Trump Kicks Off ‘Thank You’ Tour, Reveling in Crowd and Campaign Themes

Abstract: CINCINNATI — He boasted about himself in the third person. He sneered at the opponents he had vanquished. He disparaged journalists and invited angry chants from the crowd, grinning broadly at calls of “lock her up” and “build the wall.” He ridiculed the government’s leaders as stupid and dishonest failures. In his first major address since winning the presidency three weeks ago, Donald J. Trump soaked up the adulation of thousands of his supporters at a campaign-style rally here, unabashedly gloating about the “great” victory he had secured. If there were any question about whether his evolution to president-in-waiting would temper his presentation or moderate his tone, the rally offered a forceful answer: Not a chance. Kicking off what was billed as a “thank you” tour, Mr. Trump was incendiary and prideful, hopeful and indicting, vengeful and determined. His staff said the rally was the first of several he will hold before his inauguration next month. His tour is an unusual move for a president-elect, most of whom do not return so quickly to the campaign trail, especially while key cabinet positions remain unfilled. Mr. Trump, who has been mostly cloistered in Trump Tower as he tries to assemble a government, was said to be eager to reconnect with voters. Connect he did, whipping the partially filled arena into a frenzy by reprising the red-meat rhetoric from his us-against-them campaign. He repeated pledges to suspend immigration from countries with a history of terrorism, repeal the Affordable Care Act, lower taxes, end unfair trade and “drain the swamp” of corruption. But while he at times stuck to the script on his teleprompter, Mr. Trump came alive when he veered from it to talk about himself and demean those who had opposed him. “We had a lot of fun fighting Hillary Clinton,” he said, smiling knowingly as the crowd chanted “Lock her up!” but offering no indication that he intended to do so. In the middle of a scripted part of the speech about lower taxes for businesses, he shifted abruptly to note the magnitude of his wins. “How about North Carolina — how well did we do in North Carolina? Remember when they said he cannot win North Carolina?” Mr. Trump said, adding a moment later: “Donald Trump can’t break the blue wall, right? We didn’t break it, we shattered that sucker. We shattered it, man. That poor wall is busted up.” And he reserved special bile for the “extremely dishonest press,” provoking boos as he lashed out — without naming her — at a network anchor who he said had cried on television on election night when she realized he was going to win the presidency. Video Step inside President-elect Donald J. Trump's first postelection rally in Cincinnati as thousands celebrated his win, and called for Hillary Clinton to be jailed. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times. Technology by Samsung. “You know what she doesn’t understand, things are going to be much better now,” he said. “I love this stuff,” he said after a nearly 10-minute discussion of his electoral prowess and his critique of the news media. “Should I go on with this for just a little bit longer? I love it.” He did go on, shifting back and forth between his prepared remarks and his extemporaneous walk down the memory lane of victory. During the prepared parts of the speech, Mr. Trump seemed eager to reach out to the people who had opposed his candidacy. He said the new government would “seek a truly inclusive society,” and he proclaimed that “we condemn bigotry and hatred in all of its forms.” On the economy, he vowed to “reverse the stagnation and usher in a period of prosperity and growth,” even as he promised to overcome the partisan gridlock that has led to stalemate in Congress during much of the past eight years. “We’ll compete in the world, we want to compete in the world, but we’re going to compete in the world where it’s a two-way road, not a one-way road,” Mr. Trump vowed. “The advantages are going to come back to our country, and they haven’t for many, many years.” Speaking in Ohio just days after a Somali refugee wounded several people with a knife at Ohio State University, Mr. Trump essentially attributed the attack to programs to admit refugees “stupidly created by our very stupid politicians.” “We will suspend immigration from regions where it cannot be safely processed,” he said, echoing some of his most effective campaign rhetoric. But he sometimes veered from his prepared remarks in the middle of a sentence. A discussion of what his administration would do if a company wanted to move jobs overseas reminded him again of his victories. And that discussion of winning several states led directly into a diatribe against reporters, who he said had never seen his victories coming. Then, when he mentioned Utah, he railed against a third-party candidate who before Election Day had seemed poised to do well. “Remember when they said Donald Trump is going to lose to some guy I’ve never even heard of?” he said, laughing. “The people of Utah were amazing, and we trounced them. Hillary came in second, and that guy came in third. What the hell was he trying to prove?” Image Mr. Trump speaking at the rally in Cincinnati on Thursday evening. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Mr. Trump offered both an olive branch and a warning to Democrats in Washington, saying he believed that “they want to get together” but reminded them that they had lost “because the people are angry.” He delivered his promise through the prism of a Republican-controlled federal government. “Our victory was so great, we have the House, we have the Senate,” Mr. Trump said, his last words drowned out with cheers. He smiled and paused, before offering some tepid reassurance that “we want to get them on board.” Mr. Trump opened his rally with a familiar trope: gawking at the crowd and lamenting the difficulty that supporters were having traveling to the arena. “So I didn’t know what came with this position, and I didn’t know that they closed down the roads around the stadium for an hour and a half,” he said, thanking the crowd “for being so patient.” Before he spoke, a familiar scene developed at the arena, with hundreds of Mr. Trump’s supporters lined up, some clad in red shirts handing out “Trump/Pence” signs. The prerally soundtrack, heavy on Elton John and the Rolling Stones, rotated through the songs heard during the campaign. The main difference this time: the lectern at center stage, which now had a big, bold “USA” where the name “TRUMP” used to be. As president-elect, Mr. Trump has at times seemed frustrated by criticism of his business conflicts and his loss by more than two million ballots in the popular vote. But at the rally, Mr. Trump was once again in good spirits, feeding off the fervor in the crowd. He had just come from Indianapolis, where he celebrated his involvement in Carrier’s decision to keep roughly 1,000 jobs in Indiana. Mr. Trump seemed to relish toying with the news media, at one point announcing that he had chosen James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, to be his secretary of defense — even though his spokesman had said four hours earlier that no decision had been made. “I gave up a little secret,” Mr. Trump said, urging the crowd not to “let it out of this room.” But nothing seemed to fire up the president-elect as much as recalling his victories in the campaign, each made so much sweeter, he repeatedly said, because the media and his opponents had never seen them coming. “We had a lot of fun,” he said, adding: “The bottom line is, we won.”

Donald Trump
Stadiums Arenas
US Politics
Hillary Clinton


Ohio State Says Wells Is Now Doubtful for Big Game

Abstract: COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel said Thursday that it was doubtful that tailback Chris Wells would play Saturday night against Southern California. Tressel said Wells had lingering soreness in his right foot after working out Wednesday night. Wells did not practice Thursday before the Buckeyes departed for Los Angeles. “We were hoping he’d wake up this morning and feel even better than yesterday,” Tressel said Thursday. “But it didn’t happen.” Wells injured his foot in the Buckeyes’ opener against Youngstown State, did not play last week against Ohio and had no contact in partial practices this week. Tressel did not rule out the possibility that Wells would see action, but did not sound optimistic. The co-offensive coordinator Jim Bollman said after Wednesday’s practice that Wells was 75 percent healthy. “The chances of him being 100 percent are not high, I would think,” Bollman said. “That would be a miraculous recovery.” Wells rushed for 1,609 yards and 15 touchdowns last season and was considered a top Heisman Trophy contender this season.

Ohio State University
College Athletics
Football
Tressel Jim


Allergies in the Time of Research

Abstract: For his master’s thesis research, Andrew Martin, an evolutionary biologist, studied the periodical cicada, an insect that lives underground and emerges once every 13 or 17 years. Traveling the United States from Georgia to Illinois to New York, Dr. Martin, now a professor at the University of Colorado, spent a summer up close with the cicadas. At each site, he would handle anywhere from 30 to 50 of them. The cicadas’ bodies were greasy to the touch, he recalled, and their abdomens were often coated with a whitish-green powder. It is a fungus that sterilizes and ultimately kills the insects. A month into the research, the cicadas weren’t the only ones the green powder had afflicted. Whenever Dr. Martin touched it, his eyes itched and watered — symptoms that grew worse every time. “When there were lots of the fungi, my eyes wanted to pop out of my head,” Dr. Martin recalled. “I wanted to scratch my eyes out.” Dr. Martin had developed an allergy to his research subject, a fact that made finishing the project a grueling task. “I was always on something,” he said, referring to allergy medication, “but it was still bad.” Becoming allergic to your research may sound like a classic avoidance strategy — like coming down with the flu (cough, cough) right before that big exam, or having to work (what a drag) on the weekend the in-laws come to visit. But it turns out to be a little-discussed but fairly common occupational hazard of science. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of researchers who work with mice and rats, for instance, may eventually become allergic to the animals, said Dr. Karin A. Pacheco, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at National Jewish Health in Denver. The real number could be even higher, because some people who become allergic may never report it, valuing their job above their health or comfort, Dr. Pacheco said. Image Credit Ellen Weinstein Allergies are caused when our immune systems become overly sensitive to otherwise inoffensive substances. “The very first time you’re stung by a bee, you won’t be allergic,” said Dr. Pacheco. “You have to be exposed to the antigen and then develop an immune response to it.” Because scientific research often involves frequent and lengthy contact with a substance or creature, it’s something of a perfect vehicle for allergies. Charlotte R. Hewins, a research specialist at the Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, Ohio, used to spend six months a year working with witch hazel plants, pollinating the flowers by hand. Witch hazel, used as a garden shrub and medicinally as an astringent, grows tiny hairs on its leaves and twigs. When Dr. Hewins handled the plants, those hairs would come loose and float through the air. Before long, she remembers, “I’d be getting rashes and hives on my hands and forearms. My eyes would be itchy and watery, and I’d be sneezing.” For Burk Dehority , a microbiologist and professor emeritus at The Ohio State University, the offending substance was formaldehyde. Dr. Dehority was studying protozoa that live in the stomachs of cattle. “After using formaldehyde in liberal quantities for a number of years and getting splashed with it, I started to develop small blisters all over my hands,” Dr. Dehority said. He tried using rubber gloves, but that proved an incomplete solution. The chemical’s fumes were partially responsible for the allergy. So Dr. Dehority installed a fume hood — a similar device to the fan system that sits above a stove. That seemed to make the work bearable, though the allergy persisted through 40 years of research. “I made a career out of studying protozoa,” he said. “It never occurred to me to switch.” For Dr. Martin, too, abandoning the cicada project seems never to have entered his mind. “I was getting such cool data,” said Dr. Martin, who eventually earned his first publication in the journal Nature from the cicadas. “You become myopic about what you need to do.” In fact, even a pre-existing allergy may not be enough to deter an obsessed scientist from a particular line of inquiry. Monica Raveret Richter, a behavioral ecologist at Skidmore College, developed a severe allergy to bees, wasps and mosquitoes as a child. Yet she has since spent much of her career studying the foraging behavior of wasps — aided by EpiPens and a supply of antihistamines. “If I get a lot of stings, I have issues,” she admitted. Still, she said, “I’ve learned to work around it.”

Allergy
Research
Science and Technology
Medicine and Health


Liverpool and Manchester City Will Play at Yankee Stadium

Abstract: Liverpool and Manchester City will play at Yankee Stadium on July 30 as part of a multicity preseason tournament featuring some of Europe’s top soccer clubs. The eight-team tournament, the International Champions Cup, will take place from July 26 to Aug. 4 and include games in nearly a dozen American cities : Denver, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Washington, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Charlotte and Miami. Liverpool and Manchester City will be joined in the field by their Premier League rival Manchester United, as well as the Italian giants A.C. Milan, Internazionale and Roma. Real Madrid, which won the tournament last year, will return, and Olympiakos of Greece will complete the field. In every case, the teams’ rosters could be affected by this year’s World Cup, which ends July 13 and might preclude some top players from taking part. Spain, England, Italy and Greece have all qualified for the World Cup, and most of the clubs also employ players from various countries that could make deep runs in the tournament. Still, the commitments from so many top clubs indicate a continued willingness to market themselves to a growing — and increasingly knowledgable — American soccer audience. The tournament will mark City’s second straight summer tour of the United States and the second year in a row the club has played at Yankee Stadium . Liverpool last played in North America in 2012, when it visited Boston, Toronto and Baltimore. United is embarking on its first American tour since 2011. Milan and Inter, like Real Madrid, played in the I.C.C. tournament last year. Roma has spent its past two preseason in the United States; last year, it served as the opponent in the M.L.S. All-Star game. “It’s really all about branding,” the former Manchester City forward Mike Summerbee said. “Everybody wants to come and play in America.” A second game in the New York metropolitan area will pit Milan against Olympiakos at Citi Field on July 24. The clubs are divided into two groups for the tournament. Group A consists of Manchester United, Real Madrid, Inter and Roma, with Group B made up of Liverpool, City, Olympiakos and Milan. Each team will play the other clubs in its group once, and the group winners will meet in the final at SunLife Stadium outside Miami on Aug. 4.

Soccer
Liverpool Soccer Team
Manchester City Soccer Team
Yankee Stadium NYC


Nepal’s Maoists Open Unexpected Lead in Early Election Results

Abstract: KATMANDU, Nepal — Barely two years out of the jungle, former Maoist guerrillas were poised on Monday to lead Nepal’s new government, as initial election results signaled that voters had chosen to remove most of their veteran politicians from office and sought a radical break with the past. Of the 196 directly elected legislative seats for which results had been tallied, the Maoists picked up 108 in the voting on Thursday, the Election Commission announced, according to The Associated Press. Far behind were the Nepali Congress Party, with 31 seats, and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), or U.M.L., with 27. In addition to a total of 240 directly elected seats in the new, 601-member Constituent Assembly, there are 335 indirectly elected seats, intended to give women and marginalized castes and ethnic groups a greater voice in the government. The other 26 seats are appointive. The partial results of last week’s voting point toward a Maoist landslide, which would defy predictions, though the final count, which could take weeks, could tilt the election differently, or at least reduce the Maoists’ margin. The results will bear mightily on Nepal’s future: The new assembly will rewrite the country’s Constitution and govern the country while it is doing so. Under Nepal’s unusual election laws, Prachanda, the Maoist leader, was allowed to run in two election districts, and won them both. Madhav Kumar Nepal, the leader of the other leftist party, U.M.L., lost both his races and resigned as party president. Another party new to electoral politics, an ethnic Madhesi party from the southern plains, which also emerged from armed rebellion demanding greater autonomy, picked up 15 seats. Prachanda pledged Sunday to work with the other parties. It is not clear whether winning control of the government would embolden his party to push its most radical demands, like integrating its former fighters into the security forces, or whether the task of governance, in which the Maoists have little experience, would make them “sober up,” in the words of a diplomat, who, under normal diplomatic protocol, could not publicly comment on an election. Assessing the early results of the election, a newspaper columnist, C. K. Lal, said: “The Nepali people are saying they are fed up with the way things are going. The good part would be if the Maoists can use their majority to usher in changes through consensus. The bad part would be if Maoists thought they could go the way they wish because they have a majority.” Tempering their original revolutionary stridency, the Maoists, as politicians, have said in recent months that they have no intention of hindering private investment or nationalizing property. Their principal goal has been to oust the 240-year-old Hindu monarchy. It is unknown to what extent voters chose the Maoists out of genuine conviction, intimidation or a sense that former guerrillas are safer in the assembly than outside. In any event, the victors in the elections, particularly if they are the new faces of the Maoists, will inherit large expectations, especially in a young, desperately poor country that had not had elections in nine years. “For the Maoists, it will be an awful lot of pressure to govern,” said another diplomat. “There will be pressure to deliver, be relatively pro-poor and deliver a peace dividend to the countryside. That is pretty hard in Nepal.”

Nepal
Elections
Prachanda
Politics and Government
Election Results
Constitutions


WWF Study Cites Lack of Action on Poaching

Abstract: HONG KONG — Poor wildlife-protection efforts by Asian and African countries in response to skyrocketing poaching are putting the survival of rhinoceroses, tigers and elephants at risk, according to a report released Monday by the conservation group WWF . The report names Vietnam , Laos and Mozambique as the countries that do the least to combat the illegal poaching or trafficking of the endangered animals, whose body parts are highly valued in many Asian cultures for use in traditional medicines or as decorative items. Demand for rhinoceros horn, ivory and tiger parts has soared in recent years. The WWF’s report focuses on 23 countries that are considered to be either the primary homes of rhinos, tigers and elephants or the main destinations for ivory and other animal parts. Rhinos, tigers and elephants are listed as endangered under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora , the primary international treaty on wildlife. The treaty prohibits the trade in the endangered animals and their parts. The report singled out Vietnam for failing to curtail the consumption and trade of rhinoceros horn, which it said had fueled a poaching crisis in South Africa. A record 448 rhinos were killed there last year, and the poaching shows no sign of slowing down, the WWF report said. “It is time for Vietnam to face the fact that its illegal consumption of rhino horn is driving the widespread poaching of endangered rhinos in Africa,” Elisabeth McLellan of the WWF said in the report. Mozambique received poor marks for its efforts to stop rhinoceros poachers and for its lack of control over ivory trading. Laos was criticized for its performance on policing the tiger and ivory trades. The WWF also called on China to improve its control of the ivory trade.

World Wildlife Fund
Poaching (Wildlife)
Rhinoceroses
Tigers
Vietnam
Elephants
Mozambique
Laos


Texas Man Treasures Finds in Updike’s Trash

Abstract: MANCHACA, Tex. — A man can get rich off his old emails and aborted novels, if that man is Ian McEwan. This spring, Mr. McEwan, 66, the Booker Prize-winning author of “Atonement” and “On Chesil Beach,” fetched $2 million for his archive from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. To mark the acquisition, Mr. McEwan visited the center in September to give the first American reading of his latest novel, “The Children Act.” At the book signing afterward, a man with an open face and closely cropped gray hair waited in line for 20 minutes. When the man, Paul Moran, reached Mr. McEwan, he handed him a pair of glasses and an envelope. Inside the envelope was a canceled check belonging to the American author John Updike, and a 1953 issue of The Harvard Lampoon featuring a cover Mr. Updike had designed and, as evidenced by the Pennsylvania address written on the envelope, mailed to his parents. The glasses were also Mr. Updike’s, Mr. Moran said. He wanted to give them to Mr. McEwan because he had called Mr. Updike the “greatest novelist writing in English at the time of his death.” Mr. Moran, 56, a former special-needs English teacher who with his wife runs a Hawaiian shave ice truck called Maui Wowee in Manchaca, told Mr. McEwan that these were but bits of his large collection of Updike memorabilia, what he calls The Other John Updike Archive. He gave Mr. McEwan a 6,300-word essay he had written about the origins of the materials. And then, aware that he was taking a lot of Mr. McEwan’s time, Mr. Moran asked him to sign a vintage copy of Anton Chekhov’s plays that had belonged to Mr. Updike, which Mr. McEwan did, in small print. Mr. Moran then walked off, bought Mr. McEwan’s book, waited in line again and had Mr. McEwan sign that, which he did with greater flourish. Mr. McEwan could not be reached for comment. Until several months ago, The Other John Updike Archive was relatively obscure. Mr. Moran keeps it in his apartment within one of the many landscaped luxury complexes — complete with a pool and parking spots “reserved for future residents” — cropping up on the fringes of Austin. The collection came to the public’s attention after The Atlantic put out a call for submissions on the topic of things discarded and retrieved, and Mr. Moran sent the magazine a query about the essay he presented Mr. McEwan, detailing how he acquired his collection. A senior editor at The Atlantic said the piece would not be a good fit for the package, but that she wanted to write about Mr. Moran instead. The article, “ The Man Who Made Off With John Updike’s Trash ,” by Adrienne LaFrance, reveals that Mr. Moran picked through the Updikes’ garbage for two and a half years and asks who should control a literary archive and, by extension, a writer’s legacy? When the feature was published on Aug. 28, it ignited a burst of news media chatter — Alison Flood at The Guardian, for instance, chided Mr. Moran, while Alex Beam at The Boston Globe thanked him. But nothing could be said that Mr. Moran had not already considered himself. During the course of collecting, Mr. Moran obsessively wrestled with the ethics of what he was doing, as he chronicles in his essay, an edited version of which is published on TexasMonthly.com as “ Finding John Updike .” By his telling, Mr. Moran’s history with Mr. Updike’s junk begins on a spring day in 2006. Then a resident of Salem, Mass. — he moved to Texas in September 2012 — Mr. Moran routinely took tonic, 22-mile roundtrips to Singing Beach to combat his alcoholism. On this day, passing through Beverly Farms, he spotted Mr. Updike putting out a blue recycling bin. Mr. Moran biked past, but he could not stop thinking about the sighting. He wondered if he might find a New Yorker with Mr. Updike’s name and address to filch as a souvenir. On the way back, he stopped to check, and found not only a New Yorker, but 10 honorary degrees in pristine condition. There was even one from Mr. Moran’s alma mater, Salem State College. Mr. Moran returned in his car later that afternoon to retrieve the discarded degrees, and he secretly sold the batch to a now-defunct independent bookstore for $1,000. The mysterious provenance of the degrees made the front page of The Boston Globe. “I thought, ‘They’ve been well notified now,’ “ Mr. Moran said last month, referring to the Updikes, “so it’s incumbent on them, if they’re really paranoid about this stuff, to soak it in water.” Once trash hits the curb it is, after all, considered abandoned. And so it began. For the next two and a half years, Mr. Moran scheduled his Wednesdays around a trip past the writer’s house. Mrs. Updike, he said, drove past him a couple of times as he rifled through the bags, but she never commented. No one, Mr. Moran said, tried to stop him. “I thought fate had granted me this gift or responsibility,” Mr. Moran said. “But I didn’t like doing it. I was desperate to stop. It made me question myself and my character. “But I knew I would do this until one of us died, so I could find out what the entire thing was going to be.” Mr. Updike died from lung cancer in 2009. “Some of the major things I found were tossed out after his death,” Mr. Moran said. “You could tell about the last load because there was this last really good blast of materials, and you could tell Mrs. Updike was just done.” From that last blast, Mr. Moran scavenged note cards on Mr. Updike’s final, unfinished novel about St. Paul and the origins of Christianity, the drafts of which are embargoed until 2029. But Mr. Moran’s collection includes the more mundanely poignant detritus that trails a careful life: a ticket stub to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas; prescription bottles for the anti-anxiety medication Ativan; preppy pink plaid yacht shorts and L.L. Bean moccasins; a note written on the back of a scrap envelope — “SWEETIE, Let’s make love after your coffee. xx John”; a letter written and presumably left unsent, which starts, “No more Lampoons please”; and a stack of beautifully composed black-and-white pictures of Shillington, Pa., where Mr. Updike grew up, including one of his high school with a note jotted on the back, “I always liked this unique window and railing at the boys’ entrance 11/22/90.” Mr. Moran has documented the very matter that one of the country’s most famous documenters — a man who carefully packed boxes of his own papers for his official archive, which resides at Harvard’s Houghton Library — deemed unworthy of eternal documentation. Even so, Mr. Moran did throw out a few items: a dime novel ending with the protagonist having sex with his mother, and a copy of the Kama Sutra with two pictures of different women bookmarked between the pages. “By holding on to those things, I was leaving myself open to the temptation of doing something unethical, like a disservice to his legacy,” Mr. Moran said. “I had no business with this stuff, and I’m not going to use it against him.” Still, others argue that he should have let everything go to waste. According to the John Updike Literary Trust, which is managed by the literary agent Andrew Wylie, Mr. Updike did not want his personal or professional correspondence published. Leslie Morris, the curator of Mr. Updike’s official archive at Harvard, considers Mr. Moran’s collection an invasion of privacy. Other Updike scholars, however, are appreciative, like Mitch Fraas, a curator at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, and Jack De Bellis, a professor emeritus at Lehigh University, who is the director of the John Updike Society, advisory editor of the John Updike Review and Alvernia University’s first John Updike professor in residence. In “Finding John Updike,” Mr. Moran concluded that the ethics of his actions would be determined by what he did with the materials. “I found an uncorrected proof that Updike had tossed out, called ‘The Thing Itself by Richard Todd,’ “ Mr. Moran said. “He talks about this idea of the Kula, Trobriand Islander tribes that would pass on useless shells, and they would take on this value in the tribe based on whose hands they had passed through and who had owned them previously. He talked about historic aura and how that’s become more of a barometer of the value of works.” Mr. Moran took inspiration and solace from this idea. He envisioned his collection as a Kula art project, and this is what spurred his gift to Mr. McEwan. “I thought that was like a holy transmission of something that had belonged to him to someone else who was leading the legacy of writers and had this deep appreciation of it,” Mr. Moran said. If Mr. McEwan’s friend, the lion of letters “Christopher Hitchens were alive,” he said, “I would have given him something, too.” Mr. McEwan appeared to be gripped by the incident. He talked about it throughout his time in Austin, according to those at the University of Texas who spent time with him. And while conducting a class for students at the Michener Center for Writers, he read from Mr. Moran’s essay. According to several students in attendance, Mr. McEwan was disturbed by the invasion of Mr. Updike’s privacy chronicled in the story, but amazed by how well written it is. Mr. McEwan, however, was less impressed with the glasses, which still had a slight dusting of Mr. Updike’s dead skin. He said he was unnerved by the thought of his friend’s “DNA rubbing off on him.” And so, no sooner did Mr. McEwan receive the glasses than they went right back into the trash.

Texas
Ian McEwan
University of Texas at Austin
Books
Archive
John Updike
Writer
Paul Moran


A Midlife Crisis Doesn’t Have to Be One

Abstract: WE all know the stereotypes about male midlife crises. Men run out and buy red Porsches, get hair plugs and trade in their wives for younger girlfriends. My husband, Michael, took a different route. He became a weatherman. Or at least, he will be one when he graduates from his meteorology program this spring. Let me explain. Michael had been in corporate finance for his entire working life. When I met him 27 years ago he was crunching numbers and preparing financial forecasts for a public television station. He rose through the ranks at various media and sports companies, jobs that always sounded glamorous, because of the high profile of the places where he worked. In reality, though, little of the charm of association rubbed off on the spreadsheets and budget projections, even if the product was a professional basketball team or a hot TV show. His last job was as chief financial officer of a television production company. When that company did a big reorganization, Michael did some soul searching. His discontent had been building. A few years earlier, he had been on a business trip on 9/11 — a 9 a.m. American Airlines flight from Kennedy International Airport to Los Angeles. His plane never left the tarmac. But, like so many others that day, he began evaluating how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. So when he came to a crossroads for his next professional move, he didn’t follow the usual path of talking to headhunters, networking within the industry and finding another corporate finance position. Instead, he started thinking about the weather. This was nothing new for Michael. He isn’t one of those people who watch the Weather Channel simply to catch the local forecast. He has always been the kind of viewer who cares about the barometric pressure in faraway places. He monitors the rainfall levels in tropical climes. And in the Northeast, absolutely nothing gets him going like a good storm, particularly a snowstorm. Every time we are in the middle of a near blizzard, Michael will look up at the yellowish swirling sky and say, in a deflated voice, “It’s letting up.” The storm in question may or may not be letting up, but Michael needs to prepare himself emotionally for the tempest’s eventual end. As much as he wants to believe those 18 to 24 inches may fall, he needs to temper his expectations. His obsession with weather has been lifelong. As a child he built crude weather instruments. He constructed a hygrometer, which measures humidity, out of an old milk carton and strands of human hair. (His patient mother had to pluck a few strands to get the right length.) He put together an anemometer, which clocks wind speeds, out of a bicycle wheel frame, some funnels and a speedometer. Over the years, he maintained his love. He subscribed to publications like “Windswept” (published by the Mount Washington Observatory) and “Weatherwise.” Just as some households receive mail-order catalogs that advertise gardening tools or kitchen gadgets, we receive titles like “Wind and Weather” that sell barometers and rain gauges. Still, Michael had always viewed the weather as an avocation, not a vocation. He is facile with numbers, and after graduating from college and then business school, still saddled with student loans , he went directly into the corporate world and didn’t look back. Until the day he finally did. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to 9/11. Maybe it was just one too many corporate reorganizations and the cutthroat politics that accompany them. But Michael maintains that far from having a crisis of midlife or any variety, he simply decided to become the person he always wanted to be. Going back to school after 30 years is no easy thing. The closest meteorology program was at a state university in Connecticut. To apply, he had to dig up his original college transcript, which included 35-year-old SAT scores. When he was accepted, he had to produce his immunization records. Michael called his mother, who after a pause informed him that his pediatrician was long dead and that she had no idea where his old medical charts were. After further research my husband discovered that he had actually already had the diseases today’s students are immunized for — like measles and mumps. His very age proved his immunity, and the university health department gave him a pass. Attending school was another challenge. Our children told their father that he had inadvertently bought a girl’s backpack. (“But it’s blue,” he said. “Sky blue,” our daughter told him, as if that explained everything.) When Michael slung the backpack over both shoulders, our son demonstrated the one shoulder backpack slouch. Then there were the academics. Things had changed considerably since his Ivy League days, particularly the computer technology. Just reactivating the brain cells to do advanced physics was challenging. The professors were his age or younger. His fellow students were our children’s ages or younger. His wife (that would be me) alternated between offering support and nagging about lost income. He persevered. He studied climate and forecasting, not to mention physics, oceanography, thermodynamics, calculus and more. He did radio and Internet weather reporting. He had an internship with a meteorologist at a TV station. He volunteered at the weather observatory on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. This spring, he will get his degree and continue to pursue his dream. We live in a competitive town, where one-upmanship is common. Yet time and again, people — usually men — pull Michael aside and say: “Man, you’re my hero. I wish I could do what you did. I always wanted to be a ...” Fill in the blank here — landscaper, sculptor, teacher, whatever. “You still can,” Michael says. But he is one of the few who did. I’m not sure what the future will bring. The uncertainty makes me anxious. In any case, my husband tells me that anything beyond a seven-day forecast is speculation.

Labor
Education and Schools
Weather
Lombardi Kate Stone


Shuttle Is Set for an ‘Exciting Mission’

Abstract: The shuttle Endeavour will light up the skies over Florida early Tuesday, kicking off a busy 16-day mission to the International Space Station. If weather and the millions of parts that make up the shuttle cooperate, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will launch the shuttle at 2:28 a.m. from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. The mission calls for astronauts to deliver the first section of a new Japanese laboratory known as Kibo to the station, as well as an eerily human-looking robot. That robot, a Canadian creation named Dextre, can sit on the end of the station’s robotic arm and perform some of the risky maintenance and service work that currently calls for a human touch. “If you had to go to a drawing board and describe an exciting mission from scratch, I think you’d come up with STS-123,” Dominic L. Gorie, the flight commander and a retired Navy captain, said at a news conference in Houston last week, using the mission’s official name. The mission does, in fact, have a little of everything: a dramatic night launching, five spacewalks and station construction with the first Japanese module, which means that components from all of the station’s international partners — the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan — will finally be joined in orbit. “For years we’ve been calling it an international space station,” Captain Gorie said, “and now we’re truly there.” The portion of the Kibo module that is riding with the Endeavour will be put in a temporary position on the station until the main laboratory is taken up this spring. Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut on the flight, will take part in installing the pressurized room — not much longer than a Mini Cooper automobile — and will be the first to enter it. Other spacewalks will involve assembling the nine large pieces of Dextre and inspecting a damaged rotary joint that is supposed to turn half of the station’s immense solar panels to face the sun. The joint has been out of commission since last year, and NASA has a team dedicated full time to figuring out how best to get it moving again. Another spacewalk is devoted to a bit of unfinished business after the loss of the shuttle Columbia five years ago: testing an orbital goo gun that could be used to fix minor damage to shuttle tiles during a mission. The other members of the crew are the pilot, Col. Gregory H. Johnson of the Air Force; Dr. Richard M. Linnehan; Capt. Michael J. Foreman of the Navy; Maj. Robert L. Behnken of the Air Force; and Garrett E. Reisman, an astronaut who will be staying aboard the station for long-term duty. He will take the place of Gen. Léopold Eyharts, a French astronaut who has lived aboard the station since last month. Colonel Johnson, Captain Foreman, Mr. Reisman and Major Behnken are rookies. This will be the fourth flight for Captain Gorie and Dr. Linnehan, and the second for Mr. Doi. A forecast issued Friday at a space agency news briefing put the likelihood that weather conditions will allow launching at 90 percent. To avoid scheduling conflicts with an Air Force satellite launching at Cape Canaveral, NASA will only attempt launchings on Tuesday and, if there is a delay, on Wednesday before waiting until March 17. At 16 days, this will be the longest mission devoted to station construction. It is also, however, part of the winding down of the shuttle program, which will have just a dozen missions more after this one to complete the station and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope before 2010. This knowledge of an ending makes each mission somewhat bittersweet for those involved, Major Behnken said in an interview. “When I was a kid, I got to see the shuttle’s transit across the country” on the back of a 747, he said. “It’s a little bit sad to see something that has been a part of your life” go into retirement, he said, “but it’s also kind of what needs to be done in order to move on.” The fleet will be grounded to make way for the development of a new generation of spacecraft capable of taking people back to the Moon and beyond, which should be flying by 2015. During the gap between the old and the new, NASA will be dependent on the Russian space program for access to the station. Major Behnken said, “I think it really is important for NASA to have something that goes beyond just low-Earth orbit, and so if it takes retiring the shuttles to move on, you need to rip that Band-Aid off” and press on.


Buyer Beware in Seeking Lower Energy Costs

Abstract: WITH winter setting in and heating fuel prices nearing record levels, Westchester residents may be thinking about taking advantage of Con Edison’s Power Your Way program, which allows them to buy gas or electricity from a source other than Con Ed. But if saving money is the goal, it’s a buyer be aware market. “It remains a crapshoot about whether or not you’re going to save money, pay more money or have it come out a wash,” said Jason K. Babbie, senior environmental policy analyst with the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. Last year, with winter approaching and faced with ever-increasing electricity bills, Adam Rench, of Croton-on-Hudson, decided to check out the Power Your Way options, which were included with his Con Edison bill. He decided to start buying his electricity from an energy supply company offering a one-year contract for a fixed rate. But instead of leveling off or getting lower, his bills were rising $20 to $30 a month, he said. After nine months, using bill comparison information provided by Con Ed, he found he had paid close to $250 more than he would have if he had not changed. “I just assumed that if it was something coming out with the electricity bill and a state program,” he said, “it would be a good thing.” About a decade has passed since utilities in the state were reorganized, opening the door to competition. Under the shift, utilities like Con Ed continue to deliver natural gas and electricity with other energy companies — often called ESCO’s — supplying the gas or electricity. “The restructuring was so the utility would not be a monopoly, so you would have choice,” said Ann Dalton, a spokeswoman for the state’s Public Service Commission. For many consumers, however, trying to figure out if change is right for them has been little more than a headache, and while it was hoped that competition would lead to savings for consumers, there is little evidence that has happened. “You can’t shop your way out of the problem we’re facing,” said Gerald A. Norlander, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project, an advocacy group for energy users based in Albany. “If people want to get their bills down, the best thing to do is conserve. No one has ever shown that resident customers who switched have saved any significant amount of money.” Mr. Norlander said he was concerned about a trend where ESCO’s come in when prices increase and begin marketing rates to customers that appear to be lower, but in the long run turn out to be higher. Some companies also lock people in to a contract for a year or two with penalties for early termination. Mr. Rench, who owns an employment agency in Manhattan, said that when he inquired about getting out of his contract, he was told that it would take one to three months after the contract expired to move him back to Con Ed. So with three months still remaining on the contract, he began the process of switching back, only to be told that he would be charged an early termination fee of $80. Ultimately, he complained to the Public Service Commission, and the company agreed to let him out of the contract. “It was a horrible experience,” he said. “The amount of energy I put into phone calls, the math, the calculator with two kids running around. It’s just not worth it.” Ms. Dalton said the commission had a couple of Web sites to help educate consumers. One site, www.powertochooseny.com , provides information by ZIP code on companies that are registered with the state to provide energy, their rates and the basis for how they set them. It provides information on other services they offer and information on things like early cancellation fees. The state also has information at askpsc.com , and Con Ed (which is currently offering a deal for many consumers who switch to a new supplier) offers extensive information at poweryourway.com . “Con Edison has always been in favor of customers’ having the option to choose an alternate supplier, and we encourage our customers to shop for the supplier that is best for them,” said Elizabeth Clark, a spokeswoman for the utility. But several consumers who have tried the system said that even if they had some success controlling what they paid for natural gas or electricity, there was such a small difference that it hardly seemed worth the effort. Matt Olim, a Con Ed customer in Manhattan, started a Web site, poweryourwaytruth.org , in September 2006 because he wanted to share his experience. He says he has two meters in his apartment and he buys electricity from Con Ed on one and from Energetix on the other. “I think they’re about the same,” he said. “I wish companies were more competitive. I believe in competition and I think it should improve cost and quality, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

Electric Light and Power
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)


Muslim Students Report Burglaries and Hate Literature at Idaho State

Abstract: Federal officials and the local police are investigating burglaries and hate literature that appear to be directed at Muslim students attending Idaho State University in Pocatello, where tensions have recently risen over an influx of students from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In an email to Idaho State faculty and students Wednesday, the university’s president, Arthur C. Vailas, said the homes of about 50 Middle Eastern students had been burglarized over the past several weeks. “As a result of these crimes, some of our students are seriously considering leaving I.S.U. and Pocatello,” the email said. The burglaries follow reports that 17 vehicles, many belonging to Middle Eastern students, were vandalized last year, Mr. Vailas’s email said. More recently, DVDs containing hate messages were left on a number of car windshields on campus. The Pocatello police chief, Scott Marchand, said that his office was investigating the burglaries but had received reports of about two dozen, not 50. He also said there had been about 70 residential burglaries in town since Jan. 1. Wendy J. Olson, the United States attorney for Idaho, said the Justice Department was conducting a review of the hate literature found on campus. “We’re looking at this to determine whether there is a potential federal criminal civil rights violation,” Ms. Olson said. She was meeting with foreign students at Idaho State on Thursday to discuss hate crimes, but said the meeting had been previously arranged. The Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission in Washington, which administers government college scholarships for Saudi students, told the students they could leave Idaho State before the end of the semester, then transfer to another university in the fall. Five of the burglaries occurred last Friday while students were attending prayers at the local mosque, said Nezar Alnejidi, a Saudi student. “It’s very scary,” Mr. Alnejidi said. He expressed concern that the burglars had somehow obtained the addresses of Muslim students, because their apartments were the only ones targeted in large complexes. Patricia Terrell, the university’s vice president for student affairs, said there had been an outpouring of community support for the students. “These break-ins are, let’s face it, done by thugs, and they don’t represent the majority of people in this town,” she said. About 1,200 Middle Eastern students, nearly 10 percent of the student body, have been admitted here as the university tries to address declining enrollment. The Idaho State Journal reported this week that Mayor Brian Blad, who was meeting with students to try to persuade them not to leave, estimated that the students contributed $100 million or more to the local economy.

College
Hate crime
Islam
Robbery
Pocatello Idaho
Idaho State University


Early Tallies Show Revised Charter Passing in Egypt

Abstract: CAIRO — A revised Constitution validating the military takeover in Egypt this past summer appeared headed for lopsided approval by more than 90 percent of the votes cast, according to early tabulations in the official and private news media on Thursday, as international monitors raised alarms about the fairness of the plebiscite. Ratification by a wide margin was universally expected, but the turnout and credibility of the referendum are important tests for Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the defense minister who removed President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Approval of the charter will provide the first electoral legitimacy to the military takeover, setting the stage for General Sisi to run for president. The public debate preceding the referendum, held on Tuesday and Wednesday, was as one-sided as the early vote count. The government has outlawed the main opposition group, the Brotherhood; imprisoned its leaders; silenced its news media; seized its assets and criminalized its membership. (It called for a boycott of the vote.) State-run and private news media echoed with endorsements of the charter while hardly a critic could be found. Banners urging a “yes” vote were everywhere, and attempting to hang a “no” sign was a crime. Several who tried were arrested. “The very narrow political space for any groups that are opposed to the referendum is very problematic,” said David Carroll , the director of the democracy program at the Carter Center, the nonprofit group founded by former President Jimmy Carter. The center has witnessed seven Egyptian elections since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, but the group declined to monitor this one because of concerns about the context and process. “It will be hard to conclude that this process has allowed for open participation,” Mr. Carroll said, although the turnout “may tell us something about the number of people who support the general direction of the ‘road map’ ” laid out by General Sisi and the government he installed. In a statement early Thursday, the military applauded “everyone who created the glorious scene: the masses of the people, the men of the armed forces, the security men, and the media men who have been the voice of the homeland against the voice of its enemies.” About a third of the electorate voted in December 2012 in a referendum to approve the previous charter, drafted by an Islamist-led assembly. Of those, about two-thirds voted in favor. It was the subject of a noisy public debate over whether it fulfilled the promises of the 2011 revolt or opened the door to religious restrictions on individual freedoms. The new charter trims some references to Islam and reduces the accountability of the army and the police. The lack of suspense about the outcome alone may have hurt the turnout. At many polling stations in Cairo, the crowds appeared notably smaller than they had a year before. Soldiers and police officers guarding the polling places sometimes outnumbered voters. But turnout reports from around the country were mixed, and clear comparisons were impossible. The government for the first time offered voters still registered in their birthplace an opportunity to cast ballots at special stations in other parts of the country, and those polling places drew enormous crowds. The government projected big numbers. State news media reported Wednesday that the Ministry of Justice’s “operations room” put turnout in several polling stations at 50 percent of those eligible on just the first day, while Hany Mahmoud, the minister of administrative development, said the cabinet put the first day’s turnout at 28 percent. As in the other recent elections, the ballots were cast into transparent bins sealed with plastic and stored in the polling stations overnight to prevent tampering. Counting began in each station after polls closed Wednesday, and television networks filmed it in progress. But observers noted that the absence of any opposition might have consequences for the counting as well. In the past, the Brotherhood was the most vigilant monitor of the counting, sending volunteers to watch each station and quickly publicizing each local count to prevent any alteration. “Without the Muslim Brotherhood and given the limits placed on citizen observer groups,” Mr. Carroll said, “there won’t be a meaningful independent check on what is happening.”

Egypt
Referendum
Constitution
Mohamed Morsi


Senate Democrats in Albany Replace Their Leader

Abstract: Democrats in the State Senate, smarting over their inability to take control of the chamber despite winning a numerical majority, on Monday ousted their leader, John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, and replaced him with Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester County. Senator Stewart-Cousins, 62, will be the first woman to lead a conference in the State Legislature. She was chosen by her colleagues during a private meeting in New York City. She received 19 votes, to 6 for Senator Sampson; one senator was absent. “I am truly humbled and honored to be selected by my colleagues for this position,” she said in a statement. “I look forward to advocating for the progressive agenda that the people of New York have demanded.” When the Senate reconvenes in January, it will include at least 32 Democrats and 30 Republicans; one seat remains in dispute. But five dissident Democrats have announced they will form a power-sharing agreement with Senate Republicans, and another Democrat has said he would join the Republican caucus. As a result, the Senate will probably be governed by a coalition of Republicans and the breakaway Democrats. The election of Ms. Stewart-Cousins is unlikely to affect control of the Senate in the short term. But she has less baggage than Mr. Sampson, and Democrats hope she will help them take control of the Senate at some point. A Yonkers resident, Ms. Stewart-Cousins has served in the Senate since 2007, and previously was a county legislator. She is the latest in a string of African-American leaders for the Senate Democrats; the first was David A. Paterson, who later became governor. Mr. Sampson was elected the Senate Democratic leader in 2009 in the midst of a leadership coup that saw Republicans briefly claim control of the chamber. His tenure was not without its controversies; he was heavily criticized in a report by the state inspector general in 2010 that examined the bidding process for the rights to install video slot machines at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens. His leadership was further eroded after the elections last month when it became clear that the Democrats would be unable to bring their members together to elect a majority leader in the chamber. Four of the five dissident Democrats had originally broken away from their caucus nearly two years ago because they said they had lost confidence in Mr. Sampson’s leadership. Mr. Sampson said this month that he would voluntarily relinquish his post if the dissident Democrats agreed to reunite with their caucus, but they did not offer to do so. The exact composition of next year’s Senate is not yet certain. The ballot-counting process in one tight race, in the capital region, has been in court for weeks. The Republicans claimed victory for their candidate, George A. Amedore Jr., on Monday after all ballots deemed valid were counted, but Democrats said they would appeal and expressed optimism that their candidate, Cecilia F. Tkaczyk, would ultimately prevail.

Stewart-Cousins Andrea
Democratic Party
Sampson John L
New York State
State Legislatures
Politics and Government


Celebration, Then Surgery

Abstract: Michigan State defensive back Jalen Watts-Jackson had hip surgery a day after scoring the winning touchdown on the final play against Michigan .

College football
Michigan State
Jalen Watts-Jackson


Alaska: No Life Rafts for Walruses

Abstract: The United State Fish and Wildlife Service has declined to create floating platforms for Pacific walruses that come ashore because they lack summer sea ice in a phenomenon attributed to climate change. A wildlife advocacy group had suggested placing experimental rafts over a Chukchi Sea feeding area.

Alaska
Chukchi
Walrus
Fish and Wildlife Service


New York Police Officer, Juan Acosta, Charged in Drug Conspiracy

Abstract: A New York City police officer has been accused of using his badge to help a friend run a cocaine-distribution operation, providing tips on which streets were lightly patrolled by officers and stealing cash from a rival drug courier in the guise of a police seizure, officials said Friday. The officer, Juan Acosta, joined the Police Department in 2000 and had been assigned to the 43rd Precinct in the Soundview section of the Bronx until his arrest Thursday. He has resigned from the force, the police said. Since at least 2005, Officer Acosta served as a kind of enforcer for his friend, Yorick Rafael Corneil-Perez, as they and others worked to distribute “multiple kilograms of cocaine” in and around the city, according to the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan. The men, both 34 and from the Bronx, have been charged with participating in a cocaine-distribution conspiracy and with conspiring to commit extortion in connection with Officer Acosta’s improper use of his authority, a statement from the office said. According to an indictment in Federal District Court in Manhattan , Officer Acosta used a police car in mid-2005 “to rob a drug courier of several hundred thousand dollars in cash derived from a drug deal” that involved Mr. Corniel-Perez. It was a ruse to make it look as if law enforcement authorities had seized the money, but Mr. Acosta and Mr. Corniel-Perez “took the cash,” the court papers said. In October, the court papers said, the officer, “a k a Tino,” and Mr. Corneil-Perez, also known as Rafi, “agreed to provide protection for a 10-kilogram shipment of cocaine” in a Queens meeting with someone posing as a narcotics trafficker from Colombia who was actually working as a confidential government informant. They discussed how Officer Acosta could help ensure the safe transfer of drugs from a Long Island warehouse to the Bronx. At a meeting, on Nov. 10, Officer Acosta showed handwritten notes identifying the “police precincts in the vicinity of the Long Island warehouse and the local routes that would be less likely to be patrolled by police during transportation of the narcotics to the Bronx,” the papers said. Two days later, the officer drove to the warehouse in a rental car and picked up a duffel bag filled with fake narcotics from a second confidential informant, the papers said. When he got back to the Bronx, he was paid $15,000 for the job, they said. Mr. Acosta was held without bail after pleading not guilty at his arraignment on Friday before Magistrate Judge Kevin N. Fox. Mr. Corneil-Perez was held without bail after his arraignment on Thursday.

Drug Abuse and Traffic
Police
Police Department (NYC)
New York City


With Flag Gone, South Carolina May Host College Playoffs

Abstract: Minutes after Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina signed a law Thursday afternoon removing the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the State House, the N.C.A.A. announced that the state’s colleges may once again bid to host championships. “We commend South Carolina lawmakers for taking this action,” Kirk Schulz, the president of Kansas State and the chairman of the N.C.A.A. board of governors, said in a statement. “For nearly 15 years we have specifically protested the flag by not allowing states like South Carolina to host preselected N.C.A.A. championships.” The effort to remove the flag, a symbol of the Civil War that is scheduled to be taken down at 10 a.m. Friday, was prompted by the shooting at a Charleston church on June 17 that killed nine. In 2001, the N.C.A.A. imposed a moratorium on preselected championships in South Carolina and Mississippi, whose state flag includes the Confederate battle flag in one corner. Exceptions were allowed for early rounds of championships in which host sites were determined by seeding. For instance, in March, three early games of the Division I women’s basketball tournament were played in Columbia, a few blocks from the State House, because the South Carolina Gamecocks earned a No. 1 seed. But South Carolina could not host an early round of the men’s basketball tournament, as Greenville did in 2002, a date that had been established several years earlier. Similarly, the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern Conferences tended to honor the N.C.A.A. policy. Even after saying in 2005 that it would consider championships on a case-by-case basis, the A.C.C. reportedly moved its 2009 baseball championship from Myrtle Beach at the urging of the N.A.A.C.P. Commissioner Greg Sankey of the SEC and Commissioner John Swofford of the A.C.C. each released a statement last month supporting the flag’s removal. On Thursday, Athletic Director Dan Radakovich of Clemson wrote on Twitter that he was “looking forward to submitting bids” to host N.C.A.A. championships. Last month, Athletic Director Ray Tanner of South Carolina wrote on Twitter : “It is time to remove the flag. We are ONE.” The football coach Steve Spurrier, a towering figure in college sports, said via Twitter that the team agreed. At a memorial service for the nine worshipers, Harris Pastides, the chairman of the N.C.A.A. Division I board of directors, called for the flag’s removal. Clemson’s board of trustees; its president, Jim Clements; and Radakovich all released statements backing the flag’s removal. The state of Mississippi is still barred from hosting championships. The University of Mississippi’s acting chancellor, Morris H. Stocks, released a statement last month urging that the state flag be altered.

College Sports
NCAA
Flags
South Carolina
Nikki R Haley
Charleston SC
Steve Spurrier
Clemson
University of Mississippi


Taiwan Bars Ex-President From Visiting Hong Kong

Abstract: HONG KONG — The president of Taiwan does not travel much. China, which claims the self-ruled island as part of its territory, tries to block its leaders from visiting other countries. So trips are largely limited to the 22 countries that recognize Taiwan, with occasional stopovers in other places on the way. Less than one month after he stepped down, the former president, Ma Ying-jeou, has found that, even out of office, his travel is restricted. This week, Taiwan’s new government barred him from traveling to Hong Kong for a speech at a news association awards dinner. The government made the decision based on a 2003 law that limits the travel of high-level officials for three years after they leave office. Concerns about Mr. Ma’s previous access to classified information and the short time between Mr. Ma’s application and the event, on June 15, prompted the decision, said Alex Huang, a spokesman for President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan. “Hong Kong is a place with a high level of sensitivity for Taiwan’s national security, and the risk of a former president visiting Hong Kong is difficult to control,” Mr. Huang said in a written statement. Mr. Ma is the first former president under which the law that governs travel by top officials applies. Another former president, Chen Shui-bian, was barred from traveling after he left office in 2008, because he was under investigation for corruption. He was later convicted and sentenced to prison. He was released last year on medical parole. Mr. Ma, who described his trip as a way to bring attention to Taiwan, questioned the move. “This decision has aroused a lot of debate in society,” he told reporters in Taipei on Monday. “Is this necessary? Is it fair? Is this reasonable? People nationwide are looking at this. I believe society has its own just appraisal.” Some politicians in Mr. Ma’s Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, have accused Taiwan’s new government of “political manipulation” in blocking the trip. Mr. Huang, the government spokesman, cautioned against political interpretations and said the decision came after a recommendation by a task force that included representatives from several ministries. As president, Mr. Ma pushed a series of trade deals with China and met President Xi Jinping of China in Singapore , the first-ever meeting between the leader of the People’s Republic of China and the leader of the Republic of China, as Taiwan is officially known. The two sides of the Taiwan Strait have been separately governed since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists. Mr. Ma’s efforts eased tensions between the two sides but also stirred concern in Taiwan about growing Chinese influence over the island. Ms. Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party has traditionally supported Taiwan’s formal independence. She has said that she wants to maintain the status quo between the two sides and is expected to be far more cautious than Mr. Ma was toward China. Even before she assumed the presidency, China had taken steps to put pressure on her new government, holding military drills before her inauguration, pursuing criminal suspects from Taiwan abroad and renewing diplomatic ties with Gambia , which formerly recognized the island. Beijing has repeatedly called on her to accept the “92 Consensus,” which holds that mainland China and Taiwan are part of “one China,” each side with its own interpretation of what that means. One possible concern over the proposed visit to Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory, was that Mr. Ma might have engaged in his own cross-strait diplomacy at a time when Ms. Tsai’s government is trying to determine how it will handle relations with China, said Jonathan Sullivan, associate professor and director of research at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham. “If Ma had asked to appear in a less sensitive venue, like Tokyo for example, permission may have been granted, although we shouldn’t forget the lack of trust that persists around Ma,” Mr. Sullivan said by email. “The D.P.P. does not trust him and nor does the public at large — as demonstrated by the support for denying his application request.” An editorial in The South China Morning Post, a newspaper in Hong Kong, criticized the decision as a “blot on Taiwan’s image.” “It is ironic that a place with a thriving democracy and with a vibrant media should be blocking the attendance of a twice democratically elected leader at a regional showcase for excellence in journalism,” the newspaper said. The Society of Publishers in Asia, the news organization that invited Mr. Ma to Hong Kong, said it planned instead to arrange a video link for Mr. Ma on Wednesday. The New York Times is one of more than 30 members of the association.

Kuomintang,Chinese Nationalist Party
Ma Ying jeou
Tsai Ing-wen
Taiwan
Hong Kong


A Suspect With an Incriminating Tattoo Saves Face

Abstract: The robbery case, now two years old, at first had seemed pretty open-and-shut. On Jan. 24, 2012, a man walking in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Staten Island before 9 a.m. was approached by a stranger with a knife. The stranger, the man later told the police, took the man’s bag and the chain around his neck, then ran away. The man was able to get a pretty good look at the robber, and told detectives that he was young and white. And one more thing: He had a big tattoo of a red lightning bolt running down the side of his face. The police searched their database of photos of young white men with big red lightning-bolt tattoos on their faces, and they found a match. The name on the picture was Dylan Vok, 28, a Staten Island resident with a short criminal record. He once was arrested carrying a sword in a park and charged with possession of a weapon. He was also arrested after breaking car windows with a skateboard. The mug shot was released to the press. Word of the search for Dylan Vok and his big red lightning-bolt tattoo spread online, all the way to Detroit and to one incredulous reader in particular: Dylan Vok. “In October 2011, I left New York for Detroit,” Mr. Vok said in a recent telephone interview. That was months before the robbery. “I had lots of proof of that. I was using a food-stamp card. I had time stamps.” He said he could even produce video footage of himself at his job at a New Age chiropractor’s office. Image Dylan Vok says he turned his life around after leaving New York City for Detroit in October 2011. Credit Joshua Lott for The New York Times Was this the same Dylan Vok? Yes. And no. “I turned my life around coming to Detroit,” he said. “I was never one of those people who was able to really conform to the Board of Education system. I was a tattoo artist for quite some time, and I did party a lot. I liked to go to the raves. I was not using the harder drugs, but drinking a lot.” “I would get into trouble,” he added. “I would go do stupid stuff, like breaking car windows or carrying swords around.” And the tattoo? Mr. Vok said he was briefly in the Army but had been discharged. “I had flat feet,” he said. “I got very depressed after.” In 2009, his best friend was on his third tour of Iraq. Mr. Vok decided to have the symbol of the division he himself had briefly been attached to tattooed on his face. “I met a lot of people with tattoos on their faces,” he said, and so it did not seem like a big deal. He was teaching a friend how to apply tattoos — “I guess you could say an apprentice” — and asked him to do the deed. What did he think of the result? “Faces are very hard areas to tattoo,” he said. Mr. Vok found his way to Detroit as it was crumbling toward bankruptcy, and said he managed to buy a house for less than $2,000 at an auction. He found work gardening and, later, exploring new technologies in self-sustaining agriculture and permaculture. Image Mr. Vok's police photo from a previous arrest. Credit New York Police Department He does not use drugs or drink, he said, and when he and his friends request help fixing up a property or invite others to a party, they always implore guests to leave their liquor at home. Mr. Vok was several months into this new life when he came across his name and picture in his hometown paper. He said he called the detective on the case. The detective, he said, told him that the robber was described as a man with a red lightning-bolt tattoo on his face, so the authorities pulled Mr. Vok’s police photo, as well as ones of several other white men without tattoos, and they used Photoshop to paste Mr. Vok’s tattoo on all of their faces. They showed the array of photos to the victim, who picked Mr. Vok. Mr. Vok offered all sorts of proof of his whereabouts. It seemed to have worked. The police said that Mr. Vok was no longer a suspect in the robbery. He returned to his new life, his distrust of his hometown reaffirmed. “There’s just too much negativity in New York City,” he said. It has gotten even worse: “A lot of people I know are on heroin.” It is tempting to assume that there was another young man with a lightning-bolt face tattoo on Staten Island, one responsible for the robbery two years ago. Maybe, Mr. Vok said. But maybe it was not a coincidence. “It could have been that somebody who I wasn’t very friendly with took a red marker,” he said, “and drew a lightning bolt on their face.”

Robbery
Tattoo
Port Richmond Staten Island
Dylan Vok


Bill Seeks to Broaden Royalties Paid by Radio Stations

Abstract: With the economics of the music industry getting increased attention in Washington , Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Marsha Blackburn announced Monday that they were introducing a broad new bill that would require radio stations to pay royalties to performing artists and address an array of other topics about the licensing of digital music. Although much of the current discussion about music royalties concerns online services like Pandora and Spotify, the biggest complaint from artists and record companies has long been that AM/FM radio stations in the United States — almost alone in the world — pay royalties only to songwriters and music publishers, not to the performing artists and record companies. The bill, the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, would change federal copyright law to create a “terrestrial performance right for sound recordings,” as it is known in the music world, meaning that radio stations would have to pay performing artists as well as songwriters. (Online services pay both kinds of royalties.) Mr. Nadler, a Democrat of New York, is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, and Ms. Blackburn, a Republican of Tennessee, is the vice chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill would also make various changes to the complex procedures for setting royalty rates for satellite and Internet music services. These would include setting a single standard that federal judges would use in setting digital rates; Sirius XM, the satellite radio company, is subject to a different standard than Internet services like Pandora. “The current system is antiquated and broken,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement. “It pits technologies against each other and allows certain services to get away with paying little or nothing to artists.” Mr. Nadler has been a critic of licensing rules and in February gave a speech at a Grammy Awards function calling for changes to copyright law. The bill also proposes royalty payments for recordings made before 1972, which are not covered by federal copyright protection. That exemption has led to a string of lawsuits against Sirius XM and Pandora. But the bill would not extend other privileges of federal copyright to those recordings, like an artist or author’s ability to reclaim transferred works after 35 years. The Fair Play Fair Pay Act is the latest of many attempts by the music industry, going back decades, to change copyright law to require payments from radio. The call has grown more urgent in recent years as musicians and record companies have seen record sales plunge. Another bill, the Performance Rights Act, was introduced in 2009 but later fell apart in negotiations with broadcasters. The National Association of Broadcasters, the lobbying group that represents radio station owners, said in a statement that it would “strongly oppose” the new bill and noted the status of the Local Radio Freedom Act, a nonbinding resolution against “any new performance fee, tax, royalty or other charge relating to the public performance of sound recordings.” The bill has been signed by 147 members of the House of Representatives and 11 senators.

Royalties
Music
Radio
House of Representatives
Congress
Marsha Blackburn
Jerrold Nadler


Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email

Abstract: Update, Aug. 20, 2018: Subsequent developments and later reporting by The Times shed additional light on these events. New details emerged in April 2017 in this Times account of James B. Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation, as well as in Mr. Comey’s own book , published in April 2018. WASHINGTON — Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday. The request follows an assessment in a June 29 memo by the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies that Mrs. Clinton’s private account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.” The memo was written to Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management. It is not clear if any of the information in the emails was marked as classified by the State Department when Mrs. Clinton sent or received them. But since her use of a private email account for official State Department business was revealed in March, she has repeatedly said that she had no classified information on the account. The initial revelation has been an issue in the early stages of her presidential campaign. The Justice Department has not decided if it will open an investigation, senior officials said. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign released a statement on Twitter on Friday morning. “Any released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted,” it read. At issue are thousands of pages of State Department emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private account. Mrs. Clinton has said she used the account because it was more convenient, but it also shielded her correspondence from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests. Video Hillary Rodham Clinton responded to new accusations involving the private email account she used when she was secretary of state. Credit Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times She faced sharp criticism after her use of the account became public, and subsequently said she would ask the State Department to release her emails. The department is now reviewing some 55,000 pages of emails. A first batch of 3,000 pages was made public on June 30. In the course of the email review, State Department officials determined that some information in the messages should be retroactively classified. In the 3,000 pages that were released, for example, portions of two dozen emails were redacted because they were upgraded to “classified status.” But none of those were marked as classified at the time Mrs. Clinton handled them. In a second memo to Mr. Kennedy, sent on July 17, the inspectors general said that at least one email made public by the State Department contained classified information. The inspectors general did not identify the email or reveal its substance. The memos were provided to The New York Times by a senior government official. The inspectors general also criticized the State Department for its handling of sensitive information, particularly its reliance on retired senior Foreign Service officers to decide if information should be classified, and for not consulting with the intelligence agencies about its determinations. In March, Mrs. Clinton insisted that she was careful in her handling of information on her private account. “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email,” she said. “There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.” In May, the F.B.I. asked the State Department to classify a section of Mrs. Clinton’s emails that related to suspects who may have been arrested in connection with the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The information was not classified at the time Mrs. Clinton received it. The revelations about how Mrs. Clinton handled her email have been an embarrassment for the State Department, which has been repeatedly criticized over its handling of documents related to Mrs. Clinton and her advisers. On Monday, a federal judge sharply questioned State Department lawyers at a hearing in Washington about why they had not responded to Freedom of Information Act requests from The Associated Press, some of which were four years old. “I want to find out what’s been going on over there — I should say, what’s not been going on over there,” said Judge Richard J. Leon of United States District Court, according to a transcript obtained by Politico. The judge said that “for reasons known only to itself,” the State Department “has been, to say the least, recalcitrant in responding.” Two days later, lawmakers on the Republican-led House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks said they planned to summon Secretary of State John Kerry’s chief of staff to Capitol Hill to answer questions about why the department has not produced documents that the panel subpoenaed. That hearing is set for next Wednesday. “The State Department has used every excuse to avoid complying with fundamental requests for documents,” said the chairman of the House committee, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina. Mr. Gowdy said that while the committee has used an array of measures to try to get the State Department to hand over documents, the results have been the same. “Our committee is not in possession of all documents needed to do the work assigned to us,” he said. The State Department has sought to delay the hearing, citing continuing efforts to brief members of Congress on the details of the nuclear accord with Iran. It is not clear why the State Department has struggled with the classification issues and document production. Republicans have said the department is trying to use those processes to protect Mrs. Clinton. State Department officials say they simply do not have the resources or infrastructure to properly comply with all the requests. Since March, requests for documents have significantly increased. Some State Department officials said they believe that many senior officials did not initially take the House committee seriously, which slowed document production and created an appearance of stonewalling. State Department officials also said that Mr. Kerry is concerned about the toll the criticism has had on the department and has urged his deputies to comply with the requests quickly.

Hillary Clinton
Email
Classified Information
State Department
Justice Department
2016 Presidential Election
US Politics
Patrick F Kennedy


Mali: Truce Is Arranged to Bolster Talks

Abstract: Mali’s government and an alliance of northern rebels agreed on Thursday to cease hostilities to ease tensions during peace negotiations sponsored by the United Nations aimed at ending decades of uprisings. The talks, the fifth round of recent negotiations, must now turn to questions about limited self-rule and more rights for the northern region. Western governments are eager for a lasting peace in Mali, fearing that Islamist militants will take advantage of the unrest to regain a foothold in the north two years after French troops drove them out.


Fight Leads to Cancellation of Conference’s Title Game

Abstract: WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A bathroom fight on Friday among football players from Winston-Salem State and Virginia State during a pregame luncheon left the Winston-Salem quarterback beaten and a player from the other team facing charges. The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, a Division II conference, announced that the title game between the teams set for Saturday in Winston-Salem had been canceled. Both teams are 9-1. Rudy Johnson, the starting quarterback for Winston-Salem, was “viciously beaten” by members of the Virginia State team, Winston-Salem State Chancellor Donald Reaves said in a statement. Lamont Britt, a Virginia State running back, was being held in the Forsyth County jail on a charge of misdemeanor assault inflicting serious injury, a jail official said. “Today’s event was supposed to be a celebration for both teams and for all the players who were being recognized for an outstanding season,” Reaves said. “The actions from the Virginia State players certainly changed the outcome for everyone.” Virginia State Athletic Director Peggy Davis did not return a phone call seeking comment, but the school issued a statement saying it was cooperating with the C.I.A.A. in its investigation and could not comment further. The Winston-Salem Journal reported that five Virginia State players were involved, and Reaves said university police were trying to identify others.

College football
Winston-Salem State University
Virginia State University
Assault


Breathing Life Into Spaces Well Beyond 6 Feet Under Beijing’s Streets

Abstract: BEIJING — The Digua Shequ community center in Beijing is painted in cheery pastel tones and festooned with colorful paper dragons hung from the ceiling. Inside are a hair salon, a cafe and a gym — normal shops for a typical neighborhood — except that they are underground. All of the storefronts are two floors below the street, built inside a former bomb shelter designed to withstand a nuclear war. Digua Shequ, a start-up that turns unused basements into community centers and whose name is Chinese for Sweet Potato Community, has been renovating the shelter in northeast Beijing for the past year. It wants to reimagine the future of the city’s underground spaces, once largely ignored but now contested by an unlikely combination of government, commercial and artistic interests. The center’s founder, Zhou Zishu, a former designer at the National Museum of China, said he was inspired by the debate over what to do with Beijing’s bomb shelters, which currently house well over 100,000 people. “Our work is not just about renovating basement spaces and making them look better,” Mr. Zhou said. “It’s actually about improving the lives of residents and creating a new sense of community. We want to take these private spaces and make them public again.” But not everyone agrees with Digua Shequ’s vision. The uncertain fate of the shelters, as well as the rules for their use, has drawn attention from several competing stakeholders. Beijing’s more than 10,000 concrete bunkers, built over 40 years ago, were a crucial part of Mao’s Cold War defense strategy. Some of the bunkers, which were handed over to neighborhood authorities in the 1980s, when the country’s economy was liberalized, were turned into shops or offices. Most were converted into living spaces and rented out to migrant workers or residents trying to duck Beijing’s soaring real estate prices. Image Guo Chengbao, a security guard, lives in an underground unit in the same building as the Digua Shequ community center. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times The news media called these subterranean residents the rat tribe , and the shelters gained a reputation for neglect. In 2010, Beijing announced that the residential use of underground spaces would be illegal by the end of 2012, a deadline that was extended to 2017. One pressing question facing the city is what to do with the people who still live in the bunkers. Estimates of their numbers range from 150,000 to a million. Nearly every apartment building in the Digua Shequ center’s neighborhood has a former shelter or a basement. Most of the residential units in them are rented out for 500 to 900 renminbi a month, or roughly $77 to $138 — about one-third of what it would cost to live aboveground. “Workers’ wages aren’t rising as fast as the cost of living,” said Xu Tong, who both rents out and lives in an underground space in eastern Beijing. “If you get rid of these basement units, where will the migrants live?” Government data shows that migrant workers’ wages increased about 14 percent in 2014 from a year earlier, compared with a nearly 22 percent increase in their cost of living. Mr. Xu’s lease illustrates the uncertainty about how serious the government’s ban on underground dwellings is: Although the new rule takes effect in 2017, his contract does not expire until 2019. Migrant workers’ use of the former bomb shelters remains a delicate topic. After The New York Times submitted an interview request to the neighborhood committee, Mr. Zhou said, an official there who supports the project called him and recommended that he not mention the “floating population” or “northern drifters” — two euphemisms for migrant workers. So far, Digua Shequ’s work remains an exceptional case for having legally repurposed the spaces under the new rules. Currently, the Civil Air Defense Department of Beijing grants one-year leases on former bomb shelters to individuals and companies. The order to end residential use means that some stand to lose a source of revenue, as few local officials and landlords are willing to spend to transform the units into commercial spaces. As a result, many shelters and basements occupied before the ban was announced are still being quietly rented out as housing. Image A playroom at the Digua Shequ community center. The organization remains an exceptional case for having legally repurposed the spaces under new rules. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times “It’s like a wave,” said Wang Jinhui, who runs a hotel in a former bomb shelter near the Digua Shequ center. “You just put your head down and wait for it to pass.” He has rented out the space since 1998 and is optimistic that the political will to enforce the new regulations will dissipate. “They’ve said they’d clean out these underground spaces for years and not succeeded,” Mr. Wang said. “It just might be that places like mine will survive.” Subletting underground spaces can be lucrative. A lease for an entire basement or shelter typically costs about 150,000 renminbi a year, but subdividing the space can generate far more income. The shelter that Digua Shequ took over once housed more than 100 residents who together paid nearly 600,000 renminbi a year, Mr. Zhou said. “A lot of landlords have spent money renovating the spaces they lease, so they don’t want to stop renting out basements,” said Guo Chengbao, a security guard who was once a basement landlord. He lives in an underground unit above the Digua Shequ center. Private investors have also been eyeing underground spaces. Renovating the basement that now houses the Digua Shequ center cost nearly 3 million renminbi, most of which was covered by Feng Lun, the founder of Vantone Holdings and its real estate subsidiary, Vantone Real Estate. In an interview with Mr. Zhou for the online series “Wind Horse Cow,” which Mr. Feng produces, the Vantone founder explained his interest in the project. “We’ve constructed a lot of buildings,” he said, “but there’s no one today who is operating underground spaces like this. If other real estate developers came and saw your space, they might invite you to develop their underground spaces during construction.” Mr. Feng did not respond to a request for an interview. Mr. Zhou’s project was noticed by a sympathetic official and partly financed by the local and municipal governments as a promising model for Beijing’s other bomb shelters and basements. With the support of the neighborhood committee, Digua Shequ got a lease and is negotiating to turn another shelter in the Haidian district into a second community center. “No one had a very nuanced understanding of these places,” Mr. Zhou said. “Everyone thought only poor people lived in them and that they were dark and dirty.” Mr. Zhou tried several different models before arriving at his plan for the community center. At first, he ran a training program for young workers, but attendance was too inconsistent. He considered turning basements into libraries but then observed that residents used similar areas as restrooms rather than as places for borrowing books. After studying theories about the sharing economy, Mr. Zhou hit on the idea of transforming basements into community centers. The entrance to the Digua Shequ center is like that of any other bomb shelter: rusting metal gates at street level that open onto a ramp down into the chilly, subterranean darkness. The ramp ends at a bright orange steel door set into mottled concrete, behind which lies the center’s warmly lit interior. Renovations began on the shelter in 2015, after three years of surveying residents about what they wanted in a community center. When the new space opens on Friday, it will feature a 3-D printing station, co-working spaces and a movie theater. Mr. Zhou said that underground dwellings might never be eliminated entirely because of the different interests at play, but that he hoped the Digua Shequ model would be replicated in other neighborhoods. He said he saw it as a chance to transcend differences in social class and origin. Mr. Guo, the security guard, likes what it has done so far. After work, he sometimes eats dinner in the community space. “I’ve lived in Beijing for 14 years. Before, I didn’t know any of the people who lived upstairs,” he said, laughing. “Now, we’re all familiar with each other.”

Real Estate
Housing
Digua Shequ
Commercial Real Estate
China
Basement
Urban Planning
Mao Zedong
Wages and salaries
Beijing


Manhattan Man Held in Second Rooftop Rape

Abstract: A 25-year-old Upper Manhattan man was arrested Sunday on charges that he raped a woman on a rooftop on New Year’s Day — the same place where he was accused of raping a teenager three months ago. The man, Taurean Williams, was charged with raping a 45-year-old woman on the rooftop of the building at 550 West 153rd Street on Friday, the police said. The woman told the police that Mr. Williams said he was a plainclothes police detective, displayed a badge and said he needed to take her to a local precinct station house to check whether there were any warrants for her arrest. The woman said Mr. Williams took her to the lobby of the 153rd Street building and told her that he was waiting for his captain before going to the station house. Mr. Williams then pulled a gun and told the woman to go to the roof, where he raped and sodomized her, she told the police. Mr. Williams had been arrested on charges that he had raped and sodomized a 17-year-old Bronx girl on the same rooftop on Oct. 12, according to the police. Those charges were dropped, although he pleaded guilty to criminal possession of stolen property for taking the girl’s cellphone. He awaits sentencing in that case. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment on why the October rape charge had been dropped. A law enforcement official briefed on that case said that there were questions about the victim’s credibility. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified discussing the details of a continuing investigation. The girl told the police that Mr. Williams approached her on Amsterdam Avenue between 148th and 149th Street and persuaded her to follow him to 153rd Street. The police said Mr. Williams told the 17-year-old that he had been hired to rape and kill her mother, but that he would not do so if she did what he told her, the police said. They said Mr. Williams also told the girl that he was carrying two guns, and that he took her cellphone. He told her to say that she had been robbed by two girls to explain why she was missing her cellphone and was late returning home, the police said. After she was raped, she returned home. Officers were waiting there with her mother, who had called the police after becoming concerned about her daughter’s whereabouts. The girl told the officers that she had been robbed by two girls. It was only later that she told her sister that she had been raped, the police said. Detectives from the Special Victims Unit, who led both investigations, discovered the similarities between the two rape cases, the police said. The detectives presented the 45-year-old woman with an array of photos — including one of Mr. Williams — and she identified him as the man who had raped her.