3 Friends Become Foes in Fight for Final Four

Abstract: GREENSBORO, N.C. — Nothing comes between Tina, Kaili and Epiphanny. They are like the friends on “Sex and the City,” only they wear Nikes instead of Manolos, and meet for basketball, not brunch. On Tuesday night at Greensboro Coliseum, Tina Charles, Kaili McLaren and Epiphanny Prince will share the spotlight under circumstances guaranteed to leave at least one despondent. Charles and McLaren play for top-seeded Connecticut, which will face Prince and second-seeded Rutgers in the regional final. The meeting is the first for the Big East archrivals in the N.C.A.A. tournament. The winning team will advance to the Final Four in Tampa, Fla. The losing squad is done playing for seven months. The cutthroat nature of competitive sports — the cold, hard truth that my gain is your loss — can turn friendships into feuds and games into grudge matches. It is a minefield that Charles, McLaren and Prince have managed to negotiate with the same grace they do traffic underneath the basket. “Off the court I love them to death,” Prince said Monday. “But on the court, if they don’t have the same jersey on that I have on, then we are not friends.” Prince and Charles, both sophomores, met during high school in New York City; Prince starred at Murry Bergtraum in Manhattan, and Charles at Christ the King in Queens. Lumped together in many a conversation because of their basketball abilities, they bonded in a way that transcended the game. They text-message each other or talk almost every day, and when they do, “We don’t even talk about basketball,” Charles said Monday. Instead, they discuss schoolwork, men and the most recent episode of their favorite show, “Law and Order.” On occasion, Prince said, Charles will playfully chide her for choosing Rutgers over Connecticut. “Sometimes,” Prince said, “she’ll bring it up like, ‘How come you didn’t come here?’ and I’m like ‘That’s over with,’ and I’ll try to change the subject real fast.” They both tend to become emotional after losses. Last year, after Rutgers defeated Connecticut, 55-47, in the final of the Big East tournament, a disconsolate Charles said the Huskies played their worst game and the Scarlet Knights summoned their best effort. Prince was not amused. Nor did she enjoy hearing from Charles how the Huskies would be alive in the tournament longer than the Scarlet Knights. After Connecticut lost in the regional final to Louisiana State and Rutgers advanced to the Final Four with a victory against Arizona State, she said she sent Charles a text that read: “Where r u? Because we’re still dancing.” “We both can get like that when we lose,” Prince said. “Usually it’s me who says a lot when I don’t win. It’s not really her.” Prince’s friendship with McLaren, also a sophomore, was strengthened during the year they spent playing on the same A.A.U. team and sealed with Jamaican jerk chicken from McLaren’s mother, Rosemarie. While visiting McLaren last summer at her home in Washington, Prince tasted Rosemarie McLaren’s specialty dish for the first time. “I wanted seconds and thirds,” Prince said. “I liked it a lot.” In January, the Scarlet Knights traveled to Washington to play Georgetown. Prince asked McLaren if her mother would please, please, please make her some jerk chicken. Rosemarie McLaren was happy to comply, but there was one condition. She took the dish to Prince after the game so she would not miss the telecast of the Huskies’ game at Syracuse. “I ate it on the bus ride home,” Prince said with a smile. “It was delicious.” Prince or McLaren — one or the other — is going to taste defeat Tuesday night, and for that player no amount of jerk chicken will make the loss go down easier. But come Wednesday, Prince will text McLaren and/or Charles as if Tuesday’s game never happened. “I love Tina and I love Kaili and so I wouldn’t try to let anything come between us,” Prince said. “At the end of the day, you’ve still got to remember that it’s just a game, no matter how competitive we are. One day we’re not going to be able to play this game but hopefully down the line we’ll still be friends.” Could that be food for thought for Connecticut Coach Geno Auriemma? His enmity with Tennessee Coach Pat Summitt has hardened into a glacial chill, with no spring thaw in sight. Auriemma was informed Monday that Summitt told the ESPN broadcasters Nancy Lieberman and Pam Ward that she voted for him as coach of the year. With his tongue firmly in cheek, he replied, “I respect Pat Summitt’s knowledge of the game and how perceptive and keen she is, and that’s just another example of that.” Perhaps this is an example of where the players have something to teach the coach. “We want to keep this relationship going,” McLaren said, referring to her friendship with Prince. “We know when we’re on the court we’re going against each other. But as soon as that 40 minutes are up, we’re back to being good friends again.”

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey


Jimmie Johnson Wins in Sprint Cup Chase After a Stormy Finish

Abstract: Brad Keselowski’s face was puffy, and he took a few quick drinks of water to wash the blood from his mouth. So close to a big playoff win, Jeff Gordon was left with a cut on his lip. The Chase for the Sprint Cup championship took another intense turn in Fort Worth on Sunday when Gordon and Keselowski were part of a brawl after Jimmie Johnson won his third consecutive Texas fall race. Johnson emerged from a frantic finish, the second attempt at an overtime two-lap sprint to the finish after his teammate Gordon spun out from the front after contact with Keselowski. While Johnson celebrated his fourth victory at Texas and 70th Sprint Cup win over all, fireworks exploded in the sky — and on pit road. An irate Gordon stopped his car next to Keselowski and confronted him. There were plenty of punches thrown, with Nascar officials in the middle of crew members and others around Keselowski’s No. 2 car. It was the second time in the last four races that another driver confronted Keselowski after the checkered flag. Gordon was leading on a restart on Lap 335, one more than the race’s scheduled length, when he took the outside lane. When Gordon drifted up a bit, Keselowski pushed through the gap and made contact, leaving Gordon’s car with a cut tire. “We were just racing for the win,” Keselowski said. “I didn’t wreck him, and just raced him hard. He left a hole. Everything you watch in racing, you leave a hole, you’re supposed to go for it.” He added: “I wanted to win the race, and that was the opportunity. It just didn’t come together.” Gordon said he was on older tires when “out of nowhere I got slammed by the 2.” He used an expletive in referring to Keselowski, who took third. “The way he races, I don’t know how he ever won a championship,” Gordon said. “This is why everyone is fighting with him. “ He added, “The kid is just doing stuff way over his head.” Gordon spun out, lost a lap in the pits and finished 29th. BRITON TAKES U.S. GRAND PRIX Lewis Hamilton increased his lead in the Formula One world championship to 24 points when he swept to his fifth consecutive victory and 10th of the season by winning an intriguing United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Tex. Hamilton, a 29-year-old Briton, started second behind his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, his nearest rival for the championship. Hamilton took the lead with a bold move after 24 laps on his way to beating Rosberg, of Germany, by nearly five seconds. It was the 32nd win of Hamilton’s career, giving him one more than Nigel Mansell as the British driver with most career victories in Formula One. Hamilton now has 316 points to Rosberg’s 292 with two races left. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Car Racing
Jimmie Johnson
Brad Keselowski
Jeff Gordon
Sprint Cup Series


Man Detonates Suicide Vest During U.S. Raid on Iraqi House

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Eleven people died after Americans raided a house in the northern city of Mosul at dawn on Sunday and one of the residents detonated a suicide vest while others engaged in a gunfight, the American and Iraqi militaries said. The Americans said that after they entered the house in pursuit of a known insurgent, his companions opened fire and the insurgent detonated his vest. Three women and two children died during the raid, though it was unclear whether they were killed by the gunfire between the Americans and the insurgents or by the explosion. Neighbors said they heard an explosion come from inside the house between 5 and 6 a.m. They said the local morgue had received 11 bodies and that two children had survived, with at least one child taken to a hospital in Mosul on Sunday evening. “This is just another tragic example of how Al Qaeda in Iraq hides behind innocent Iraqis,” said Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, a military spokesman. “The terrorist exploded his suicide vest in close proximity to women and children, and in a house full of explosives and weapons.” The violent episode, one of two in the Mosul area on Sunday, served as a reminder that Sunni extremists continue to operate there despite several months of intensive efforts by American and Iraqi forces to remove them from the city. On the west side of Mosul, in a rough, crime-ridden area known as Zanjeli, two Sunni militants attacked a mourning tent in pursuit of an Iraqi military officer on Sunday. Some of the mourners returned fire. Two mourners were killed and three were wounded, including the military officer, said Brig. Khalid Abdul Sattar, the police spokesman in Mosul. He said the gunmen escaped. A witness who was in the tent said four people were killed, three of them brothers of the person being mourned — a woman who had recently been caught in the cross-fire between the Iraqi police and insurgents. Meanwhile, an American military official said Sunday that a collision between two helicopters in Baghdad on Saturday that killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded five other soldiers appeared to have been an accident. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. Earlier reports left some doubt as to whether the collision occurred because one of the helicopters was attacked and the pilot lost control. The crash occurred in a neighborhood near Sadr City, which has often been hostile to the American military presence. In other developments, signs that campaigning for provincial elections had begun were evident in a visit Saturday by two prominent Shiite leaders to the Sunni province of Salahuddin. The Shiite leaders — Amar al-Hakim, the heir apparent to the leadership of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, one of the country’s two most influential Shiite parties, and Hadi al-Ameri, a member of Parliament who is also from the party — met with local leaders in Tikrit, including the deputy governor, Abdullah Jabarah. Tikrit is the provincial capital and the hometown of Saddam Hussein. At the meeting, which was televised on Sunday, Mr. Jabarah told the Shiite leaders that if they wanted to achieve lasting reconciliation with Sunnis, they should ease rules excluding members of the former ruling Baath Party from government jobs and grant amnesty to army officers associated with Mr. Hussein. His request highlighted the case of Sultan Hashim, the defense minister under Mr. Hussein, who has been awaiting execution since June 2007. Mr. Jabarah is a former military officer who worked alongside Mr. Hashim. “There must be a total amnesty for him and the army chief of staff,” Mr. Jabarah said in a telephone interview. “It would be a huge step toward reconciliation and national unity.” Mr. Jabarah likened the trial of Mr. Hashim to prosecuting American military officers for the role of their soldiers in killing Iraqi civilians in the course of conducting operations in the country. “Putting him on trial in the first place is equivalent to trying the whole Iraqi Army,” he said. Also on Sunday, Egypt’s foreign minister and oil minister made an official visit to Baghdad. It was the highest-ranking Egyptian delegation to visit Iraq since the kidnapping and murder of Cairo’s envoy to Baghdad, Ihab al-Sharif, in July 2005. The Turkish military said Sunday that it conducted airstrikes Saturday against Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq. It gave few details, saying only that Turkish warplanes had safely returned to their bases, and that the strikes were aimed only at military targets.

Iraq
Bombs and Explosives
Mosul (Iraq)
Terrorism
United States Armament and Defense


A World Cup From a Different World

Abstract: About two months after Italy hoisted the World Cup in 2006, following a championship game that was watched by more than a billion people worldwide, 48 teams gathered in Cape Town for a tournament that had little glitz or cachet — the Homeless World Cup. On Tuesday, the movie “Kicking It,” which chronicles the tournament through the eyes of seven players and was a selection at the Sundance Film Festival , will make its television debut (ESPN2, 9 p.m. Eastern). The entrepreneur Ted Leonsis, who owns the Washington Capitals of the N.H.L., the Washington Mystics of the W.N.B.A. and a share of the Washington Wizards of the N.B.A., financed the movie and was its executive producer. “As someone who loves sports and owns teams, I live in this world where sports is a basic fabric of our culture, and what gets reported all the time is dog fighting, steroids, promiscuity — the bad things,” Leonsis said in a telephone interview. “That’s what sell papers and leads the news. Yet here is this basic construct — a billion people around the world are homeless. And more than a billion love soccer. So you make a field, throw out a ball, and people who look like their lives are lost become transformed. Lives are reclaimed through the beauty and simplicity of teamwork. There are very few stories like that. People who were outside society learn to work together.” Leonsis, a Brooklyn native and former executive at AOL, became interested in the potential power of documentary films when he read an obituary about Iris Chang, the author of “The Rape of Nanking.” (He has started a Web site, SnagFilms.com , where you can view full documentaries free or “snag” a clip and embed it in a site.) “It motivated me to make a film,” Leonsis said. At the Sundance festival in 2007, when “Nanking” won the Documentary Editing Award, Leonsis coined the term filmantrophy to describe his approach. The director of “Kicking It,” Susan Koch, contacted Leonsis and secured $1 million in financing. “This was right down our strike zone,” he said. Leonsis enlisted the actor Colin Farrell as the film’s narrator, and Farrell pledged his fee to a homeless shelter in his native Ireland. “He’s from Ireland, played soccer and also had drug demons,” Leonsis said. The filmmakers tell the story of soccer and homelessness through the stories of men from the United States, Russia, Spain, Afghanistan, Ireland, Kenya and other countries — people who all “have problems with the soul,” one of them said. “I’ve gotten to know some of these men personally, the coach of Russia, one of the American players, Craig Holley,” Leonsis said. “And I hosted the U.S. trials at George Washington University for the next World Cup, in Australia this year. “I got to know them as humans and realized that many times we walk down the street, see a homeless person and cross over. The majority have fallen on hard times. But in the end, after the Homeless World Cup, 77 percent of the players ended up going back to school and cleaned up their lives. Mostly good news, but some tragic news, too.” Who won the title? Tune in Tuesday. Canada While the United States appears to be on track to play in its sixth straight World Cup, soccer in Canada experienced the good, the bad, but mostly the ugly in the past week. The good: the Montreal Impact of the United Soccer Leagues’ First Division, advanced to the group stage of the inaugural Concacaf Champions League. The bad: the national team took only 1 point from two home games in the semifinal round of regional World Cup qualifying and faces a difficult match at Mexico on Wednesday that it must win. Canada has not played in the World Cup since 1986. The ugly: Toronto F.C., minus nine players on international duty, petitioned Major League Soccer to postpone Saturday’s match against visiting Chivas USA, but the request was denied. Toronto was forced to sign three players (Tim Regan, the club’s top scout; Diaz Kambere of the U.S.L. Vancouver Whitecaps; and Rick Titus, a truck driver who plays for Real Toronto of the Ontario Soccer League) to emergency contracts the day before the game. Wait, it gets worse: Toronto defender Marco Vélez, the team’s captain, was ejected for violent conduct early in the second half and Chivas scored two goals to win, 3-1. Toronto has won only one of its last 10 games (1-6-3) dating to June 21. “On this occasion, I thought common sense would prevail,” Toronto Coach John Carver told The Canadian Press, referring to the request to postpone the game. “Unfortunately, it didn’t. The result was inevitable.” Carver added: “This is my toughest moment in football. I’ve had some good times, I’ve had some bad times, I’ve had some proud moments, but this was the toughest week I’ve ever, ever put in in 25 years of professional football.” The game was not without another strange moment. In the 73rd minute, Chivas goalkeeper Zach Thornton was injured in a collision with Danny Dichio, who was given a yellow card. Thornton hurt his leg and had to be taken off on a stretcher, but medical personnel were unable keep their grip, dropping the 230-pound Thornton to the turf. He then walked to the locker room. United States There has been nothing pretty or stylish about the United States’ three straight road wins in World Cup qualifying games. But the American team will nearly clinch a berth in next year’s final round with a victory over Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday in Bridgeview, Ill. “Two wins for us doesn’t get better than that, so that’s what we’re building on,” defender Carlos Bocanegra said after the United States defeated Cuba, 1-0, in Havana on Saturday night. “We’re going home now to Chicago, so we’re excited. If we get 3 more points there, we’ll set ourselves up nice.” The win against Cuba came after a 1-0 win in Guatemala, a place the United States had never won in World Cup qualifying, and a 1-0 victory in Barbados in June. “It’s exactly where we wanted to be,” striker Brian Ching said. “Two tough road games. Someone was saying it’s the first time we’ve won three road games in Concacaf in a row, so an accomplishment there. Hopefully, we can build on that and get another 3 points at home.” Coach Bob Bradley has been criticized for fielding lineups heavy with veteran players that had little flair and produced few goals. But an early clincher will give Bradley time to call on younger players like Jozy Altidore and Freddy Adu before next year’s final round. Notes ¶The Red Bulls have started a Web site, redbullarena.us , where fans can track construction progress via photographs and a live Web cam at the club’s new stadium in Harrison, N.J. * * * MORE NEWS ABOUT SOCCER TEAM France could have a new coach if it does not defeat Serbia in Paris on Wednesday, according to news media reports,. The French opened World Cup qualifying by losing at Austria, 3-1. Coach Raymond Domenech, who kept his job even though France was eliminated in the first round of Euro 2008, may not survive another defeat. PLAYER Trinidad and Tobago’s prospects of beating the United States in a World Cup qualifying match Wednesday took a hit when the veteran striker Dwight Yorke, 36, was recalled by Sunderland of the English Premier League. Yorke was the captain and played 90 minutes in Saturday’s 1-1 draw against Guatemala.

Soccer
Motion Pictures
Kicking It (Movie)
World Cup (Soccer)
Leonsis Ted


John I. Goodlad, Progressive Educator, Dies at 94

Abstract: John I. Goodlad, an influential educator whose study of more than 27,000 students, teachers and administrators in the late 1970s and early ’80s documented the problems plaguing American public schools, died on Nov. 29 in Seattle. He was 94. The cause was cancer, his son, Stephen, said. Professor Goodlad, who taught for many years at the University of Washington and had earlier been dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, was a progressive education reformer in the tradition of John Dewey. Many of his views — on the importance of early childhood education, for example, or on the need for better teacher training — remain central to the educational reform agenda. He was best known for his comprehensive eight-year study involving classes from kindergarten through 12th grade in 38 schools in 13 communities. The project, sponsored by the Institute for the Development of Educational Activities, an independent research organization, and conducted with the help of more than 40 other researchers, published its findings in 1983. The picture it painted, The New York Times reported at the time, was “a world of talky teachers and uninterested students, who work in a context of unclear goals and serious social and educational inequities.” The study and a 1984 book by Professor Goodlad that grew out of it, “A Place Called School,” resonated widely in policy circles, in part because it appeared so closely on the heels of “A Nation at Risk,” the 1983 report by a presidential commission that concluded that American education was threatened by a rising tide of mediocrity. “John’s most powerful teaching was that school is a moral enterprise, not just a matter of getting the right techniques and organizational structure,” said Jeannie Oakes, who worked with Mr. Goodlad on the school study and is now an emeritus education professor at U.C.L.A. “There has to be an understanding that schooling is central to our democracy, that teachers are responsible not only for the academic development of their students, but their social development and their development as citizens.” John Inkster Goodlad was born on Aug. 19, 1920, in North Vancouver, British Columbia, and grew up in a mountain community nearby. He began his teaching career in a one-room schoolhouse with 34 children across eight grades, an experience that shaped many of his ideas, his son said. He came to see grade levels as arbitrary markers devised for adult convenience. “He could see that the kids were really great at helping other kids learn, across the grade levels,” Stephen Goodlad said. “And he saw that just because you were at a certain age or grade level didn’t mean you were functioning at a certain level. What he saw there showed him that we had a system that didn’t make much sense.” Professor Goodlad proposed a radically new model of schools, in which elementary school students would not be divided into specific grades and their work would not be graded. He opposed tracking students by their skill levels, and he suggested that teachers should have a career path that, with experience and a doctoral degree, could lead to higher-paying jobs as a master teacher, working with professionals who were newer to the classroom. At the University of Washington, Professor Goodlad and two other professors, Roger Soder and Kenneth Sirotnik, founded the Center for Educational Renewal to promote collaboration between schools and teacher-training institutions. In 1992, the year after he retired from the university, Professor Goodlad founded an offshoot, the Institute for Educational Inquiry , which is devoted to strengthening the role of education in maintaining democracy. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Mary Paula Kamp, and five grandsons. His wife, Evalene, died in 2006. “I have pondered for decades how he kept going, fighting the same fights over and over,” Stephen Goodlad said of his father. “I would have torn out my hair, or gone fishing.” Professor Goodlad, incidentally, often did just that, his son said. He was an avid salmon fisherman at his summer home in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Professor Goodlad was hopeful but also realistic about changing how schools teach, and in a long career at the forefront of educational reform he learned lessons of his own. “One of the things you learn is that good things keep recycling,” he said in 1993 in an interview with Technos Quarterly, a journal about the use of technology in education. “If it’s a good idea that doesn’t make it this time, it’ll make it next time. “The other thing that you learn — and it’s discouraging — is that you’re always getting newcomers on the scene for the recycling process,” he continued. “That means the process of educational change and improvement never ends, because you’re always dealing with a new clientele, a new group of parents, a new group of administrators, a new group of teachers, and so on. “Third, and most important,” he said, “would be that it doesn’t matter how many bills you pass and how many policies you lay down from on high — when it comes right down to it, the individual school has an incredible capacity for rejecting it passively or taking it on and doing something about it.”

Obituary
K-12 Education
A Place Called School
University of Washington
University of California
Los Angeles
Research
John I. Goodlad


Bruins’ Sweep of Penguins Punctuates Unlikely Turnaround

Abstract: BOSTON — The game had ended, the handshakes and pleasantries had been exchanged, and the Bruins gathered in their black jerseys and white hats for a team picture surrounding the Prince of Wales Trophy, given to the winner of the Eastern Conference finals. Superstition says that players should only pose with the trophy and not touch it, for the only one that merits holding and hoisting is the Stanley Cup. The Bruins will get that opportunity starting this week. Six weeks ago, the prospect of Boston’s winning the conference title, or even still playing in June, seemed close to preposterous. The Bruins stumbled their way into the playoffs, winning two of their last eight games in a lockout-compressed schedule made tougher by two postponements because of the Boston Marathon bombings and a third to a snowstorm. They fell from the No. 2 spot in the conference to No. 4 with a season-ending home loss to Ottawa. They proceeded to blow a 3-1 lead in the first round to Toronto and found themselves trailing, 4-1, midway through the third period of Game 7 . Then, something happened — the Bruins cannot explain it — and they have never been the same. Since Game 6 of the Toronto series, the Bruins have won 9 of 10 games, and the only loss came in overtime. They have been a defensive juggernaut with opportunistic scoring and solid goaltending. The Bruins rallied for three goals to tie the Maple Leafs, two of them coming with the goalie pulled in the final two minutes. The winner came in overtime. “It certainly catapulted us into our level of our play and performance,” General Manager Peter Chiarelli said Saturday. “You could see the team pick itself up. It wasn’t really a switch. I think it was more of a realization to these guys, like, ‘Hey, we had better get this thing done.’ We waited a little long. But it certainly was a boost to their play the rest of the way, without question.” Boston dispatched the Rangers in five games and improbably swept the vaunted Penguins in the conference finals , a series in which Pittsburgh, with the N.H.L.’s most productive offense, never held a lead and managed only two goals. Image The Bruins celebrating their sweep of Sidney Crosby, left, and the Penguins. Credit Charles Krupa/Associated Press “If we look back at that Game 7, we wouldn’t be here anymore,” said Bruins center David Krejci, who leads all playoff scorers. “We would be done. The Rangers would have beat us. We’ve done a pretty good job to stay in the moment. We took it game by game. Right now, we’re talking about the final.” The dismantling of the high-flying Penguins included holding their top three playoff scorers, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Sidney Crosby, without a point in the four games. Letang still leads the N.H.L. in playoff assists with 13. Malkin is still tied with Krejci at No. 2 with 12. Jarome Iginla, who spurned the Bruins for the Penguins at the trade deadline, also had no points. In a fitting denouement, an inoffensive 35-foot wrist shot by Iginla — only his fourth shot of the series — proved to be the Penguins’ final one. Goalie Tuukka Rask, who had been ordinary in much of the first two rounds, easily caught it to conclude an extraordinary series: two goals allowed and a .985 save percentage in the series. “Right now, he’s in a zone that you hope he can hold on to,” Bruins Coach Claude Julien said of Rask. “Without that kind of goaltending, you don’t get a chance at winning a Cup.” The Bruins know. In 2011, Tim Thomas was nearly unbeatable in the Stanley Cup finals against Vancouver, allowing eight goals in seven games. But he really did not turn into a fortress that postseason until Game 7 of the conference finals, when he shut out Tampa Bay. In the previous six games of that series, Thomas allowed 19 goals. Rask has allowed 30 goals in 16 games — three in the last five. The turnaround by Rask epitomizes the Bruins’ about-face. Throughout the Toronto series and even early in the Rangers series, Julien kept referring to his team as a Jekyll-and-Hyde club, never sure which one would show up. Injuries contributed to the problem, as three regulars on defense were injured in the Toronto series. But, as the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The Bruins hardly looked like Stanley Cup contenders heading into the playoffs and were a corpse-in-waiting in Game 7 against Toronto. Now, they’re playing for a chance to win a second Stanley Cup in three seasons. “The peaks and valleys of a season sometimes pay off a lot more than people give credit for, because you certainly grow from those tough times, you learn from those things, it makes you a better team down the road,” Julien said. Julien continued: “I thought this year had its ups and downs; it was a tough schedule. But right now we’re probably playing some of our best hockey of the season.”

Bruins
Pittsburgh Penguins
Ice hockey
Tuukka Rask
Tim Thomas
Stanley Cup


At CES, Netflix Adds Over 130 Countries to Streaming Service

Abstract: Netflix went live with its streaming television service in nearly every country across the world on Wednesday, an unexpected acceleration of the company’s aggressive quest for global ubiquity by the end of 2016. Yet one major region on Netflix’s world map remains dark: China, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s broadband households. And in many of the 190 countries where Netflix now is available — including Turkey, Russia and Poland — the service is available in English, but not the local language. “We still have a lot of work to do,” Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon. “Because of the number of countries, it seems like we are ahead of plan. But we still have China — we still have a quarter of the world to go.” Mr. Hastings’s cautious demeanor on the phone was in contrast to the more commanding pose he struck hours earlier when he announced at International CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, that Netflix had simultaneously added more than 130 countries to its world service map. “Right now, you are witnessing the birth of a global TV network,” Mr. Hastings said from the stage in a keynote address. A montage of global flags scrolled in the background followed by a map of the world emblazoned with the hashtag #netflixeverywhere. “Whether you are in Sydney or St. Petersburg, Singapore or Seoul, Santiago or Saskatoon, you now can be part of the Internet TV revolution,” Mr. Hastings added. The proclamation was a bold move from Netflix to address growing skepticism about whether it can sustain its breakneck expansion and deliver on its promises. Costs are running high for Netflix. In addition to its global rollout, the company plans to spend more than $6 billion in cash on programming in 2016, offering more than 600 hours of original series, films and other content. And after running roughly at break-even profitability through this year, Netflix has pledged to deliver material global profits starting in 2017. International expansion is increasingly crucial for the company as growth slows in the United States. The opportunity is big. While the United States has about 100 million broadband households, according to SNL Kagan, that is just a fraction of the 730 million total global broadband households. Yet there are steep challenges, including whether Netflix will be able to land programming rights to series that appeal to customers around the globe and compete with local streaming rivals. “International is really the place where people have a bigger sense of debate,” said Michael Nathanson, a media analyst with MoffettNathanson Research. “It has never been attempted before.” Mr. Hastings said that Netflix was now in about 70 million homes and he expected the number of customers outside the United States to surpass the number domestically at some point in 2017. Netflix’s long-term goal is to reach 60 million to 90 million subscribers in the United States, but has yet to set a similar target internationally. Around the globe, Netflix will be available for one monthly price — in India that is 500 rupees, or about $7.50 — and global subscribers will be able to watch Netflix original series as well as a library of licensed television shows and movies. Netflix said that in 2016 it planned to release 31 new and returning original series, 24 films and documentaries, 30 original children series and stand-up comedy specials. They will become available to all subscribers at the same time around the world. Netflix also announced that it was including Arabic, Korean and simplified and traditional Chinese to the 17 languages already available. The service will not be available in Crimea, North Korea and Syria because of United States government restrictions on American companies. China remains the major unanswered question, analysts said. “That is the big wild card that Netflix and investors are waiting for,” said William V. Power, analyst at Baird Equity Research. “The questions are: Just how do you tackle that market with the various governmental or regulatory obstacles? Can they go it alone or do they partner with somebody?” Mr. Hastings said that Netflix continued to explore its options in China but that establishing a service there could take many months or even some years. “We are building relationships and trying to be very patient,” Mr. Hastings said. “The strategy is to think very long term, to be like Disney, Apple or Starbucks in China.” Wall Street is watching Netflix’s moves carefully. The company’s share price surged 135 percent in 2015, making it the top performer on the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. But some analysts question whether the company can maintain the momentum. On Monday, Netflix shares dropped after an analyst downgraded the company’s stock, citing concerns over weaker-than-expected subscriber growth in the United States. Mr. Power, the analyst at Baird who downgraded the stock, outlined other risks, including escalating content costs, international expansion and rising competition from Amazon, Hulu and YouTube. “Given Netflix’s high valuation, any missteps could prompt outsize movement in the stock,” Mr. Power said. On Wednesday, Netflix shares increased about 9 percent.

Netflix
China
Web television
TV
International CES
Reed Hastings


3 Palin Stylists Cost Campaign More Than $165,000

Abstract: Senator John McCain ’s presidential campaign spent more than $165,000 over the course of nine weeks on a trio of stylists for Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, equivalent to what a Hollywood studio might invest in preparing an A-list actress for a movie premiere or publicity campaign, other stylists said. The fees showed up in new campaign finance reports filed late Thursday with the Federal Election Commission. The filings furnished a trickle of new details to what has become one of the lingering controversies of the 2008 presidential campaign: the expensive makeover of Ms. Palin, the vice-presidential nominee, for the campaign, including the tens of thousands of dollars spent by the Republican Party on clothing for her and her family, undermining her calibrated “hockey mom” appeal. Besides the payments to the stylists, the new reports, for the period of Oct. 16 to Nov. 24, showed additional purchases on Ms. Palin’s behalf, significantly beyond the $150,000 already reported that was spent by the party at luxury stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. The Republican National Committee used contributions from its donors for about $23,000 in additional charges from dozens of stores, including Saks, Neiman’s, Nordstrom, Victoria’s Secret, Kate Spade, Brooks Brothers, Radio Shack and the Gap, according to the filings. There were more than 70 bills, ranging from more than $4,500 spent at various Saks stores to $350 at Escape Skin Care & Day Spa in New York to $151.71 bought from Toys “R” Us in New York. Ms. Palin said through a spokeswoman that she had not authorized the purchases or services and was “appalled” at the huge amount of money spent. The new filings also showed that the McCain campaign paid Lisa L. Kline, a New York stylist who appears from campaign finance records to have been Ms. Palin’s fashion consultant, $54,900 in mid-October. Calls to Ms. Kline’s home and office in New York in recent weeks, including on Friday, were not returned. A former McCain campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity to give a candid account of private matters in the campaign, said that after Ms. Palin expressed interest in help from a stylist, she was referred to Ms. Kline by Nicolle Wallace, a senior communications aide for the campaign. Ms. Wallace did not return a call seeking comment. Two Hollywood stylists, each of whom works with leading actresses but asked not to be identified because of their clients’ wishes, said Ms. Kline’s fee seemed excessively high. “If she was traveling with Sarah Palin every day, maybe I’d understand,” one of the stylists said. “But stylists don’t typically do that.” A top stylist working for a top film actress for a movie premiere and a press junket, which might last two weeks and include time selecting outfits, would be paid about $40,000, the stylists estimated. What is not known is whether Ms. Kline’s fee included extra costs like tailoring, messenger services and the use of an assistant. If so, said Leslie Fremar, a stylist whose clients include the actresses Charlize Theron, Jennifer Connelly and Julianne Moore, the fee to style Ms. Palin would not be unreasonable. “At first glance, it seems high,” Ms. Fremar said. “I think most people don’t realize what it costs for an independent contractor to do these services. They think it’s just clothes.” The McCain campaign also paid Amy Strozzi, Ms. Palin’s traveling makeup artist, $68,400 for roughly two months of work. Ms. Strozzi was nominated for an Emmy award this year for her work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?” The figure did not seem outlandish to Robin Siegel, a makeup artist in Los Angeles who has worked with celebrities. “I don’t think that’s exorbitant considering the time she needed to be available,” Ms. Siegel said. Ms. Palin’s traveling hair stylist, Angela Lew, was paid $42,615, which works out to about $750 a day over two months. John Barrett, who owns a hair salon in New York that bears his name, said his day rate to work with a star or a V.I.P. was $5,000, a figure that was consistent with other top hairdressers’. “For someone like Nicole Kidman or Jennifer Lopez, that’s reasonable,” Mr. Barrett said of the fee. A man who identified himself as Ms. Lew’s father, Ron Lew, said his daughter traveled with Ms. Palin and worked round the clock. He said her earnings were roughly the equivalent of what she would have made at the Hair Grove in Westlake Village, Calif., where she normally works and which he characterized as a high-end salon. He said Ms. Lew, who is 24, came to the attention of campaign officials through Cindy McCain, who had used a hairdresser at the same salon. “She thoroughly enjoyed it,” Mr. Lew said of his daughter’s campaign experience. But while studios may be willing to pay thousands of dollars a day for the preferred hairdressers of stars like Julia Roberts or Reese Witherspoon, Mr. Barrett, the New York salon owner, said salons and agencies could offer a range of rates for grooming services. Some stylists questioned why Ms. Palin needed separate hair and makeup people when there were people who could do both. Even as the controversy over Ms. Palin’s makeover continues — controversy that many of her defenders said would not surround a male politician — it remains unclear exactly how the transactions occurred and who made the purchasing decisions. Ms. Palin has rebuffed anonymous accusations by McCain campaign aides about shopping extravagance, saying the clothes were simply lent to her for use at the Republican National Convention. If she were to keep the clothes, she would have to report them as taxable income. “Those clothes are not my property,” Ms. Palin said in an interview on Fox News. “We had three days of using clothes that the R.N.C. purchased.” But the sheer number of purchases, from vendors around the country, would seem to contradict her explanation. They range from a $561 charge at Home Optics, a store in Chugiak, Alaska, about a half-hour from Ms. Palin’s home in Wasilla, to $79.98 spent at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Washington, Pa. Joy Leedham, the owner of Home Optics, said Ms. Palin’s campaign aides bought an extra set of eyeglasses for her with antireflective coating on the lenses that her old glasses did not have, just before the vice- presidential debate on Oct. 2. Ms. Leedham said Ms. Palin still had the glasses. Meghan Stapleton, a senior adviser to the vice-presidential campaign, said Friday that Ms. Palin had not been consulted about the expenditures. “The decisions reflected in this disclosure are financially poor decisions made by campaign staffers hired by the campaign and not the governor,” Ms. Stapleton said in an e-mail statement. “The governor expected judicious decisions to be made, and they weren’t. She is absolutely appalled at the news and the amount of money reportedly spent on the vice-presidential campaign. To this day, the governor has not seen a list of expenses for the campaign and its staff, and she does not know who benefited from all the expenditures reported.” The campaign finance records showed that numerous campaign aides initially paid for the clothes and were then reimbursed. They included Ms. Palin’s chief of staff, Andrew Smith; Christopher Edwards, who was in charge of advance for the governor; and Kristi Pulsfort, a member of the traveling press staff. Republican National Committee officials, who insisted that all the purchases were made at the campaign’s behest, said all of the clothes had been collected, were being catalogued and would be given to various charities. They declined to provide further details.

Palin Sarah
Presidential Election of 2008
McCain John


Big Chill in the Big House for Toronto’s Winter Classic Win

Abstract: ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Toronto’s Jonathan Bernier wore heat packs inside his goalie pants and blocker pad. Several players wore black balaclavas under their helmets; a few wore knit caps atop them. Water bottles froze on the benches. Amid falling snow and bitter cold on New Year’s Day, more than 100,000 fans packed the Big House to watch the Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings play in the N.H.L.’s sixth Winter Classic. In the end, the Maple Leafs beat the Red Wings, 3-2, on Tyler Bozak’s shootout goal, but hockey, played this day in its wintry original form, came out the biggest winner. “The snow coming down brought back a lot of memories from a childhood of playing outside,” said Toronto Coach Randy Carlyle, who grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, and spent most of his career playing for Winnipeg. “Growing up in northern Ontario, I never really played indoors until I was 14 years old.” Mike Babcock, the Red Wings’ coach, said: “Today was spectacular. It was a home run for hockey.” The game at Michigan Stadium was the most aesthetically pleasing Winter Classic since the inaugural one, at Orchard Park, N.Y., in 2008, which was also played in the snow and decided by a shootout, with Pittsburgh beating Buffalo. The announced attendance, 105,491, will set a record for a hockey game pending confirmation by the Guinness Book of Records. The previous mark, 104,173, was set here for a 2010 game between Michigan and Michigan State. The temperature was 13 degrees at game time, with a wind chill of minus-1. A steady snowfall that started before dawn delayed traffic, turning a 45-minute drive from Detroit into a crawl of more than two and a half hours, causing some fans to miss the opening face-off. But inside the stadium, the mood was festive, with the fan support split evenly between the two Original Six teams. Entire blocks of hundreds of seats were dominated by red-clad Wings fans or blue-clad Leafs fans, 40,000 arriving from across the Ontario border. While Carlyle called the atmosphere raucous, the players found the frigid conditions challenging. Detroit’s Justin Abdelkader said he had to shake frozen water bottles to get a drink. Bernier, who made 41 saves to keep the Leafs in the game, was often seen shoving his hands inside his pants during stoppages. “My trainer was giving me hot packs, and I put it in my pants as well to try and keep warm,” Bernier said. He also wore a tuque atop his helmet to keep the heat from escaping through the ventilation holes, he said. Play was stopped twice in the first period so crews could shovel snow off the ice. Pavel Datsyuk told Babcock that the Wings were being too careful with the puck, but they had no choice because of the layer of snow. Wings defenseman Danny DeKeyser momentarily overskated the puck when it got stuck in a pile of snow. Leafs defenseman Carl Gunnarsson checked Abdelkader into the sideboards, knocking a cascade of powder from the boards’ outer shelving. Afterward, players and coaches did not talk so much about the snow and the cold, instead reveling in the atmosphere of playing hockey outdoors in front of a huge crowd of hockey-mad fans. “Having 105,000 people screaming and yelling for us is really amazing, and as hockey players, we’re never going to forget that,” Bozak said. Babcock said: “I never talk to my team after we lose, ever. I did today. I just said: ‘You should be proud. Be thankful for the experience. Remember the experience.’ ” The game was scoreless until 13 minutes 14 seconds of the second period, when a pass bounced into the Toronto net off the skate of Detroit’s Daniel Alfredsson. The south half of the stadium, dominated by Detroit fans, rose with a roar. The north half of the stadium, dominated by Toronto fans, stayed seated, shivering. With 37 seconds left in the second period, James Van Riemsdyk tied the score for Toronto, and in the third, Bozak tipped in a shot to give the Maple Leafs the lead. Abdelkader tied the score with 5:22 left in regulation. Only a few frozen fans left early, missing a frantic overtime period, with the Leafs’ Cody Franson hitting the post behind Detroit goalie Jimmy Howard with 33 seconds left. “It was a little chilly out there,” Carlyle said. “But it got a lot warmer by the time the game was over, that’s for sure.” Next year’s Winter Classic will be hosted by the Washington Capitals, although the site of the game has not been determined. Almost certainly, it will not match the frozen snow globe of the Big House.

Ice hockey
Maple Leafs
Red Wings
NHL
Ann Arbor Michigan


Russia Vetoes U.N. Resolution on Crimea

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — Russia on Saturday vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that declared a planned Sunday referendum on secession in Crimea illegal, casting the sole vote against it. China, Russia’s traditional ally on the Council, abstained. As a permanent member of the Council, Russia has the right to reject any measure proposed in the body. The Russian ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, preceded his no vote by saying that Russia would respect the results of Sunday’s referendum, but he did not say anything about exactly what it would do afterward. Mr. Churkin described the referendum as an “extraordinary measure,” expressing the Crimean people’s right to self-determination, made necessary by what he said was an “illegal coup carried out by radicals” in Ukraine. He was referring to the ouster of President Viktor F. Yanukovych, a Russian ally, in February, which precipitated the current crisis. No one had expected the resolution to pass. Western diplomats had hoped that China would not side with Russia, which would push Moscow into an uncomfortable corner. The measure was worded carefully to persuade China to abstain — “a deliberately reasonable text,” as the British ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, put it — and it succeeded in doing so, but only after placing Beijing in the tightest corner of all. China does not want to be seen as speaking against its strategic partner, Russia. It also does not want to be seen as endorsing the secession of Crimea, which might encourage a vote on independence for Tibet or Taiwan. “China has always respected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states,” said the Chinese ambassador, Liu Jieyi, in explaining his abstention, while also jabbing a finger at the West. “At the same time we have noticed foreign interference is also an important reason leading to violent clashes on the streets of Ukraine.” It was unclear what the Council was prepared to do next. Sanctions are likely to be tightened or expanded by the United States and the European Union, and President François Hollande of France said Saturday that his country would review its military cooperation with Russia, Reuters reported. Russia and the West are deeply entwined in trade and commerce, even though their diplomatic relations are arguably as tense as they have been since the end of the Cold War. Asked whether isolating Russia on the Security Council would complicate efforts to gain Russian cooperation over the conflict in Syria, the American ambassador, Samantha Power, said Washington and Moscow had been deeply divided on Syria even before the Ukrainian crisis emerged. “We have not been able to come together, to see eye to eye on bringing about a political transition” in Syria, Ms. Power said. The United States had proposed the resolution on Ukraine. The one-page text did not name Russia. Rather, it declared the referendum over Crimea’s secession to “have no validity.” It affirmed “the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial sovereignty of Ukraine.” It urged “all parties” to refrain from “unilateral actions and inflammatory rhetoric.” The resolution prompted plenty of high-voltage speeches in the Council. “Russia has used its veto as an accomplice to unlawful military incursion,” Ms. Power told the Council. The French ambassador, Gérard Araud, said, “Russia has vetoed the U.N. Charter.” The Australian ambassador, Gary Quinlan, said that despite the veto of the resolution, “the message from Council members and wider international community is overwhelming.” A de-escalation of the crisis is imperative, Mr. Quinlan said. He urged Russia to pull back its troops into their barracks and allow international monitors into the Crimean peninsula. The authorities there have not allowed observers, including the United Nations assistant secretary general for human rights, Ivan Simonovic, to visit Crimea. The ambassador from Lithuania, Raimonda Murmokaite, said people in her country and others who have lived under “Soviet domination,” as she put it, shared the same apprehension as they watched Russian military advances against Ukraine. “It’s a feeling of tremendous concern and worry,” Ms. Murmokaite said. Unlike Ukraine, Lithuania and many of the former Soviet republics are members of the European Union as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Ukraine has not said whether it planned to take up the issue in the General Assembly, which could further embarrass Russia.

UN
US Foreign Policy
Referendum
International relations
Moscow
Ukraine
Russia
Crimea
China


Lightning Strike Kills More Than 300 Reindeer in Norway

Abstract: OSLO — Hardangervidda, a mountain plateau in southern Norway that is popular among tourists and hikers, is known for its natural beauty. As the seasons change, thousands of reindeer migrate across the plateau, moving between drier lands in the east, where they graze on lichens, and wetter lands in the west, where they breed. But on Friday, a storm transformed the plateau into a grisly scene. Lightning appeared to have killed an entire herd: 323 reindeer at last count, including 70 calves and five reindeer that had to be put down because they were severely injured in the storm. “We are not familiar with any previous happening on such a scale,” Kjartan Knutsen, an official at the Nature Inspectorate , part of the Norwegian Environment Agency , said in a phone interview on Monday. “Individual animals do from time to time get killed by lightning, and there are incidents where sheep have been killed in groups of 10 or even 20, but we have never seen anything like this.” Officials surmised that an extremely high discharge of electricity from the storm on Friday afternoon — and the interaction of the lightning with the earth and water — had electrocuted the animals. “Reindeer often huddle together in groups during thunderstorms,” Mr. Knutsen said. “It is a strategy they have to survive, but in this case their survival strategy might have cost them their life. The corpses are all lying in one big group, piled together.” An employee of the agency found the corpses while conducting a count in connection with the culling of the herd, through a controlled hunt. The hunt, which began on Aug. 20 and is scheduled to last through the end of September, is intended to destroy about 2,000 to 3,000 of the roughly 11,000 to 15,000 reindeer, and plans for the hunt are continuing. Olav Strand, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research , inspected the site on Sunday, and said the animals appeared to have died “as if someone just turned off a switch.” The air was filled with a smell that seemed both sweet and sour, he said. “The lightning was fierce, the amount of water pouring down that day was incredible, and the whole group was found dead at the scene, placed as they usually are, huddled into a group, with some standing in two lines on the side and a larger congregation in the middle,” he said. “They were standing on a hill, moving up that hill. They seem to have fallen dead on the ground, exactly where they stood.” He said the only comparable event he could recall in Norway involved 280 or so deer dying in an avalanche at Snohetta, a mountain peak in central Norway, in 2005. “Reindeer are herd animals, unlike elks,” he said. “They gather in groups, and that is how accidents like this one can happen.” Mr. Strand said it was appropriate for the hunt to continue. “We hope this year’s hunt will bring the amount down by 2,000 to 3,000 animals, to get a balance between population and resources in the areas,” he said. “However, had this incident happened to a smaller population than the one in Hardangervidda, we might have had to take measures.” Anton Krag, a zoologist and the chief executive of the Norwegian Animal Protection Alliance , said he hoped the publicity surrounding the reindeer deaths would lead to greater awareness of the dangers reindeer face. “We are shocked by the extent of this tragedy,” he said. “However, this freak event had unavoidable natural causes and is overshadowed by the animal suffering inflicted on reindeer by human activity. Each year, hundreds of reindeer are killed by trains because the Norwegian government is not willing to invest in preventive measures like fences. Hundreds of reindeer are also wounded by trophy hunters for the sake of recreation.” Mr. Knutsen and Mr. Strand pointed to one upside: the deaths of the 323 reindeer offer an opportunity to increase the sample size for a project to map the prevalence of chronic wasting disease, a contagious neurological disorder that is related to mad cow disease and that was detected in reindeer in southern Norway in March. The authorities had previously asked hunters to submit the heads of up to 4,200 animals as they worked to contain the disease, which attacks the brains of deer, caribou, elk and moose. Mr. Knutsen said that officials would use most of the animals killed in the storm to add to the sample. “The test results for the herd killed by lightning can give crucial answers in understanding how much the disease has spread,” he said. As for the rest of the reindeer corpses, he said, “That remains to be decided upon within the next couple of days. The normal routine in such cases is to let nature take its course.”

Reindeer Lightning Hardangervidda Norway


Leonard Kerpelman, Who Led School Prayer Case, Dies at 88

Abstract: Leonard J. Kerpelman, a Baltimore lawyer and gadfly who successfully argued a landmark Supreme Court case in 1963 that led to a ban on state-supported prayer in public schools, died on Sept. 26 in Baltimore. He was 88. The cause was complications of a tumor, his son Jason Kerpelman said. Mr. Kerpelman, who once proudly referred to himself as “a pariah to the Establishment,” blended a legal career with a commitment to causes, including historical preservation, environmental activism, government transparency and the rights of divorced fathers. He was best known for representing Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the founder of the group American Atheists, who on behalf of her teenage son William J. Murray III objected to a Baltimore rule requiring the Lord’s Prayer and Bible verses to begin each school day. Mr. Kerpelman took on the case, pro bono, after Mrs. O’Hair parted ways with her first lawyer in the middle of an appeal. Mr. Kerpelman’s wife, Elinor, had encouraged him to reach out to her, he recalled, because “she felt sympathy for her.” Mr. Kerpelman carried the case to the Supreme Court, where it was combined with another case and identified as Abington School District v. Schempp . Questioning Mr. Kerpelman from the bench, Justice Potter Stewart pointed out that Baltimore’s rule allowed children who did not want to participate to be excused. Image Leonard J. Kerpelman in 1979. Credit Associated Press “You are entirely free,” the justice said. “Why not just walk out? You are not required to participate.” Mr. Kerpelman said that his young client had tried that route and had suffered for it. “This boy was spat upon, insulted, actually assaulted,” he said. Mr. Kerpelman told the justices that he saw no constitutional violation in teaching the Bible in school as part of history or literature classes, or in allowing a school-sponsored moment of silent devotion, or in letting students voluntarily assemble for prayer. What was unconstitutional, he said, was the state’s mandating prayer. The court agreed in an 8-to-1 decision delivered in June 1963, with Justice Stewart dissenting. In his majority opinion, Justice Tom C. Clark wrote that the place of religion in society was “an exalted one, achieved through a long tradition of reliance on the home, the church and the inviolable citadel of the individual heart and mind.” However, he wrote, “In the relationship between man and religion, the state is firmly committed to a position of neutrality.” Mrs. O’Hair, who left Baltimore after the decision, was later gruesomely killed, along with a son and granddaughter, in a kidnapping scheme devised by a former employee . Their remains were found buried on a Texas cattle ranch in 2001 five and a half years after the victims had disappeared. William J. Murray III is now an evangelical Baptist minister who heads the Religious Freedom Coalition in Washington and is the founder of a political action committee, Government Is Not God . The relationship between lawyer and client, both of them strong-minded, could be difficult. “Some found him irascible and cantankerous,” Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland said of Mr. Kerpelman in a statement after the death, but he also praised him as “a relentless and principled advocate.” Image Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her son William after the landmark ’63 ruling. Credit United Press International For his part, Mr. Kerpelman said that Mrs. O’Hair — whom Life magazine labeled “the most hated woman in America” in 1964 — had “brought abrasiveness to a new height.” “She could not say ‘hello’ without being abrasive,” he said in an oral history interview taped by his daughter Antonia K. Fowler. But the principle that she and her family had the right to be left alone in their beliefs was constitutionally crucial, he insisted. “Nobody had a right to bother her over that, no matter how repulsive a personality she had,” he said. Leonard Jules Kerpelman was born in Baltimore on Jan. 12, 1925. His parents, who were Russian immigrants, were lawyers, and he followed in their footsteps in obtaining a law degree from the University of Maryland. Childhood polio left him with limited use of one arm, and a childhood accident left him blind in one eye. He fought often with judges, and in 1989 was disbarred over allegations that he had overcharged a client and was disruptive in court. In forced retirement, he took to public access television in Baltimore. He carried a video camera into closed meetings of the city Board of Estimates, which manages fiscal affairs, and put the footage on screen. He also interviewed Yiddish-language speakers to preserve their oral traditions, Jason Kerpelman said. Besides his son and daughter, he is survived by his wife of 63 years, Elinor Hoffman Kerpelman; a daughter, Sally A. Semyonova; a son, Saul; three brothers, Charles, Larry and William; a sister, Marjorie Auerbach; and eight grandchildren. To the end of his life, Mr. Kerpelman contended that the disbarment was retribution for his role in the O’Hair case. In the taped interview with his daughter, which was recorded in June, he said, “I never committed an unethical act in my life.” He told her that he had just sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asking to be reinstated. In an interview, Ms. Fowler called her father “a very inconvenient man,” saying, “If it was a right, his right or the right thing to do, he would not be dissuaded, and it got him in a lot of trouble.”

Leonard J Kerpelman
Prayer
K-12 Education
Obituary
Separation of church and state
Supreme Court,SCOTUS


Fire Island: Water Restrictions Lifted

Abstract: Residents of several Fire Island communities were given permission yesterday to resume using tap water after an advisory over the weekend to boil water because of concerns about E. coli bacteria, said Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive. Tests from late last week showed the presence of the bacteria, which can be of particular concern for people with weakened immune systems, but officials said it was more likely a problem with the samples that were tested rather than with the water system. County officials distributed 27,000 bottles of water and 100,000 pounds of ice to residents in about 3,000 homes and businesses on the island over the weekend.

Bacteria
Water
E Coli (Bacteria)
Long Island (NY)


Henrietta Bell Wells, a Pioneering Debater, Dies at 96

Abstract: Henrietta Bell Wells, the only woman, the only freshman and the last surviving member of the 1930 Wiley College debate team that participated in the first interracial collegiate debate in the United States, died on Feb. 27 in Baytown, Tex. She was 96. Her friend Edward Cox confirmed the death. The story of the team, called the Great Debaters in last year’s movie of the same name, began in 1924 at Wiley College, a small liberal arts college in Marshall, Tex., founded a half century earlier by the Methodist Episcopal Church to educate “newly freed men.” Melvin B. Tolson arrived at the all-black school that autumn to teach English and other subjects. He also started a debate team. Mr. Tolson, who would win wide distinction as a poet, saw argumentation as a way to cultivate mental alertness. Wiley was soon debating and defeating black colleges two and three times its size. In 1930, Mr. Tolson decided to break new ground. He managed to schedule a debate with the University of Michigan Law School, an all-white school. Wiley won. Other debates with white schools followed, culminating with Wiley’s 1935 victory over the national champion, the University of Southern California. Mr. Tolson’s stunningly successful debate team was portrayed in “The Great Debaters,” directed by Denzel Washington. Describing the cinematic young debaters in The Chicago Sun-Times, the critic Roger Ebert wrote, “They are black, proud, single-minded, focused, and they express all this most dramatically in their debating.” In the fall of 1930, Henrietta Bell, who would later marry Wallace Wells, was a freshman in an English class taught by Mr. Tolson. The professor urged her to try out for the debate team, because she seemed to be able to think on her feet. She was the first woman on the team. In an interview with The Houston Chronicle in 2007, she said the boys “didn’t seem to mind me.” But the work was far from easy. Miss Bell attended classes during the day, had three campus jobs and practiced debating at night. The intensity of debating was reflected in Mr. Tolson’s characterization of it as “a blood sport.” But the hard work paid off. In the interview with The Chronicle, Mrs. Wells declared, “We weren’t intimidated.” Henrietta Pauline Bell was born on the banks of Buffalo Bayou in Houston on Oct. 11, 1912, and raised by a hard-pressed single mother from the West Indies. When riots broke out in 1917 over police treatment of black soldiers at a World War I training camp, the family’s house was searched. Mrs. Wells recalled being unable to try on clothes in segregated stores. She did not debate in high school but was valedictorian of her class. She earned a modest scholarship from the Y.M.C.A. to go to Wiley, Episcopal Life reported. In the spring of 1930, Miss Bell, her teammates and her chaperone arrived at the Seventh Street Theater in Chicago. It was the largest black-owned theater in town, because no large white-owned facility would admit a racially mixed audience, according to an article in The Marshall News-Messenger. Mrs. Wells remembered a standing-room-only crowd. She wore a dark suit and had her hair cut in a boyish bob. In an interview with Jeffrey Porro, one of the screenwriters of “The Great Debaters,” she felt very small on that very big stage. “I had to use my common sense,” she said. She remembered Mr. Tolson urging her to punch up her delivery. “You’ve got to put something in there to wake the people up,” he had said. Mrs. Wells told The Chronicle, “It was a nondecision debate, but we felt at the time that it was a giant step toward desegregation.” She debated for only one year, because of the need to work for money. She kept up with drama, which Mr. Tolson also coached. After graduating from college, she returned to Houston, where she met Mr. Wells and married. He was a church organist and later an Episcopal minister. She worked as a teacher and social worker. Mrs. Wells advised Mr. Washington on the movie, using her scrapbooks as visual aids. She urged him to play Mr. Tolson, something he at first was not inclined to do. He called her “another grandma.” Mr. Wells died in 1987. Mrs. Wells left no immediate survivors. Her advice to today’s students was straightforward: “Learn to speak well and learn to express yourself effectively.” She learned this lesson directly from Mr. Tolson, whom she called her crabbiest and best teacher. He was known for issuing intellectual challenges immediately upon entering the classroom. A typical salutation: “Bell! What is a verb?”

Wiley College
Debating
Tolson Melvin B
Deaths (Obituaries)
Colleges and Universities


Missouri: Soldiers Looted After Tornado

Abstract: Four Missouri National Guard soldiers stole electronics from a Walmart in Joplin while helping with recovery efforts the day after the store was destroyed by a tornado last year, according to records released Tuesday. The Guard said three specialists and a sergeant who admitted taking video game devices, a camera and other items believed the merchandise was going to be discarded, The Joplin Globe reported. The men, who are not named in the records, were among 16 soldiers assigned to look for survivors and help with recovery after the tornado killed 161 people. The four admitted to the thefts and returned the items to their superiors, although the sergeant initially did not return the correct video game device “because he had given the new one to his son and was embarrassed to ask for it back,” the records state. An investigating officer recommended that the four be demoted, but the records do not indicate what type of discipline they eventually received.

Tornadoes
Looting
National Guard
Joplin (Mo)
Robberies and Thefts


As New Shipping Rules Are Studied, Another Oil Train Derails

Abstract: In the latest accident involving rail cars carrying crude oil, a CSX train derailed and erupted into black, smoky flames on Wednesday in downtown Lynchburg, Va., forcing scores of people to evacuate and causing a spill in the James River. Hours later, the Transportation Department said that a long-awaited package of rules aimed at improving the safety of oil transport by rail had been sent Wednesday night to the White House for review. The proposed regulations were not made public, but they follow Canada’s announcement of stiffer regulations last week and are expected to include measures requiring transport companies to replace old tank cars with more robust models that are resistant to puncture. It was the second train accident involving crude oil for CSX this year. As smoke billowed into the air, frightened shoppers, office workers and residents evacuated a 20-block area of Lynchburg, a city of 77,000. There were no reported injuries. Images from the scene uploaded to social media and broadcast by local television showed mangled tracks along the river and three black tankers that slid down the bank into the water. The Transportation Department said that the agency’s Federal Railroad Administration last inspected track in the area where the train derailed on Jan. 8 and did not find any violations or significant defects. Leaking oil briefly ignited. An eyewitness told WSET-TV in Lynchburg that the flames leapt as high as the 19th floor of the office building where he watched the accident. Within an hour of the derailment, the smoke and flames had largely subsided. City officials said 13 to 14 cars derailed and three to four cars had ruptured. They were unsure how much oil drained into the river. The city of Richmond, about 120 miles downstream, was preparing to switch to an alternative water supply in case oil reached it, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. The Lynchburg water supply’s intake is upstream of the wreck. “An initial assessment indicates that three of the cars were on fire,” CSX said in a brief statement. The company did not say what caused the accident. The train was traveling from Chicago to Virginia when the derailment occurred at 2:30 p.m. The company said it sent emergency personnel, environmental workers and community support teams. Federal rail inspectors were also at the scene of the derailment. Train traffic carrying crude was relatively rare until four years ago, when oil companies in North Dakota began shipping large quantities of Bakken shale crude out of the state by rail because there was insufficient pipeline capacity to do the job. Now, much of the production of the Bakken region is sent by rail on trains that can stretch up to a mile long and carry roughly 85,000 barrels of oil. When a runaway train carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded last July in the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, killing 47 people, the safety issues surrounding the transportation of crude through populated areas rose in importance for both American and Canadian regulators. Image Some cars of the CSX train that derailed Wednesday in Lynchburg, Va., fell into the James River. Credit WSET/Reuters Then, in December, an oil train passing through Casselton, N.D., derailed and exploded, sending flames high into the air and forcing some residents to evacuate. That followed an accident in November, when another oil train derailed in Alabama, spilling crude oil. Many of the trains are destined for refineries on the East Coast, which have a strong desire to replace expensive imported crude from the Middle East and Africa with the high-quality, and less expensive, crude from North Dakota. In response to the rising concerns, federal regulators and railroads agreed in February to a series of voluntary measures to improve safety, including lower speed limits for oil trains in urban areas, increasing the frequency of track inspections and adding more brakes on trains. And last week, Canada issued tough new rules requiring emergency plans from railroads on responding to catastrophic accidents and requiring companies to retire older models of tank cars within three years. The new model of tank car, developed in 2011, would effectively set a new standard of safety for rail companies in the United States since many lines cross the United States-Canadian border. But despite years of discussion, American regulators have lagged on requiring stronger tank cars, which are generally owned by oil companies and private investors, not by railroad companies. Safety experts have warned for more than 20 years that the older tank cars, called DOT-111s, are prone to rupture in a derailment. Environmentalists quickly made the case on Wednesday that the accident was another sign of the dangers of oil drilling, even though they are also critical of alternative pipeline transport. “The accident is a potent reminder of the dangers that come with our dependence on dirty fuels,” the Sierra Club said in a statement, “and the need for better safety measures and increased emergency preparedness.“

CSX
Regulation and Deregulation
Oil and Gasoline
Lynchburg VA
Train wreck
James River
Oil spill


In Shootings’ Aftermath: ‘Take a Deep Breath. We’re Going to Get You Out of Here.’

Abstract: With bursts of gunfire ringing in the background, a group of police officers in Jersey City charged out the front door of an apartment building Thursday morning, a wounded comrade draped on their shoulders. Officer Michael Camacho, 25, was bleeding from the neck and crying out for help. They laid Officer Camacho on the sidewalk near an ambulance, where he was rolled onto his back. The officer told an approaching medic, Michael Saul, that he had been hit “once in the neck and once in the vest,” Mr. Saul recalled. “Are you having difficulty breathing?” asked Mr. Saul, an emergency medical technician. “I can’t swallow,” Officer Camacho replied. “Take a deep breath,” Mr. Saul said. “We’re going to get you out of here.” Officer Camacho was wounded in a furious gun battle that began around 5:15 a.m. on the streets, and ended an hour and a half later on the third floor of 24 Reed Street, with two suspects fatally shot and five officers wounded. Two of the officers, including Officer Camacho, were in critical condition; Officer Camacho was taken to Jersey City Medical Center, where he underwent surgery to remove a bullet or fragments that doctors said lodged just millimeters from his jugular vein. Edward DeFazio, the Hudson County prosecutor, said a preliminary review concluded the officers were justified in their use of deadly force. Mr. DeFazio said all five of the wounded officers had exemplary records, including a wide assortment of commendations. “These are police officers who make you proud,” he said. The most seriously injured was Officer Marc DiNardo, 37, who was shot just below the left eye and had no visible signs of life when he arrived at the hospital. The son of a retired Jersey City police lieutenant, Officer DiNardo is a 10-year veteran of the force on the Emergency Services Unit, and the father of three young children: a 4-year-old daughter, and sons ages 3 and 2. “He’s 100 percent about those kids,” said Jerry DeCicco, president of the Jersey City Police Officers Benevolent Association. “He works the midnight shift, then hurries home, because at that age, there’s a lot to do, and he loves doing it.” Doctors at Jersey City Medical Center said that Officer DiNardo remained in extremely critical condition on Thursday night and would need reconstructive surgery to repair the damage to his cheekbones, face and sinuses. The other officer who remained hospitalized, Frank Molina Jr., 35, was well enough to receive visitors, including Gov. Jon S. Corzine. Officer Molina, a 15-year-veteran of the force who has received 15 awards for excellent police service, was shot in the back, but the bullet’s impact was blunted by his protective vest. One friend who visited Officer Molina said that he reported that the shootout had left his metal shield looking like “Swiss cheese.” Two other officers were treated and released from the hospital. Dennis Mitchell, a Port Authority police officer who marked his seventh anniversary on the force on Tuesday, was shot once in the arm. Officer Mitchell, 35, has been on the special operations unit since 2006, and is trained both in special weapons and tactics and as an emergency medical technician, according to Port Authority officials. He is married and the father of three children. Detective Marc Lavelle, a member of Jersey City’s major case squad, was released from the hospital after being treated for minor gunshot wounds to the leg. Although he has been called “Spike” since his classmates at the Police Academy joked about his spiky hairstyle, Detective Lavelle, 43, is known as a soft touch who would rather talk about coaching his children’s basketball games than about his work tracking down criminals. Mr. DeFazio, the prosecutor, said he had worked with Detective Lavelle on investigations involving major drug dealers and violent criminals, and had been impressed with his effective, but low-key demeanor. “He’s a smart, top-notch detective,” Mr. DeFazio said. “The fact of where he was and that he acted the way he did today is testament to that.” Despite his distinguished record, Detective Lavelle seldom speaks about his job once he arrives home, according to his wife, Nancy. After being shot on Thursday, in fact, he neglected to mention it to her during a brief conversation, saying only that he’d had “a crazy day” at work and would offer details later. But when Mrs. Lavelle got a call from one of her friends, who is also the wife of a Jersey City police officer, asking whether her husband was all right, she turned to him in shock and said, “You want to tell me what happened?” Mrs. Lavelle said she was initially upset he had not told her that he had been shot, but was then quickly overcome by an immense wave of relief. “I just keep saying, thank God,” she said. “Thank God you’re all right!”

Jersey City (NJ)
Attacks on Police
Police


Testing for Joy and Grit? Schools Nationwide Push to Measure Students’ Emotional Skills

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — The fifth graders in Jade Cooney’s classroom compete against a kitchen timer during lessons to see how long they can sustain good behavior — raising hands, disagreeing respectfully and looking one another in the eye — without losing time to insults or side conversations. As reward for minutes without misconduct, they win prizes like 20 seconds to kick their feet up on their desks or to play rock-paper-scissors. And starting this year, their school and schools in eight other California districts will test students on how well they have learned the kind of skills like self-control and conscientiousness that the games aim to cultivate — ones that might be described as everything you should have learned in kindergarten but are still reading self-help books to master in middle age. A recent update to federal education law requires states to include at least one nonacademic measure in judging school performance. So other states are watching these districts as a potential model. But the race to test for so-called social-emotional skills has raised alarms even among the biggest proponents of teaching them, who warn that the definitions are unclear and the tests faulty. “I do not think we should be doing this; it is a bad idea,” said Angela Duckworth, the MacArthur fellow who has done more than anyone to popularize social-emotional learning, making “grit” — the title of her book to be released in May — a buzzword in schools. She resigned from the board of the group overseeing the California project, saying she could not support using the tests to evaluate school performance. Last spring, after attending a White House meeting on measuring social-emotional skills, she and a colleague wrote a paper warning that there were no reliable ways to do so. “Our working title was all measures suck, and they all suck in their own way,” she said. And there is little agreement on what skills matter: Self-control? Empathy? Perseverance? Joy? “There are so many ways to do this wrong,” said Camille A. Farrington , a researcher at the University of Chicago who is working with a network of schools across the country to measure the development of social-emotional skills. “In education, we have a great track record of finding the wrong way to do stuff.” Schools began emphasizing social-emotional learning around 2011, after an analysis of 213 school-based programs teaching such skills found that they improved academic achievement by 11 percentile points. A book extolling efforts to teach social-emotional skills in schools such as the KIPP charter network and Riverdale Country School in New York, “How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough, appeared the next year. Argument still rages about whether schools can or should emphasize these skills. Critics say the approach risks blaming the victim — if only students had more resilience, they could rise above generational poverty and neglected schools — and excuses uninspired teaching by telling students it is on them to develop “zest,” or enthusiasm. Groups that spent decades urging the country toward higher academic standards worry about returning to empty talk of self-esteem , accepting low achievement as long as students feel good. But teaching social-emotional skills is often seen as a way to move away from a narrow focus on test scores, and to consider instead the whole child. It may seem contradictory, then, to test for those skills. In education, however, the adage is “what’s measured gets treasured”; states give schools money to teach the subjects on which they will be judged. Next year, the National Assessment of Educational Progress , a test of students in grades four, eight and 12 that is often referred to as the nation’s report card, will include questions about students’ social-emotional skills. A well-known international test, PISA, is moving toward the same. The biggest concern about testing for social-emotional skills is that it typically relies on surveys asking students to evaluate recent behaviors or mind-sets, like how many days they remembered their homework, or if they consider themselves hard workers. This makes the testing highly susceptible to fakery and subjectivity. In their paper published in May, Dr. Duckworth and David Yeager argued that even if students do not fake their answers, the tests provide incentive for “superficial parroting” rather than real changes in mind-set. Quiz: How Much Grit Do You Have? Here’s a sample of the Grit Scale, developed to identify traits that might predict success. “You think test scores are easy to game?” said Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who is working with the districts in California. “They’re relatively hard to game when you compare them to a self-report survey.” Students might be tested on performance, as in the “marshmallow test,” in which children were told they could have a sweeter reward if they waited. Those who waited scored higher in self-control. But those tests are too time-consuming to use on a large group of students. Other researchers have proposed calling or texting students at regular intervals to check their behavior and frame of mind, or monitoring Facebook or Twitter to observe patterns of behavior. But privacy concerns would almost certainly disqualify those. Transforming Education , a Boston-based group that is among the biggest proponents of teaching social-emotional skills, argues that they are so important that schools have to begin testing for them, even if perfect measures do not exist. The group worked with the school districts here — which count one million students, or 20 percent of the state total, in cities including Los Angeles and Oakland — to choose four measures to evaluate: growth mind-set, social awareness, self-efficacy and self-management. The districts tested 10,000 students in 2014, and nearly 500,000 students last year, surveying things like how many days the students had come to school prepared (self-management), and whether they believed it was more important to be talented or to work hard (growth mind-set). Just two years ago in her classroom in a trailer here at Visitacion Valley Elementary School, Ms. Cooney struggled with the kind of management problems that often confront young teachers. Her students, mostly poor and living in a nearby housing project, were bouncing around the classroom, playing with their phones instead of paying attention, fighting out interfamily beefs. Even if they wanted to learn, they were not. Ms. Cooney, 27, took a two-hour training session in a student-behavior program and began playing “ good-behavior games .” They look like regular lessons, except that they begin with students identifying goals for good behavior, and end with her assessing what went right and wrong. On a recent day, students took notes on their reading as Ms. Cooney moved with a kind of Zen bustle around the classroom, grading papers and consulting one-on-one while she watched for things she would compliment the class on later — keeping bodies still, focusing on the task — and quietly noted bad behavior. For every 1,000 minutes of good behavior earned, the children win 15 extra minutes of recess. “I’m really saving minutes that would be lost to transitions, settling disputes and behavior problems,” Ms. Cooney said. It can be exhausting, but not nearly as much as teaching before. As she said, “Would you rather put out fires, or prevent them?” Social-emotional learning will count for 8 percent of a school’s overall performance score; no teacher will lose a job for failing to instill a growth mind-set. Noah Bookman, the chief accountability officer for the districts, said he understood the concerns about testing. But, he said, “This work is so phenomenally important to the success of our kids in school and life. In some ways, we worry as much if not more about the possibility that these indicators remain on the back burner.”


Russia Warns European Union Over Visa Proposal

Abstract: MOSCOW — Russia responded angrily on Thursday to a proposal that would deny European visas to a list of 60 officials who have been implicated in the death of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in pretrial detention in Moscow last year. Konstantin I. Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the lower house of Parliament, condemned the proposed ban as “Bolshevik tactics” and said Russia might be forced to “very harshly retaliate” if the proposal went forward. He said such pressure “could have extremely negative consequences for the entire relationship between Russia and the European Union .” Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the move “direct interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state, and open pressure on the judicial system of the Russian Federation.” The comments were in response to the European Parliament ’s Foreign Affairs Committee, which voted to add the recommendation to its annual human rights report. The proposal remains far from becoming policy. First, it must be approved by the full European Parliament in December. Then it would be up to the European Union’s member states to decide whether to adopt sanctions against the 60 officials, said Heidi Hautala , a member of the Finnish delegation, who sponsored the proposal. “What it represents is a strong concern in the European Union that it’s time to give justice to Magnitsky, who certainly looks like a victim of the Russian judicial system,” she said. The 60 names include highly placed officials in the Russian Interior Ministry, prosecutorial Investigative Committee and prison administration, as well as 12 judges. The proposal recommends denying them visas and freezing assets and bank accounts held overseas. The committee’s vote follows a recommendation by Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, in April that the State Department deny visas to the officials, a group now known in Russia as “Cardin’s List.” Mr. Magnitsky died on Nov. 16, 2009, after being held for more than 11 months on suspicion of tax fraud. At the time of his arrest, Mr. Magnitsky was working as outside counsel for Hermitage Capital Management, an international investment fund whose founder, William F. Browder, was involved in a bitter feud with the Russian authorities. Mr. Browder had accused Russian officials of using his companies to embezzle $230 million from the Russian Treasury. Last week, on the anniversary of Mr. Magnitsky’s death, police officials announced that they had evidence that Mr. Magnitsky was responsible for the theft. Though President Dmitri A. Medvedev ordered an investigation into Mr. Magnitsky’s death, there has apparently been little progress toward a prosecution. Sergei Mironov , the speaker of the upper house of Parliament, warned that if European nations acted on the proposal, Russia might retaliate with similar measures. “As a rule, such measures are mirrored, and Russia will have to do the same: If you bar our officials, we will apply the same instruments,” he said, according to the Interfax news agency. “However, these measures are inappropriate, and there must be another way for our relations.”

Magnitsky Sergei L
Visas
Russia
European Union
Legislatures and Parliaments
Deaths (Fatalities)
European Parliament
Europe
United States


The Holy Grail: Small Cameras With Big Sensors - State of the Art

Abstract: If you want an easy puzzle, solve a Rubik’s Cube. If you want something more challenging, balance the national budget. But if you really want a head-pounder, try making a tiny camera with a big sensor. The problem is physics. A big sensor records superior light, color and detail. But to flood its surface with light, the lens has to be big and be a certain distance away. That’s why, for years, there were two kinds of cameras: pocket models, with tiny sensors that produce blurry or grainy photos in low light and S.L.R. cameras, those big-sensor, big-body, heavy black beasts used by professionals. In the last couple of years, though, things have changed. There’s a new class of camera whose size (both body and sensor) falls in between those two time-honored extremes. They represent a rethinking of every single design element, a jettisoning of every nonessential component, in pursuit of a tiny, big-sensor camera. Because that, after all, is what the world really wants. Two of the smallest cameras yet have just arrived: the Panasonic Lumix GF2 ($600 with 3X zoom lens) and Olympus E-PL2 ($520 with 3X lens). They’re both 12-megapixel Micro Four-Thirds cameras, a format dreamed up by Panasonic and Olympus about three years ago. All of these cameras have the same-size sensor — not as big as an S.L.R.’s, but much bigger than a compact camera’s — and accommodate the same family of lenses, now numbering about 20. How small are they? Well, the Panasonic’s body is 4.4 by 2.7 by 1.3 inches. That’s darned small. You’ve eaten brownies bigger than this camera. Panasonic says it’s the smallest interchangeable-lens camera in the world — with a flash. (Clearly, that’s a veiled reference to the even more ridiculously small Sony NEX5, which lacks a built-in flash.) The Olympus is only a fraction porkier. Now, these cameras aren’t so small that you can carry them dangling from your wrist or a neck strap; you’d break bones that way. But the body certainly fits in a coat pocket or, with some discomfort, a pants pocket. It will fit even with the lens on, provided that the lens is a “pancake” (nonzooming) starter lens like the 14 millimeter one that comes with one of the Panasonic kits (it’s equivalent of a 28 millimeter traditional camera lens). In the end, you can’t really cheat physics. Getting cameras this small means sacrifices. For example, both of these cameras have a pop-up flash — and it pops way up high, a trick that minimizes red eye in your subjects — but it’s weak, with only about a six-foot range. You have full manual controls, of course, since these cameras are meant to be mini-S.L.R.’s. But there’s not nearly as much room on these cameras as on an S.L.R., so the buttons are small, cramped and have multiple functions. Panasonic’s solution: a touch screen. That might seem like a great idea, because it gives the designers acres more real estate for displaying controls. It also means that you can touch the spot in the scene where you want the camera to focus — a neat trick — and pan around a zoomed-in photo by dragging your finger. The software is designed with fingertip-size, translucent buttons on the screen — but unfortunately, they clutter the image and sometimes sit right where you want to tap to focus. You can customize the icons, specifying which ones appear and in what order. But many tasks still take too many steps. And, bizarrely, the touch-screen world ends when you enter the main menu; suddenly you have to use the up/down arrow buttons to navigate. The Olympus camera uses a more traditional four-way controller, surrounded by a turning ring. It’s all tiny, though, and it’s easy to click buttons accidentally when you’re turning the ring. Another sacrifice: there’s not much room in that tiny body for a big battery. You’ll get about 300 shots on a charge from these cameras, which is at the low, low end. The bigger loss is the optical viewfinder. Both cameras have bright, beautiful three-inch screens that do O.K. in sunlight. But they’re nowhere near as good as the eyepiece of a regular S.L.R., especially in low light. The difference in clarity and feeling is especially evident when you compare one of these Micro Four-Thirds cameras with an S.L.R. side-by-side. Both Olympus and Panasonic are happy to sell you an electronic eyepiece viewfinder that snaps onto the top of the camera. But it costs a lot: $200 for the Panasonic, $250 for the Olympus (a $100 optical glass one is also available). It also fills up the hot shoe where you might have attached a microphone or flash, and besides, it’s cheating. Your little camera is less little if it has a big doodad sticking up from the top. None of this is to say that these aren’t great cameras — they are. Yes, you make some sacrifices. But you do indeed get the holy grail: a tiny camera with a big sensor inside. And the photos make it all worth it. They’re bright, beautiful, clear and wide, and you can get that beautiful blurred-background effect that’s common in professional portraits. (You can see some samples in the slide show that accompanies this article on The Times Web site. . ) These cameras are really great at video, too. Each has a dedicated Record/Stop button, so you don’t have to change modes just to start shooting. Both record in high definition: the Olympus is 720p, the Panasonic is 1080p, although you really can’t see any difference. Both cameras offer some cheesy special effects that work both in still and video mode. Both of these cameras can smoothly change focus, quickly and beautifully, while you’re capturing video — if you zoom or pan to something closer, for example. That’s rare in S.L.R.-type cameras. This process isn’t as quick or reliable as it is on a camcorder — gigantic shifts in distance sometimes baffle the refocusing mechanism — but over all, it works well. Now, even though these cameras have S.L.R.-like features, they’re not real S.L.R.’s. First, they’re not nearly as good in low light. The sensor inside is much bigger than a compact camera’s, but it’s not S.L.R.-size. Second, because of the mirrorless Micro Four-Thirds design, these cameras aren’t as quick to focus as a real S.L.R. Depending on the zoom level and the lighting, the Olympus, in particular, sometimes struggles to focus; you can see it “hunting,” adjust the lens in and out as it tries to figure out what’s going on. That doesn’t happen as often on the Panasonic. Over all, it’s the nicer camera — it has stereo mikes instead of mono , it’s aluminum instead of plastic, and it has a rotation sensor for righting photos you took with the camera on its side — but it’s $80 more expensive, too, and its photos are more likely to require color correction. (It also accepts a new Panasonic dual lens that takes 3-D photos, for playback on a 3-D TV — but it doesn’t zoom, doesn’t work in video mode, doesn’t work in low light and takes only 1.4-megapixel photos.) And it’s not clear that Panasonic has trumped its obvious target, the Sony NEX-5. That camera lacks a built-in flash, but its screen has twice the clarity (and it tilts), the body is smaller and the sensor is bigger — as big an S.L.R.’ s— so the photos are better. On the other hand, only three lenses are available for the Sony, and its menu system is hopelessly inefficient. These miniature Micro Four-Thirds cameras cost as much as a real S.L.R., and they teem with compromises. Still, if the world craves a solution to the small camera/big sensor challenge, these models offer some novel solutions to the puzzle.

Camera Photography Sensor Olympus Panasonic