Rain Stops Play at United States Open, Bringing Some Players Relief

Abstract: OAKMONT, Pa. — The first rain delay Thursday morning at the 116th United States Open was greeted like recess in grammar school, except in reverse. Golfers dashed from their playground to the nearest dwelling. Some impishly pilfered chocolate chip cookies from the media center as a gaggle of their European colleagues watched soccer broadcasts from their home continent. There were smiles and laughs, and selfies posted on social media. Play resumed after about 75 minutes only to be suspended 45 minutes later. When that delay dragged on for hours, the playful mood began to fizzle. Not only was Andrew Landry, a 28-year-old Texan ranked 624th in the world, leading the tournament; he was threatening to post the lowest score in any round at a major championship. Bryson DeChambeau, an amateur two months ago, was only two strokes behind Landry. Image Andrew Landry, the leader, playing the ninth hole on Thursday. Credit David Cannon/Getty Images But after the second delay ended, DeChambeau catapulted off the leaderboard with consecutive double bogeys, and Landry misfired on back-to-back birdie putts. The two players were emblematic of what was going on all over the golf course. The field looked wet and wilted. When thunderstorms caused a third, and final, interruption, it was almost welcomed, like a boxing referee stopping a lopsided fight. By late afternoon, when play at the Oakmont Country Club was suspended until Friday, there seemed to be a sigh of relief. With only seven players under par and more than 30 at five over par or higher, a host of players looked as if they needed to cool off. Among them were the defending champion, Jordan Spieth, who was loudly muttering on the course, and the world No. 3 Rory McIlroy, who seemed exasperated as he bogeyed his final two holes to stumble to four over. Landry, however, was one player who probably wished he had had another five minutes on the course. He led the tournament at three under, but the air horn signaling the end of play blared as he was approaching a 10-foot birdie putt on his final hole. “I was trying to get that last hole in,” said Landry, who will have to return at 7:30 a.m. Friday. After he putts out, he will probably not begin his second round for many hours. But Landry knew what was coming. “I heard it thunder as we were coming up the last fairway,” he said. Rain was in the forecast, but Landry, a rookie on the PGA Tour, unquestionably sneaked up on the field. He has made the cut in only three of nine starts, with his best finish a tie for 41st. Landry, who was an all-American at Arkansas, is 5 feet 7 inches and 150 pounds but had an average driving distance of 303 yards on Thursday, which was nearly 20 yards farther than the field average. Landry hit nine of 13 fairways and 12 of 17 greens in regulation. “Because of the rain, the golf course was playing way easier today than it was earlier this week,” Landry said, a sentiment not shared by most of his competitors. “On the first hole, for instance, we could actually land the ball on the green and it stayed there,” he said. “Two days ago, we had to land it 30 or 40 yards short of the green and run it up there.” Image Scottie Scheffler shooting from the fourth tee Thursday. He finished his round. Credit Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images Not many other golfers felt that Oakmont was being generous. Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters champion, and Danny Lee, who has four top-20 finishes this year on the PGA Tour, were one stroke behind Landry. Watson had completed 14 holes and Lee 13. Tied for fourth at one under were Kevin Streelman, Harris English, Lee Westwood and Scottie Scheffler, a 19-year-old amateur playing in his first United States Open who was the only golfer in the top five to finish his round. Scheffler will be a junior at Texas next fall and is a former United States Junior Amateur champion. His caddie is his sister, Callie, who began an internship a week ago but asked off from work to carry her brother’s bag. “Hopefully she doesn’t get in trouble,” Scheffler said. Spieth, another Texan, had an adventurous day with two bogeys and a birdie in the 11 holes he played. Spieth was clearly displeased by the results of some of his shots, which may have been because Oakmont played so differently Thursday than during the practice rounds. “Completely different golf course than we played in the practice round,” Spieth said afterward. “I mean, night and day.” Image Groundskeepers maintaining the third green during the first round. Credit John David Mercer/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Rain might have made the greens softer and the fairways more receptive, but it also made the rough heavier and more penalizing. And Spieth also just seemed to be getting into awkward spots, which is common at Oakmont. At one point, on the 15th green, Spieth had a putt of more than 118 feet, which is nearly 40 yards. He two-putted, which was a major accomplishment. But late in the afternoon, when he was finally out of the rain and wind, Spieth took solace in the idea that he had only seven holes to play tomorrow morning to finish his first round. So many of his competitors had yet to hit a shot in the first round. “Those other guys have to play 36 holes in a row at a U.S. Open,” Spieth said, “which isn’t easy.” Staying on schedule United States Golf Association officials said Thursday night that they expected to finish the tournament Sunday night. With the weather expected to improve, the plan is to complete the first round Friday and then start the second round around 2 p.m. The second round is expected to be completed Saturday morning. The goal is to start the third round by 1:45 p.m. Saturday and finish before darkness.

Golf
US Open Golf
Weather
Andrew Landry
Jordan Spieth
Bryson DeChambeau
Oakmont Country Club


Britain Moves to Toughen Rules on Immigrants

Abstract: LONDON — Britain moved to toughen immigration rules on Wednesday as the government tried to regain the initiative after recent electoral gains by a populist party that wants the country to curb immigration and leave the European Union. With an austerity program in place and its economy barely out of recession, Britain is one of a number of European countries whose voters appear disenchanted with mainstream politicians and worried about social and economic issues, including immigration. That has left lawmakers in the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, vulnerable to the United Kingdom Independence Party, whose success in local elections last week appears to be forcing the established parties to shift policy to the right. The proposed changes outlined Wednesday would make it easier to deport foreigners who commit serious crimes, increase fines on companies that use illegal labor and force private landlords to check the immigration status of their tenants. Temporary immigrants would also be required to pay for some of their health care. The measures were announced at the start of a new parliamentary session in a speech written by the government but delivered, as British constitutional protocol requires, by Queen Elizabeth II. The address is known as the Queen’s Speech and is conducted with much ceremonial pageantry. The speech came days after the Independence Party won about a quarter of the vote in local elections across the country, sending shock waves through the mainstream political parties. The party also pushed the Conservatives into third place in a parliamentary by-election in South Shields, in the north of England, which was won by the opposition Labour Party with a reduced majority. Though drafted before last week’s voting, some of the new legislation announced Wednesday seemed aimed at winning back disaffected supporters of the dominant Conservative Party who have voted for the Independence Party, which has been gaining popularity for months. Though opponents say the Independence Party’s policy program is threadbare, its engaging, straight-talking leader, Nigel Farage, has been contrasted with Mr. Cameron. The prime minister has been criticized as being aloof and drawing too many of his advisers from the same privileged social class into which he was born. Before the Queen’s Speech, Mr. Cameron used a Twitter post to promote his agenda for the new parliamentary session, saying it contained measures on “growth, immigration, pensions, consumer rights and social care” and was intended for “people who work hard and want to get on.” On immigration, the government said its new measures would seek to stop immigrants from using public services to which they are not entitled, make it harder to appeal deportation orders, regulate access to health care for immigrants, and prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses. Because of European Union law, which guarantees freedom of movement among its 27 nations, Mr. Cameron is powerless to curb migration from within the bloc. Instead, his government concentrated on cutting back on welfare entitlements and taking tougher measures against those from outside the European Union who are in Britain illegally.

Great Britain
Immigration
Legislation
Conservative Party
United Kingdom Independence Party
David Cameron
Elizabeth II,Queen Elizabeth
EU


2 Workers at Police Review Board Drop Sexism Suit Against Ex-Chairman

Abstract: The executive director of the civilian agency that oversees the New York Police Department on Tuesday dropped her lawsuit accusing its former chairman of using sexist remarks. The lawsuit was brought by Mina Malik, the executive director of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and her deputy, Robia Charles. The suit prompted the agency’s chairman at the time, Richard D. Emery, to resign on April 13 , a day after it was filed. The women, in a statement from their lawyer, cited Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “swift and decisive action” in accepting Mr. Emery’s resignation in their decision to voluntarily dismiss the case. The lawyer, Douglas H. Wigdor, said Ms. Malik and Ms. Charles were doing so without prejudice, meaning they reserved the right to refile the lawsuit. “We hope that the filing of this lawsuit sends a powerful message to all of those who silently suffer at the hands of discriminatory and retaliatory employers that the legal system can create positive change,” Mr. Wigdor said. “By dismissing the case without prejudice, my clients reserve the unfettered right to reinstitute the proceedings should they be mistreated or retaliated against in any way.” Ms. Malik, who joined the agency in January 2015, had accused Mr. Emery of retaliation after she reported what she said were sexist remarks to the city’s Law Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Office. Mr. Emery, whom the mayor appointed in July 2014, said in a statement that he was not surprised that Ms. Malik and Ms. Charles had voluntarily dismissed the case, which he called “frivolous and a distraction.” In an interview, he acknowledged using strong language in a meeting in September where Ms. Malik was not present, but said he had not disparaged her. “It had to do with the Police Department seeking a lower penalty in a case that was egregious,” Mr. Emery said. His top position at the review board had been a source of tension for Mr. de Blasio as the mayor sought to mend relations with rank-and-file officers. When the women filed their lawsuit, Mr. Emery was already in the cross hairs of police union officials. They had been calling for his removal over his law firm’s role in representing plaintiffs in federal lawsuits against officers and derogatory comments he is accused of making about the police. After Mr. Emery’s resignation, the mayor appointed Deborah N. Archer, a member of the agency’s board, as acting chairwoman until a replacement is named.

Civilian Complaint Review Board
NYPD
Richard Emery
Mina Malik
Robia Charles
Bill de Blasio
Lawsuits
NYC
Discrimination


Hiring Rises, but Number of Jobless Stays High

Abstract: Employers are hiring at a more aggressive pace again after a winter cold snap, but the pace of job gains is only slowly making up for years of lost ground in the labor market. Nearly five years after the end of the Great Recession, the total number of private sector jobs is finally back to where it was as the downturn began in early 2008, the Labor Department reported on Friday. But that level is still far below what is needed to fully accommodate the millions of people who have joined the work force since then, or relieve the backlog of jobless workers anytime soon. Still, the addition of 192,000 jobs last month, all from private employers, represented an uptick from the anemic rate of job creation recorded at the turn of the year. That encouraged optimists, who foresee a slight strengthening as the wintry weather in many parts of the country in late 2013 and early 2014 yields to a more inviting spring. In addition, while the unemployment rate remained flat at 6.7 percent in March, an increase in the number of Americans looking for work also offered up some modest hope that better times could lie ahead in 2014. So too did an upward revision in the number of jobs that government statisticians estimate were added in January and February. “We’ve gotten back to where we were before the winter slowdown in terms of job creation — as well as where we expect to be going forward,” said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays. “This gets us back on trend.” Statistically speaking, the estimated rate of job creation in March was nearly identical to the average monthly gain of 183,000 jobs recorded over the last 12 months. The latest numbers are likely to be revised significantly as more information flows into the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even so, they suggest that the economy is not achieving what economists call escape velocity, something that policy makers have long sought. Neither is it falling into the rut some pessimists feared was developing early in 2014. “Growth-wise, in terms of the economy and the labor market, we think 2014 will look a lot like 2013 and 2012 did,” said Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS Securities. “In all likelihood, we will see average monthly job gains of a little north of 200,000 this year.” While that pace of job creation would gradually bring the unemployment rate down, it would take until nearly the end of the decade before the labor market returned to the level of robustness that prevailed in the mid-2000s, let alone the 1990s. Experts with the Hamilton Project, a research group that is associated with the Brookings Institution in Washington, estimate that at the current rate it will take until early 2019 for the economy to accommodate new entrants into the work force and get back to where it was before the recession. While the Labor Department data showed that private payrolls in March stood at 116.09 million — compared with 115.98 million as the recession began in January 2008 — the size of the American work force has jumped by more than two million over the same period. Moreover, even as people joined the work force, millions of other Americans dropped out of it entirely in the last five years, having given up the search for work, and the question of just how many of them will ever return to full- or even part-time jobs is now being hotly debated in economic circles. The participation rate did edge up in March as more workers returned to the labor market amid increased openings, a central reason the unemployment rate remained flat even as a survey of households suggested that nearly half a million people found new jobs last month. The return of Americans to the job hunt not only underscores just how much slack remains in the economy but also means that the unemployment rate is unlikely to keep falling as sharply as it has in the last two years. That’s because people who are again looking for work are counted as unemployed, while those who have given up and dropped out of the labor force are not. The plunge in the unemployment rate — to 6.7 percent, from 8.2 percent in March 2012 — has encouraged policy makers at the Federal Reserve to slowly begin easing back on their stimulus efforts. But even as that so-called tapering process is likely to continue for the remainder of 2014, stabilization of the unemployment rate between 6.5 and 7 percent would encourage the Fed to be in no hurry to begin raising short-term interest rates. The government conducts two separate surveys each month to come up with the jobs figures — the figures for job creation come from the poll of private firms and the public sector, while the household survey yields the unemployment rate and more granular data on the work force itself. While the two move in tandem over time, the household survey in March was especially encouraging, showing an increase of 503,000 in the labor force, including 476,000 who reported they had found jobs. On Wall Street, stocks initially traded higher after the Labor Department report, only to turn sharply lower in the afternoon with profit-taking in the highflying social media and biotech sectors. Hiring in March was paced by gains in construction, retail and professional services. Government employment over all remained flat, with federal and state governments shedding 11,000 jobs even as local governments added the same number. Over the last 12 months, total federal employment has fallen by 85,000. For nonsupervisory manufacturing workers, the length of the typical workweek rose to 42 hours, tying a postwar high and setting the pace for a slight gain in the workweek for workers in every sector. Across the economy, average hourly earnings in March were basically flat but the increase in hours meant slightly fatter paychecks over all. One especially strong sector in March was the broad professional and business services category, where employment rose by 57,000. Over the last two years, companies have added more than 1.2 million workers in this heavily white-collar category. At Hagie Manufacturing, a farm equipment maker in Clarion, Iowa, that hired 12 workers last month, most of the new positions were in areas like marketing and engineering, rather than on the production line. And those jobs are heavily sought after, according to the company’s chief executive, Alan Hagie. In the last 12 months, the company has hired 83 workers, bringing its total work force to 488; the company received 2,800 résumés for these openings. Similarly, hiring is also up sharply this year at Ernst & Young, the accounting giant. Most of those positions are going to college graduates and workers with specialized skills in fields like auditing as well as cloud computing and data analytics. Patterns like that explain why the unemployment rate among college graduates in March stood at 3.4 percent compared with 6.3 percent for high school graduates. Dan Black, director of recruiting in the Americas at Ernst & Young, said the firm expected to hire 12,700 professionals in the United States in fiscal 2014, up from 10,400 last year. “I’m not hearing about a slowdown,” he said.


Carl Edwards Pulls Closer in Chase With Victory at Texas

Abstract: FORT WORTH (AP) — Carl Edwards won for the second straight week, squeezing a victory out of his last tank of gas. And this time, Jimmie Johnson ran out of magic. Edwards’s victory Sunday in the Dickies 500, combined with a 15th-place finish by Johnson, the Nascar Sprint Cup points leader, lifted Edwards to 106 points behind Johnson with two races remaining. Edwards, in second place in the standings, began the race 183 points back. Although Edwards dominated most of the race, leading 199 of the first 264 laps on the one-and-a-half-mile oval at Texas Motor Speedway, it was a daring call by his crew chief, Bob Osborne, that helped Edwards win after several other drivers used two-tire strategies to move ahead of him near the finish. Edwards, who also won here in April, had several large leads. But he fell to seventh when Osborne chose to change four tires on Lap 265 of the 334-lap race. But as the laps wound down and the cars ahead of Edwards’s No. 99 Ford began pitting for two tires and gas, Osborne told Edwards to stay on the track. “I thought Bob made a mistake on the four-tire change,” Edwards said. “But Bob came up with a way to win that thing, anyway.” Edwards lapped Johnson on Lap 96, and Johnson slipped to 33rd after a pit stop on Lap 113. Johnson regained some positions but never got back on the lead lap. “Not the day we wanted,” Johnson said. “It’s frustrating.” Five of the 12 drivers who qualified for the Chase for the Sprint Cup — Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch — were mathematically eliminated from winning the series title.

Jimmie Johnson
Car Racing
NASCAR
Carl Edwards


Tip Leads to Vanished Arctic Exploration Ship After 168 Years

Abstract: OTTAWA — To solve a 168-year-old Arctic mystery, the Canadian government had spared no expense. Officials over the last several years used satellite and underwater imaging and deployed crews from the navy and coast guard along with scientists and researchers to search for the Terror, a British ship that vanished along with 129 crew members while trying to map the Northwest Passage. But in the end it was a tip from a local Inuit hunter that led to the apparent discovery of the Terror. The discovery, made on Sept. 3, comes two years after the Erebus, the other ship in the disastrous expedition led by the British explorer Sir John Franklin, was found. The location of the Terror, appropriately in the middle of the coincidentally named Terror Bay, matched longstanding Inuit oral accounts of Franklin’s fate rather than the assumptions of modern researchers. “The Inuits’ oral traditional knowledge around Franklin has been the only authoritative account,” said John Geiger, the chief executive of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society . “Right from the early days, the Inuit had provided extraordinary insight, and it continues to this day.” Parks Canada , the federal agency overseeing the search, said it was “currently working with our partners to validate the details of the discovery.” But Mr. Geiger, the author of several books about the doomed expedition, said underwater images of the remarkably intact ship and the paucity of other 19th century shipwrecks in the area make it all but certain that the Terror has been found. The discovery was made by the Martin Bergmann, a research vessel outfitted specifically to hunt for the missing ships. The Martin Bergmann is owned by the Arctic Research Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by Jim Balsillie, the Canadian former co-chief executive of BlackBerry, and Tim MacDonald, a Canadian businessman with a personal interest in the Arctic. Its crew included Sammy Kogvik, the local Inuit hunter. In a video released by the institute, Mr. Kogvik is heard saying that about six to eight years ago he saw “something weird sticking out of the ocean on the ice.” When the Martin Bergmann was near Terror Bay while heading to a rendezvous with naval and coast guard ships involved in the search, Mr. Kogvik, who lives in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, brought up his earlier sighting. The Bergmann then headed for anchor in the bay. Adrian Schimmnowski, the chief executive of the Arctic Research Foundation, said the Martin Bergmann launched a boat in an initial search of the bay, which is not charted, but found no sign of the Terror. But when the research ship pulled anchor to resume its initial course, “We sailed right over a shipwreck and saw it on our sonar.” If the Martin Bergmann’s route had varied by as little as 600 feet, he said, the Terror’s location would still be a mystery. “It sent shivers down my spine,” Mr. Schimmnowski said from Gjoa Haven. “It’s like finding a needle in a haystack, and this is a very, very big haystack.” The video released by the institute includes footage captured by a remotely operated Royal Canadian Navy camera. It shows several objects perfectly preserved by the frigid water, including a ship’s double-wheeled helm, its bell and even some ropes. Before being put on Arctic mapping duty, the Terror was one of the British naval ships involved in the attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812, Mr. Geiger said. That battle inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The disappearance of the Franklin expedition — the ships were apparently trapped in ice — and the 32 search missions, some of which included Americans, attempting to rescue the crews were followed closely in the 19th century. In Canada the memory of the expedition has been largely kept alive by “Northwest Passage,” a popular folk song by Stan Rogers. Then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who fell from power last year, made locating the ships a major part of his strategy to demonstrate Canada’s sovereignty over its Arctic region. It was a somewhat controversial move given that Mr. Harper’s Conservative government was cutting back on scientific research at the time. Mr. Schimmnowski said he felt no letdown now that part of the mystery surrounding the expedition has been solved. “The story has just begun,” he said. “There’s so much to look at in the site and what’s actually there it could take several years to piece together what happened to the Franklin crew.”

Arctic
Exploration
Canada
Shipwrecks
John Franklin
Eskimo


Publishers Agree to E-Book Price Deal in Europe

Abstract: BERLIN — The European Commission said Wednesday that it was prepared to drop its investigation into the fixing of e-book prices by Apple and four European publishers after the companies agreed to let online retailers like Amazon sell e-books at a discount for two years. The proposed settlement, which will be open to comment from affected businesses for a month, would end the commission’s nine-month antitrust inquiry into Apple and the publishers — Simon & Schuster, a division of the CBS Corporation; HarperCollins, a unit of the News Corporation; Hachette Livre, owned by the French publisher Lagardère; and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck of Germany. The commission’s antitrust arm opened the investigation in December, and the companies had faced penalties of up to 10 percent of their global sales if they had been found to be fixing prices. One publisher still under investigation, the Penguin Group, owned by Pearson, did not participate in the proposed settlement. The commission contended that the publishers had intentionally set up distribution deals with Apple, which sells e-books through iTunes for iPhones and iPads, to thwart the ability of large online sellers like Amazon to dictate reduced prices for their titles. The proposed settlement echoes a deal reached in the United States in April between the Justice Department and HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette. A judge in New York approved the agreement on Sept. 6. One British author, Damien Seaman, said the proposal could open the nascent market for electronic books to lesser-known writers by allowing them to price their novels competitively to attract readers. “This decision is potentially great news,” said Mr. Seaman, whose e-book crime novel “The Killing of Emma Gross” was published last year by Blasted Heath, an e-book publisher in Glasgow. “It will allow us to continue to price dynamically and experiment with discounts and offers to get more visibility with readers, and to stop the larger publishers from trying to strangle the growth of a dynamic, independent e-book market.” Apple and the publishers also agreed to refrain from making “most favored nation” arrangements. In those agreements, the publishers promised to refrain for five years from making deals with other retailers to sell their books at lower prices. Should the proposed settlement agreement receive favorable reviews from European industry peers, the commission said it might make the plan and its concessions legally binding on Apple and the four publishers. Such an arrangement would effectively end the antitrust case without an admission of guilt. A spokesman for Apple in Europe could not be immediately reached for comment. Anne Bergman-Tahon, the director of the Federation of European Publishers, an industry group in Brussels, declined to comment and referred questions to the individual publishers. A spokesman for Amazon in Europe, Matt Lambert, did not return a request for comment. The European market for e-books, with the exception of Britain, is less developed than that in the United States, often because printed books in Europe are levied at reduced rates of value-added tax , while e-books are taxed at the full rate. According to a report by O’Reilly Media, a publisher of technology research based in Sebastopol, Calif., e-books accounted for 6 percent of the market in Britain in 2011. Across Europe, according to Futuresource Consulting, a research firm in Dunstable, England, e-books accounted for just 1.6 percent of total book sales in 2011, but are expected to make up 16 percent of book sales in the region by 2016, according to the research firm. In Britain, 45 percent of e-book owners still read their books on a personal computer or laptop, not e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s e-reader, according to O’Reilly. In Germany, 40 percent of new books are released both in the electronic and paper format.

Book Trade and Publishing
European Commission
Antitrust Laws and Competition Issues
Apple Inc
E-Books and Readers
E-Commerce


Straight A’s, With a Burger as a Prize

Abstract: FAST-FOOD chains often post nutritional report cards about their product ingredients on restaurant walls. Now one is using children’s report cards to help stimulate sales. The McDonald’s restaurants in Seminole County, Fla., and the Seminole County School Board have agreed to reward students for good grades and attendance during the 2007-8 school year with Happy Meals. The program replaces one that for the last 10 school years had been sponsored by local Pizza Hut restaurants, according to the school district. Students in kindergarten through fifth grade can now receive a Happy Meal from a local McDonald’s restaurant as a “food prize,” as it is described, for achievements like all A’s and B’s in academic subjects or two or fewer absences from school. The “report card incentive,” as the program is called, is a business partnership between the owners of the McDonald’s restaurants in Seminole County and the school board, according to information published on the jackets in which the children receive their report cards. The jackets are used throughout the school year. Teachers put report cards in them, and students take them home for their parents to sign to let the teachers know the report cards have been read. The jackets also bear a cartoon of Ronald McDonald, the chain’s brand mascot for children, and its Golden Arches logo.  The jackets also feature photographs of Happy Meal menu items like Chicken McNuggets. “Turning report cards into ads for McDonald’s undermines parents’ efforts to encourage healthy eating,” said Susan Linn, director of an advocacy organization in Boston , the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. “It’s a terribly troubling trend,” Ms. Linn said, because “it really, clearly links doing well in school with getting a Happy Meal.” The commercialization of educational culture, particularly in elementary schools, has long been a contentious issue. It has become more clamorous in the last decade as hard-pressed school districts seek to raise money for academic programs, sports and extracurricular activities without raising taxes. Billboards advertising products and local merchants can be found on athletic fields outside schools and inside schools on gymnasium walls and scoreboards. In some districts, ads appear on the sides of school buses. And some districts play radio programs, with commercials, over the buses’ public-address system. The New York City Department of Education is considering a proposal to give all students free cellphones, which would use text messages — produced by an advertising agency, Droga5 — to promote achievement. The plan includes sponsorship opportunities for cellphone makers, service providers and other marketers. In e-mail messages to reporters yesterday, Ms. Linn urged McDonald’s to “immediately stop advertising on children’s report cards” and attached an image of a report-card jacket sent home with Cathy Griffith, who attends fourth grade at Red Bug Elementary in Winter Springs, Fla. In a telephone interview yesterday, Cathy’s mother, Susan Pagan, said the jacket caught her eye when her daughter brought home her report card with “some very good grades.” “Ronald McDonald and the photo of the Happy Meal,” Ms. Pagan said. “I was like, ‘O.K. What’s this all about?’ ” “I thought this was appalling,” Ms. Pagan said, because “you get a reward for good grades by eating — and eating fast food.” When Pizza Hut sponsored the program, Ms. Pagan said, “I don’t remember it being so blatant.” And even if that sponsorship had continued for many years, she added, today’s concerns about childhood obesity ought to call the program into question. “I’ve worked in advertising and marketing for over 21 years,” said Ms. Pagan, who runs Creative Angle Media, a company in Winter Park, Fla. “There’s a tasteful and professional way for large corporations to sponsor such programs.” “This just seemed very inappropriate, very blatant and direct, into the hands of my daughter,” she added. When the local Pizza Huts sponsored the program, according to the school district, the Pizza Hut logo appeared in place of the McDonald’s symbols. There were no photographs of the Pizza Hut food prize, which was a personal pan pizza. Pizza Hut is owned by Yum Brands. During the 10 years of the Pizza Hut sponsorship, “we did not receive any complaints,” said Regina Klaers, a spokeswoman for the Seminole County Public Schools in Sanford, Fla. Ms. Pagan is the only parent to complain so far about the McDonald’s sponsorship, Ms. Klaers said, adding that district administrators and members of the school board discussed her concerns this week. Asked about the propriety of a school district’s offering fast food as prizes for achievement, Ms. Klaers said the jackets described to students “some alternatives” to the standard Happy Meal menu items.  There is a lengthy paragraph in the bottom right corner, in small type, explaining how the students can choose as their side dishes either French fries or apple slices, which McDonald’s calls Apple Dippers. Their beverage choices are listed as milk, apple juice or a soft drink. Nationally, McDonald’s does not sponsor any programs that reward schoolchildren with food, said Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s USA in Oak Brook, Ill., part of the McDonald’s Corporation. The program in Seminole County is local, Ms. Proud said, and participation in such promotions is “a very local decision.” As for the healthfulness of the Happy Meal menu items, Ms. Proud said, the Chicken McNuggets, which can be chosen in place of a hamburger or cheeseburger, are made with white meat. She also reiterated the options to select apple slices instead of the French fries and to replace the soda with low- fat milk or apple juice. “There’s variety on our menus so parents can make the choice about the Happy Meal most appropriate for their child,” Ms. Proud said. At the Seminole County school district, Ms. Klaers said, the food prize program is re-evaluated each year. Next spring, when the district is making plans for the 2008-9 school year, “we are planning to revisit what is on the jackets,” she added. In the meantime, Ms. Klaers said, the current jackets will remain in use. The sponsorship covers about $1,500 of the $1,600 it costs each year to supply and print the jackets, Ms. Klaers said. The district “partners with local businesses on lots of different levels” to defray costs, she added, but has a policy against selling the naming rights to schools to marketers. In other words, Ms. Klaers said, do not expect a “McDonald’s High” in Seminole County. Bob Bertini, a spokesman for Wendy’s International in Dublin , Ohio , the third-largest hamburger chain behind McDonald’s and Burger King, said yesterday that his company had no national program to reward students with food items. “It is possible that some of our franchisees and stores may be supporting their hometown school districts with attendance or good-student awards,” Mr. Bertini said in an e-mail message, “but I have not heard of local markets where this is occurring.” At Burger King Holdings in Miami , a spokesman, Keva Silversmith, said yesterday that school-related promotions on a corporate level were devoted to college scholarship programs. He said he was not immediately able to determine whether there were food-prize programs sponsored by owners of local restaurants because of the time required to check with field-marketing offices.

McDonald's
Advertising Marketing
Fast food
Florida


Judge Declares Mistrial in Hip-Hop Manager’s Trial

Abstract: A judge in the federal trial of a hip-hop manager accused of ordering the murder of one of 50 Cent’s associates declared a mistrial on Friday, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan said. The judge, Colleen McMahon, made the ruling after the jury sent several notes saying it was hopelessly deadlocked on four murder-for-hire counts in a federal indictment against the manager, James Rosemond, and his co-defendant, Rodney Johnson. It remained unclear Friday night if the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, would pursue a second trial. Mr. Rosemond was sentenced to life in prison after a conviction in Federal District Court in Brooklyn for running a cocaine ring. “We are currently considering our options with respect to a retrial,” Mr. Bharara said in a statement. Mr. Rosemond, once a heavyweight in the hip-hop world who managed acts like the Game and Gucci Mane, was accused of orchestrating the shooting of Lowell Fletcher, an associate of the G-Unit rappers Tony Yayo and 50 Cent. Mr. Fletcher was a reputed Bloods gang member from the Rockaways who went by the street name Lodi Mack. He was shot and killed on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx on Sept. 27, 2009. Two weeks earlier, he had been released from prison after serving a sentence for assaulting Mr. Rosemond’s 14-year-old son. Prosecutors portrayed the murder as the final act in a “street war” that had started years earlier as a feud between the Game and 50 Cent that escalated in March 2007, when Mr. Rosemond’s son was attacked. Four members of Mr. Rosemond’s organization, testifying in return for reduced sentences, said Mr. Rosemond had hired two low-level drug dealers, Brian McCleod and Derrick Grant, to carry out the ambush, paying them with a kilo of cocaine. Mr. Johnson and two other associates of Mr. Rosemond’s also participated, monitoring the attack from nearby cars, Mr. McCleod testified. But Mr. Rosemond’s lawyer, J. Bruce Maffeo, attacked the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses, pointing out that they were career criminals who had lied repeatedly to the authorities. He also said Mr. Rosemond was in Miami the day of the killing. “At least one juror was not willing to credit the cooperating witnesses,” Mr. Maffeo said. “What’s clear is the prosecutors were unable to put the ball over the goal line.” Earlier this week, the jury convicted Mr. Johnson of narcotics distribution, drug possession and gun possession in connection with his role in Mr. Rosemond’s cocaine enterprise. In June 2012, Mr. Rosemond was found guilty of using his music business as a front for a drug operation that sold more than $11 million worth of cocaine a year, often moving it across the country in cases designed for music equipment. He has appealed the verdict.

Murders
Lowell Fletcher
G-Unit
Bloods Gang
James Rosemond
Rodney Johnson


Pierre Moscovici Embodies a Softer Approach to Europe’s Recovery

Abstract: BRUSSELS — His new portfolio is the entire economy of the European Union. But he still has a financial soft spot in his heart for his native France and other financially challenged countries. Pierre Moscovici, who was the Socialist finance minister of France until this spring, is now the economic policy commissioner for the European Union. In that new role he will have a big say in whether France gets a reprimand, is fined, or instead gets a further reprieve, if it fails to make further adjustments to its 2015 budget, which once again missed European Union deficit targets. And in an interview, he made his opinion clear. While declaring that Europe’s budget rules “are made for everybody,” Mr. Moscovici said that “sanctions are always a failure” as they only make the target country “feel stigmatized and create a backlash in public opinion.” “Blunt criticism, French-bashing, are stupid,” said Mr. Moscovici. He said that rather than budget cutting, the European Union should focus on growth and investment as the best ways to hold back a rising tide of populist indignation — not only in France but in other economically challenged countries like Italy and, in particular, Greece. Mr. Moscovici spoke as political gyrations in Greece, still struggling to emerge from the austerity program required as part of its international bailout, are raising the prospects of a change of government in Athens. A new round of elections that began on Wednesday is renewing questions about whether Greece might leave the euro currency union. Mr. Moscovici is scheduled to meet in Washington on Thursday with Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew and the Federal Reserve chief, Janet L. Yellen, in an effort to keep Greece in the eurozone. Greece is “not only a European issue,” he said, noting the United States’ contributions to the International Monetary Fund, which is one of the major creditors in the country’s bailout. Supporting Greece means “we need also to have the help of our American friends — that’s one of the main messages I will carry there,” he said. Mr. Moscovici, who took up his Brussels post in November, wants to be heard above a growing chorus of voices in Germany and elsewhere that deride France as the “sick man of Europe” and that insist sound management of the 28-nation European Union may require punishing Paris for its chronic overspending. He and his colleagues at the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, must decide by March whether France has done enough to trim its budget deficit to avoid a sanction that could result in a fine of around 4 billion euros, or $5 billion. Instead of budget discipline, Mr. Moscovici argues that European governments should be spending more and trying harder to attract private investment, to jolt the region’s listless economies from their stupor. That debate has put severe strain on a Franco-German partnership that for decades drove European integration. Despite his robust defense of France, Mr. Moscovici declared himself an impartial defender of European Union interests in his new role overseeing the bloc’s fiscal rule book. It was the sovereign debt crisis, which threatened to destroy the euro currency union, that prompted the European Union and member governments to strengthen the rules on deficit targets. In France’s case, that is supposed to be no more than 3.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2014 and 3 percent next year. The country, whose deficit is well above 4 percent, has not met its targets for several years, and its 2015 budget as originally submitted this autumn would have missed it again. During Mr. Moscovici’s nomination hearing in the European Parliament in October, some lawmakers questioned whether he might promote a double standard by advocating leniency for France, even as some other countries — like Spain and Portugal — continue to struggle after years of painful austerity in trying to meet budgetary targets. Some lawmakers still question Mr. Moscovici’s willingness to enforce the European Union’s budget rules and levy fines, if needed. “We didn’t introduce the sanction mechanism for nothing,” said Esther de Lange, a Dutch conservative member of influential Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs at the European Parliament. “So already now taking sanctions off the table is really pushing it.” Ms. de Lange said applying the sanction against France, if necessary, would not be a sign that “a bunch of number fetishists” are in charge but a message to France that “running up deficits that are becoming bigger and bigger and bigger will result in the next generation ending up with a debt that cannot be paid.” That, she said, “is how a lot of the trouble started the first time round.” But eurozone countries have often failed to meet the bloc’s targets, and none has ever been fined — mainly for lack of political will to push the point in Brussels. And certainly now, Mr. Moscovici argues, is not the time to set that precedent. Too many European Union citizens, he said, already believe “that European policies are only about austerity.” That perception, he said, could mean that by the end of the decade there is “no pro-European majority in the European Parliament.” Those forces have already buffeted France. In the last elections to the European assembly in May, France’s far-right National Front finished ahead of mainstream French parties after a campaign dominated by its denunciations of the European Union as a threat to French sovereignty and prosperity. Anti-Europe parties also scored well in a number of other countries. Syriza, a leftist anti-austerity party in Greece that is highly critical of the euro and is set on renegotiating the Greek sovereign debt and increasing public spending, could come to power next year. Another leftist protest party, Podemos, has surged in popularity in Spain. Mr. Moscovici, 57, cuts a relatively colorful figure in Brussels. Never married and without children, he has often been photographed by the French media with a two-day growth of stubble and a younger girlfriend on his arm. His long-term relationship with a woman about 30 years his junior ended recently, and he has begun dating a woman in her mid-30s. His longtime intellectual and political mentor was the onetime French finance minister and former I.M.F. chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who had been Mr. Moscovici’s seminar teacher at the École Nationale d’Administration, the hyper-competitive training school for French civil servants. Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist, was considered a likely top candidate to become France’s president, before his career derailed over charges, later dropped, that he sexually assaulted a hotel housekeeper in New York in 2011. At that point, Mr. Moscovici switched his loyalties to François Hollande, running his successful 2012 presidential campaign and securing the job as finance minister. Mr. Hollande replaced him as finance minister this past April in a cabinet reshuffle, but then supported Mr. Moscovici as France’s appointee to the European Commission. Jean-Claude Juncker, who was the incoming president of the European Commission, nominated Mr. Moscovici as commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs. Mr. Moscovici said he came to Brussels with a passion to defend the European Union against extremism. Raised in a Jewish family in Paris, Mr. Moscovici is not religiously observant but has followed Jewish tradition by letting his beard grow in recent weeks in homage to his father, a noted psychologist from Romania who died last month. His mother, also a Jewish refugee who arrived in France in the 1940s, is a psychoanalyst originally from Poland. He said he had grown up knowing “what fascism was” and how “the communist system didn’t work.” Mr. Moscovici said that bloc of countries that eventually evolved into the European Union found common cause in its early years by memories of World War II and a shared commitment to avoid conflict. Now, once again, he said “the European project is really in danger.” It is “not about history now,” he said. Rather, he continued, “it’s about economics, it’s about jobs, it’s about the future of industry, it’s about our place in globalization.”

Pierre Moscovici
Europe
EU
European Commission
Euro
France


Arizona: Child Welfare Overhaul Signed

Abstract: Gov. Jan Brewer has signed into law legislation that overhauls the state’s child welfare agency after revelations that thousands of abuse and neglect reports had gone uninvestigated. The two bills will create and fund a Department of Child Safety to replace the old Child Protective Services department at a cost of $834 million. Ms. Brewer proposed the overhaul after revelations late last year that more than 6,500 abuse and neglect reports were closed without investigation by the old department. She set up a temporary department in January under Charles Flanagan, who will lead the new agency.


Unemployment Malaise Lingers in Euro Zone

Abstract: PARIS — The labor market in the euro zone remains in the doldrums, official data showed on Tuesday, as the unemployment rate ticked higher in France and rose to a record in Italy. The jobless rate in the 18-nation currency bloc stood at 11.9 percent in February, unchanged from January’s revised figure and flat since October, according to a report by Eurostat, the statistics agency of the European Union. About 25.9 million people remained without work across the 28-nation European Union, Eurostat estimated, out of a potential labor force of about 244 million. There was one bright spot in the data released on Tuesday: The number of unemployed people in the European Union fell by 65,000 from January. The monthly data does not provide a detailed breakdown explaining the decrease. While that figure was an encouraging sign, it did not affect the jobless rate for the euro zone. It did, however, nudge down the unemployment rate for the broader European Union to 10.6 percent in February from the revised 10.7 percent in January. Clemente De Lucia, an economist at BNP Paribas, said that the continuing disappointments from the labor market were not surprising, even though other recent indicators, like surveys of purchasing managers, have suggested that the economy remains in an expansionary phase. He noted that new hiring was a lagging indicator, as businesses in many European countries face substantial legal barriers to shedding jobs in a downturn and are cautious about adding workers. Thus the economy may have to pick up some steam before hiring can take off. The European economy officially rose out of recession in the second quarter of 2013, but the labor market remains in poor health more than five years after the credit crisis struck in 2008, followed by a crisis of confidence in a number of euro zone countries and in the common currency itself. European leaders responded to those crises with austerity measures — the policy of budget discipline — the only remedy that Germany, with the union’s largest economy, would accept. That policy, which gave the European Central Bank enough cover to promise unlimited action in support of the euro, has calmed the markets. But the decline in government spending also hammered overall demand, undermining employment and reducing inflationary pressures. Markets were upbeat after the report, with the euro rising 0.2 percent to $1.3802 and the Euro Stoxx 50 index, which tracks blue-chip stocks, adding about half a percent in Paris afternoon trading. In Italy, the jobless rate reached a record 13 percent in February from 12.9 percent a month earlier. The rate is the highest documented by Istat, the Italian national statistical agency, in records that date to the beginning of 1977. The country’s new prime minister, Matteo Renzi, is hoping an aggressive policy change will restart the faltering economy. Michel Martinez, an economist at Société Générale in Paris, said that many Italian companies had tried to hold onto their employees through thick and thin, but that many remained under pressure to cut workers to restore weakened profit margins. The Italian jobless rate is probably near its peak now, Mr. Martinez said, but will remain high for some time because of the poor state of the country’s economy. In France, the jobless rate ticked up to 10.4 percent from 10.3 percent in January. Unemployment was the biggest factor in the drubbing that President François Hollande’s government received in municipal elections this last weekend, which led to the ouster of Jean-Marc Ayrault as prime minister in favor of Manuel Valls, the former interior minister. The labor market in Greece remained the worst in Europe, with joblessness at a depression-level 27.5 percent. Spain, at 25.6 percent, was not far behind, but the market there is showing a glimmer of hope, edging down from 25.8 percent in January. Austria registered the lowest unemployment rate in the union, at 4.8 percent, followed by Germany, at 5.1 percent. In addition to relatively strong economies by current European standards, the two countries have extensive work-sharing programs that help to hold down the figures. The European Central Bank’s Governing Council is to meet on Thursday to plot monetary policy. In addition to the dismal employment report, the central bank will be considering a report that was issued on Monday showing consumer prices rising at an annual rate of just 0.5 percent, suggesting that the euro zone is on the verge of outright deflation. The European situation contrasts with that of the United States, where the unemployment rate stood at 6.7 percent in February and where the economy has been adding an average of 189,000 new posts each month over the past 12 months. The Labor Department is poised to release jobs data for March on Friday. Mr. Martinez, of Société Générale, forecast that the gross domestic product of the euro zone would increase by 1.1 percent this year. Even assuming that slow a recovery, he said, the unemployment rate would most likely end the year around the current level. Partly, that would reflect the return of workers who had given up on finding a job altogether, he said. The pool of discouraged workers — young people who dropped out of the job market to return to school, and long-term unemployed people in countries like Spain, Italy and France — will swell the ranks of the officially jobless as hiring picks up, keeping the official jobless rate at elevated levels, he said.

Unemployment
Euro Crisis
EU
European Central Bank
Eurostat
Greece
Spain


A Disruptive Venture Capitalist Shakes Up a New Field

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — William R. Hambrecht helped usher in the high-technology age in the 1980s by being an early venture investor in Apple Computer, Genentech and a host of other industry pioneers. Hambrecht & Quist, the investment firm he co-founded, was also the lead underwriter of many of the initial public stock offerings of these companies. Mr. Hambrecht left Hambrecht & Quist in 1997 to found a new firm, WR Hambrecht + Co. Today, at 72, he is shaking up the underwriting establishment by offering online investment banking. Through its flagship product, OpenIPO, the firm has co-managed auction-style initial public offerings for about 20 U.S. companies, including Google and Morningstar. Since 2007, the company has been in partnership with the Japanese electronic trader Monex Group. Mr. Hambrecht is also making waves in the sports world, having helped found and finance the United Football League, a competitor to the National Football League. Mr. Hambrecht spoke recently in his office in San Francisco about the changes he has seen in investment banking during a 52-year career, and what he still hopes to accomplish. Q.You refer to WR Hambrecht + Co. as a disruptive firm. What do you mean? A. It is the dramatically different business model — enabled through technology — that gives its disruptive characteristic. I was looking for something that would deliver 80 percent of what the market wanted for 20 percent or less of the cost. The cost structure and culture of a traditional underwriter don’t allow them to adjust or change dramatically. I was unable to try this within my first firm — where you would think I had some leverage — as I wasn’t able to overcome the culture. Q.You picked the I.P.O. market as the first place to test out this new model. Why? A. It was the place that was the most expensive, in terms of the discount pricing that the underwriters demanded of new companies to go public against what would be the normal market price for the stock. An auction gets you very close to the normal market price. We did the deal with Morningstar at under 10 percent of what it would have cost the company, and Softbank, the selling shareholder, got a check for a $150 million for its stake, instead of $100 million. Q.How have traditional investment banks responded? A. Incumbents, when threatened, move upmarket; they never move down, and that is what happened here. Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley aren’t interested in $50 million and $100 million deals anymore. They want to keep the half-a-billion and billion-dollar deals that make them money. Q.What reaction have you encountered from institutional investors? A. Initially, major mutual funds fought it because they were very well treated by the traditional underwriters. They were the guys that got the big allocations of the hot deals, and they paid for it in commission flow. For every dollar of underwriting profit that a mutual would make on a first-day trade, they’d give 30 cents in commissions to the investment banks. This is what made underwriting so profitable for the banks: It wasn’t the 7 percent underwriting fee but the commissions. Q.Since founding the new firm, have you learned anything that might change the way you manage the I.P.O. auction business in the future? A. I think the biggest surprise, and the thing that was hardest for me to deal with, was that an auction works better on the bigger deals. I grew up at Hambrecht & Quist, where we did the smaller deals — we took the early-stage risk — and loved that stuff. Any auction person will tell you, the more people you have bidding, the broader the market reach and the more effective the auction. As the market gets more efficient working its way down, we’ll get more efficient doing smaller auctions. There is a tremendous backlog of deals right now, especially smaller ones, which historically are good performers. Eventually the backlog will open, and portfolio managers, who are driven by performance, will come out. Q.The I.P.O. market worldwide is in a slump. How worried are you about being able to attract capital to your auctions? A. Every other cycle I went through, I would have a half a dozen investments that were hanging by their teeth. We had to raise money to keep them in business. I don’t have a company in trouble right now. I think the market will recover when earnings recover. And there are signs that will probably start at the end of this year. Q.Beside the I.P.O. and corporate bond market, where else do you see your next big opportunity to be disruptive? A. We see the United Football League as a tremendous opportunity to be very disruptive in the media market.

Investment Banking
Initial Public Offerings
Venture Capital
William R. Hambrecht


IBM Revenue Slides as Revamping Takes Hold

Abstract: IBM is in the midst of a challenging transition, and its fourth-quarter financial results reflected that reality. The technology giant on Tuesday reported quarterly declines in both sales and profits, though its earnings were above Wall Street’s diminished expectations. Under Virginia M. Rometty, who became chief executive in 2012, IBM has been rapidly shifting its portfolio of businesses. She has initiated multibillion-dollar spending programs for data-analysis software and skills, cloud computing and Watson artificial intelligence technology — fields that promise high profits and strong growth. At the same time, the company has sold businesses that generated several billion dollars in sales but lost money or barely broke even. Units sold recently include its chip-manufacturing operation and its division making smaller server computers. So a falloff in IBM’s overall revenue is, for now, largely by design. The new businesses are growing. But they are not yet large or profitable enough to offset the erosion of growth and profitability in some of IBM’s traditional hardware, software and services lines. And the new technology, like cloud computing and low-cost data analysis, often adds to the pressure on IBM’s old-line businesses. How long the transition will take, and how painful it may be, is the question. But it is certainly not one that will be answered by the financial results in a single quarter. And IBM’s fourth-quarter performance provides grist for both the optimist and pessimist camps that closely follow the company. The company said net income in the quarter fell to $5.5 billion, down 11 percent from the same quarter a year ago. The company’s operating earnings declined to $5.81 a share, above the average estimate of analysts for $5.41 a share, as compiled by Thomson Reuters. IBM’s revenue slid to $24.1 billion, well below the $27.7 billion in the year-earlier quarter. Its quarterly sales were somewhat below Wall Street’s consensus forecast of $24.8 billion. In after-hours trading, IBM’s stock price slipped $2.90 a share, or about 1.9 percent, to $154.05. During regular trading, the company’s shares closed down 19 cents, to $156.95 a share. In the conference call and in an interview afterward, Martin Schroeter, IBM’s chief financial officer, made the case that IBM was showing encouraging progress in its transition. The new businesses the company has earmarked for growth — data analytics, cloud, security and mobile apps for corporations — grew at a 16 percent rate in 2014 and contributed $25 billion in revenue, or 27 percent of the company’s total sales. These growth businesses, he said, should continue to expand at a double-digit rate. The size and growth of those units, Mr. Schroeter said in the interview, was “an important sign post” that IBM’s strategy had taken hold. For IBM’s traditional businesses, he said, the goal is to deliver “stable revenue with improving profit margins,” through cost-cutting and efficiency initiatives. Image Under Virginia M. Rometty, who became chief executive in 2012, IBM has been rapidly shifting its portfolio of businesses. Credit Brendan McDermid/Reuters But analysts question how well IBM is doing in achieving its objectives. IBM’s reported numbers for its so-called strategic growth businesses, according to estimates by A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research, suggest that revenue for the rest of IBM declined by 8 percent last year. “The fact is the core is not stable,” Mr. Sacconaghi said. “The jury is still out on IBM.” Mr. Schroeter said the company expected to report earnings per share for full-year 2015 of $15.75 to $16.50. That guidance is slightly below the $16.53 a share projected by Wall Street analysts and below the $16.53 it earned in 2014, an acknowledgment that this year is one of adjustment. In October, after IBM reported surprisingly weak profits, Ms. Rometty abandoned its previous financial blueprint, which for years had projected that the company would produce earnings per share of $20 in 2015. “That yoke is off,” said Steven Milunovich, an analyst at UBS. “They’re not following the old game plan anymore.” The longer-term target, beyond 2015, Mr. Schroeter said, is for IBM to generate annual revenue growth in “low single digits” and profit increases at high single-digit rates. Despite the decline in revenue and profit, IBM’s profit margins on operations rose by six-tenths of a percent. The backlog of contracts in its big services business, which had declined in the third quarter, stabilized at $128 billion. The profit margins in its services business were better than most analysts expected, which contributed to IBM’s reporting operating earnings per share that were above Wall Street estimates.

IBM
Virginia M Rometty
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Earnings Reports


Anonymous Bomb Threats Rattle Jewish Centers Across Eastern U.S.

Abstract: The morning rush at the Jewish community center in Columbia, S.C., had subsided when the phone rang on Monday. The caller, an elderly-sounding woman, “in a loud screaming voice kept saying there’s a bomb,” said Barry A. Abels, the center’s executive director. At roughly the same time, a woman dialed the Jewish community center in Rockville, Md., nearly 500 miles away, and said there was a bomb. Not long after, a man called a Jewish organization in Wilmington, Del. He, too, warned of a bomb. Similar threats, which turned out to be unfounded, were reported all over the Eastern United States on Monday, at as many as 16 Jewish community facilities, one advocacy group estimated. Time and time again, the police responded, buildings were evacuated and, after tense waits, the centers and schools reopened. Federal law enforcement officials did not definitively link the threats, but the episodes rattled nerves, and raised deep concern and little doubt that the phone calls had been orchestrated. “My personal take is it’s a statement of where we are in this country,” said Michael Feinstein, the chief executive of the Bender Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, in Rockville. “There’s some thought amongst some people that hate speech and hate crimes are O.K. and anti-Semitism is O.K., and I think that is reflective of sort of the political discourse that we’ve had in this country.” Mr. Feinstein said about 300 people had been in the Rockville center when the threat was made, including about 200 preschoolers. After the threat in Delaware, parents were called to pick up preschool and day school students. In South Carolina, Mr. Abels said staff members and patrons attending exercise classes had to leave. About three hours later, he said, the authorities said it was safe to return, leaving many to wonder what had happened. “It could be anything from hate groups to a terrorist situation,” Mr. Abels said. “I think it’s probably more on the hate group side, because it was just a scare.” He said he believed it was “designed to be psychologically disorienting and scary and just disruptive.” Jerry Silverman, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Federations of North America, said the threats were part of a disturbing trend toward normalizing hate speech. It was less than three years ago that a former Ku Klux Klan leader killed three people outside Jewish facilities in Overland Park, Kan. And in November, after the presidential election, the Anti-Defamation League posted a warning about a reported uptick in hate speech and anti-Semitism . Some members of the alt-right, a far-right fringe movement that embraces elements of anti-Semitic, racist and anti-immigrant positions, perceived the victory of President-elect Donald J. Trump as validation for their cause and have become increasingly visible in recent months. Mr. Trump, who has a Jewish daughter and son-in-law, has disavowed the alt-right . Mr. Silverman said Monday’s cases were part of a broader “coordinated effort” to intimidate Jews. He said that Jewish organizations nationwide had instituted emergency protocols, and that leaders were communicating with one another on Monday as the threats were reported. “We’ve seen this at Jewish community centers over the last year,” Mr. Silverman said. “We’ve seen it at Jewish day schools. We’ve seen it at synagogues.” “It’s all about training and preparedness,” he added. Law enforcement agencies in Nashville; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Tenafly, N.J., were among those confirming on Monday that they had responded to and cleared bomb threats at Jewish centers. An F.B.I. spokeswoman said the bureau was “aware of bomb threats” and had been in touch with the local police. “We understand there were similar threats around the country,” said Tzipora Cohen, of the Jewish Community Center in Tenafly. “I guess these are the times we live in.”

Jewish Community Center Assn of North America


Federer, Making Quick Work of Tsonga, Will Face Murray in Final

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — So much for all the pretournament talk about how Roger Federer was distracted, aging and vulnerable at the Australian Open, and how 8 to 10 players were ready to knock him from his throne. After filleting Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France in straight sets, now there is only one: Andy Murray, the scrambling Scotsman. It took Federer, the world’s top player, less than 90 minutes to showcase his touch shots, mastery of angles and all-around court command and reach his 22nd Grand Slam final, a record, and eighth in a row. He broke Tsonga’s serve in the fourth game of the first set, then toyed with him, 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 . “It’s nice going through a match like that,” Federer said. “I think against top players, it’s always positive if you can win the first set.” Tsonga, a finalist here in 2008, and the No. 10 seed, had played back-to-back five-set thrillers, including a grueling quarterfinals victory over third-seeded Novak Djokovic. He was unable to make Federer face a break point, and he said Federer was just too much for him. “He was really good, and that’s it,” said Tsonga, 24, who along with Juan Martín del Potro, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic were among the challengers ready to unseat Federer. Federer agreed. “I felt like right from the start I was hitting the ball well,” he said. “But then I didn’t expect the second and third to sort of be able to run away with the score the way I did.” Now, it falls on Murray to try to vanquish a player many fans consider to be the finest the sport has produced from the Grand Slam stage, which Federer has owned now for six years. Murray does hold a 6-4 edge in their matchups . The only other time he has played a center court final of a Grand Slam, however, he lost to Federer in straight sets at the 2008 United States Open . Murray, 22, is also carrying the hopes of British fans on his thin shoulders: they have been waiting 74 years, since Fred Perry captured the 1936 United States Open, to cheer on a Grand Slam men’s champion. It is not going to be easy for Murray as a confident Federer made clear in a loose and jovial quip that was obviously buoyed by his dominant play. “I know he’d like to win the first for British tennis in, what is it, like 150,000 years?” Federer said in a courtside interview. “The poor guy has to go through those moments over and over again. He’s done tremendously. We match up well. I’m looking forward to the final.” Murray has been brilliant, dropping only a single set in six matches , and he is feeling like a worldbeater after running Federer’s longtime rival Rafael Nadal ragged in the quarterfinals. Murray was up by two sets and leading, 3-0, when Nadal retired after feeling something amiss in his right knee. “This is the best I’ve played at a Slam,” Murray said. “Obviously, Roger’s record in Slams speaks for itself. He had a great year last year in them, making all four finals. You know, he lost the two — the two that he lost were incredibly tough five-setters. If I’m going to play against him, it will take a special performance to win against him. But I feel like I can do that.” This is Murray’s 17th Grand Slam tournament; Federer broke through in his 17th major, Wimbledon in 2003 , to notch his first of a record 15 major titles. Federer knows he will be facing a much saltier and serene Murray than the nervous kid whom he swept at Flushing Meadows. “He was already an excellent player back then,” Federer said, referring to their meeting in the 2008 United States Open . “I just think now he has more, again, more matches in his body. He knows what to expect from the crowds, from the opponents, from the conditions and everything. And I think that’s a big step, just playing a lot of tough matches on center courts. “He knows his fitness more now, where maybe in the beginning it was unsure if he was fit enough for tough matches. I think the last two years have given Andy many answers.” Federer, 28, has won the Australian Open three times — in 2004, 2006 and 2007 — and is now through to his fifth final after losing an epic five-set clash with Nadal last year . He has made eight consecutive Grand Slam finals dating to the 2008 French Open , winning three of them. Federer likes getting to them, and knows what to do when he arrives. He likes reminding Murray, and all the younger guns trying to knock him down. He knows how to get in their head, too. “I mean, look, he’s in his second Grand Slam final now,” he said. “I think the first one’s always a bit tougher than the second one. But now that he didn’t win the first one, I think, doesn’t help, for the second one around. Plus he’s playing, you know, me, who’s won many Grand Slams prior to that, been able to win here three times so I know what it takes and how to do it, which is definitely an advantage. “I don’t feel like the pressure is really on me having to do it again, because I did it before,” he said. “I think he really needs it more than I do.”

Australian Open (Tennis)
Federer Roger
Tsonga Jo-Wilfried


With Chevrolet Sonic, G.M. and U.A.W. Reinvent Automaking

Abstract: ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The only subcompact car being built on American soil will soon roll out of an assembly plant here in suburban Detroit that is as unusual as the car itself. The production line has been squeezed into half the space of a traditional plant. Welding robots are concentrated in efficient clusters, instead of being spaced along the line, while many of the workers earn half the typical union wage. Even the first coat of rust-proofing has been reformulated so that it is one-hundredth as thick as — and thereby cheaper than — the coating on other cars. One of the oldest axioms in the auto industry is that no company can build a subcompact car in the United States and make money because they are priced too low. The Ford Fiesta is built in Mexico . The Honda Fit is made in several places, including China and Brazil . But with Americans — and Detroit — rediscovering small cars because of high gasoline prices, General Motors is intent on shattering that notion with its new Chevrolet Sonic. The car, with a base price of around $14,000, will give G.M. a new entry in the lowest tier of the market when it goes on sale this fall. The Sonic is also expected to be a breakthrough in establishing a new level of cooperation between Detroit and the United Automobile Workers . The radically revamped factory here operates with fewer and cheaper workers, many of whom are paid $14 an hour rather than the full U.A.W. wage of $28 an hour. The plant itself is smaller and reconfigured to save money, with company executives modeling some of the changes after G.M.’s most efficient factories in Germany and Korea. The production line’s footprint alone was reduced from a million square feet to 500,000 — the equivalent of losing the space of more than two Wal-Mart Super Stores. The energy bill was cut by powering some operations with methane gas from neighboring landfills. The Sonic will be G.M.’s littlest, and most fuel-efficient , conventionally powered vehicle. It was conceived in 2008 before the federal government’s bailout of the bankrupt automaker, when negotiators from the company and the union began brainstorming about what it would take to make a profitable subcompact car in the United States rather than in low-wage countries. “We wanted to prove we could do it,” said Diana D. Tremblay, G.M.’s head of global manufacturing. The U.A.W. tried to persuade the Ford Motor Company to build the Fiesta subcompact in the United States. But Ford chose a plant in Mexico, where the combined wages and benefits of a production worker total less than $10 an hour. By contrast, a full-wage union member in the United States costs G.M. close to $60 an hour. Even an entry-level wage employee costs about $30 an hour in wages and benefits. While it is not the only factor in producing a profitable subcompact, lower employment costs were critical to the decision to build the Sonic in Michigan . In a groundbreaking labor agreement, the union allowed G.M. to pay 40 percent of its union workers at Orion Township an “entry-level” wage that sharply reduces overall production costs. “The entry-level wage structure was an important enabler, because obviously the smaller the car the less the margin,” said Ms. Tremblay. The U.A.W.’s president, Bob King , said the union considered the significance of a competitive subcompact to G.M.’s overall product lineup. The Sonic is the first subcompact that G.M. has tried to build in its home market since the Chevrolet Chevette almost 40 years ago, aside from a brief joint effort with Toyota to build Geo Prizms. The smallest car in its lineup now is the Chevrolet Aveo , a subcompact developed by G.M.’s South Korean subsidiary. A version of the Sonic to be sold overseas will be built in South Korea . “We are committed to the success of the company,” Mr. King said recently. “We had to talk about a business model that makes sense.” For all its promise, the Sonic still has to convince consumers that G.M. has found the right formula for an attractive and affordable subcompact. Previous subcompacts efforts like the Geo Prizm and the Aveo were bland and underpowered, and contributed to G.M.’s lackluster reputation in the overall car market. “G.M. has a lot to prove with the Sonic,” said Joseph Phillippi of the research firm Auto Trends . “They have to cut costs but still put out a competitive car.” The car itself is a mosaic of innovation to make the Sonic lighter, less costly and more fuel-efficient, including high-strength steel used in its windshield pillars and the ultrathin film applied to prevent rust. The Sonic sedan resembles a shrunken version of the Chevrolet Cruze , while the hatchback version is distinguished by its short rear overhang and upright stance. The Sonic weighs 500 pounds less and is eight inches shorter than the next biggest car G.M. makes, and its little 1.4-.liter turbocharged engine will deliver the best gas mileage in the company’s fleet. “It will be north of 40 miles per gallon,” said Jim Federico, head of G.M.’s global small cars and electric vehicles . Still, to get the car to meet cost-saving goals, a team of G.M. engineers and manufacturing specialists also had to adapt and reconfigure the Orion plant, which opened in 1983 and was used to build big cars like the Buick Riviera . G.M. spent heavily in converting the plant, investing $545 million in new equipment and retraining workers — and it shows, from the gleaming floors to the banks of fluorescent lighting that brighten the plant and save $430,000 a year in energy costs. The plant is also the company’s greenest, producing 80 percent less solid waste and using 20 percent less water, all at a savings. Various stages along the assembly line, like the body shop and trim area, are more compact, with teams of six workers installing parts fed to them on automated carts by independent suppliers who operate inside the plant. That reduces costly inventory and improves productivity. “Normally the suppliers would be five miles away versus 50 feet,” said John Barry , a G.M. manager. The plant over all employs 1,800, a reduction of 25 percent. To augment the small profit earned on the Sonic, the workers will also make the larger, more upscale Buick Verano on the same line. Overall capacity at the plant is 160,000 cars a year. Even the two shifts have been fine-tuned to four 10-hour days rather than the usual five-day week to better maintain the machinery and save energy. Every dollar saved is essential for the Sonic to compete, auto experts said. And if the car is a winner with consumers — production begins in August — the Orion factory could become a model. “This plant has the potential to redefine American manufacturing,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley . “A success here indicates untapped capabilities.”

Chevrolet Division of General Motors
UAW
Compact Cars Microcars
Wages and salaries
Manufacturing
Labor Unions


Mexican Authorities Burn 134 Tons of Seized Marijuana

Abstract: TIJUANA, Mexico — It is now the city safe enough for an Al Gore speech. Indeed, Tijuana has become a place, in the narrative of federal and local officials, not only where the former vice president of the United States can attend a business conference, as he did earlier this month, but where the drug cartels are on the run. Human remains are no longer discovered partly dissolved in chemicals; shootouts in broad daylight are rare; and local, state and federal law enforcement work so closely that they celebrated this week over the destruction of the largest load of marijuana — 134 metric tons, or about 150 United States tons — ever seized in the country. “Citizens of Tijuana should be proud of the authorities and the armed forces,” said Gen. Alfonso Duarte Múgica, regional commander of the army, as the seized marijuana erupted in flames and smoke after soldiers set it ablaze. But the question on the minds of many here is whether this is a fragile peace, or even peace at all. It is true that this is not 2008, when the headlines reflected a sense of mayhem and out-of-control violence that led to 843 killings, a record high in this city of 1.6 million people across the border from San Diego. Yet the body count this year stands at 639, on pace to match or exceed the 695 of last year. “The only thing that has changed is you don’t see spectacular murders in the middle of the city,” said Victor Clark-Alfaro, a visiting professor from Tijuana at San Diego State University who has studied drug violence for years. “The elite feel more safe, but in the neighborhoods where drug dealers and addicts are dying, people do not feel any more safe,” he added. Questions have also been raised about the hard-line tactics of the police and military here. Human Rights Watch, in a letter to President Felipe Calderón last month, urged him to investigate abuses at the hands of the authorities here, including more than 100 cases in the past year in which the group said people were taken to military bases and tortured into making confessions. “Tijuana is anything but a model for an effective public security operation,” the letter said. The police chief here, Julián Leyzaola, an army veteran who has been photographed kicking the body of a gunman believed responsible for killing a police officer, has remained unapologetic, saying a tough line is just what the town needs to clean up its police force and take on organized crime. He beamed at an elaborate ceremony on Thursday, complete with a military band, bused-in dignitaries, and ample national and international coverage, to burn the tons of marijuana seized earlier in the week. It was a spectacle meant as much to send a message to the traffickers as to reassure an anxious public of success, any success. “This was a strike at the structure of this criminal group,” Chief Leyzaola said. And for a moment at least, residents like Juan Alberto, 21, a law school student who watched the burning ceremony at the invitation of a professor, felt a measure of calm. “I have felt a little safe these past few months,” Mr. Alberto said. “But I know things can change quickly. Shopping centers are busy and bars and restaurants are slowly filling again, though American tourists remain scarce. People go to work and school, and young people are venturing out, though with some trepidation. “It is getting better, certainly better than a couple of years ago when everybody was afraid,” said Paula Cruz, 20. Civic leaders have been anxious to put on the city’s best face. The two-week Tijuana Innovadora conference, intended to stoke investment, concluded Thursday after speeches by Mr. Gore; the co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone; the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales; Mr. Calderón; and others. But as if to remind the public of the drug war never far away, two decapitated bodies were found hanging from a bridge, and four young men were killed, both discoveries several miles from the conference. David A. Shirk, who researches criminal justice in Mexico as the director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, said Tijuana might simply be in a lull while gangs regroup. He noted that the authorities claimed success both when violence was high, as a sign of destabilization among criminal organizations, and when it was low, as a mark of criminal activity being kept under control. The violence tends to ebb and flow with little explanation, Mr. Shirk added, as one group gains strength or cuts deals with the police while others fall out of favor or lose ground. The conventional wisdom is that the gruesome shows of violence decreased after the arrest in January of Teodoro Eduardo García Simental , a kingpin known as El Teo who, among other crimes, was accused of having the bodies of scores of enemies dissolved in vats of chemicals. Still, the bottom line, Mr. Shirk said, was that the marijuana seizure would not greatly affect the drug market and that “even with 134 tons, there is no sign the flow of drugs into the United States has abated.” A United States Justice Department report this year said marijuana production in Mexico had increased 59 percent since 2003. The report attributed the increase in production to a 48 percent decrease in eradication efforts over the last four years. The decrease in crop destruction “is the result of the Mexican military’s focus on antiviolence measures rather than illicit crop cultivation,” the report said. Alejandro Poiré, the Mexican government’s chief spokesman on security, said in a recent interview that it had and would continue to make big seizures. The seizure of the big marijuana haul, which occurred Sunday and was announced Monday, came about after the local police happened on a convoy and were fired upon. They, along with the state police and the military, eventually found three tractor-trailers and a smaller truck in an industrial neighborhood near the border, raising the question of how such a large load could have eluded police and military checkpoints leading into Tijuana from the interior, where most of the marijuana is grown. The 15,300 bales were tightly wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil, with some labeled “yoyo,” “dog” or “wolf,” or bearing the smiling image of Homer Simpson, apparent branding or labels for drug distributors in the United States. It will take two days to burn it all.


Tigers and Fans Salute Ernie Harwell

Abstract: DETROIT — Ernie Harwell, the beloved Detroit Tigers broadcaster, described his rare visit to Comerica Park for Wednesday night’s game as a chance to say hello to the team and its fans. But they knew, just as he did, that it could very well have been Harwell’s goodbye to the city where his booming Southern drawl was the voice of summer for 42 years. Earlier this month, the 91-year-old Harwell revealed that he has an inoperable and incurable form of bile duct cancer . He has said the disease could defeat him within a year — maybe longer, maybe shorter — yet in the next breath insists that he is “ready for a new adventure.” Tigers fans, though, are not ready to give up Harwell, who retired in 2002. “He was the background noise of our lives growing up,” said Ron Del Villano, who attended the game specifically to see Harwell’s appearance. Harwell used to throw a ceremonial first pitch of the season when Del Villano played baseball as a boy on the east side of Detroit. “We were always wishing Ernie would call one of our home runs,” he said. Harwell spoke to the crowd during the third inning Wednesday, after fans watched a video tribute to him on the scoreboard. The Tigers asked their opponent, the Kansas City Royals, for extra time in the game to accommodate Harwell, although he began by saying he would be brief because “we don’t want to be penalized now for delay of the game.” He stood at a microphone behind home plate and waved to the fans before thanking them for their “devotion, support, loyalty and love.” “In my almost 92 years on this earth, the good Lord has blessed me with a great journey — and the blessed part of that journey is that it will end in the great state of Michigan,” Harwell said. “I deeply appreciate the people of Michigan. I love their grit, I love the way they face life, I love the family values. And you Tiger fans are the greatest fans of all. No question about that.” The Tigers, who lead the American League Central, went on to defeat the Royals, 4-3. Before the game, Harwell met with the Tigers players and greeted members of the news media in the press box that bears his name. “I don’t feel too good,” he told a group of reporters. “I’m a little shaky.” But he was generally in good spirits, and he laughed while describing himself as a “failed newspaperman” who stumbled into a fallback career in radio. “I don’t think Ernie wants anyone sitting around feeling sorry for him,” Tigers Manager Jim Leyland said. “I think it’s really a happy moment.” On Sunday, Harwell will be an honorary captain for the Detroit Lions, who play at Ford Field. A native of Atlanta, Harwell began his broadcasting career there in 1940 as a radio commentator. He spent several years each with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants and the Baltimore Orioles before arriving in Detroit in 1960. He was known for colloquial catchphrases like describing home run balls as “long gone” and batters who took a called third strike as “out for excessive window shopping.” Darryl Austin, 29, who moved to Detroit just after the team’s 1984 World Series championship, remembers secretly staying up past his bedtime as a boy to hear Harwell and root for a Tigers victory. “I used to put my radio in the pillow and dial into 760 AM to listen to the rest of the game,” said Austin, who watched Wednesday’s game from the walkway above Harwell’s name on the team’s center-field wall of Hall of Famers. Harwell worked at Comerica Park, which opened in 2000, for only three seasons. Most of his career was spent in the press box at Tiger Stadium, which was torn down earlier this year. Harwell was among those who tried to save the old stadium from demolition , offering to donate his large collection of baseball memorabilia to be displayed at a museum on the site. But efforts to raise enough money for the project fell short, and the city proceeded with razing the stadium.

Harwell Ernie
Baseball
Detroit Tigers
Radio


Jets’ Cromartie Seeing Lots of Action Across Revis Island

Abstract: FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Trent Dilfer spent Wednesday watching film, which is part of his job as a football analyst for ESPN. He got home and decided to catch up on the news — meaning, football news — and he found one report to be particularly enlightening. Dilfer heard that Tom Brady , the New England Patriots ’ quarterback who faces the Jets in an American Football Conference playoff game Sunday, described the Jets’ cornerback Antonio Cromartie as “good” before describing the Jets’ other cornerback, Darrelle Revis, as “great.” “That spoke volumes to me,” Dilfer, a former N.F.L. quarterback, said Thursday. “ What he was saying there was that he was giving a lot of respect to Darrelle Revis, but kind of as a side note to that was, ‘Don’t try to put Cromartie in the same place as Revis.’ ” Cromartie, a five-year veteran in his first year with the Jets, would not try to put himself in the same place as Revis, either. Cromartie received a lot of attention this week by profanely criticizing Brady from afar, — and on Thursday he still was not regretting what he said — but he knows he is far from polished. The Jets’ coaching staff loves Cromartie. Mike Westhoff, the special-teams coach, said Cromartie volunteered last week to return kickoffs, which certainly came in handy when, substituting for the injured Brad Smith, he set up the winning field goal Saturday against Indianapolis by returning a kickoff 47 yards. “He even told Westy that if he needed him to long snap, he’s ready to fill in as a long snapper,” Jets Coach Rex Ryan said. “He’s just a great athlete and wants to help the team out.” But Cromartie’s primary responsibility Sunday will be to play cornerback with distinction against a corps of receivers with a knack for getting open downfield. Cromartie said he hoped Brady threw it his way a lot. Revis is the gold standard of N.F.L. cornerbacks these days, so anyone playing on the other side of the field would pale in comparison, especially when opponents do not seem to want to test Revis. On Thursday, Cromartie said about his season: “I think it’s going pretty well, but to me, it’s not been the season I would like to have. I gave up too many touchdowns. As far as me being graded as one of the best corners, I don’t think I’m there yet.” He then said, “Revis is doing a great job. He’s doing a tremendous job. You try to look at it and learn from it and try to do the same things he does.” According to figures compiled by Football Outsiders through Week 15 of the regular season, the most recent available, Cromartie gave up an average of 5.7 yards on passes thrown his way, the same as Revis — and below the league average of 7.1 yards. Cromartie is a superb athlete — Jets safety Brodney Pool describes Cromartie’s arms being like Laffy Taffy— but the general perception is that Cromartie is much more susceptible to losing his man than Revis, particularly when covering receivers breaking away from him toward the middle of the field. Dilfer said: “He’s a guy who can absolutely be torched on certain route concepts, and that’s what the Patriots do.” Indianapolis wide receiver Pierre Garcon raced past Cromartie to catch a 57-yard touchdown pass from Peyton Manning in the first half Saturday — although Pool, another newcomer, said Thursday, “I could have been a little deeper to help Cro, so I’d put that one on me.” That was not Cromartie’s only slip. Cris Collinsworth, the analyst on the NBC telecast of the game, was critical of Cromartie three times Saturday. Collinsworth praised Cromartie’s ability to play bump-and-run with a receiver, but said Cromartie was vulnerable to quick slants. “The more they get him to back away from the line of scrimmage, the more effective they will be,” Collinsworth said, referring to the Colts. After a completion on a quick slant to Garcon when Cromartie played off him, Collinsworth said, “When Cromartie gets off, he’s just not effective. That’s not his game. I would do that very little. And every time he played off, I’d go after him.” The Jets’ coaching staff is aware of this. Mike Pettine, the defensive coordinator, said Thursday that Cromartie had a really good season, especially when he filled Revis’s role when Revis missed two and a half games with a hamstring injury. “He came to us with the habit of not putting his hands on a receiver,” Pettine said of Cromartie, who had played for San Diego, “and our whole emphasis was getting him to work on that. He is so strong, and his arms are so long, that when he gets his arms on a guy, it’s over.” Of course, it has been a challenge for any cornerback to get near slippery receivers like the Patriots’ Wes Welker and Deion Branch. The Patriots, Pool said, are somewhat different than the Colts in that they like to break their inside routes back to the outside. Cromartie will be tested, and not just because he did not have kind things to say about Brady this week. The pregame chatter will be forgotten, and Cromartie will have a challenge on his hands. “He embraces that,” Pool said with a smile.

Revis Darrelle
Cromartie Antonio
Football
New York Jets
New England Patriots
Brady Tom
Ryan Rex