’s benchmark interest rate last month, but concerns among policy makers about the strength of economic growth could slow the march toward higher rates. Officials are focused on the persistence of sluggish inflation. While rising prices are unpopular, central bankers see benefits in moderate inflation. But for almost four years, there has been less inflation than the Fed’s 2 percent annual target; some policy makers worry that higher interest rates will not help, according to an official account of the December meeting published on Wednesday. For some of those officials, the decision to raise rates was a “close call,” the meeting account said. It added that “many participants remained concerned about the downside risks attending the outlook for inflation.” And it described general agreement among the 17 officials who make up the Fed’s policy-making body, the Federal Open Market Committee, to keep a close eye on prices. By the time the Fed formally announced its December decision to raise interest rates , ending the seven-year period during which it held short-term rates near zero, the attention of investors had already shifted to the question of how quickly the Fed would raise rates a second time, and a third. Fed officials forecast in December that they were likely to raise rates by one percentage point in 2016, most likely in four quarter-point increments. Referring to that prediction in an interview on CNBC Wednesday, Stanley Fischer, the Fed’s vice chairman, said that “those numbers are in the ballpark.” Not everybody is necessarily in line with that thinking, though. The meeting account, released after a standard three-week delay, did not address the issue directly, but its description of the internal debate underscored differences on the timing and frequency of future moves. In particular, it raised the question of how much further Fed officials are willing to raise rates without clear evidence the pace of inflation is also rising. Most Wall Street analysts predict the Fed will not raise rates at its next meeting, in late January, but they generally expect the Fed to raise its benchmark rate at the following meeting, in March. Video Stanley Fischer, the Federal Reserve's vice chairman, said on CNBC Wednesday that forecasts of four rate increases in 2016 were "in the ballpark," but that circumstances could change. Laura Rosner, an economist at BNP Paribas, said the minutes provided less information than she expected about the Fed’s plans, but she still put the odds of a March increase at 80 percent. She said she did not expect the questions about inflation to be resolved by then, but she wrote on Wednesday that “inflation data released leading up to the March meeting are unlikely to increase worries.” Ms. Yellen and her allies have already demonstrated they are willing to raise rates despite the uncertainty. Other analysts, however, said they were surprised by the Fed’s emphasis on its inflation concerns. “Given all their worries about inflation, it’s a wonder they even hiked at all,” wrote Michael Feroli, chief United States economist at JPMorgan Chase. “Absent from this discussion was any sense that further tightening in the labor market would bolster their confidence in the inflation outlook. Instead, they wanted proof: not only expected progress, but also ‘actual’ progress on their inflation objective.” Mr. Feroli said a March raise now depended, in his judgment, on data showing increased inflation. The minutes described Fed officials as optimistic that the economy would continue its steady, but slow, growth this year. They generally predicted the strength of the domestic economy, fueled by increased consumer spending, would outweigh the weakness of the global economy, which has limited foreign demand for American products. They also expected growth to be strong enough to drive continued improvement in labor market conditions — fewer people without jobs, fewer people in jobs that they do not like and, perhaps most important, more workers able to obtain raises. As employment increases and wages rise, the Fed expects inflation to rise more quickly, in keeping with a longstanding pattern. A majority of Fed officials, led by Ms. Yellen, view this pattern as sufficiently reliable that they decided to start raising rates before it actually happened. “Nearly all participants were now reasonably confident that inflation would move back to 2 percent over the medium term,” the minutes said. And because the influence of monetary policy is gradual, they worried that waiting to raise rates would risk driving economic growth to unsustainable heights or fostering a speculative bubble. The Fed, however, has repeatedly forecast that inflation would rise, and it has repeatedly been wrong. Some officials are concerned the central bank is once again overestimating the economy. Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, has argued that her colleagues are underestimating the potential deflationary impact of global economic weakness. The minutes, describing this view, said a couple of officials “worried that a further strengthening of the labor market might not prove sufficient to offset the downward pressures from global disinflationary forces.” The Fed has taken comfort in the stability of inflation expectations, which show Americans have not changed their views about the likely level of future inflation. But that blanket has been fraying for some time. Measures of expectations derived from asset prices are far weaker than survey measures, and in recent months, some of the survey measures have also shown signs of declining. The minutes said several officials expressed “unease” about that decline, while others saw benign explanations, arguing that lower oil prices, for example, were exerting an influence that would soon fade once the energy market stabilized and began to rise. So far, that has not happened.

Federal Reserve
US Economy
Interest rate
Inflation
Janet L Yellen


Lisa P. Jackson

Abstract: As he prepares to take office, President-elect Barack Obama is relying on a small team of advisers who will lead his transition operation and help choose the members of his administration. Following is part of a series of profiles of potential members of the administration. Name: Lisa P. Jackson Being Considered For: Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Would bring to the job: Twenty years of experience as an environmental regulator and a reputation as a consensus builder. Ms. Jackson, who is a chemical engineer, brought a more policy-driven approach to New Jersey’s historically politicized Department of Environmental Protection as its commissioner. During her 33 months in that job, the state began conducting compliance sweeps to crack down on polluters in environmentally ravaged sections of Camden and Paterson, ended its controversial bear hunt and unveiled a plan to reduce carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Is linked to Mr. Obama by: His transition team . Like her boss, Gov. Jon S. Corzine, Ms. Jackson supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton over Mr. Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries. Besides making a $1,000 donation to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007, Ms. Jackson was an at-large delegate pledged to Mrs. Clinton; only later in 2008 did she donate $200 to the Obama campaign. Shortly after she was named Mr. Corzine’s chief of staff in late October — taking over on Dec. 1, becoming the first woman and first African American to hold the post — she was chosen by President-elect Obama in mid-November to serve on his transition panel for energy and the environment. In her own words: “When it comes to the auto industry, the E.P.A. apparently is the Emissions Permissions Agency.” (Announcing in December 2007 that New Jersey would join other states in suing the Bush administration for its ruling that prevented states from enacting tougher fuel efficiency standards, a decision she called “a horrendous change of course.”) Used to work as: An administrator in the federal Environmental Protection Agency for 16 years, where her duties included regulating the cleanup of hazardous waste sites under the Superfund program. She also ran various enforcement programs at both the E.P.A. and New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, as well as New Jersey’s Land Use Management Program. Carries as baggage: The E.P.A. criticized New Jersey in a recent report for moving too slowly to clean up some toxic waste sites. Some environmentalists also say she caved in to pressure from big business by supporting a plan that would privatize cleanup of hazardous waste sites, and from developers by diluting a proposal to enact stricter groundwater quality standards. Also known for: Although her tenure at the Department of Environmental Protection involved dealing with an assortment of volatile political issues, Ms. Jackson’s measured approach won praise even from those who opposed her decisions; those diplomatic skills led Mr. Corzine to name her his chief of staff. Biography: Born Feb. 8, 1962, in Philadelphia; adopted a few weeks later and raised in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. ... first in her class at St. Mary’s Dominican High School (she once described her academic career, saying, “I was a straight ‘A’ student — a geek basically.”). ... graduated summa cum laude from Tulane University’s School of Chemical Engineering and earned a master’s in chemical engineering from Princeton University. ... She lives with her husband, Kenny Jackson, and their two sons in East Windsor, N.J. ... an avid cook, her signature dish — gumbo — is a tribute to her Louisiana roots. ... renowned for her annual Mardi Gras party, which she has not thrown since Hurricane Katrina devastated her hometown in 2005.

Presidential Election of 2008
United States Politics and Government
Environment


Hometown Lets Paul Ryan Ponder Speaker Job on Own Terms

Abstract: JANESVILLE, Wis. — Representative Paul D. Ryan stepped out of St. John Vianney Roman Catholic Church after Mass here Saturday evening into the twilight of a cloudless day, far removed from the bleating of Washington that had surrounded him roughly 24 hours before. In his hometown, he was not being chased by reporters with microphones or beseeched by his colleagues courting him to be the next speaker of the House. Instead, he was among friends and neighbors, shooting the breeze as he meandered across a large suburban parking lot. “Hey, Paul, what are the odds?” one of them asked about the chances he would try to ascend to the office second in the line of succession to the presidency. A knowing Mr. Ryan stopped, smiled and gestured toward the lone journalist in the crowd. “He’s a reporter,” he said, by way of apology, and kept walking. But the question is on many minds in Janesville, a town of blue-collar workers, still suffering from the idling of a General Motors plant almost seven years ago, and of well-to-do families like the Ryans. The people here seem almost as conflicted as Mr. Ryan himself professes to be. Mr. Ryan has called Janesville home since childhood, and he helped put it on the political map as an adult when he was named Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate in 2012. It is also where he came during the weekend to be surrounded by a tight-knit circle of family and longtime friends as he ponders an answer. He appears to have spent Saturday morning bow hunting (a local pastime and favorite hobby of Mr. Ryan’s) and the afternoon around the house with family, including his older brother, Tobin Ryan, who has served as something of an informal political adviser throughout his career. As of Saturday evening, despite entreaties from some of the most respected leaders of his party, Mr. Ryan said he had not budged. Hard-Line Republicans Clear the Way for Paul Ryan to Be Speaker Any candidate for the speakership — which requires the approval of a majority of the House — will need the support of at least some of the hard-line members. “I’ve got nothing for you. I’m sorry,” he said as he walked alone toward his Chevrolet Suburban, which bore a Green Bay Packers license plate cover. “I haven’t changed my mind.” But there were signs here that Mr. Ryan, the powerful, numbers-driven chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was still working over the math. “This was all a big surprise to us 48 hours ago, so we’ll see,” Tobin Ryan said as he perused a farmers’ market downtown with his wife earlier in the day. “We’re just praying for him that he gets the kind of contemplation he needs with his family to make this decision.” It was a sentiment shared across Janesville over the weekend, by Mr. Ryan’s supporters and critics — of whom there are many here — alike. Though the ascension of a local son to one of the most powerful perches in American government could help bring federal attention and investment that residents said this city badly needed, most people here said Mr. Ryan should make the right decision for himself, by himself. Neighbors doing yard work Saturday afternoon wished their friend up the street well but said they had made a habit of not commenting to the press. Patrick Lyons, a close friend of Mr. Ryan’s since childhood, declined to share his thoughts. Roz Thorpe, who raised her family across the street from the Ryans when Paul was young, said she would be “very surprised” if Mr. Ryan took the job, but then again she had not yet spoken to him since he had returned to town. Janesville residents of the type who occasionally see Mr. Ryan around town or share mutual friends were less circumspect, though few could agree on how the speakership would affect Mr. Ryan’s high-potential career, what role family considerations might play in the decision and what it might mean for their city. Outside the Citrus Cafe, a popular diner on Main Street, Karl Anderson explained between puffs of a cigarette that though he was not a big Ryan supporter, he thought the congressman’s perseverance under pressure was wise. “The party is just not united enough for him — it would be kind of a death sentence,” Mr. Anderson, 47, said, emphasizing that he thinks Mr. Ryan’s only obligation should be to the citizens of his district. Possible Candidates for a Brokered House Speaker Race With Representative Kevin McCarthy’s stunning decision to withdraw from the race for speaker on Thursday, the Republican leadership elections were turned upside down. The competitive races were supposed to be those for lower-tier positions. Now the big uncertainty is who the next speaker will be. “Who wants that job?” he said again. “My god, who wants to be that? It’s a chopping block.” Across town at the weekly farmers’ market, where shoppers examined kettle corn and kringle on a closed-off commercial district street, Jenifer Jelinek, a 33-year-old Democrat, largely agreed. “I feel like out of our choices, he’s a little bit better,” she said. “But I think given the Republican House, he’s not going to get any more done than Boehner. You can’t win, because any compromise they refer to as capitulation.” Even people who said Mr. Ryan should succeed Speaker John A. Boehner did so with an asterisk. “I think he should take it. I think he’s the best qualified,” said Howard Hoekman, a Janesville resident, before qualifying that view just a few seconds later. “It’s probably not good for his family, no,” he added. “If I was him, I wouldn’t do it.” Others, like Sister Marie Lucette, a nun who works at St. Elizabeth, a nursing home up the street from the Ryans’ home, and who knows the family, said she would not presume to make a judgment on what she said was really a family matter. “He’s a prayerful man,” she said, “so he should follow his heart.” Even if Mr. Ryan enters the race, support from the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, which helped force Mr. Boehner’s resignation, is not assured. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the caucus’s chairman, said on “Fox News Sunday” that though the group “would look favorably” on a Ryan candidacy, Mr. Ryan would be expected to address its agenda. Mr. Ryan, seemed to be doing much of that contemplating at home in his stately six-bedroom, red brick, 5,800-square-foot colonial in Janesville’s Courthouse Hill neighborhood, where he has lived since 2010 with his wife, Janna, and three children, ages 10, 12, and 13. In a largely industrial and aging city, the neighborhood stands out for its handsome architecture and placement on a hill above the city. On Saturday, Mr. Ryan’s children played in the sprawling back yard, which nestles against a patch of woods and includes a tennis court. Neighbors made use of the sun-dappled day to catch up on outdoor chores or prepare for homecoming at one of the local high schools. For much of the day, the only movement around Mr. Ryan’s home belonged to falling leaves and an American flag tossed by the wind. The weekend offered the kind of weekly retreat that Mr. Ryan covets and that he has suggested he would be unwilling to give up for the House speakership, which requires long hours and frequent travel for fund-raising. (Mr. Boehner has in some years spent more than 200 days on the road.) Mr. Ryan’s views are shaped in part by his father’s early death from a heart attack, when Mr. Ryan was just 16, and time with his three young children is scant enough given his work weeks in Washington. “It’s his oxygen to be here and be with his family,” Ms. Ryan told The Janesville Gazette in a rare interview in August. And it is a refuge. He spent Sunday, like so many in his state, worshiping the unofficial state religion: watching the Packers game.

Paul D Ryan Jr
US
US Politics
House of Representatives
Congress
Republicans


Missouri: Documents Turned Over in Priest’s Abuse Case

Abstract: After losing its appeals, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests has turned over about 180 documents that were subpoenaed by lawyers for a Roman Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse. The Survivors Network had argued that the documents, mostly e-mails, should remain confidential because they contained information about victims. The organization, the nation’s largest advocacy group for victims of clergy sexual abuse, was supported by rape crisis centers, news media outlets and several former prosecutors, but the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a judge’s order to comply. The Survivors Network said it had not yet released all of the subpoenaed documents and was considering its options. Among the documents it withheld were those pertaining to the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, a Kansas City priest who pleaded guilty last month to child pornography charges and is still the target of civil lawsuits. The documents are under a protective order and supposed to be viewed only by the lawyers.

Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests


Ethnic Violence in Rift Valley Is Tearing Kenya Apart

Abstract: NAKURU, Kenya — Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, may seem calm, but anarchy reigns just two hours away. In Nakuru, furious mobs rule the streets, burning homes, brutalizing people and expelling anyone not in their ethnic group, all with complete impunity. On Saturday, hundreds of men prowled a section of the city with six-foot iron bars, poisoned swords, clubs, knives and crude circumcision tools. Boys carried gladiator-style shields and women strutted around with sharpened sticks. The police were nowhere to be found. Even the residents were shocked. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said David Macharia, a bus driver. One month after a deeply flawed election, Kenya is tearing itself apart along ethnic lines, despite intense international pressure on its leaders to compromise and stop the killings. Nakuru, the biggest town in the beautiful Rift Valley, is the scene of a mass migration now moving in two directions. Luos are headed west, Kikuyus are headed east, and packed buses with mattresses strapped on top pass one another in the road, with the bewildered children of the two ethnic groups staring out the windows at one another. In the past 10 days, dozens of people have been killed in Molo, Narok, Kipkelion, Kuresoi, and now Nakuru, a tourist gateway which until a few days ago was considered safe. In many places, Kenya seems to be sliding back toward the chaos that exploded Dec. 30, when election results were announced and the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging. The tinder was all there, even before the voting started. There were historic grievances over land and deep-seated ethnic tensions, with many ethnic groups resenting the Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s group, because they have been the most prosperous for years. The disputed election essentially served as the spark, and opposition supporters across Kenya vented their rage over many issues toward the Kikuyus and other ethnic groups thought to have supported Mr. Kibaki. In the Rift Valley, local elders organized young men to raid Kikuyu areas and kill people in a bid to drive the Kikuyus off their land. It worked, for the most part, and over the past month, tens of thousands of Kikuyus have fled. More than 650 people, many of them Kikuyus, have been killed. Many of the attackers are widely believed to be members of the Luo and Kalenjin ethnic groups. What is happening now in Nakuru seems to be revenge. The city is surrounded by spectacular scenery, with Lake Nakuru and its millions of flamingos drawing throngs of tourists each year. The city has a mixed population, like much of Kenya, split among several ethnic groups including Kikuyus, Luos, Luhyas and Kalenjins. On Thursday night, witnesses and participants said, bands of Kikuyu men stormed into the streets with machetes and homemade weapons and began attacking Luos and Kalenjins. Paul Karanja, a Kikuyu shopkeeper in Nakuru, explained it this way: “We had been so patient. For weeks we had watched all the buses and trucks taking people out of the Rift Valley, and we had seen so many of our people lose everything they owned. Enough was enough.” In a Nakuru neighborhood called Free Area, hundreds of Kikuyu men burned down homes and businesses belonging to Luos, Mr. Odinga’s ethnic group. The Luos who refused to leave were badly beaten, and sometimes worse. According to witnesses, a Kikuyu mob forcibly circumcised one Luo man who later bled to death. Circumcision is an important rite of passage for Kikuyus but is not widely practiced among Luos. The Luos and the Kalenjins, who have been aligned throughout the post-election period, then counterattacked, resulting in a citywide melee with hundreds wounded and as many as 50 people killed. By Friday night, the Kenyan military was deployed for the first time to intervene. Local authorities also placed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Nakuru, another first. Many people in Free Area, which is now almost totally Kikuyu, say it will be difficult to make peace. “We’re angry and they’re angry,” said John Maina, a stocky butcher, whose weapon of choice on Saturday was a three-foot table leg with exposed screws. “I don’t see us living together any time soon.” That is the reality across much of Kenya, and it seems to be nothing short of so-called ethnic cleansing. Mobs in Eldoret, Kisumu, Kakamega, Burnt Forest and countless other areas, including some of the biggest slums in Nairobi, have driven out people from opposing ethnic groups. Many neighborhoods that used to be mixed are now ethnically homogeneous. Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, visited the Rift Valley on Saturday. He called it “nerve-racking.” “We saw people pushed from their homes and farms, grandmothers, children and families uprooted,” said Mr. Annan, who is in Kenya trying to broker negotiations between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga. He called for the Kenyan government to investigate the attackers and increase security. On Saturday, Kenyan soldiers in Free Area escorted Luos back to their smoldering homes and stood guard with their assault rifles as the people sifted through the ruins and salvaged whatever they could before leaving. Many Luos said they had no choice but to go to far western Kenya, the traditional Luo homeland, just as many Kikuyus who have been displaced said they would resettle in the highlands east of Nakuru, their traditional homeland. Mr. Macharia, the bus driver, who is Kikuyu, conceded that many Kikuyus were feeling vengeful. But he said it does not mean they actually want to fight. “I saw it myself,” he said. “The elders called ‘Charge!’ but not all the boys charged.” Still, enough did charge that the Luos who used to live in Free Area were not taking any chances. On Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people carrying trunks on their heads and bags of blankets streamed toward a government office that was protected by a few soldiers. Nancy Aloo, a Luo, was guiding four frightened young children. “God made all of us,” Ms. Aloo said. “We need his help.”


Mayors, Looking to Cities’ Future, Are Told It Must Be Colored Green

Abstract: SEATTLE, Nov. 2 — The mayor of Fayetteville, Ark., gushed through a slide show about how his city was in the midst of great change. Bleak roads and bland shopping strips were being redrawn to a more human scale. Downtown condominiums were going for a million dollars. Streets once silent at night now bustled. Besides being great for the local economy, the mayor, Dan Coody, told his counterparts from other cities gathered here, the redevelopment is also helping Fayetteville go green. “I’m so excited to be here and talk about this I can’t stand it,” Mr. Coody said at the end of his presentation on Thursday. “Let’s all go save the world!” They settled for lunch, at least for the moment, but the 100 or so mayors who attended the two-day Climate Protection Summit, convened by the United States Conference of Mayors, heard a clear message: Cities that are “walkable,” workable and livable add up to the “s” word: sustainable. Cities that are centered on people and public transit, not cars, and built to higher standards of energy efficiency will save money, hum with new development and create jobs to suit a greener way of life. Al Gore said as much in a speech he gave to the mayors via satellite. So did former President Bill Clinton, in an address here on Thursday, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who spoke Friday. But many mayors spoke of the struggle of convincing voters that investing in green is good for them. John Robert Smith, the mayor of Meridian, Miss., said he had been criticized for supporting a plan to restore streetcar service in his city decades after autos made it seem obsolete. “This is one of those things you do in your last term in office,” Mr. Smith said, “because they’ll be sure you’ve lost your mind.” Part pep rally, part policy discussion, the conference presented two main themes: the federal government must do more than the Bush administration has done to fight global warming ; and in the meantime, cities must take up the slack. Spurred by Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle, more than 700 mayors have signed a pledge to reduce their cities’ emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to levels laid out in the Kyoto Protocol. That treaty, signed by the United States but never ratified by the Senate, called for reducing such emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Mr. Nickels issued a report this week showing that Seattle had already exceeded that goal. On Friday, he listed city initiatives like promoting locally produced foods, distributing 300,000 high-efficiency shower heads and encouraging residents to trade in their gasoline-powered mowers for electric or nonmotorized versions. But it helps that Seattle gets its power from hydroelectric dams, not coal or natural gas. Many mayors here said they had yet to measure how much pollution their cities were causing, much less win political support for reducing it. “You just can’t say we need to reduce global warming because there will be floods and polar bears will be gone,” said Mayor Douglas H. Palmer of Trenton, president of the Conference of Mayors. “They’ll run me out of town.” Mr. Palmer said he talked about the issue at home in a way residents could relate to. Pollution is bad for your child’s asthma. Leaky buildings and dependency on foreign energy sources can drive up monthly heating bills. Instead of working in a fast-food restaurant, young people could be trained in “green collar jobs,” like retrofitting older buildings to be more efficient and installing solar panels. Capitalism and consumerism were at the core of the meetings. Mr. Clinton announced that he had negotiated with private companies to help 1,100 cities buy energy-efficient products at volume discounts. Sessions had names like “Blueprints for Building a Green City” and “Engaging Your Business Community.” Mayors from big and small cities, from Anchorage to Miami, talked about their conversions to green thinking and discussed how to decipher “green building codes” and force developers to abide by them. Some said they had found developers unwilling. Others urged them just to apply more pressure. The conference had a decidedly Democratic tilt, but there were Republicans here, too, and the frustration with Washington on the issue of climate change was apparent across political lines. Mr. Bloomberg, who was elected mayor twice as a Republican but who switched his affiliation to independent in June, announced his support for the controversial idea of a federal tax on carbon pollution. “As long as greenhouse-gas pollution is free, it will be abundant,” he said. “If we want to reduce it, there has to be a cost for producing it.”

United States Conference of Mayors
Environment
Mayors
Global Warming
Urban Areas


Low Interest in Egyptian Runoff That Favors Ruling Party

Abstract: CAIRO — Runoffs in Egypt ’s parliamentary elections were held on Sunday amid a general mood of public disinterest and quiet resignation after it became clear from the first round that the ruling party was determined to eliminate any meaningful opposition. Widespread violations and allegations of fraud pushed the two main opposition groups in Egypt to boycott Sunday’s runoff elections. According to the results announced by a government-appointed commission following the first round, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s strongest opposition group with 88 seats in the outgoing parliament, had won no seats. The secular Wafd party, which fielded a total of 222 candidates, won only 2 seats. For both groups, this served as a clear indication that President Hosni Mubarak ’s ruling National Democratic Party was intent on expunging any voices of opposition or dissent in the coming parliament, ahead of next year’s presidential elections. “It is a repulsive farce and people saw what happened in the first act,” said Muhammad El Beltagy, one of the 27 Brotherhood candidates who made it to the runoffs but boycotted them in protest. “There is just no need now to see what happens in the second act.” President Mubarak is 82, and questions about the state of his health have persisted since he underwent an operation to remove his gall bladder earlier this year. It is not clear whether he plans to run in the coming elections. But the parliamentary elections clearly underscored the ruling party’s resolve to tighten its grip over all institutional levers at this time of increasing uncertainty about the future of leadership in Egypt. “You can think of this coming parliament as an appointed, not elected, body,” said Hassan Nafaa, an Egyptian political science professor and newspaper columnist. “The regime wants to take full hold of everything so that when the time comes, they can execute their succession plan,” Mr. Nafaa added, in reference to the widespread belief that President Mubarak’s son, Gamal, is being groomed to succeed his father. Official results show 209 out of 221 seats went to the NDP in the first round, while only 5 seats went to opposition party members and 7 others went to independent candidates — most of them NDP members not running under the party name. Out of the 283 remaining seats in Sunday’s runoff elections, 113 are sure to go to the NDP because they are contested by NDP candidates. According to state officials, final results will come out over the next three days.

Elections
Boycotts
Muslim Brotherhood
National Democratic Party
Mubarak Hosni
Egypt


Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, Much-Quoted Official for Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dies at 83

Abstract: Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, a poet of percentages who for 15 years as a regional commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics transformed colorless wage and employment figures into small, brightly lighted windows onto New Yorkers’ daily lives, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 83 and had lived in Brooklyn for many years. The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone-marrow disorder, his son, Steven, said. A career civil servant associated with the bureau for four decades, Mr. Ehrenhalt was the commissioner of its New York regional office from 1980 till his retirement in 1995. (The bureau is an arm of the United States Department of Labor; by the federal government’s inscrutable logic, the New York region comprises New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands.) As the region’s official gatherer, interpreter and disseminator of labor figures, Mr. Ehrenhalt was a highly visible, nonpartisan public presence. He lectured widely and was routinely consulted by the news media on an array of subjects, among them the job prospects of women, minorities and young people; the outlook for industries like banking, building, retailing and education; and even the role of the weather in economic forecasts. Mr. Ehrenhalt’s office — he oversaw a staff of more than 100 — answered about 100,000 queries a year, from journalists, of course, but also from politicians, small-business owners, Wall Street tycoons, anxious college graduates and warring couples. “You can’t get a divorce these days without checking in at our office,” he told The New York Times in 1988. “Unless you have an idea of what the inflation rate is likely to be, you would never know what kind of escalations to ask for in your alimony payments.” A lover of theater and opera, Mr. Ehrenhalt by all accounts brought to his work an articulate wit and, when needed, a keen dramatic flair. To him, statistics did not exist in lifeless isolation; instead, they reflected the web of contingencies that forms the narrative of everyday life. For instance: ¶If New York is beset by many snowstorms in a single season, as it was in the winter of 1993-94, when there were 15, then its unemployment rate can rise, because snow shuts down construction, Mr. Ehrenhalt told The Times in March 1994. ¶If every New York office worker needs 250 square feet of room, then the loss of 23,000 financial-sector jobs, which Mr. Ehrenhalt’s office recorded from October 1987 to August 1989, means that the commercial real estate market needs to supply 5,750,000 fewer square feet of office space. That is the equivalent, he told The Times in October 1989, of losing five new office buildings. In a 1995 profile of Mr. Ehrenhalt in Newsday, Edward I. Koch, the former mayor of New York, described the interpretation of statistics as being more art than science. He added, “Sam Ehrenhalt is an artist.” Samuel Milton Ehrenhalt was born in Krakow, Poland, on June 30, 1925, and moved with his family to Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1930. In 1936, he and his parents were able to come to the United States, eventually settling in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Mr. Ehrenhalt earned a bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College and, in 1949, a master’s in economics from Columbia. After teaching at several colleges, he joined the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1955. In 1975, he was chief of a United States economic mission to Sierra Leone, Ghana and Kenya. Besides his son, Steven, of Beit Shemesh, Israel, Mr. Ehrenhalt is survived by his wife, the former Eleanor Pashkovsky, whom he married in 1953; a daughter, Dina Steinberg, of Queens; and seven grandchildren. Though he was often the bearer of bad tidings, Mr. Ehrenhalt was perennially hopeful about the region’s prospects. He remained so even after the Wall Street crash of October 1987, a time of frenzied activity for his office. “Even with one engine out, the economy has not fallen apart,” he told Newsday. Mr. Ehrenhalt was rarely shy about voicing opinions on a range of subjects, his son said. But in retirement, he was uncharacteristically silent about the current economic climate.

Ehrenhalt Samuel M.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Deaths (Obituaries)


Review Finds Police Failure to Report Driver Friskings

Abstract: When police officers pulled over David Modeste for the third time in three weeks in 2012, he was driving his Lexus around noon near his home in eastern Queens. Three officers, in plainclothes and an unmarked car, believed the sedan had illegally tinted windows. Two approached the car. One officer questioned Mr. Modeste, 31, and then frisked him. The officer suspected that Mr. Modeste might have been armed, according to departmental paperwork. No weapon was found; no summons was issued for the windows or for anything else. The Police Department conducts hundreds of thousands of traffic stops a year and in 2013 issued more than a million tickets for vehicle infractions ranging from a broken taillight to driving without a license. The stops also give officers a chance to check for outstanding warrants and in some cases, to make an arrest, as happened Monday when a Brooklyn pastor with ties to Mayor Bill de Blasio was taken into custody, setting up a firestorm for Mr. de Blasio after it emerged that he contacted the police while the clergyman was at a precinct station house. But unlike stop-question-and-frisk encounters with pedestrians, which are recorded and include demographic information even when a frisking is not conducted, the department collects no data on car stops in which no summons is issued. Nor does it track the number that escalate, as Mr. Modeste’s did, into a frisking or search of the driver or passenger. “Where you end up is a situation where vehicle stops are a black hole when it comes to demographics,” said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. Whenever an officer stops, questions or frisks a person, he or she is required to fill out a form — the UF-250 — documenting the reason for doing so and noting the demographic characteristics of the person stopped. The forms provided the underlying data for a series of federal lawsuits against the Police Department over racial disparities in its practice of stopping and frisking pedestrians on the street. Less attention was paid then to the role of car stops as the basis for the initial encounter that lead to a frisk. Some of the only available data comes in the form of complaints to the Civilian Complaint Review Board , an independent oversight body, such as the one lodged by Mr. Modeste. A review by the board of five years of such complaints related to car stops, released by the board on Wednesday, found that in cases in which a driver or passenger was frisked, officers failed to file required reports more than half of the time. The finding comes at a time when the Police Department is increasingly focused on traffic crime, a priority that is likely to lead to more traffic stops by officers. Commissioner William J. Bratton has committed his officers to playing a key role in an effort by the de Blasio administration to dramatically reduce the number of fatal accidents on the road. The report looked at a total of 1,203 cases brought to the board since 2009 that were related to car stops over that period, a majority of which included an allegation of a frisk or search of a person, in addition to any search of the car. Of the 699 cases studied that included a frisk or search, the board found that 282 would have “required the preparation of a stop-and-frisk report.” Officers failed to do so in 175 cases or about 62 percent of cases, the board found. “In many of these cases, when asked by investigators, officers could not explain why a report was not prepared,” the report reads. The board recommended “additional training” in the filing of 250s. A vast majority of pedestrian stops — most of which are of black and Hispanic men — led to no arrest or summons. In nearly half of the recorded stops, no frisk was conducted. Mr. Modeste filed his complaint for an improper traffic stop that came soon after he already got tickets twice, once for talking on his cellphone in his car, then again the next week for tinted windows. He had the tint removed, he testified, and days later he was stopped again. In the case of Mr. Modeste, who is black, the only immediate record of his stop was the UF-250 form filed for the last incident, a police supervisor testified at a disciplinary proceeding at Police Headquarters last week. The officers, he said, used their discretion to let him go without a ticket.

Cars
NYPD
Search and seizure
Police
Race and Ethnicity
Legislation
Bill de Blasio
Traffic and Parking Violations


Wimbledon 2011: This Time, Isner Makes Quick Work of Mahut

Abstract: WIMBLEDON, England — For all their discernible differences, Nicolas Mahut and John Isner are like two sides of the same piece of paper. When they met again Tuesday in the first round of Wimbledon, they might as well have been clutching pens in their hands instead of rackets. Mahut, the plucky Frenchman who lost to Isner in their history-making opener last year , wrote a book on the match, then returned to the All England Club keen on changing the ending. Isner, an affable American eager to be known as more than tennis’s marathon man, came back intent on writing a new chapter to his career. They are fierce competitors but will be remembered forevermore as collaborators on one of the most memorable stories in Wimbledon history. In 2010, Isner needed more than 11 hours to separate himself from Mahut, who succumbed, 70-68, in the fifth set. By comparison, Isner’s 7-6 (4), 6-2, 7-6 (6) victory in the sequel, which ran 2 hours 3 minutes, was prosaic. In fading daylight, he secured a berth in the second round when Mahut hit an errant forehand on the second match point. “I’m just really thrilled to have won that third set,” Isner said, “because if I lose that third set, then chances are we don’t finish. You know, our match goes to a second day.” The six-time champion Roger Federer also advanced, as did the three-time runner-up Andy Roddick. Marcos Baghdatis, the No. 32 seed, barely thwarted the upset bid of James Blake, whose ranking has fallen outside the top 100, winning, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7 (5), 4-6, 6-4. On the women’s side, the winners included the top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki and the 2004 champion Maria Sharapova. First-round matches are fret-filled exercises, but for Isner, who is 6 feet 9 inches with the wingspan of an albatross, the pressure was intense. His career did not take flight last year after his iconic victory. Less than 24 hours after dispatching Mahut, he lost to Thiemo de Bakker in straight sets. The rest of the summer was a struggle. In his return, he kept his focus on the big picture, even as pundits spent four days talking about his first-round date with Mahut. “The goal is the second week,” Isner said. Last year’s match was played in the cozy confines of Court 18, which now bears a plaque on an outside wall that commemorates the marathon match. The sequel took place on Court 3, one of the All England Club’s show — but by no means showy — courts, with a capacity of 1,980. There were several dozen empty seats when Isner and Mahut walked out for their warm-ups after 6 p.m. After winning the first set, Isner swung with much more freedom on his serve and forehand. In the second and third sets, he produced 26 winners against 7 unforced errors and five of his eight aces. “After the first set, I felt actually really comfortable out there,” said Isner, who finished with 41 winners and 10 unforced errors. “I came out a little tight. Won that first-set tiebreaker. That was huge. That took a lot of pressure off me. Felt like I played pretty well from that point on.” If Isner was uncomfortable last summer being asked to relive his match against Mahut over and over, it was because he knew he had set himself up for a huge encore. “Nothing’s going to live up to that match,” Isner said. Asked what he has to achieve to be known for something other than outlasting Mahut, Isner replied, “In all honesty, I think that’s going to have to be something really big.” He added, “I’d have to make a huge, huge mark in the course of a Grand Slam some time in my career.” In many ways Mahut’s loss last year was a breakthrough. Serving second, Mahut served to stay in the match for 64 consecutive service games, showing a tenacity and focus that has not always been evident in his career. Philippe Bouin, the former lead tennis writer for L’Équipe who collaborated with Mahut on his book, “The Match of My Life,” wrote in an e-mail, “ I had told him that what interested me really was to try to find why a ‘normal French player’ like him, meaning talented, but mentally fragile, had been able for once to behave like a champion.” Mahut could find no such consolation after Tuesday’s match, which was played in adverse conditions. He is one of the few players who does not wear a visor or cap during his matches, and his well-gelled hair made a handy wind gauge as strands waggled in gusts that made serving tricky. Isner was the better returner, earning five break points and converting three. Mahut, who wore black adhesive strips around his left knee, was not moving as well as he normally does. He managed only two break points, one of which he converted. After finishing with 32 winners and 16 unforced errors, Mahut said: “Was difficult to play this match. We talk about last year during three days. That was not easy. But he handled it much better than I did.” It was nearly 8:30 when the last point was played Tuesday. The players met at the net, and Isner said Mahut told him, “I want to see you in the second week of the tournament.” That’s Isner’s mission: to write the perfect ending for both of them.

Isner John
Mahut Nicolas
Wimbledon Tennis Tournament
Tennis


A Last Hurrah for Hollywood Park

Abstract: INGLEWOOD, Calif. — “And now, ladies and gentlemen, Hollywood Park belongs to you,” the race caller, Joe Hernandez, said over the public-address system on June 10, 1938. Among the 40,000 people who came for opening day at Southern California’s newest racetrack were the era’s biggest film stars, including Al Jolson, Joan Crawford, Milton Berle, Claudette Colbert, Bob Hope and Barbara Stanwyck. Most of the track’s 600 original shareholders had a direct connection to Hollywood and the track chairman, Jack Warner. The track itself, built in a bean field, was 11 miles south of Warner Bros. Studios on Sunset Boulevard. About five weeks after opening day, Hollywood Park held its first Gold Cup, which became the biggest annual race on the track’s calendar. It was won by a horse named Seabiscuit. Hollywood Park’s last race is scheduled for Dec. 22. Among the relative few likely to witness the track’s final moments are those who still remember the serendipitous synchronization of the golden eras of horse racing and Hollywood. For decades, they have worked at Hollywood Park, up-close observers of the people — the famous and the desperate, the weekend fun-seekers and the everyday gamblers with names like Frankie Eyelashes, Fat Eddie and Frank the Hat. They knew little of the horses, less of the hidden rituals in the backstretch stables that have undermined an industry, like the doping of potential champions and the discarding of unwanted thoroughbreds. They just knew what made Hollywood Park different from the rest. Theirs was the sunny view from the grandstand — a collective memory of history and rumor, of celebrity sightings and mob hustles, of cheats and thrills, of deafening stretch runs and silent decay. THE BUGLER Each race starts with 34 familiar notes. And for 25 years at Hollywood Park, the bugler — officially, the “horn blower” — has been Jay Cohen. He has played “Call to the Post” — officially, “First Call” — more than 85,000 times, here and elsewhere. He knows this because he keeps track in a notebook. Image Jay Cohen says he has performed “First Call” more than 85,000 times in his career. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times “No one comes to the track because of the trumpet,” Cohen said. “But they all hear it when they’re here.” Adding a dose of tradition and formality to the daily proceedings, Cohen wears a “coach guard” uniform. Hollywood Park bought two of them in the 1990s, at $400 each, before the track’s attendance descended into its deadly plummet. Cohen’s two-tone jacket is deep green with tan accents, and the tan pants are tucked into riding boots. He wears a tan top hat. Cohen is also a magician, and his coat pockets are filled with novelties for gags and tricks. The right one recently held a miniature horse head, a gadget that makes a squealing sound, and a tiny plastic nun. (“How many do I have in this hand? Nun!” The crowd groans.) People ask him to play a special song or to come to their birthday party or to appear in their television show or movie. He was the bugler in the 2003 film “Seabiscuit.” About a dozen times a year, he plays a funeral. Cohen calls each race with the familiar da-da-da, da-da-da, duh-duh-duh-duh refrain, followed seamlessly by a second song. Only the first race of the day is always the same: “Call to the Post” followed by “Hooray for Hollywood.” Cohen knows thousands of songs, and he plays to his audience. He honored Veterans Day by playing military marches. When he spots the actress June Lockhart, he will play the theme from “Lassie” or “Lost in Space.” He has thought hard about Hollywood Park’s final song. He considered the Looney Tunes send-off, “That’s All, Folks!” But it seemed a bit too glib, even for a man who boards the press box elevator and says to its operator, “Women’s lingerie, please!” Conversely, “Taps” would be too bleak. This is a funeral for a place, a time, not a person. No, the track will close the way each day started: “Hooray for Hollywood.” THE JOCKEY Image So many of jockey Laffit Pincay Jr.'s 9,530 career victories came at Hollywood Park that a street was renamed in his honor. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times Everything is expected to go, starting as soon as January. But after Hollywood Park is torn down and 265 acres of horse-racing history are plowed under to make room for retail and office space and 3,000 homes, Pincay Drive will remain, cutting east and west between Crenshaw Boulevard and Prairie Avenue. Video Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Calif., opened on June 10, 1938. “If I go to the airport and have a chance to go on my street, I do it, to remind me of the history there,” Laffit Pincay Jr. said. He won 9,530 races, more than any other jockey when he retired in 2003, and passed only by Russell Baze since. More of Pincay’s victories came at Hollywood Park than anywhere else. It is where Pincay, a debonair Panamanian, became a rival and friend to the legendary Bill Shoemaker, and then surpassed most of his records. Pincay liked Hollywood Park’s large track — one and one-eighth mile of dirt, framing a mile-long turf oval. “If you had any trouble at the beginning, you had time to make it up,” he said. He won the Gold Cup a record nine times. And when Pincay won big races, he found familiarity in the sea of congratulatory faces — Cary Grant, John Wayne and Alfred Hitchcock among them. He found himself at parties, awed by the movie stars and too shy to introduce himself, only to have one of them approach and say, “Laffit Pincay!” “Wow,” he remembered thinking. “They know who I am.” Now 66, he came to Hollywood Park on a recent Saturday and took a friend to the Directors Room, an exclusive bastion of prestige for track executives and champions high in the grandstand. “Twenty years ago, it would be packed,” Pincay said. “But we were the only people in there. It’s really sad.” Pincay circled too many tracks to remember, but Hollywood Park stood out. At least one piece of that history will remain. “Many years from now, people will drive on Pincay,” he said. “And they’ll say, ‘Who in the world is Pincay?’ Well, there used to be a racetrack here. ...” THE MAÎTRE D’ Lawrence Abbott looks a lot like Jack Lemmon. “Now?” he said, with feigned mortification. Abbott, 76, is a quick wit. Lemmon died in 2001. Image Lawrence Abbott, who was hired in 1980 to oversee the members-only Turf Club, said every day was like an event back then. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times Abbott was the maître d’ at the Beverly Hills Trader Vic’s, the famed tiki bar and Rat Pack hot spot, when the track chairwoman, Marge Everett — a friend of many celebrities — hired him to come to Hollywood Park in 1980 and oversee the members-only Turf Club. Back then, Abbott said, “Every day was like an event.” Thirty years ago, the club was private and the dress code was formal. Men wore jackets and ties. Women could not wear pants. Now anyone willing to pay $10 can get waited on and pretend to be someone from another era. The tables, once a treasured commodity, are rarely filled. Even the menu shrunk. “There was an elegance to it,” Abbott said. “And that is gone.” But he still wears a tuxedo, and his lectern still overlooks the terraced outdoor dining area, shaded by the huge overhang of the grandstand. Each cloth-covered table offers a perfect view of the track and its manicured grassy infield, sprinkled with ponds and flamingos. It is a green oasis within a crime-ridden neighborhood. The faint sounds of sirens are an intermittent soundtrack, and people like Abbott have stories about dead bodies found here and there — in a pond, hanging from a tree. Every few minutes, a large airplane rumbles overhead and disappears over the soaring grandstand roof as it makes its final approach to Los Angeles International Airport, a few miles straight west. “As a kid,” Abbott said, “I used to ride my bike around here.” THE CELEBRITY Dick Van Patten began going to tracks in New York — Aqueduct, Belmont, Jamaica — when he was 14 and already a Broadway actor. He started coming to Hollywood Park in 1970, amid a dizzying stretch of supporting roles in movies and guest appearances on television. Image The actor Dick Van Patten, a track regular, started coming to the park in 1970. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times For a long time, he was just one of many celebrities who frequented the racetrack. Now he is the last. “The name ‘Hollywood Park’ meant Hollywood,” Van Patten said. At 85, Van Patten comes to the track every day there is racing. He takes the same seat in the front row of Section 31 and has a standing order: the soup of the day, a Coca-Cola and a bucket of ice cubes to suck on. Van Patten has long owned racehorses, and when he took a role in Mel Brooks’s “High Anxiety” in 1977 — the same year Van Patten began his role as the father on television’s “Eight Is Enough” — he took Brooks to Hollywood Park. Now Brooks, 87, is a frequent visitor on weekends, sitting alongside Van Patten and Daryl Richard, who had a recurring role on “The Donna Reed Show” as a teenager 50 years ago. Van Patten exudes calm through his gentle smile. Brooks is more anxious, standing and glancing from the track to the television broadcast, then double-checking the results with his friends. Video Laffit Pincay Jr. breaks Bill Shoemaker’s record for career victories by a jockey at Hollywood Park, and later retires from riding. “I like the idea of catching lightning in a bottle,” Brooks said. “I mostly bet on horses that are 30 or 40 to 1, and they rarely win.” Van Patten once said to Brooks that we all had real-life troubles — deaths in the family, illnesses, business losses. “But for four or five hours, you forget the world,” Brooks said. “You just care about No. 6 and nothing else, getting into the lead and maybe winning the race. Part of my life is believing in unreality, and it’s a wonderful thing to believe in.” As he spoke, Joan Rivers was at a betting window, surrounded by a camera crew and a few onlookers, filming a scene for something. “It’s like the Ambassador Hotel, the Brown Derby,” Brooks said. “It’s all very sad when happy places like this close down.” THE USHER Every day at Hollywood Park, people stop to talk to Dick Warren, the usher for Section 211, where the green sign reads: “Reserved Box, Seats Available, $8.” If someone had asked him on the day he started his job, 65 years ago, whether he thought he would be doing the same thing at 86, he would have laughed. “I’d say you’re nuts,” Warren said. “I’m a creature of habit, I guess.” Image Dick Warren, 86, the usher for Section 211, started his job at the track 65 years ago. “I liked it better when there were people here,” he said. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times Warren was discharged from the Army in 1947 and returned home to Syracuse. Realizing he no longer appreciated “snow up to my earlobes,” he moved to California. He took a job at Hollywood Park and never left. The old wooden grandstand, a quarter-mile long, burned down in 1949. Warren rushed to the scene to watch. Racing was moved to Santa Anita Park, 30 miles away in Arcadia, and Hollywood Park reopened in 1950, the massive six-story building rebuilt and topped with a metal roof. Warren returned to his post. “Milton Berle used to ask me for jokes,” Warren said. " ‘You hear anything good today?’ ” He was there in 1951 to watch Citation win the Gold Cup and become racing’s first million-dollar horse, and Affirmed (ridden by Pincay) become the first $2 million horse by winning the Gold Cup in 1979. He was there in 1965, when the average crowd was 34,516 — about 10 times what it is these days. He was there when a record 80,348 came for a tote-bag giveaway in 1980, and when the inaugural Breeders’ Cup was held at Hollywood Park in 1984. “I liked it better when there were people here,” Warren said. On a recent Sunday, Hollywood Park honored Warren’s service by having him present the trophy to the winner of the day’s biggest race. Like a lot of other employees, he plans to continue working at Santa Anita, which will expand its calendar to help absorb the closure of Hollywood Park. “I’ll work until I’m tired,” Warren said. “I feel 30 years old. No aches, no pains, no nothing.” The same cannot be said for Hollywood Park. “I’m so used to seeing it,” Warren said. “I can’t picture it not being here.” THE CURATOR On opening day in 1986, his first day employed in the television operation at Hollywood Park, Kip Hannan was asked to shoot celebrity interviews. On his way to the exclusive Gold Cup Room, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor walked close behind. Image Kip Hannan, the track's TV supervisor, has also become its de facto historian and video curator. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times “I got his autograph,” Hannan said. “And when she smiled, I melted.” In-house television production was a nascent thing then, but it was about to change horse racing — saving it or killing it, depending on the perspective. Within a few years, races at Hollywood Park and elsewhere were widely simulcast to other tracks and betting parlors. The idea was to make it easier for more people to gamble on horse racing. The effect was to give customers a great excuse to stop coming to places like Hollywood Park. Average attendance dropped nearly 90 percent between 1983 and 2012, from 23,958 in the fall meet to 3,189. Of the $213.7 million wagered during Hollywood Park’s fall meet last year, only $20.3 million was wagered at the track itself. The rest came from off-track betting. Even those who pay $10 to enter Hollywood Park often stand in front of banks of television screens, betting on races at tracks around the globe rather than, or in addition to, the world-class races happening just a few feet away. “Racing has become a video game, to some extent,” Hollywood Park’s president, F. Jack Liebau, said. In 2005, Bay Meadows Land Company bought Hollywood Park from Churchill Downs for $260 million. The track’s extinction looked imminent; the same company closed Bay Meadows Racecourse in San Mateo, near San Francisco, in favor of a major mixed-use redevelopment project. Last spring, it was announced that the 2013 fall meet would be the final season at Hollywood Park. Video Zenyatta notches her 17th consecutive victory. “The land got too expensive, and horse racing was no longer the highest and best use,” Liebau said. “The property’s just too valuable.” Plans call for leveling the buildings, including the mammoth grandstand and the acres of concrete backstretch stables — the best in horse racing, several trainers said — that contain 1,900 horse stalls and currently house an estimated 600 workers and their families. Horse owners and trainers will move their operations to other tracks, and take most of their workers with them. But Hollywood Park has 215 full-time employees, many now looking for other work — people like Hannan, the supervisor of production operations for the television department. His immediate concern, however, is for Hollywood Park’s archives. Much of it is stuffed in what Hannan called his “hoarder’s room,” a television production room lined with boxes of film and videotape — all the big races, from Seabiscuit to Zenyatta, and priceless footage of Hollywood stars and jammed bleachers. There is even a clip of Hannan, as a boy, handing a program to Jimmy Stewart. “You walk out there now, and you wonder where it all went,” Hannan said. He has spent years restoring and cataloging the footage. What he does not know is where it all will go once Hollywood Park is gone. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only one who cares,” Hannan said. “But I know, come Dec. 22, I can’t bring it all to my house.” THE RACE CALLER Image Vic Stauffer, who calls the races, has given a lot of thought to what his final words at Hollywood Park should be. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times Vic Stauffer will have the final word at Hollywood Park. He spends race days alone in a wood-paneled box on the roof of the grandstand, holding binoculars and standing in his socks. His is the voice heard through the public-address system. He knows how all the races start — “They’re off,” in his measured voice — but is tortured by what he will say when the last one ends. What will be the final words uttered at Hollywood Park? “I’ve given a ton of thought to it, and I’m not any closer to knowing what the right thing is,” Stauffer said. Until then, he will stick to routine. Races last about 90 seconds and run every 30 minutes or so. Amid various between-race announcements, Stauffer privately performs a feat of short-term memory. He studies the mostly unfamiliar names of horses in the next race and matches them with the bright hues of racing silks, repeating the names to himself with great enunciation. After the race, he forgets what he has learned and starts over. “Eight Stitches, Rocky Barboa, Shining Son, Warren’s Tyler S,” he said as he stared downward through binoculars one afternoon. “Rocky Barboa. Rocky Barboa. Eight Stitches, Shining Son, Warren’s Tyler S, Broker Brett, Ranulf. Broker Brett, Eight Stitches ...” It took about two minutes. And when the race began, Stauffer, a 54-year-old bear of a man, smoothly called the action, fast-tongued and mistake-free. He stood upright, shuffling his feet like a slow dancer to keep his body aimed at the herd circling the track, his voice rising when one horse made a move and they stormed across the finish line. A ripple of cheers and moans came from below. The winning jockey steered the winning horse to the winner’s circle, and Stauffer introduced the winning owners and trainers. The next post time, Stauffer announced, was in 30 minutes. He flipped a switch that turned the microphone off and pondered a question about what makes Hollywood Park different from other tracks. “The ghosts are here,” Stauffer said. “What’s different about walking into Wrigley Field or Fenway Park? There are a couple of racetracks like that. Without a doubt, Hollywood Park is one.” He flipped the switch to announce payouts and a scratch in the next race, then turned the microphone off again. “It also makes you aware of your own mortality,” he said. “If this can die, so can you. It’s an inevitability that I don’t want to accept.” The only subject that gives him pause is the final race. He has pondered invoking the famed ghosts of the place — trainers, jockeys, horses — as the final group of anonymous horses gallop down the backstretch. He has considered going silent when they cross the finish line and not uttering another word. “Part of me would like it to be done like any old race,” Stauffer said. “Because it is any old race. It just has the misfortune of being the last one.”

Horse racing
Hollywood Park Racetrack Calif
Laffit Pincay Jr
Bill Shoemaker
Celebrity
Dick Van Patten
Jack Warner