LG to Reduce Height of Headquarters, Preserving Palisades Horizon

Abstract: For nearly all their 200 million years, the Palisades cliffs were not disturbed by the arrival and extinction of dinosaurs, the formation of the Grand Canyon, or millenniums of human settlement along the Hudson River. This Tuesday, however, is at least the third time in 125 years that the cliffs north of the George Washington Bridge have been saved from development or destruction. LG, the South Korean conglomerate, has agreed to reduce the height of a tower it was planning to build for its North American headquarters on the cliffs by about half, largely preserving the sweeping horizon over the Palisades Interstate Park. Instead of rising 143 feet, its new building will be just under 70 feet high, the company announced in a statement it released on Tuesday with five conservation and environmental groups that had opposed the original design. As redesigned, the LG headquarters would still be twice as high as nearly all buildings along the Palisades north of the bridge, where the riverbank, cliff columns and the vista have been cherished and protected by philanthropists, civic activists and environmentalists for more than a century. Image William Cho, second from left, chief executive of LG Electronics USA, and Laurance Rockefeller, second from right, whose family donated land for the Palisades Interstate Park, at a news conference on Tuesday to announce the new, shorter design for the company’s planned headquarters. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times Computer renderings show that the roof and perhaps the top floor of the redesigned building would be visible at or above the tree line, protruding slightly into what planners call the viewshed. LG, which spent two years getting permission for its original project and had won initial court challenges, was supported by construction trade unions, which expected about 1,000 jobs. The possibility that LG would prevail and that its plan would have led to more high-rise construction along the Hudson — similar to the development south of the George Washington Bridge — helped drive the compromise. “It could have set a bad precedent,” said Laurance Rockefeller, an environmental lawyer whose family gave much of the land for the Palisades Interstate Park, and who was among the principal opponents of the original project. He praised the company for acting to protect what had been declared “a national treasure” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Over the last 11 months, Mr. Rockefeller said, “quiet time” discussions took place between the company and organizations that had brought suit against it, including Scenic Hudson, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. Image A rendering of the original building proposal. Credit Saratoga Associates The agreement effectively substitutes width for height, a longer building instead of a taller one. The company also said it planned special lighting arrays that were intended to protect migratory birds. Hawks and bald eagles are frequent fliers along the Palisades Ridge, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Services. Although the conservationists had help in making their case to LG from four former governors of New Jersey , numerous leading American environmental and park officials, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which operates the Cloisters in northern Manhattan) and four former United States ambassadors to South Korea, the safety of the birds was important to a powerful member of the LG hierarchy, Mr. Rockefeller said. “The chairman of LG Group, Bon-Moo Koo, is an avid bird-watcher,” he said. In fact, the chairman wrote the introduction to a field guide for the birds of Korea, and sent a copy of it to Mr. Rockefeller, along with a letter saying, “I assure you that I have great respect for your family’s passion for nature conservation and cultural heritage.” Land along the clifftops, which rise as high as 500 feet above the river, was bought up secretly in the late 1920s and into the 1930s by Mr. Rockefeller’s grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Jr., according to Susan E. Smith, the director of cultural resources for the Palisades Parks Conservancy. He then gave it to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission to secure an unbroken horizon for Fort Tryon Park, which he was building across the river in northern Manhattan. Image A rendering of the new proposed building as it would be seen from across the Hudson. Credit Saratoga Associates He also lobbied the small towns along the Palisades to limit building to heights of 35 feet. In effect, land and sky were protected for 12 miles north of the bridge, reaching from New Jersey into New York. That limit was in jeopardy of being breached in 2012, when Englewood Cliffs granted LG, which already had its headquarters in the town, permission to develop a new campus on a 27-acre site, including the 143-foot-tall building. The LG property was just west of the land donated by Rockefeller. The news brought action on both sides of the river, not only from members of the Rockefeller family , but also from other people and organizations with longstanding interests in the Palisades. In the late 19th century, the Palisades were being dynamited for gravel and building stone, and the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs persuaded Gov. Theodore Roosevelt of New York and Gov. Foster McGowan Voorhees of New Jersey to create an interstate park. J.P. Morgan bought land options from a major quarry company. “That was the initial savings of the Palisades,” Ms. Smith said. More than a century after it fought against the destruction of the cliff base, the Federation of Women’s Clubs was one of the groups that made the case to LG for preserving the views at its summit.

Palisades Hudson River
LG Electronics
New Jersey
Buildings
Historic preservation
Englewood Cliffs NJ
Land use
Conservation of Resources
Rockefeller family
LG Group


Ryan Fitzpatrick’s Steady Hand Is Upended in Jets’ Loss to the Patriots

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The Jets decided to introduce the offensive starters before Sunday’s game against the New England Patriots, and the final player announced was quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. One of their most popular players last season, Fitzpatrick may now be one of their least. His penchant for throwing the ball to the other team is one reason. His lofty role in consigning the Jets to irrelevance in the A.F.C.’s playoff chase is another. The foremost reason, however, may seem counterintuitive: Coach Todd Bowles believes that Fitzpatrick, and not the second-year backup Bryce Petty, gives the Jets their best chance to win. Contrary to popular belief, that is the Jets’ objective every week. But as this season edges closer to merciful completion, Bowles determined that a desultory present trumped the potential future. He cared about nothing beyond Sunday, and across the first 58 minutes, Fitzpatrick proved his coach prescient. He did not throw an interception. He fired two touchdown passes, including one that will be replayed for weeks. He also outplayed, to some extent, his counterpart, Tom Brady. But that is not what the crowd at MetLife Stadium will remember. What lingered for the fans clad in green and white as they trudged into the evening chill was a third consecutive defeat, this by 22-17, after Chris Long stripped Fitzpatrick at the Jets’ 30-yard line with under two minutes remaining, forcing a fumble that Trey Flowers recovered. The Patriots (9-2) ran out the clock and celebrated the victory that secured their 16th straight winning season. The Jets (3-8) retreated to their locker room and answered questions about the job security of their coach and quarterback, about the blunders that imperiled them, about the fourth-quarter comeback that never was. “We’ve got to find a way to finish the game,” Bowles said. The Jets found ways last season, when late victories against the Giants, the Dallas Cowboys and these Patriots emboldened a playoff charge that fizzled in the finale. These past three losses, the Jets either led or were tied in the fourth quarter. So much of the Jets’ misery is viewed within the context of their success in 2015, when so many factors aligned: a compassionate schedule, excellent team health, Fitzpatrick’s unexpected brilliance. Their 10-6 record created the impression that the Jets were an ascending team, even though it was unreasonable to imagine all those elements tilting in their favor again. “It’s been a rough season for us all,” said cornerback Darrelle Revis, who was twice beaten by Malcolm Mitchell for touchdowns, including the game-winner with 1 minute 56 seconds left. “It’s been a shocker for us, as well.” The plunge to last place in the A.F.C. East, three games behind Buffalo (6-5), served as corroboration. It invited questions as to whether Bowles will be invited back for a third season, though it is difficult to believe that the owner Woody Johnson, regardless of a threshold for embarrassment that has been tested frequently over the last six seasons, would dismiss him. The defeat confirmed that the Jets will not win the division title this season, as if that should surprise anyone who has watched them slog through the last three months. The best they can finish is 8-8, and when the Jets’ quest for mediocrity resumes next Monday night against Indianapolis, Fitzpatrick, who completed 22 of 32 passes for 269 yards and two touchdowns, might still be their quarterback. Or he might not. Bowles was noncommittal afterward, and Fitzpatrick, weary of the subject, declined to offer his thoughts. The possibility of assessing Petty’s viability — especially with Fitzpatrick and Geno Smith all but certain not to return next season — remains a consideration, though Bowles must first weigh his investment in the long term against that unyielding desire to feel good again after a game. With the Jets trailing by 13-10 after three quarters, Fitzpatrick dissected New England’s defense, leading the Jets down to the 22, when he unleashed what might be his best pass of the season. It certainly resulted in the Jets’ best catch, an acrobatic effort by Quincy Enunwa, who, leaping above cornerback Malcolm Butler, grabbed the ball while falling backward in the far right corner of the end zone. The play was ruled incomplete, but video replay confirmed that Enunwa’s posterior landed in bounds, putting the Jets ahead by 17-13 with 10:17 remaining. The touchdown injected the Jets with confidence but not security. “I’ve played these guys enough,” Fitzpatrick said of the Patriots. Referring to Brady, he added: “He is who he is for a reason. I had all the faith in the world in our defense, but I’ve seen it a lot of times, too.” Fitzpatrick saw it last October, when the Patriots overcame a fourth-quarter deficit to topple the Jets, and he would soon see it again. New England countered with a field goal, and after a second-down intentional-grounding call on Fitzpatrick stalled the Jets’ drive, Brady marched the Patriots 83 yards. On that drive, Brady, and the Patriots, performed as if empowered by the occasion. The Jets, whose mistakes to that point included a blocked field goal and a critical fumble by Robby Anderson, flopped. Brady converted a fourth-down pass to James White, found Chris Hogan for 25 yards and then, on first-and-goal from the Jets’ 8, picked on Revis one final time. With no safety help over the middle, Revis said, he felt he had to protect the inside. Deciphering the Jets’ coverage, New England called a play that had both receivers to Brady’s left run out routes, toward the sideline. Revis was late, and Brady connected with Mitchell for the go-ahead score. “They made one more play than we did” was Bowles’s explanation, and that is one way of evaluating the game. In truth, opponents have made those plays against the Jets all season, which is why they are 3-8, caught between competing and rebuilding, the veteran and the backup, unsure of what they are and how they are going to get there.


In Information War, Documentary Is Latest Salvo

Abstract: MOSCOW — A new documentary film about the Belarussian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, portrays him as a bumbling tyrant enamored of Hitler and Stalin. He has political opponents killed, journalists silenced and elections rigged in the film, all while keeping his faltering country locked in a Soviet time warp. For years, human rights groups and Western governments have been leveling similar accusations. But the latest salvo against Mr. Lukashenko comes from an unlikely source: Russia ’s government-controlled television. The documentary is part of an all-out propaganda war that has erupted between Russia and neighboring Belarus , two former Soviet republics that were once so close they had been on track to reunite. When the documentary, titled “Godfather,” was aired this month on Russia’s NTV television, it seemed to signal that the marriage was officially off. The mudslinging, which has played out in both countries’ government-controlled media in recent weeks, reflects the deepening tensions between them. The latest dispute broke out in June when they tussled over natural gas prices, and continued when Mr. Lukashenko nearly scuttled a planned customs union between his country, Russia and Kazakhstan that had been a pet project of Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s prime minister and pre-eminent leader. For years the Kremlin has supported Mr. Lukashenko, praising elections that independent monitors called rigged, while also ignoring violent crackdowns on the opposition. Moscow bolstered Mr. Lukashenko’s government with cheap natural gas and discounted duties on oil , which Belarus refined and resold. Russian subsidies, the moderator in the recent documentary says, “are the main secret of the Belarussian economic miracle.” In return, the Kremlin seems to believe that it has received little but headaches. Amid the natural gas pricing dispute in June, Belarus retaliated by briefly cutting off flows into Western Europe. Mr. Lukashenko has also been out of step with Russia’s policies in the former Soviet Union. He has given refuge to Kyrgyzstan’s former president, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev, who was ousted in April after bloody riots that Moscow seemed to encourage. He has also failed to follow the Kremlin’s lead in recognizing the independence of two separatist Georgian enclaves, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “He received a huge amount of money, with which he was in part able to support the economy of Belarus, its economic growth and the well-being of his people, without giving anything in return,” Vladimir Ryzhkov, a Russian opposition politician, said on Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio last month. “It seems the Russian leadership decided that that’s it.” Speaking to reporters recently, Mr. Putin played down the significance of the media campaign. “I do not see any media war. Perhaps this is because I barely read any periodicals and have not been following the electronic media lately,” Mr. Putin said. He was less ambivalent about Mr. Lukashenko, however: “When it comes to money or energy supplies, everyone wants to get something from Russia for free, so when they don’t they get annoyed.” The “Godfather” documentary voices criticisms typically found in Western human rights reports about Belarus (and Russia, for that matter). It covers the disappearances and killings of Mr. Lukashenko’s political opponents over the years and shows video of armored police officers beating antigovernment protesters. Images of Mr. Lukashenko dressed in military uniforms intersperse with footage of him inspecting collective farms. “Little has changed since the U.S.S.R.,” the narrator says at one point. Only those with satellite dishes were able to view the program inside Belarus, though it can easily be accessed on YouTube . And in the Soviet tradition of samizdat, people have been recording the film themselves and passing along bootleg copies, said Andrei Sannikov, a Belarussian opposition leader. Mr. Lukashenko, needless to say, was not pleased. He said that he was “offended” by the documentary. “I know who gives these commands, who is governing these processes,” he said in a statement on his Web site. Shortly after, Belarus fired back, publishing excerpts in one of Belarus’s government newspapers from a highly critical report about Mr. Putin, written by Russian opposition figures. “Savagery has become the norm in Russian society,” the newspaper wrote in an accompanying commentary. Belarus’s government-controlled First Channel also aired an interview with Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been vilified by Russia’s leaders — and who has been the target of unflattering Russian documentaries himself. In the interview, Mr. Saakashvili called the Lukashenko documentary hypocritical, noting the prevalence of political killings in Russia. “This has the smell of a propaganda war,” Mr. Saakashvili said. Responding to the interview, Boris Gryzlov, Russia’s Parliament speaker, called Mr. Saakashvili an “outlaw” and suggested that there would be consequences for Belarus. “Anyone who gives Saakashvili the opportunity to feel like a president, including in another country, is making a decision that could affect relations with Russia,” he said. Russia’s retreating support could certainly bode ill for Mr. Lukashenko in next year’s presidential election. Some Russian political analysts have begun to speculate that the media campaign could signal the start of an effort to unseat him. In fact, several Belarussian opposition leaders traveled to Moscow last month, where they met informally with Russian officials, including Russia’s finance minister and members of Mr. Putin’s United Russia party. Russian soft-power in the form of media campaigns and economic pressure is credited with helping to unseat the Kyrgyz president, Mr. Bakiyev, in April. However, Mr. Lukashenko, who has been in power for 16 years, appears to be on surer footing than his Kyrgyz colleague was. Still, the possibility of gaining Kremlin support has already enchanted some opposition figures in Belarus. “This is a unique situation when Europe and Russia can agree on the conduct of the Belarussian presidential campaign,” said Yaroslav Romanchuk, an opposition leader, who said he planned to run for president. “This is the first time in history.”

Russia
Belarus
Documentary Films and Programs
Propaganda


Tito Vilanova’s Death Cut Through Spanish Soccer’s Rivalries

Abstract: LONDON — Sometimes, when a sport is feuding within itself, it takes an extraordinary event to remind us all that it is a merely a game we play in life. Spanish soccer is locked in a rare three-way fight for the championship. Partisan feelings divide Barcelona, Atlético Madrid and Real Madrid. Yet over the weekend, Atlético’s president, Enrique Cerezo, flew to Barcelona to visit Camp Nou stadium and join the 53,000 people offering their condolences for Tito Vilanova, the former Barcelona coach who died Friday of throat cancer at 45. While he was making that journey, Barcelona’s first team was on its own mission. Harrowed by events, the players fell into a shocking two-goal deficit at Villarreal on Sunday. Lifted by a desire that meant more than just the points, Barça came back to win, 3-2. It needed no explanation when Lionel Messi scored the final goal and raised both index fingers to the sky before he was engulfed by his fellow players. Messi had been put under Tito Vilanova’s tutelage after the Argentine enrolled at Barcelona’s La Masia youth academy. Messi was 14. He needed growth hormone drugs, for which Barcelona would pay. Francesc “Tito” Vilanova, himself a former academy boy, though not nearly so gifted as many others, was cutting his own coaching credentials by passing on the knowledge he learned at La Masia. If you saw Messi’s face on Villarreal’s field on Sunday, or in Barcelona’s cathedral on Monday night when it was packed for a memorial service to Vilanova, you could not mistake the grief, the love or the torment he is now going through. Messi, and all the rest. One doubts that Vilanova had any inkling of the depth of feeling he generated. He knew that his club was special. It was to him. It will be to his son, Adrià. Adrià turned 17 in February. He looks eerily like his father. Standing in the cathedral on Monday, tall, lean, quiet and committed like his father, the young man smiled enigmatically when he was consoled by the archbishop. In January, when Tito Vilanova was again battling the throat cancer that struck him 21/2 years ago, he ventured out to watch his boy play for Barça’s Juvenil B team. From central defense, Adrià stole forward to strike the only goal of that game. Those whom Vilanova helped toward stardom include the big names currently on the revered club. Sunday against Vilanova had been “the most difficult to play,” Xavi Hernández, who has played more games for Barcelona than anybody, said on the club’s website. “We felt it in our bodies. We’ve lost a leader. We relied on pride and grit to win this game.” “We did it,” said Javier Mascherano, another Argentine recruited to the Catalan club, “the way that Tito did it, by fighting to the end. We have a lot of fight left in us.” Image Tito Vilanova in May 2013 after Barcelona won the league in his one season in charge. Credit Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Vilanova no longer has. But he cannot have imagined what a demonstration the soccer community would make for the most undemonstrative of men. Barcelona has won four of the past five La Liga titles, and Vilanova’s role during most of that time was assistant to Pep Guardiola. They started together as boys at La Masia, boys so young and so idealistic that Guardiola told reporters covering his new club, Bayern Munich, “We wanted to conquer the world, and that’s what we did. “The profound sadness that I have,” Guardiola added, “will accompany me for the rest of my life.” There had been a period of separation. In 2012, Guardiola left Barcelona, drained, he said, by the intensity of forever chasing, and winning, trophies. Vilanova stepped out of his shadow to surpass Guardiola, in terms of points won and in fluency on the field. When Vilanova needed surgery and chemotherapy in New York, Guardiola was already there, living near Central Park and taking a sabbatical. The friends didn’t see one another, as Vilanova would have liked. The word love was used unsparingly this week as Guardiola and so many others tried to convey their feelings across a variety of platforms. Josep Bartomeu, the current president of the club, wrote in an open letter to fans of Vilanova’s “humility and discretion, uncommon values in the world of football today. His perfectionism and his penchant to demand the most of himself was a source of inspiration for all who have worked with him.” Those who knew him most intimately saw Vilanova as the tactical mind, the thinker, alongside the driven Guardiola. Bartomeu said that days before he died, Vilanova called. “We have to do this,” Vilanova said, suggesting a new initiative. “You want me to help you do that?” Javier Faus, the board member leading plans to redevelop and enlarge Camp Nou, recalled journeys shared with Vilanova. “On the trips back from any game we would often be sitting across the aisle from each other and Tito would begin to analyze the match, whatever the result, as soon as he sat down on the plane. He got out team sheets, talk about the players’ positions.” Faus wrote that in their last long conversation, “We talked about our families, life in general and Barça, always Barça!” It was, ultimately, a visitor to the training camp on Monday who encapsulated the man. “I had to be here,” Éric Abidal said via the club’s website . “I watched on Sunday and you could tell that mentally the players weren’t really up for it, but they got a result and took the three points.” Abidal, now with A.S. Monaco, was a Barça player who underwent a liver transplant at the time that Vilanova’s cancer was in remission. “We shared a lot,” Abidal said. “F.C. Barcelona is a big family, and if we lose one of our own, it was more important than ever to be close to the family.”

Soccer
Barcelona Soccer Team
Lionel Messi


Williamses, Safina and Dementieva Advance to Wimbledon Semifinals

Abstract: WIMBLEDON, England — The top four women’s seeds are all through to the semifinals, a false indicator of stability on a women’s tour that has been unable to achieve it. But this is Wimbledon, a place where hierarchy and tradition are still at a premium, as well as a place where the Williams sisters usually win. It was difficult to detect hints of a revolution on Tuesday, which is ladies quarterfinal day at the All England Club. The older sister Venus and the younger sister Serena were both in rare form, which was bad news for those who wanted to bask in the summer sunshine and enjoy a long, suspenseful match under their Panama hats and much more disappointing to the opposition. Venus, a five-time Wimbledon champion, went first on Court 1, reeling off the first five games of the match against 11th-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, then winning, 6-1, 6-2. She showered, did her interviews and hustled over to Centre Court to watch her Wimbledon housemate and doubles partner. Venus must have been reassured, because Serena was wearing the ominously introspective game face that she sometimes reserves for gifted younger opponents whom she perceives as threats to the family plot. In one of the finer performances of her lengthening career, Serena imperiously showed Victoria Azarenka who was boss, at least on grass this year, with a 6-2, 6-3 victory. Despite no shortage of eye-catching rallies or intensity, the match lasted only 1 hour 13 minutes. The other numbers confirmed what was suspected: Though her first-serve percentage was less than 50 percent, Williams served nine aces and no double faults. She had 26 winners and only 7 unforced errors, a remarkable ratio for a big-swinging player who has power to spare but does not like to spare it. “She really showed the unbeatable Serena today, I guess,” said Azarenka, a 19-year-old Belarussian who has been on the rise this season and who had routed Serena in the final in Miami in April. But that was on a hardcourt with Serena sustaining a flare-up of the chronic knee pain that has caused her more worry than most of her opponents over the years. This time, she started and finished strong — marking her territory by chasing down drop shots and hitting forehand winners on the stretch against a fine athlete who has no fear of high-velocity rallies. “I really wanted to do well today,” the second-seeded Serena said. “I didn’t do well the last time we played. I was not feeling great, and I felt like I really wanted to show up today.” Thursday’s semifinals will be Williams-Russian affairs. The third-seeded Venus will face No. 1 Dinara Safina, who defeated the German Sabine Lisicki, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-1, in an edgy match littered with errors and shrieks of frustration from Safina. Serena will face No. 4 seed Elena Dementieva , who defeated the unseeded Italian veteran Francesca Schiavone, 6-2, 6-2. Despite the tape on Venus’s sore left knee, the sisters are also thriving in doubles. They reached the quarterfinals on Monday, winning, 6-0, 6-0, against the Chinese twosome of Zheng Jie and Yan Zi, who beat the Williamses in Australia last year. Dementieva, a Muscovite, has looked at home on the lawns this year. Like the Williamses, she has not lost a set and has not been pushed to a tie breaker. Once hampered on grass by her unreliable serve, Dementieva has worked hard to address that weakness and reached the semifinals last year, losing to Venus in straight sets. She then went on to win the Olympic gold medal, which looked as if it might soothe her persistent self-doubt and propel her to greater success. She started the year in ferocious fashion by winning in Auckland, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia. But Serena stopped her run in the semifinals of the Australian Open, and Dementieva has yet to win another tournament. She looks fit and focused, however, and has been training hard on the grass with the help of the former touring professional Andrei Cherkasov, even though her mother, Vera, remains her primary coach. “I know it surprised a lot of people that I’m still working hard and trying to improve my game,” the 27-year-old Dementieva said. “But this is what is so interesting for me about tennis, that I’m still trying to learn a lot about my game, and I feel very open to change something in my game.” Safina, still looking for a Grand Slam singles title, has already had her best Wimbledon result. Never past the third round in six previous visits, she has matched her older brother Marat Safin’s best performance here by reaching the semifinals. Safina double-faulted to start the first set and lose the first set, receiving a code violation for racket abuse after flinging her instrument of self-torture to the grass. She finished with 15 double faults, but Lisicki’s inconsistency and the quality of Safina’s returns, particularly her backhand return, ultimately made the difference in this deflating match. Safina will have to be better, much better, to stop Venus Williams’s 19-match winning streak at the All England Club. Safina won their most recent match, in the semifinals in Rome this year. But that was on clay, not the grass that continues to bring out the champion in Venus. “When I go out there, I’m going to, of course, feel like I want to make it happen on my side of the net,” Venus said. “She has the top ranking, but I have more the experience in this tournament and more success.”

Wimbledon Tennis Tournament
Tennis
Williams Venus
Williams Serena
Radwanska Agnieszka
Azarenka Victoria
Safina Dinara
Dementieva Elena


Rangers Keep Rolling as Captain Sits Out

Abstract: Defenseman Ryan McDonagh, the Rangers’ captain, missed his first game of the season Monday with a concussion. His team soldiered through, winning its third straight game with a lift from a stoic defenseman who had broken his right thumb only six days earlier. Kevin Klein played with his thumb wrapped. He said it still hurt, at least until he was distracted by the flow of the game. His wrist shot was strong enough, though, as he pumped in the first goal in the Rangers’ 2-1 victory over the Devils at Madison Square Garden. “One of those things you battle through,” Klein said with a shrug. “You get to know him over the years here, and he always plays hard,” goalie Henrik Lundqvist said of Klein, who is in his third season with the Rangers. “It doesn’t matter what he goes through — he’s always out there battling.” J. T. Miller also scored for the Rangers (30-18-5), who have won three straight for the first time since their nine-game winning streak ended with a Nov. 19 loss at Tampa Bay. It was also the Rangers’ first victory in three games this season over the Devils (26-21-7). Lundqvist stopped 27 of 28 shots, beaten only by a shorthanded goal by Travis Zajac with 2 minutes 17 seconds remaining against a Rangers power-play unit that went 0 for 5, dropping the team to 2 for 49 in its last 17 games. “You guys might not believe it,” Coach Alain Vigneault said, “but I thought the power play had some really good looks. We need a bounce to get a little bit of confidence, and we are going to keep working at it.” The Rangers had an 18-11 shot advantage when forward Chris Kreider swooped into the Devils’ zone with the puck in the first five minutes of the second period, then swiped a shot that goaltender Cory Schneider stopped. But the puck stayed in the zone, and Mats Zuccarello picked it out along the right-wing boards and sent it to Klein, who was alone in the left face-off circle. Klein drilled a shot past Schneider at 4:47 for his fourth goal of the season. “That’s why he’s my favorite player,” Klein said of Zuccarello. “You know Zuke is going to find you.” Klein’s goal was the first since Nov. 3, when the Rangers toppled Washington, 5-2. He missed 11 games in December with a strained oblique — and only one after fracturing his thumb in a 3-2 loss to the Devils last Tuesday in Newark. It was first said that he would be out indefinitely. “We thought we were going to lose him for a long time,” defenseman Marc Staal said. “We’ve been fortunate here that he’s been able to find a way to play through it and he scores a huge first goal for us. That first goal against these guys is massive.” Miller, who scored two goals in that game, added an important goal at 4:37 of the third when he took a drop pass from center Derick Brassard and whipped a low, hard shot that skipped between Schneider’s legs. “I’m not even remotely thinking from scoring out there,” said Miller, who nonetheless registered his 17th goal of the season and ninth in the last 10 games. He had scored 15 goals in the first 114 games of his N.H.L. career. It was a good thing for the Rangers that Klein was able to return for Saturday’s 3-2 comeback victory over the Philadelphia Flyers. McDonagh was injured early in that game, sustaining a concussion that still had Vigneault fuming on Monday. McDonagh was ruled out, two days after Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds punched him in the face. Simmonds received a match penalty and a game misconduct but would not face further punishment from the N.H.L. “What I didn’t expect was the reaction from the league,” Vigneault said. “An All-Star player gets sucker-punched — I wonder, if that was Crosby, what happens, what are the consequences?” Vigneault added, referring to Pittsburgh center Sidney Crosby. The Rangers face Crosby for the first time this season on Wednesday in Pittsburgh, and McDonagh may not be available to stop him. But they still have Klein, who, true to form, said Monday’s victory was much bigger than his goal.

Ice hockey
Ryan McDonagh
Concussion
Wayne Simmonds
Rangers
Devils


Richard Petty Is a Buyer in the Sale of Petty Motorsports

Abstract: Richard Petty’s Nascar business has not proved as legendary as his driving. In 2008, he sold a majority of Petty Enterprises to the private equity firm Boston Ventures to raise needed capital. About six months later, it merged with Gillett Evernham Motorsports. The new business, called Richard Petty Motorsports, has had its woes, none more dire than the majority owner George Gillett Jr.’s default on a reported $90 million in bank loans earlier this year. So on Tuesday, Petty Motorsports was sold for considerably less than the value of the debt to an investment group comprised of Medallion Financial, DGB Investments and Petty himself. “It was less than $50 million,” said Andrew M. Murstein, the president of Medallion Financial, the lead investor, which is best known for financing the purchase of taxi medallions in New York, Boston, Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia and Baltimore. “In effect,” Murstein said, “we got George Gillett’s stake by buying the debt.” He added, “It’s a great business that’s been strangled by debt.” Petty’s investment of “several million dollars” gave him a one-third stake in the business, Murstein said. Petty will oversee its operations. “Richard’s going to run it,” Murstein said. “He knows the business better than we do. You want to hitch your ride to him. He’s invigorated.” Petty Motorsports has cut back to two teams from four, with A. J. Allmendinger and Marcos Ambrose, who moved from JTG Daugherty Racing. The company released an increasingly unhappy Kasey Kahne from his contract — he jumped quickly to Red Bull Racing, and will move to Hendrick Motorsports starting in 2012 — and Elliott Sadler has left for Kevin Harvick Inc. Murstein said that without the debt, Petty Motorsports’s finances were solid, with $30 million in sponsorships locked up. The Stanley Tools sponsorship of Sadler’s car has shifted to Ambrose’s, and an extension of Best Buy’s sponsorship of Allmendinger’s car is being negotiated. Murstein has coveted a sports franchise for a few years; he raised $215 million in a public offering in 2008, was an early bidder for the Chicago Cubs, and looked at the Montreal Canadiens. In 2010, having made no acquisitions, the fund was liquidated. High debt, mixed with the recession, has led to the recent sale of two high-profile sports teams. After defaulting on $525 million in debt on the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Stars in 2009, Tom Hicks filed for Chapter 11 protection before the Rangers were sold in a federal bankruptcy court auction to a group led by Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenberg for $593 million. In England, Hicks and Gillett were forced to sell Liverpool F.C. in October for about $480 million after they were unable to refinance $445 million in debt to the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Petty Richard
Petty Enterprises
Automobile Racing
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Boston Ventures
Gillett Evernham Motorsports


Hiatus Is Set for Leader of Arts Club

Abstract: The venerable National Arts Club said on Monday that its longtime president would take a vacation, a time-off that the club’s first vice president, who will serve as the acting president, called a leave of absence. Word of the change came eight days after dozens of baby finches were apparently abandoned in Gramercy Park, the two-acre oasis across from the club, and newspaper stories linked the president, O. Aldon James Jr., to the incident. Dianne Bernhard, the acting president, said that the club’s board of governors was not happy about the publicity. But she said that the finches — apparently left in the park and endangered by a heavy rainstorm — were not the only reason that the board gathered for an emergency meeting on Monday night. “We’ve had a barrage of newspaper articles, complaints from board members, members, tenants, staff neighbors,” she said. “We had disgruntled employees who were fired, and this last episode of the birds in the park. We felt like there was so much information out there that we didn’t know which was fact and which was fiction, and we needed to get to the bottom of it.” Referring to Mr. James, she said that he had told the board “he would be willing to take a leave of absence and take a vacation,” Ms. Bernhard said. Mr. James did not return a call for comment last night. A statement from the board said Mr. James had “requested that the board of governors spend the next couple of months looking into how we can improve our operational structure while he will be taking a well-earned vacation.” Mr. James, 63, has presided over the club since the mid-1980s. More than once he has feuded with the Gramercy Park Trust, which looks after the famous park where keys to the iron gates have been issued since the days of Washington Irving. Over the years he took issue with the park’s trustees for cutting down trees and, he said, for poisoning birds and squirrels. In 2002, the club’s dining room manager pleaded guilty to stealing $163,000 that was supposed to go for sales taxes on meals. Mr. James’s brother, John T. James, pleaded guilty in 2003 to misusing the club’s tax-exempt status to purchase expensive jewelry —which he resold at a profit — without paying sales taxes. He was sentenced to five years’ probation. John James agreed to pay $469,213 in restitution and $60,000 in fines in the jewelry case. The city’s financial investigation ended in 2004 when the club agreed to pay hotel occupancy taxes of roughly $150,000. The club has rooms that members can reserve. Mr. James, who has said in the past that he keeps exotic birds in his quarters at the club, was quoted last week as denying releasing the finches in the park, and saying he had tried to rescue some of them. “He was not going to let them die out on the street,” Ms. Bernhard said. “I mean, he is an avid animal lover.”

National Arts Club
James O Aldon Jr
Bernhard Dianne


New Zealand Builds a Nest Big Enough to Save Kiwis

Abstract: CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — In the thousand or so years since humans discovered the remote islands that make up New Zealand, three-quarters of the indigenous bird species have been driven to extinction, and until recently, it looked as if the kiwi could follow. That would be a loss for the environment, but also for national pride; the kiwi, a small flightless bird that nests in burrows, is the national bird and has become something of an improbable national symbol. The country’s dollar is named after it, and New Zealand’s residents are often labeled “kiwis” by outsiders. Now, environmentalists are becoming more hopeful that a project started in 1994 will pull the beady-eyed bird back from the brink. Kiwi numbers have declined rapidly over the past century, as populations struggled with the twin threats of shrinking habitat and expanding legions of new predators. Hugh Robertson, who runs the Kiwi Recovery Program of New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, estimates that there were as many as five million kiwis when European settlers arrived in the 1820s and that the population now stands at 75,000. “It’s because of people and introduced predators: ferrets, stoats, weasels, dogs, cats,” said Jeremy Maguire, manager of the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve just outside the town of Christchurch. “They are a species in decline, and if it continues at the current rate, they will become extinct.” There are five species of kiwi, a smaller nocturnal relative of New Zealand’s now-extinct moa, and, more distantly, the emu and the ostrich. All kiwi species are listed on the country’s endangered species list. But two of them, the Rowi and Haast Tokoeka, are down to fewer than 300 birds, earning them a place on New Zealand’s “nationally critical” list, its most extreme category of endangered species. The near absence of mammals in New Zealand until they arrived with white colonizers meant that many bird species evolved into flightless ground-dwellers, leaving them vulnerable to the incursions of predators. “In our case, the stage was set for a spectacular tragedy,” said John McLennan, who has studied the kiwi for 20 years. Mr. McLennan estimates that the kiwi’s numbers are declining 2 percent to 5 percent a year, depending on the species. “Our flightless birds took an incredible hammering,” said Mr. McLennan, who is a trustee of the nonprofit organization Save the Kiwi. The birds are insect eaters with an acute sense of smell and, because they are flightless, their feathers resemble hairs more than traditional avian plumage. Their bones are filled with marrow, again more like mammals than birds, which usually have hollow bones. When humans arrived 1,000 years ago from other South Pacific islands, they used fire to clear the forests, starting an erosion of the kiwi’s habitat that gathered speed over time. And when the Europeans arrived, they brought other animals, which now pose the greatest threat. Kiwis evolved in a wooded environment where there were few natural predators apart from various eagles. The adults weigh at least about 2.2 pounds, and can hold their own against many of the smaller predators, but young kiwis have fewer defenses. Surveys suggest that in the wild, only one in 20 kiwi chicks survives its first year. Mr. McLennan said that the Conservation Department and other groups aiding the kiwi put out traps and poison to control the predators, but that has proved an expensive and far from complete solution. So New Zealand’s government agencies have partnered with local communities, nonprofit groups like Save the Kiwi and commercial operations like the Willowbank reserve, to tackle the problem by trying to protect the birds until they have a better chance of defending themselves. The plan, called Operation Nest Egg, is simple in conception but difficult to execute. Eggs are taken from kiwi nests in the wild and incubated in places like Willowbank. The newly hatched chicks are then taken to protected areas, many of them on isolated islands off the coast without predators, for about a year until they are big enough to fend for themselves. Then they are returned to the place their egg was found. The program began in 1994, but it has taken a while to perfect the process. It is expected to pass something of a milestone early next year when it hatches its 1,000th chick. Mr. McLennan says each chick that is returned to the wild costs about $2,750, a reflection of the difficulty in getting the eggs. The remaining kiwis tend to live in remote corners of New Zealand, and each pair of birds — they remain monogamous for life — controls a territory ranging from 12 to 100 acres, making it extremely difficult to find the nests. The egg collectors travel with a “kiwi caller,” who can imitate the call of a male kiwi, or sometimes a tape recorder. Male kiwis incubate the eggs, an evolutionary necessity because females lay eggs as large as 30 percent of their body weight and need time to recover. When the males run out to chase off the intruders, the collectors can trace them back to the nest and take the egg to places like Willowbank. Mr. Maguire, the Willowbank reserve manager, says the chicks seem to suffer few ill effects from not being brought up by their parents and seem to thrive on their return to the wild. After a slow start, Operation Nest Egg is picking up momentum. Its success rate is rising, and similar programs are starting throughout the country. Mr. McLennan is cautiously optimistic that Operation Nest Egg will stem the kiwis’ decline. “Because the rates of decline are relatively low at 2 to 5 percent, you don’t have to add many birds back into the population to make it break even,” he said.

New Zealand
Endangered and Extinct Species
Birds
Environment


Spy Swap Forced Prosecutors Into Balancing Act

Abstract: On June 29, two days after the arrests of 10 Russian agents in New York and three other states, Preet Bharara , the United States attorney in Manhattan , called an emergency meeting of his closest aides. Their criminal case, he was aware, was fast becoming a deal being orchestrated by politicians and diplomats. Mr. Bharara told his aides that he had just learned that serious talks were under way at the highest levels of the American and Russian governments for a spy exchange that would end the criminal prosecution. He knew the idea of a swap had been discussed in the Obama administration as a way to resolve a potentially delicate situation at a time when the United States and Russia were trying to improve relations. But there had been no indication that a deal would come together so quickly. “Is it appropriate for us to even be considering these sorts of things?” Mr. Bharara said he had asked his lieutenants. “Should we ever acquiesce in a trade?” The proudly independent Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office and the Justice Department “should never be an extension of or a rubber stamp for the White House,” he said, adding, “I feel that very strongly.” Mr. Bharara knew something about the sensitivity of law and politics: as a counsel with the Senate Judiciary Committee, he had spearheaded an investigation into the political firings of United States attorneys during the administration of President George W. Bush . The meeting late last month began an intense tutorial by the prosecutors on law and philosophy, ethics and history, politics and statecraft. They examined research on the history of swaps of spies and other prisoners; a big one involving their office occurred in 1986, during the Cold War, when Mr. Bharara was a teenager. Would they ever draw a line? What if the child of a Russian official were arrested for drug dealing and demands were made to drop that case? Would they object to a deal then? Mr. Bharara’s office was assigned last year to prosecute another high-profile case, the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, but before the defendants ever arrived in New York, the plans were derailed by strong opposition from local politicians. In the Russia case, though, the circumstances were different. A deal was being struck by political leaders of two nations that would close a decade-long investigation even before an indictment was brought. In the end, Mr. Bharara said he concluded the deal being brokered by the politicians was acceptable and just, and was being pursued for the right reason, and his prosecutors scrambled to secure guilty pleas from the 10 jailed suspects in different cities as the case sped to a conclusion. Now, with the deal done and the Russian agents back in Moscow , it turns out that prosecutors were not the only ones questioning their role in one of the odder, more fascinating spy cases in years. Donna R. Newman, the lawyer for one man accused of being a member of what was known as Russia’s illegals program, said a prosecutor had made clear to her that the terms of the eventual plea deal were being handed down from the highest levels of government. She said it was usually the United States attorney’s office that dictated the terms of plea bargains, and she joked with the prosecutor, “I’m used to being window dressing, but in this case you’re window dressing, too.” Robert M. Baum, the lawyer who represented another of the agents, Anna Chapman , said, “People congratulated me on the result of the case, but I had nothing to do with the result.” The case moved so swiftly that Peter B. Krupp, the lawyer for one of the Russian agents detained in Massachusetts , said he first learned the outlines of what later became the plea deal not from prosecutors but from a Russian official in a jailhouse meeting in Plymouth, Mass. Mr. Krupp said he called a prosecutor, asking for confirmation of the terms of the deal, and was left with the impression that the prosecutor himself was unaware of the details. “It is my feeling,” Mr. Krupp said, “that the defense teams, the prosecutors and the court were all pawns in this negotiation.” To Mr. Bharara, the 41-year-old United States attorney for the Southern District of New York , who has served 11 months in the post, the prosecutors were not pawns, and he said they worked hard to guard against that. “We took seriously our responsibility to be independent thinkers and responsible enforcers of justice,” he said. “It’s very easy for me to say that, because we agreed with what was going on, but it’s important for people to know that we thought about that.” “If something would have violated our principles,” he added, “we would have objected.” Mr. Bharara agreed to discuss limited aspects of the case at the request of The New York Times . Further details were obtained from others who were briefed on the process. Mr. Bharara said he and two top aides had monitored the arrests from an F.B.I. command center in Manhattan as they were being carried out on June 27. He knew at the time, he said, that some in the Obama administration had raised the idea of a swap as part of the broader rebuilding of United States-Russian relations. But that weekend, he said, he had no information that a deal was imminent, or even on the table. His office had sent prosecutors to Alexandria , Va., and Boston to handle arraignments there; his lead prosecutor on the case, Michael Farbiarz, the co-chief of the office’s terrorism unit, was overseeing the effort from Manhattan. “I fully expected we’d be in lengthy proceedings,” Mr. Bharara said, “and pleading some people out and going to trial with others.” So when, to his surprise, he was informed on June 29 “that the idea of a swap was extremely serious,” he said, he summoned Boyd M. Johnson III, his deputy, and Richard B. Zabel, who ran the criminal division, to his eighth-floor office. Mr. Farbiarz was called back from a colleague’s farewell luncheon in TriBeCa. Big cases often end in plea bargains before trial, with prosecutors never showing their evidence. But this proposal, coming from outside the Justice Department, raised unusual questions. “We’re prosecutors, right? We’re not spy-swap negotiators,” Mr. Bharara said. “The view was we just needed to make sure that at every step we’re doing the right thing for the right reasons.” Thus began their deliberation. “Was it O.K. to have a swap? And should we be considering that?” he said he had asked the group. They also discussed the content of the proposed exchange, he said He raised hypothetical questions, like what would happen if the office were asked to dismiss a prosecution for less noble reasons. “Would we be thinking differently,” Mr. Bharara recalled asking, “if it was a cocaine case involving some significant foreign leader’s child? And the answer was yes.” Mr. Bharara also asked about the history of such trades, and whether they were an acceptable outcome, both in criminal law and as understandings between nations. “We deal in precedent, and it was important for me to understand what has gone on before,” he said. He declined to elaborate on which cases they examined, but one major deal is well-known. In 1986, an accused Czechoslovakian spy, Karl F. Koecher, who was being prosecuted by the Southern District under Rudolph W. Giuliani , became part of an elaborate nine-person exchange in which the Soviet dissident Anatoly B. Shcharansky ( now known as Natan Sharansky ) was freed at Berlin ’s Glienicke Bridge. The prosecutor at the time, Bruce Green, now a Fordham University law professor , recalled this week that Mr. Koecher received a life sentence that was reduced to time served on the condition he participate in the swap and never return to the United States. “You can wonder,” Professor Green said, “does the criminal law really have much of a role to play here? If the likely result is going to be you just pack them up and send them home, what’s the point of the legal process?” For Mr. Bharara, the review of the earlier cases was useful because it showed they were not “in uncharted territory.” In that meeting and over the ensuing days, Mr. Bharara said, he kept a dialogue going as the proposal evolved and as Mr. Farbiarz and two other assistant United States attorneys, Jason B. Smith and Glen Kopp, worked to secure plea deals. He said there was unanimity that no swap should occur until after the Russian agents had admitted their guilt in court, described how they had violated the law and disclosed their real names. “It was very important to us,” Mr. Bharara said, “to vindicate the interests of the criminal justice system.” One of the other key considerations, Mr. Bharara said, was the comparative significance of the four prisoners being returned in the deal. “We did ask questions,” he said. “We learned about the relative identities and backgrounds of our 10 versus the other four; we were satisfied that the overall resolution was in the interest of justice.” At that point, the prosecutors had to act quickly, as the Russian government was making preparations for its prisoners to be exchanged. On July 8, the day of the guilty pleas in United States District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Bharara’s office found itself pushing to ensure that the fast-moving swap remained consistent with the requirements of the criminal justice system. In court, Mr. Farbiarz told the judge, Kimba M. Wood , that Russian officials had been meeting with the defendants jailed in the United States, and he suggested she ask each lawyer whether the Russians had done anything to either force or entice their clients to plead guilty. The lawyer for one defendant, the journalist Vicky Peláez , revealed that the Russians had offered his client a monthly stipend of $2,000 for life and other amenities, but he assured the judge that the promises had not induced her to plead guilty. The pleas were accepted, and the agents sentenced to time served. Within hours, they were on a flight to Vienna, the transfer point for the swap. “Our job is to make sure that justice is done,” Mr. Bharara said, “and in the modern world, it’s to make sure it’s done consistent with national security.”

US Attorney
Espionage
Preet Bharara
Politics
International relations
Justice Department
Manhattan


Bronx Zoo in Queens: Angry Words, and Wins

Abstract: Like the Yankees of Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson, the Mets may just be a team that thrives on a little bit of turmoil. There have been two confrontations involving a player and a member of the team’s staff in the last five days, and during that time, the Mets have won three out of four games. The first angry exchange occurred last Thursday night in Washington, when Manager Jerry Manuel and pitcher John Maine had words in the dugout after Manuel replaced Maine in the first inning after he had thrown just five pitches. After a tense plane ride back to New York, Manuel crammed all 25 players into his office on Friday afternoon before the beginning of their weekend series against the Yankees and told them to relax and enjoy playing baseball. But two days after that meeting, the team’s closer, Francisco Rodriguez, and its bullpen coach, Randy Niemann, had to be separated by other relievers in the bullpen on Sunday night during an apparent dispute over how Rodriguez is being used. The confrontation occurred in full view of some of the fans sitting in right field. Order was quickly restored, and Rodriguez later went into the game and after some dicey moments struck out Alex Rodriguez to earn his eighth save of the season, and his second in two nights, as the Mets held off the Yankees, 6-4, and took the series, two games to one. Afterward, Francisco Rodriguez said the tussle in the bullpen was just an instance of Mets relievers engaging in some roughhousing. “We were just fooling around,” he said. “We were just kidding with each other.” But two people in the Mets organization confirmed that the confrontation between Rodriguez and Niemann was indeed a heated one and might have escalated if other pitchers had not intervened. A third member of the organization said that Rodriguez and Niemann met after the game and apparently patched things up. At the heart of Sunday night’s incident is the Mets’ heavy reliance on Rodriguez to bail them out of one dangerous situation after another. With his own job on the line, Manuel has felt pressure to win every game he possibly can, even it means stretching Rodriguez’s normal limitations. He has had Rodriguez warm up more than once in the same game in case he is needed before the ninth inning; he has had Rodriguez come into the games where the Mets are still comfortably ahead. On the night of the confrontation between Maine and Manuel, for example, Rodriguez was summoned to pitch the ninth inning even though the Mets had a 10-6 lead and it was a nonsave situation. But just as in the 20-inning game against St. Louis in April, when Rodriguez warmed up 10 times before finally entering in the 19th inning, the Mets, and particularly Manuel, were in desperate need of a victory. So in came Rodriguez, and the Mets prevailed, 10-7. A day later, with the team still uneasy over the Maine incident, Manuel arranged for the team meeting in his office about an hour before the first pitch against the Yankees. He said the next day that he told the assembled players: “Just breathe and enjoy the game.” The Mets lost that game, 2-1, but came back to win Saturday night as Manuel called upon Rodriguez to get a five-out save after two other relievers — Pedro Feliciano and Fernando Nieve — faltered. Rodriguez threw 28 pitches and the Mets held on, 5-3. Manuel was probably hoping to not use Rodriguez on Sunday. But as Johan Santana began to tire in the eighth inning with a 6-1 lead, Rodriguez was asked to warm up and was told he would go into the game if the tying run came out on deck. That happened when the Yankees loaded the bases with two out, but Manuel instead called on Feliciano to face Robinson Cano, who popped out. “They told me if the tying run gets on deck, I will be in there,” Rodriguez said after Sunday’s game. “So I got up in the eighth and after Feliciano got Cano I sat back down, and they told me in case something else happened and someone gets on base, I will be in there.” Asked if it was difficult to do that, to keep warming up, Rodriguez said it was a matter of being smart. “You have to save your bullets and not waste them back there and throw too much,” he said. But sure enough, in the top of the ninth, Rodriguez was quickly warming up again after another reliever, Ryota Igarashi, gave up a walk and two hits. In came Rodriguez to get the final two outs, although it was not easy. Derek Jeter doubled, and after a groundout, Mark Teixeira reached on an infield single. With the score now 6-4, two runners on base and one out to go, Alex Rodriguez came to the plate. It was K-Rod vs. A-Rod, and the Mets came out on top, with Rodriguez striking out the Yankees slugger on a full-count changeup. For the second time in two nights, Rodriguez had turned back the Yankees. In between, there had been a confrontation with his own bullpen coach that spoke to the tension caused by everything the Mets are asking of him. By the time it was all over, he sounded exhausted. “That was five outs,” he said of Saturday night’s effort. “This felt like eight.” INSIDE PITCH John Maine has inflammation in his right rotator cuff and will begin a throwing program when the discomfort is gone.


Wisconsin’s Block Leaves Kansas State Hanging Its Heads

Abstract: TUCSON — By the time two seasons came to a head at the McKale Center on Saturday night, Wisconsin guard Jordan Taylor had long since lost the much-anticipated battle with Kansas State guard Jacob Pullen. His worst collegiate moment was juxtaposed with the best from Pullen, who sought revenge for a 2008 N.C.A.A. tournament loss to the Badgers. Pullen, a senior, nearly found it all by himself during a dazzling display of two-way dominance. But when Pullen pulled up on the left wing with two seconds left for a 3-pointer that would have tied this Round of 32 game, Taylor picked the perfect time for some retribution of his own. He closed quickly on Pullen, blocking his shot and capping a 70-65 Badgers win that sent them singing all the way to the Sweet 16 and ended Pullen’s illustrious career on a painful note. Pullen’s bittersweet outing will go down with individual footnotes, as he surpassed Mike Evans to break Kansas State’s career scoring mark of 2,115 points and set a new tournament scoring record for the Wildcats. Taylor, however, did just enough at the end to lead his team into the next round. Wisconsin will face eighth-seeded Butler in New Orleans on Thursday after its upset of top-seeded Pittsburgh in Washington on Saturday. “I feel like we won the battle because we won the game,” Taylor said. “It’s a team sport. So obviously he is a heck of a player. He was the best player on the floor tonight. But we’re moving on and going to New Orleans, so that’s all that matters.” Taylor did, in fact, get plenty of help from his teammates. His fellow all-Big 10 Conference player Jon Leuer had 19 points and 7 rebounds, and Josh Gasser and Mike Bruesewitz had 11 apiece. They did just enough to leave up it to Taylor at the end, and he came through in a way they have grown so accustomed to seeing. “We made the gutty plays, and that’s what we are known for,” Wisconsin senior forward Keaton Nankivil said. “Gutty hustle plays, that’s what describes our team. “The way I would always describe Jordan as an athlete is a winner. Whether he’s scoring, passing, doing anything, he’s a winner. It was signature in that sense, that he made the plays when they counted.” As the sizable Wisconsin contingent danced along with their favorite band, Pullen was the only member of his team to place a towel over his low-hanging head as he walked off the floor. Even with his career-high-tying 38 points that included 6 of 8 shooting from 3-point range, and even with Taylor’s 2 of 16 showing that had everything to do with Pullen’s presence, his final two minutes had been everything that the first 38 were not. Two of his three turnovers came in that stretch, the first coming with 1 minute 40 seconds remaining when his entry pass to forward Curtis Kelly was intercepted by Taylor and led to a 3-pointer from Bruesewitz to put Wisconsin up, 64-61. Then with 19 seconds remaining and fourth-seeded Wisconsin up by 64-63 on the fifth-seeded Wildcats, Pullen — whose freshman season was ended by Wisconsin in the third-round matchup he certainly never forgot — lost control of the ball in traffic on the break and kicked it into the loudest of crowds. Leuer was fouled, and buried two free throws to make it 66-63. Pullen seemed to have one final answer, though, taking the handoff from the freshman point guard Will Spradling atop the key and drawing contact from Taylor on his 3-point attempt. He made the first attempt, but missed the second, then converted the third before Kansas State was forced to foul. Fittingly, Taylor was sent to the line. He converted both attempts with 10 seconds remaining, then finished the late turning of this tide with the late block. Kansas State Coach Frank Martin, whose team fell far short of matching its Elite Eight showing last season, was looking for Spradling to take the open look on the play and made his frustrations known afterward. “Will can shoot the basketball, and he is a real good shooter off the dribble,” Martin said. “I told him, ‘Will, when you come off that ball screen, if they don’t guard you, shoot it’ because I knew they were going to pay so much attention to Jake. But we didn’t execute it real well. Our floor spacing was bad, which then Jake had no space to operate.” Pullen would later sit surrounded by his teammates in a silent locker room, the towel removed from his head but the pained look still on his face. “It’s over with man, the end of my career,” he said in hushed tones. “That’s all I can think about right now. No more games. That’s it. That’s the toughest part about it.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kansas State University
NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
Basketball
College Athletics


After 2 Games Back, Forsberg Retires Again

Abstract: Colorado Avalanche forward Peter Forsberg, 37, is retiring from the N.H.L. after playing in two games during his latest comeback. A chronic foot ailment cut short his career. Forsberg made a brief return in 2008 and did not play in the N.H.L. again until this month after signing a $1 million deal to play the rest of the season. He played in two road games, scoring no points, before calling it a career and surprising his teammates. ¶Andy McDonald and Patrik Berglund scored power-play goals to lead the host St. Louis Blues past the Vancouver Canucks, 3-2. blues ¶Ray Whitney had a goal and an assist, and the Phoenix Coyotes frustrated visiting Washington’s top line of Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Semin with a flurry of blocked shots in a 3-2 win over the Capitals. coyotes ¶Jimmy Hayes scored six minutes into overtime to give Boston College a 7-6 victory over Northeastern in the Beanpot championship game in Boston. Boston College is the defending Beanpot and N.C.A.A. champion. beanpot

Hockey Ice
Colorado Avalanche
Forsberg Peter


Guilty Verdict for 5 in A.I.G. Case

Abstract: Five former insurance executives were found guilty Monday of fraud and conspiracy in a scheme to manipulate the financial statements of the insurance company American International Group . The defendants — one from A.I.G. and four from the General Re Corporation — were convicted in Federal District Court in Hartford after a five-week trial. One question is whether the verdicts will increase the legal pressure on Maurice R. Greenberg , the former chief executive of A.I.G. Mr. Greenberg, 82, ran the company at the time of the sham transaction at the center of the trial and was an unindicted co-conspirator. Fallout over the transaction led to his ouster in 2005. He has denied wrongdoing. Eric J. Glover, a prosecutor for the United States attorney’s office for Connecticut, said Monday that the government’s investigation “is continuing,” as is usual with such prosecutions, but he declined to provide any details. Throughout the trial, including six days of deliberations, the jury of nine men and three women wrestled with complex, arcane accounting concepts. The defendants were convicted on all 16 charges, including conspiracy, securities fraud, mail fraud and lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sentencing is scheduled for May 15. The most senior defendants are Ronald E. Ferguson, 63, the former chief executive of General Re, and Elizabeth A. Monrad, 51, Gen Re’s former chief financial officer. The A.I.G. defendant was Christian Milton, 58, who formerly ran the company’s reinsurance business. Questions about legitimate reinsurance, which is insurance for insurance and is intended to spread out risk, lay at the heart of the trial. The other defendants are Robert Graham, 58, General Re’s former senior vice president and assistant general counsel; and Christopher P. Garand, 59, a former General Re senior vice president. In addition to prison, four out of the five defendants face fines of up to $46 million; the fifth, Mr. Garand, faces a $29.5 million fine. It was unclear Monday whether the guilty verdicts would raise new questions about the involvement of Warren E. Buffett , the investor who runs Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which owns General Re. Both Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Buffett have said that they knew generally of the transaction but were unfamiliar with its inner workings or with any improper accounting. Prosecutors in the case have treated the two men differently. Defense lawyers and well as prosecutors argued that Mr. Greenberg initiated the transaction with a call to Mr. Ferguson of Gen Re. Mr. Buffett was on the government’s witness list but was not called to testify. While some defense lawyers said that Mr. Buffett surely knew of the transaction’s inner workings, he was not accused by prosecutors. Joseph Belth, a retired insurance professor from Indiana University, said that “it seems reasonable to me that Mr. Buffett was not aware of the details or of the questionable nature of the transaction. But it seems different for Greenberg.” A lawyer for Mr. Greenberg, Nicholas Gravante, disputed that notion in an interview after the verdict. “Mr. Greenberg was not a defendant in this action,” Mr. Gravante said, “and he neither initiated nor participated in an improper transaction. Mr. Greenberg acted responsibly, ethically and legally during his career at A.I.G., which he built into the largest and most successful insurance company in the world.” A spokesman for General Re declined to comment; a spokeswoman for Berkshire Hathaway said that no one was available to comment. Mr. Greenberg, known as Hank and for decades one of the most senior players in the insurance industry, is a defendant in a raft of civil cases, including one filed by New York’s former attorney general, Eliot Spitzer , in 2005. He is also a plaintiff in some cases, one of them a legal battle against A.I.G., the company he ran for 37 years. David Schiff, the editor of Schiff’s Insurance Observer, an industry publication, said Monday that the guilty verdict “is bad news for Hank — it means a crime was committed. Who wants to be in any way associated with that? It turns up the heat on him.” Peter Henning, a criminal law professor at Wayne State University, and a former prosecutor in the fraud section of the Justice Department, said that it was unlikely that Mr. Greenberg would be indicted. “Naming him as an unindicted conspirator was done for strategic reasons,” Mr. Henning said. “They will run into a defense from him of, ‘I don’t do details.’ Greenberg wanted it more, but Buffett was happy to have it.” The transaction, undertaken with General Re, allowed A.I.G. to claim that it had increased its loss reserves — a crucial indicator of performance — by $500 million in 2000 and 2001, when Mr. Greenberg ran the company. The move helped A.I.G. persuade analysts that it was in better shape to pay claims, and helped increase its share price. A.I.G. has acknowledged that its accounting for the transaction was improper, and in 2006 it agreed to pay $1.6 billion to settle claims by federal and state regulators over improper accounting and bid rigging, among other charges. An A.I.G. spokesman declined to comment on the verdict. Mr. Spitzer, now the governor of New York, was among the first to levy charges against A.I.G. of improper accounting. He said “the convictions demonstrate the underlying accuracy of the allegations we made years ago about fraudulent accounting and the conspiracy to mislead the market. This conspiracy is not limited to those who were convicted today.” Cliff Schoenberg, a lawyer for Mr. Ferguson, said that “we can only hope that the district court judge or the court of appeals will reverse this grave miscarriage of justice.” Calls to Reid Weingarten, a lawyer for Ms. Monrad, were not returned. A lawyer for Mr. Milton, Fred Hafetz, said that “I believe that Mr. Milton is innocent. He did not get a fair trial and should have been severed from the co-defendants.” In a statement, the acting deputy attorney general Craig Morford, chairman of the President’s Corporate Fraud Task Force, said that “these convictions continue the string of successes in our crackdown on corporate fraud and our effort to restore integrity to our financial markets.”

American International Group
Frauds and Swindling
General Re Corp
Decisions and Verdicts
Insurance
Executives and Management
Greenberg Maurice R
Ferguson Ronald E
Buffett Warren E
Spitzer Eliot L


Drought Pushes Nevada Ranchers to Take On Washington

Abstract: BATTLE MOUNTAIN, Nev. — Around here they call it “going Bundy”: allowing cattle to graze illegally on federally owned land. For months, ranching families in this tiny community have itched to do it — both because of the relentless drought, which has left their own land dry and their animals hungry, and because of the anti-Washington streak that runs deep in this part of the rural West, where people fervently believe that the government owns too much land. Last month, the Filippini family finally did it: They released hundreds of cattle onto federal land here at the border of Lander and Humboldt Counties, an arid patch that straddles part of the old Pony Express cross-country mail route of 1860 and 1861. Drought has reduced the grass cover here to less than four inches of stubble in some creek beds, a level that leads to a ban on grazing. The Filippinis drew inspiration from another Nevada rancher who did the same thing and, so far, has won. In the spring of last year, Cliven Bundy , from the southern Nevada town of Bunkerville, about 450 miles from here, became a household name when hundreds of his supporters faced down rangers from the Bureau of Land Management in an armed standoff. “We did the right thing as far as I’m concerned,” said Eddyann Filippini, 59, the ranch matriarch, whose Facebook portrait shows her on horseback by the Pacific Ocean, poised to ride to Washington to protest the government’s management of land in Battle Mountain. “If I end up in a federal prison, I hope it’s Martha Stewart’s,” she added. So far, that does not look likely. Since the drought began here in 2012, the ranching families of Battle Mountain, a community of 3,600 people in Nevada’s northern desert, have been locked in a battle with the bureau, the federal agency charged with caring for millions of acres of taxpayer-owned land. The agency looms large in the West, where the government owns and controls about half of the land, and its decisions about who can graze, drill or mine can make or break entire communities. Image Hank Filippini, 21, the youngest in his family, studied welding in college, just in case ranching did not work out. Credit Kim Raff for The New York Times “This is really political,” said Doug Furtado, manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s Battle Mountain district, who has been a lightning rod for the ranchers’ anger. “This is not an easy job that we have here, and I accept it. I knew that when I first came to the B.L.M., and I accept that responsibility.” In 2013, the agency began restricting cattle grazing on public lands, concerned that the ecosystem would not recover if animals ate their way through during a dry spell. Three families were ordered to halt grazing on various land allotments: the Tomeras, the Mariluches and the Filippinis. Several companies were also affected. Environmental groups, which have long called for the end of ranching on public lands, urged the agency to be as strict as possible. The families strongly objected, saying that the agency’s restrictions could drive them out of cattle ranching — a business that is central to their identity and heritage. “We’re pretty close to being extinct,” Ms. Filippini said, “and they’re using the drought as the ax to cut our heads off.” In the case of Mr. Bundy, the issue was not drought but grazing fees. The Bureau of Land Management had a court order to confiscate his cattle because Mr. Bundy had been illegally grazing them on public land since 1993, refusing to pay fees that had come to more than $1 million. Image Tack and family photos in the Filippini home. Since the drought began in northern Nevada in 2012, the ranching families of Battle Mountain have been locked in a battle with the federal Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights. Credit Kim Raff for The New York Times Eventually the rangers backed down, and Mr. Bundy has continued to graze his cattle without paying and to repeat his position that he does not recognize federal authority over the land. As recently as last week, Sally Jewell, the secretary of the interior, vowed that she would bring him to justice. The issue here — drought — has caused longstanding tensions between Western ranchers and the federal government to escalate. “We have to be more careful” during a drought, said Mr. Furtado, explaining that grazing on too-dry land could destroy critical root structures and suck up sparse water, possibly causing a dust bowl or wildfires. “The science all supports this,” he said. The ranching families of Battle Mountain filed lawsuits to overturn the no-grazing edict. They pitched signs near the agency’s office urging drivers to “Honk to Impeach Furtado.” And last fall, eight of them mounted horses in Bodega Bay, Calif., just north of San Francisco, and rode 3,000 miles to Washington to deliver petitions to Congress calling for Mr. Furtado’s removal. The ride, called the Grass March Cowboy Express , lasted 21 days and ultimately took the life of one of the group’s leaders, A. Grant Gerber, 72, a lawyer who suffered a concussion in Kansas when his horse, Gandhi, tripped in a groundhog hole. (Mr. Gerber made it to Washington, but died on the return trip.) Image Doug Furtado, manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s Battle Mountain district, has been the target of much of the ranchers’ anger. Credit Kim Raff for The New York Times His obituary in The Elko Daily Free Press , the newspaper in Elko, said: “Before he left, he wrote to family and friends telling them to complete the ride with or without him, saying: ‘Please carry on if I am killed or hurt. And then after the petitions are delivered you can then scrape up my old bones and deliver them back to Elko County.’ ” When none of these efforts prompted the Bureau of Land Management to allow grazing, the families began to consider defiance. The Tomeras decided against it. “We could turn the cows out, tell the B.L.M. to go to hell in the sand,” Paul Tomera, 45, said. “We’ve been trying not to go that route. We’ve been trying to go about it the right way — the legal way.” But the Filippinis gambled that the bureau would not risk another Bundy situation. For months, their cattle had been penned behind the family home, eating expensive hay on a plate of dry dirt. Several had died; others were sick and thin. On June 2, the Filippinis, accompanied by about 40 supporters, trucked about 300 cattle up to Big Cottonwood Canyon, where a swath of green awaited the herd. Image ”We’re pretty close to being extinct,” Eddyann Filippini said of Nevada ranchers, “and they’re using the drought as the ax to cut our heads off.” Credit Kim Raff for The New York Times “I called our sheriff,” Ms. Filippini said. “I told him: ‘This is what we’re doing. We’re turning out whether we have authorization from the B.L.M. or not.’ ” When the Bureau of Land Management did not clamp down, environmental groups spoke out. The Western Watersheds Project accused “scofflaw ranchers” of “trashing” public lands. That group also joined with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in berating the Bureau of Land Management for caving in “to every whim of the ranchers.” “The B.L.M. really needs to take care of the public’s land, needs to regulate the ranchers’ exploitation of this privilege to graze on public lands,” Kirsten Stade, the advocacy director at the public employees group, said in an interview. But, she added, “they’re scared.” “You had Cliven Bundy and his friends coming out with guns and making threats against B.L.M. employees,” she said. “The question becomes: Well, why aren’t they getting support? Where is the support for those B.L.M. employees?” A few days after the Filippinis unleashed their cattle, the bureau struck a new deal with the family, one that allows them to graze for three years if they pay a fine — $106 — for the cattle trespass. Ms. Filippini and her husband, Dan, called it a win. Shortly after, the other families negotiated new agreements with the bureau, which allow them to graze if they move their cattle more often. But if the drought worsens and the grass runs out, the squabbling may all be moot. Hank Filippini, 21, the youngest of Eddyann and Dan’s three children, said that he had studied welding in college, just in case ranching did not work out. “I always wanted to be a cowboy,” he said. “But they’ve been trying to break us for quite a long time.”

Nevada
Drought
Cattle
Land use
BLM
Federal lands
Cliven Bundy
Ranch


End Gets a Bit Nearer as Mets Lose to Phillies

Abstract: The Mets ’ flags atop Citi Field remained a vivid blue and orange Friday, but after a loss to the Philadelphia Phillies , they seemed to gain a decidedly whiter hue. The Mets have not given up on the season just yet, but they moved a step closer. By losing, 7-2, the Mets fell 12 games behind the Phillies in the National League East, an almost insurmountable deficit, and 8 ½ games behind the Atlanta Braves in the wild-card standings. Neither number is particularly encouraging for a team seeking a playoff berth, nor is the fact the Mets have lost four of their last five games. That is why General Manager Sandy Alderson may soon conclude that the postseason is not a realistic possibility. If so, he is expected to trade the All-Star outfielder Carlos Beltran, and perhaps others, in what would amount to raising the proverbial white flag of surrender on the season. Beltran only enhanced his value to other teams by driving a home run over the 408-foot sign to the right of the apple in center field on Friday. Potential bidders for his services were sure to take note. “Well, in the situation where I am, that’s probably happening,” Beltran said. “But I am a Met and I’m trying to help the team win ballgames.” Beltran’s homer, his 14th, came with one out in the eighth off reliever Michael Stutes with the Phillies already leading by 7-1. Phillies starter Vance Worley, who left the game in the sixth, thwarted the Mets’ ambitions by allowing only one run and three hits in five and a third innings. With the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline approaching, Alderson called this current stretch of games — against the Phillies, the Florida Marlins and the St. Louis Cardinals — critical to determining his course of action regarding Beltran and other possible trades. Nothing that happened Friday precluded his pursuing those moves instead of pursuing the playoffs. “This is the ultimate challenge now,” Manager Terry Collins said. “We came out of the break, we had some guys that needed some rest and we’ll see who steps up, because we’re back to square one now. We have 70 to play and we’ll see who rises.” The game did not begin auspiciously, as the Phillies scored three runs in the second inning and never trailed. The Mets mustered only five hits, and Phillies center fielder John Mayberry knocked in a career-high five runs. Mets starter R. A. Dickey surrendered four runs in seven innings and threw 114 pitches. He allowed two walks and six hits, including a solo home run by Raul Ibanez in the sixth inning that extended the Phillies’ lead to 4-0. Dickey lamented two pitches in particular, a 3-2 ball to Domonic Brown in the three-run second that loaded the bases, and was followed by a two-run single by Mayberry. Dickey also was unhappy with the floating knuckleball he served up to Ibanez. “Last year I was much better at making the big pitch,” he said. The Mets did not score until the bottom of the sixth, when Beltran came home from third after Scott Hairston struck out on a wild pitch. It was indicative of the Mets’ inability to generate offense. They went 0 for 5 with runners in scoring position. Because they never led, the Mets did not have an opportunity to test the new committee of closers — beginning with Jason Isringhausen — that they will use in the wake of the trade of Francisco Rodriguez. Alderson claimed that transaction did not signal that the Mets were giving up on the season. Still, the Mets continue to explore possible trade partners for Beltran, who has a blanket no-trade clause, but would be willing to accommodate the right trade. “Right now I’m just going to listen to the proposals they make to me and if it makes sense for me, then I will move forward,” Beltran said before the game. “If it doesn’t make sense, then I’m not going to make the decision.” INSIDE PITCH Jose Reyes said he felt no more discomfort in his strained left hamstring and could be back with the team before Friday, his original target. He plans to run full speed in a straight line Saturday and then test the hamstring by running the bases Sunday. ... David Wright, who is recovering from a stress fracture in his lower back, played five innings for Class A St. Lucie and went 1 for 2 with a double and a walk.

New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Beltran Carlos
Baseball


Russian Skater Sets Olympic Standard for Himself

Abstract: TALLINN, ESTONIA — Aleksei Mishin, the small and round Russian who has coached three men’s Olympic figure skating champions, was beaming as Yevgeni Plushenko listened to the Russian anthem with another gold medal around his neck. But for Mishin, as for Plushenko, the comeback hardly culminated at these European championships. This impressive, if not quite flawless, performance was about setting the tone for the Olympics in Vancouver next month; about trying to send a message that what was required to win in Plushenko’s absence the past three seasons will no longer be sufficient. That means an upgrade in athleticism. That means quadruple jumps. “I’d like to tell you he’s coming back to wake up not only Russian men’s figure skating and not only Russian figure skating family but international also,” Mishin said. “He’s coming back to wake up a lot of athletes to start to work harder and be more ready and prepare.” In his first major competition since the 2006 Games in Turin, Plushenko finished first in both the short program, where he set a record score, and the free program Thursday against a strong field that included two former world champions, Stéphane Lambiel of Switzerland and Brian Joubert of France. It was the sixth European title for Plushenko, who won his first in 2000 when figure skating was still using its old scoring system, with 6.0 the mathematical model of perfection. That concept no longer exists in the new scoring world of elements with base values and running tallies. But Plushenko, now 27 and remarried, can clearly still crunch the numbers effectively in this era, too. In Tallinn, he ended up with a combined score of 255.39 points, well ahead of Lambiel, an Orlando Bloom doppelgänger who is in the midst of a comeback of his own after his own retirement lasted just one season. Lambiel, who finished second in Turin, has yet to win Olympic gold. But why did Plushenko, who has already won all of skating’s major trophies, feel the need to return? “My wife kept insisting,” he said through a translator. “And I have to say, competition is such a great feeling. Maybe I was missing that. But I won’t be going high in the sky at winning this. The most important competition is the Olympics.” Lambiel received the silver medal and the biggest standing ovation Thursday night on the strength of a finely conceived if imperfectly executed free program set to music from La Traviata. Lambiel, the most expressive of the top Europeans, touched down on his opening quadruple jump and later fell at the start of a step sequence that he never expected to trip him up. He finished with 238.54 points and the consolation prize of outscoring Plushenko in the program component score by nearly two points. Joubert, in striking range of Plushenko after the short program, was disappointing and deeply disappointed Thursday night, stepping out of his opening quadruple jump and then continuing to struggle, getting hit with deductions in bunches as he downgraded jumps, abandoning a planned combination and coming up with another shaky landing on a triple salchow. He ended up with the bronze medal with 236.45 points. “Tonight really hurt me,” said Joubert, who said that he did not feel conditioned enough after rushing to recover from foot surgery in December. “I’m going to do the maximum to be at my best three weeks from now in Vancouver,” he said. “I know I can do much better. I know I can be Olympic champion if I do my best.” Plushenko has already done it: winning in 2006 before taking an extended break from elite-level competition but not necessarily from skating. “To say he’s gone four years without skating is not true. He has done lots of shows,” said Didier Gailhaguet, the president of the French ice sports federation. “But it’s a remarkable comeback. There’s no doubt, but you also have to say that nobody else on the podium got to Plushenko’s level, and he did not have much trouble winning. But that’s our fault. We can’t blame him.” Joubert, who skated before Plushenko in the final group, hardly applied much pressure. When Plushenko took to the ice in Tallinn’s main indoor arena, the Saku Suurhall, and his tango music began, he needed little more than a minute to cleanly land the only quad toe-triple toe combination of the night, a triple axel, a triple axel-double toe combination and a triple loop. Though he later downgraded a planned triple lutz to a double lutz, he was otherwise in complete command. “I’m working on the quad lutz, maybe I have to do a quad instead of a triple,” Plushenko said. Maybe he wasn’t joking. Plushenko said he was well aware that the men who won the last two world championships — Jeremy Buttle of Canada in 2008 and Evan Lysacek of the United States in 2009 — did not require a quad. “I think that’s just not possible,” he said. “Today people were trying two quads, so that was good. Maybe they realized that you can’t win without a quad. My job now is to do two.” Consider that a warning to the rest of the deep men’s Olympic field that includes the in-form Lysacek. “Everybody will have to pay attention and think about how to beat him,” Mishin said of Plushenko. “To beat him, not too easy.” Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin of Russia are the reigning world ice dance champions and favorites for the gold medal at next month’s Winter Olympics. But their original dance, performed to an aboriginal theme, is generating anger in the middle of the Australian summer, with aboriginal elder Sol Bellear calling the dance “very offensive.” “We see it as stealing aboriginal culture, and it is yet another example of the aboriginal people of Australia being exploited,” Bellear, of the New South Wales state Aboriginal Land Council, told Reuters on Thursday. That was the same day Domnina and Shabalin donned red loin cloths and dark body suits with white markings designed to look like body paint and performed their original dance at the European Championships. There were no protests from the spectators in the arena or from the judges, who placed the Russians second in the original dance, which kept them in first over all heading into the free dance Friday. Natalia Linichuk, their Russian coach who works with the pair in Aston, Pennsylvania, said the highly unusual program, set largely to voices and chants instead of a traditional soundtrack, was not directly based on Australian aboriginal dance or culture but on aboriginal culture in general. “Aboriginal, it translates from Latin language, it’s ‘from the beginning,”’ Linichuk said. “We try to represent a picture of this time when aboriginal people start being in the world. It’s no customs, no country, nothing.”

Ice Skating
Estonia
Olympic Games (2010)


3 Labor Activists in China Get Suspended Prison Terms

Abstract: HONG KONG — A court in southern China has sentenced three prominent labor organizers to suspended prison terms, human rights groups and a lawyer for one of them said on Monday, more than nine months after they were arrested amid a crackdown on civic organizations that work outside the Communist Party. The activists, who live in the southern province of Guangdong, could still be imprisoned if found guilty of any further offenses, the lawyer, Lai Shengqi, said by telephone. Mr. Lai’s client, Zeng Feiyang, was charged with “gathering a crowd to disturb social order” and sentenced to three years with a four-year suspension. The two other organizers, Tang Jian and Zhu Xiaomei, were sentenced to one and a half years in prison with two-year suspensions, said William Nee, a China researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International. The sentences for Ms. Zhu and Mr. Tang, while relatively mild, were surprising, said Mr. Nee, because the two had already been released on bail, and judging by past practice in China, it was not expected that they would be tried at all. But the three activists, in addition to at least one other still in custody, had proved extremely effective at organizing workers to win higher pay and better conditions. While their activities had been generally tolerated for many years, as the Chinese economy boomed and labor shortages grew, the government appears to be taking a harsher line on such activities now that growth has slowed and some factories are relocating to countries like Vietnam, where labor can be cheaper. Mr. Zeng, the director of the Panyu Migrant Workers Center in Guangzhou, was particularly adept at adopting the language of the labor rights movement to match some of the most important goals of the Communist Party, such as preserving stability, Mr. Nee said. “Things were never perfect — there was a labor crackdown in 2012 — but over all, there was a positive direction,” Mr. Nee said by telephone. Video A downturn in the economy has caused a boom in worker demonstrations and strikes across China. One man is trying to help those who are most vulnerable in China’s slowing economy. Credit Credit Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times Last year, however, the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin recorded more than 2,700 protests and strikes in China, more than double the number in 2014. In December, Mr. Zeng, Ms. Zhu, who was nursing a baby, and several other activists were detained. Although the crackdown appeared to be confined to Guangdong, Mr. Zeng was the subject of intense criticism by the nation’s official media, which sought to cast doubt on his character in, among other reports, a 24-minute television segment on Dec. 23 that accused him of deliberately inciting unrest and taking money from foreign sources. Xinhua, the official news agency, reported on Dec. 22 that Mr. Zeng, a married man, had had at least eight extramarital affairs. Pang Kun, a former lawyer for Ms. Zhu, expressed some relief after the suspended sentences were announced because they meant that the activists would not be immediately imprisoned. But, he said, the sentences were “unacceptable” because what Ms. Zhu did — organize and help workers — “was not a crime.” The suspended sentences will also mean that the activists will find it difficult to continue their work, Mr. Pang said by telephone from Shenzhen. No one answered the phone at the Panyu District Court in Guangzhou, where the sentences were announced. “It’s obvious that the authorities want them to depend on the government and the system to deal with similar labor disputes,” Mr. Pang said.

Communist Party of China
Guangdong
Labor Unions
Zeng Feiyang
Tang Jian
Zhu Xiaomei
China
Human Rights