Jeter, With His Final Home Opener Up Next, Climbs Career Hits List to No. 8

Abstract: TORONTO — A year ago, when the Yankees opened their season in the Bronx against the Boston Red Sox, there was a noticeable void. It was felt during the pregame introductions when players like Kevin Youkilis and Travis Hafner were announced over the public-address system, but Derek Jeter was not. It was felt again when the Yankees took the field and the player who ran to shortstop was Eduardo Nunez, not Jeter. In fact, Jeter missed all but 17 games last season as he experienced the most maddening, injury-marred season of his career. But on Monday, Jeter — healthy and eager — is scheduled to be a part of all the festivities as the Yankees celebrate their 112th home opener, and Jeter’s last. “We all look forward to the home opener,” Jeter said Sunday before the Yankees beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-4. “It almost doesn’t seem like the season is underway until you get your home opener. Especially missing last year, I’m looking forward to this one.” The home fans are too, because this will be their first chance to shower him with their appreciation since he announced Feb. 12 that he will retire after this, his 20th season with the Yankees. Jeter has already been celebrated by the fans in Houston and Toronto during each of his at-bats, but Monday is destined to involve several lengthy, heartfelt standing ovations for the 39-year-old Yankees captain. Jeter will enter Monday afternoon’s game against the Baltimore Orioles in style. With two hits Sunday, he moved past Paul Molitor into eighth place on the career hits list with 3,320, the fourth most in the American League. He is 99 hits from tying Carl Yastrzemski for seventh. “It feels good,” Jeter said. “I’d be lying if I said otherwise. It’s an accomplishment. You’ve got to play for a long time to be close to something like this. I just try to play; try to be consistent. I want to be out there every day. If you do it long enough, then some of these things are attainable. “It’s definitely special. But I’m not going to go home and celebrate, because we have a game tomorrow. But it’s something I take a lot of pride in.” Jeter’s two hits raised his batting average to .250, and the Yankees collected nine hits altogether. One of those was their first home run, a line drive to right field by Brett Gardner in the fourth inning, as the Yankees held on to win their first series of the season. After dropping the first two games in Houston, the Yankees come home for the first time feeling a little better about themselves. Manager Joe Girardi said that after the team’s slow start, having a 3-3 record felt somehow better than a .500 mark. The Yankees scored three times in the first inning, but C. C. Sabathia gave up a leadoff home run to Melky Cabrera, who homered in each of the three games in the series. Sabathia, in his 400th start, settled down and held on to earn his first win of the season. In the sixth, he gave up four straight hits and three runs but got out of the inning. The victory was his seventh in eight decisions at Rogers Centre. Sabathia was charged with four runs and seven hits in six innings, but walked off the mound leading, 6-4. Three relievers made it stand up. Adam Warren and Shawn Kelley each threw a scoreless inning, and David Robertson earned his second save. The Blue Jays made it tense for Robertson, sending Cabrera to the plate with runners on first and second and two outs. One good swing could have sent the Yankees home in misery. But Cabrera lined out to right field to end the game, enabling the Yankees to turn their attention to the home opener. The festivities Monday will feature a tribute to the so-called Core Four members of the Yankees’ five World Series teams from 1996 to 2009. Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera will throw tandem ceremonial first pitches to Jorge Posada and Jeter, the last member of the group still playing. “I don’t think all of us have been together for a while,” Jeter said, “so it will be nice to see them all together.” Monday will also be the first home game for several new Yankees, including Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran and Brian Roberts, who will be facing the only other team he has played for in the major leagues. “I try not to make too much of a deal of the Orioles thing, but try to enjoy opening day in pinstripes,” Roberts said, adding that he is looking forward to seeing how the fans respond to Jeter. “It’s going to be cool. You’ve seen what it’s been like on the road. I can only imagine what it will be like at home.” INSIDE PITCH Alfonso Soriano, who was hit with a pitch in his first at-bat, later recorded his first hit of the season after starting 0 for 17. “You know why?” he said, pointing to the spot on his back where he was struck. “Because that hit the slump out.” ... Derek Jeter has reached base safely in 19 straight games against Toronto. ... Jacoby Ellsbury moved from leadoff to third in the lineup for Sunday’s game because Carlos Beltran had the day off.

Baseball
Yankees
Derek Jeter
Blue Jays
C C Sabathia


Eddie Einhorn, a Creator of College Basketball on TV, Dies at 80

Abstract: Eddie Einhorn, who created a sports network that propelled national interest in college basketball, laying a foundation for the immense popularity of the annual tournament known as March Madness, died on Wednesday in Norwood, N.J. He was 80. The cause was complications following a stroke, said his wife, Ann. He lived in Alpine, N.J. In recent decades, Mr. Einhorn was known as a baseball executive. In 1981 he and his law school classmate Jerry Reinsdorf led a group of limited partners in buying the Chicago White Sox. He was the team president until 1990. Mr. Einhorn made a more consequential contribution to sports as a television executive. He was in his 20s, a law student at Northwestern University in Chicago, when, working out of his dorm room, he put together a network from a handful of radio stations to broadcast the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament. This was the late 1950s; college basketball had little more than a regional following for local teams, and Mr. Einhorn was able to purchase the radio rights for a tiny fee. By the early 1960s, he was broadcasting games on television. But as he recalled in “How March Became Madness,” a 2006 book written with Ron Rapoport, interest in college basketball was still so circumscribed that the telecast of the 1962 national final, in which Cincinnati defeated Ohio State, was seen only in Ohio. The breakthrough came on Jan. 20, 1968, when U.C.L.A., with Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) at center, took a 47-game winning streak into the Houston Astrodome — then just three years old and still thought of as a glamorous building — to face the also undefeated University of Houston and its star center, Elvin Hayes. More than 52,000 people attended, an extraordinary number for a basketball game even today, and they saw a captivating, tight contest dominated by Hayes, who scored 39 points in a 71-69 Houston victory. The invincible reputation of U.C.L.A. was punctured, and so was the dominance of Alcindor, who had recently been sidelined with an eye injury. (In a rematch in the N.C.A.A. tournament that year, U.C.L.A trounced Houston, 101-69, holding Hayes to 10 points. Alcindor scored 19.) The contest in the Astrodome, which came to be called the Game of the Century, was the first college basketball game to be televised nationally in prime time. Millions watched on TVS — for television sports — as Mr. Einhorn had named his network, reportedly of some 150 stations in 49 states. Many of the stations were affiliated with CBS, ABC or NBC and angered the parent companies when they broadcast the game instead of the regular network programming. It turned out to be the college basketball equivalent of the 1958 National Football League championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, an overtime contest, won by the Colts, that acquired its own hyperbolic nickname, “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” and ushered in the modern era of pro football on television. Image Eddie Einhorn surveying the field before the White Sox opening day in 2013. Credit Megan Bearder for The New York Times NBC began broadcasting the N.C.A.A. tournament in 1969, and CBS seized the rights in 1982. In 2010, CBS and Turner Sports paid the N.C.A.A. nearly $11 billion for rights to broadcast the tournament for 14 years. As a baseball executive, Mr. Einhorn was presiding over the White Sox when, in 1983, the third season of his tenure, they won the American League Western Division championship — the team’s first championship of any kind since 1959, when they captured the American League pennant but lost to the Dodgers in the World Series. The 1983 team won 99 regular-season games, more than any White Sox team in 66 years (the 1917 club won 100), and more than any since then, with the exception of the 2005 Sox, who also won 99 as well as the World Series. By 2005, Mr. Einhorn was no longer involved with the day-to-day operation of the club, but as vice chairman, a title he held at his death, he returned to Houston, the site of his greatest triumph in basketball, to celebrate the World Series victory over the Astros. Edward Martin Einhorn was born in Paterson, N.J., on Jan. 3, 1936. His father, Harold, owned an insurance agency. His mother was the former Mae Lippman. He went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a radio announcer for basketball games, and moved to Chicago for law school. For a time, he worked as a vendor at Comiskey Park, the South Side home of the White Sox that he would have a hand in replacing some 30 years later. (In the late 1980s, with the team threatening to move to St. Petersburg, Fla., the state agreed to help finance a new stadium, now known as U.S. Cellular Field, which opened in 1991.) Mr. Einhorn sold TVS to the Corinthian Broadcasting Corporation in 1973, though he continued to run it for several years afterward. For a time in the late 1970s, he was executive producer of “CBS Sports Spectacular,” which featured a variety of sports events. He negotiated lucrative television contracts for Major League Baseball and was an architect of baseball’s own early television venture, The Baseball Network. Mr. Einhorn was a television consultant to the United States Olympic Committee and the United States Figure Skating Association. In 1982, he founded a cable sports network in Chicago and put White Sox games on it, an enterprise that did not fare too well at a time when Chicago Cubs games were on free television. In the mid-1980s, he also took over the Chicago franchise of the fledgling United States Football League, which was trying to move from a spring schedule to a fall schedule to compete directly against the N.F.L. Mr. Einhorn was unable to negotiate a satisfactory television contract, and the league filed an antitrust suit against the N.F.L., claiming it had monopolized the fall schedule of the major networks, unfairly thwarting competition. The suit was decided in favor of the U.S.F.L., but the victory was a Pyrrhic one. Nominal damages were awarded, and the league folded after the 1985 season. Mr. Einhorn married Ann Pelachik in 1962. In addition to her, his survivors include a brother, William; a son, Jeff; a daughter, Jennifer Jacobson; and a grandson.

Obituary
Basketball
College Sports
White Sox
Baseball
Eddie Einhorn


Pennsylvania Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, Denies Charges

Abstract: HARRISBURG, Pa. — Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane defended herself against criminal charges on Wednesday, saying she was the victim of retaliation against her own investigation into pornographic emails that were exchanged between some officials in the previous state administration. Ms. Kane, a Democrat who has faced months of criticism since a grand jury recommended criminal charges against her, said she had done nothing wrong, and did not conspire with anyone to do “anything improper or unlawful.” In her first public comments since the charges were filed by the Montgomery County district attorney last week, Ms. Kane said the charges were the result of her investigation into emails passed between some officials in the administration of former Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican. The district attorney, Risa V. Ferman, said Ms. Kane told The Philadelphia Daily News of the existence of a grand jury inquiry into the financial dealings of J. Whyatt Mondesire, a former leader of the Philadelphia N.A.A.C.P. The leak, she said, was in retaliation against former state prosecutors who headed the grand jury investigation, whom Ms. Kane blamed for news reports that she had decided not to prosecute five Democratic lawmakers for financial irregularities. Ms. Ferman did not respond to requests for comment. Reading a statement to reporters at the Capitol here, Ms. Kane said the charges did not originate with her office’s leak of grand jury secrets in the spring of 2014, as Ms. Ferman alleges, but with her own investigation into the emails. “The chain of events that led to this moment began long before that, and it began with a group of state prosecutors and judges passing pornographic, racially offensive and religiously offensive emails among each other,” said Ms. Kane, who faces five charges, including perjury, criminal conspiracy and false swearing. The emails came to light in 2014 during her office’s investigation into how state prosecutors under her predecessor handled the prosecution of the former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky for child sexual abuse. Some of the emails were released publicly, leading to the firing of several officials, including the state environment secretary, the resignation of a State Supreme Court justice and the reprimanding of 23 members of the attorney general’s office. Some of the emails remain undisclosed because of a protective order issued by William R. Carpenter, a Montgomery County judge who supervises the grand jury investigating Ms. Kane. She called on Judge Carpenter to lift the order to allow the release of emails still in the possession of the attorney general’s office. Chuck Ardo, a spokesman for Ms. Kane, said the people who have been identified as having circulated the emails represented a “small minority” of the those who were involved. He said Ms. Kane wanted full exposure of the nature of the emails and people who came into contact with them. G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., said Ms. Kane, 49, had apparently decided that the best strategy was to present herself as the victim of an attempted retaliation by people whose careers could be ruined by the full publication of the emails. “Her argument is that they are trying to take her down,” Mr. Madonna said. In addition to the criminal charges, Ms. Kane is facing calls for her resignation from Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, a fellow Democrat, and from Gene Stilp, an activist who on Tuesday called on a Pennsylvania Supreme Court disciplinary panel to investigate her case. Ms. Kane said the protective order would likely remain in place if she is forced to step down. “Should I be removed from office, either by conviction or through the suspension of my license by the state’s disciplinary board, the one person who would challenge that order would no longer have standing to do so,” she said. She faces a preliminary hearing on Aug. 24.

Kathleen G Kane
Attorney general
Pennsylvania


Andrew Luck and Colts Show Youth in Loss to Patriots

Abstract: FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — His pass was in the hands of an opponent, who was streaking down the sideline in front of him. Andrew Luck had already seen this once Sunday, and he seemed to determine to head off the ignominy of another of his interceptions being returned for a touchdown. So Luck gave chase — he has surprising speed — and nearly caught Alfonzo Dennard near the end of his 87-yard sprint. But Luck dived and missed, and as he lay face down on the field, Dennard completed his return. The moment, early in the fourth quarter, summed up the game perfectly. Luck was off. The Patriots were on. And so was the rout, with the Patriots winning, 59-24 . There will surely come a time — perhaps the next time these teams play — when the Colts will offer a better challenge for the Patriots, who in their impressive victory might have lost tight end Rob Gronkowski to a broken forearm, according to reports Sunday night. The Colts are a young team still in the midst of a makeover, with a superstar-in-the-making quarterback in Luck and a record that is far better than anyone expected, one that could make them the most unlikely playoff team this season. But on Sunday, the Colts’ youth, and the mistakes that usually accompany it in the N.F.L., ensured that any kind of passing of the torch from Tom Brady to Luck, from the pre-eminent A.F.C. team of more than a decade to a team clearly on the rise, would wait just a little longer. “You know, you’d like to think that we have a chance to win it if we could play it again,” Luck said. “But they whipped our butts tonight. All the credit goes to them. They were the much better team tonight.” The Patriots are doing what the Patriots often do when the Foxborough nights turn chilly: rounding into form as the playoffs approach, conjuring their best all-around victory against a quality opponent this season. They scored on a punt return, on the two interceptions of Luck, on a pass to Gronkowski one play after a fumble by Luck deep in his own territory, and on more conventional drives that stretched as long as 81 yards. The Patriots posted their highest point total of the season, tying the franchise record set in a victory over Tennessee in 2009. Perhaps most encouraging for the Patriots was the performance of their frequently shaky defense, which successfully moved Luck off his spot much of the day. “We played good complementary football,” Belichick said. “Not perfect, but I’ll take it.” That, of course, constitutes high praise from Belichick, and it was deserved. The victory moved the Patriots to 7-3, three full games ahead of the rest of the A.F.C. East teams, all of whom are tied at 4-6, and one of which — the Jets — the Patriots will play Thanksgiving night. For the Colts, the loss was not devastating to their short-term goals, goals that perhaps only they believed feasible back in September. They dropped to 6-4, three games behind the Houston Texans in the A.F.C. South. But because of the weakness of the rest of the conference, the Colts have a one-game cushion for a wild-card spot. “Every week is a learning experience for him,” their interim head coach, Bruce Arians, said of Luck. “We’ve got a lot of rookies out there, so every week is a learning experience. It was a bad learning experience. Two high throws cost him, you know. We need to protect just a little bit longer on the fumble. It was a lot better day than the first day Peyton Manning came up here; I was here that day.” When the Colts review this tape, they will find flashes to build around. The Colts’ second touchdown came on a low Luck strike to receiver T. Y. Hilton in the back of the end zone. And in the third quarter, Luck made the kind of play he has already shown a propensity for, standing up on third-and-12 through sack attempts by Vince Wilfork and Rob Ninkovich to deliver a 16-yard pass. But more frequent were plays like the first interception that was returned for a touchdown. Luck threw high over Reggie Wayne’s head in the middle of the field. Wayne was open and Luck was not under undue pressure. It was just a terrible throw and Aqib Talib caught the ball instead. He started to his right, then wove across the field, completing the 59-yard return for the touchdown. Luck threw two touchdown passes, and finished with 334 passing yards, setting an N.F.L. rookie record with his fifth 300-yard game of the season. But he was responsible for four turnovers and the struggles of the offense only underscored the Colts’ holes on defense and special teams. Brady heard the chatter this week about Luck, and he sometimes seems to chafe at the idea of up-and-coming quarterbacks who might someday pass him. If it was his intention, Brady delivered a clear message to Luck. He completed 24 of 35 passes for 331 yards and three touchdowns and had no interceptions. “I think we’re trying to make improvements,” Brady said. “I don’t think we’re anywhere near where we need to be.” But they are still far ahead of most.

Football
New England Patriots
Indianapolis Colts
Luck Andrew
Brady Tom


Facebook Profit Nearly Triples on Mobile Ad Sales and New Users

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s growth appears to know few limits. And even when one source of growth is set to slow down, the social network is ready with another. The Silicon Valley company on Wednesday reported blockbuster second-quarter earnings , with strong increases across almost every measure. Facebook said sales totaled $6.44 billion for the quarter, up 59 percent from a year ago, while profit almost tripled to $2.06 billion. The rise was driven by strong mobile ad sales, as well as a steady ascent in its number of users. Facebook now counts 1.71 billion monthly active users, up 15 percent from a year ago. And in a sign of how indispensable the social network is to people, the amount of money the company can squeeze from each user globally jumped to $3.82, up from $2.76 a year earlier. In the United States and Canada, Facebook’s most valuable markets, the company makes an average of $14.34 per user. The performance made Facebook a bright spot in a mixed field of technology company earnings this month. On Tuesday, Twitter, once seen as a social media rival of Facebook’s, posted weak second-quarter earnings , including decelerating revenue growth and only a small increase in users. To maintain its rocket-ship trajectory and to avoid the pitfalls of its counterparts, Facebook said it was also looking ahead and betting on what it hoped would be a major business driver in the years to come: video and video advertising. “We see a world where video is first, with video at the heart of all of our apps and services,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said in a conference call with investors. Facebook also acknowledged on Wednesday that it could not just keep cramming more ads onto the site, something known in industry parlance as the “ad load.” Instead of increasing the number of ads in people’s News Feeds, Facebook plans to sell more video advertising, which commands a premium. Other companies, like Twitter and Snapchat, have also said they will pursue this strategy, which has long been a mainstay of YouTube, Google’s powerhouse video site. Facebook has been methodical about its transition to a more video-centric network. In recent years, it has introduced new tools to let people easily capture and post videos to the site, including uploading so-called native video directly to Facebook, which hosts the content itself. More recently, Facebook Live, the company’s streaming video offering , allows people to broadcast and post live videos of themselves directly to Facebook in real-time. The company has struck deals with major media companies and publishers like BuzzFeed and The New York Times to produce live content exclusively for Facebook; Facebook pays The Times for some of the live content. The more acclimated users are to seeing video content on Facebook, the thinking goes, the less disruptive it will be for people to view video ads alongside them. The push is already paying off. Facebook on Wednesday said users spend more time on the network as a result of the increase in video content posted to the site. “Think about what video looks like on Facebook. The most effective video ads are really built for social,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. “We see even better engagement with videos that are actually put together for Facebook.” Facebook has shown it is skilled at adapting to new ad formats and industry trends. As people moved away from desktops to smartphones en masse five years ago, Facebook quickly shifted its advertising business to focus on mobile sales. Today, mobile ads constitute roughly 84 percent of Facebook’s overall advertising revenue. “Three or four years ago, the single most important trend to figure out on the internet was mobile,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst from RBC Capital Markets. “These days, the single most important trend to figure out on the internet is video. And from a financial perspective, it seems like Facebook is figuring out the video-fication of the internet better than anyone else.” Mr. Zuckerberg foresees a future where Facebook is far more advanced in video than simply automatically playing them in the News Feed. He has tasked his top lieutenants to work on virtual reality and 360-degree cameras, which will aid videos and protect Facebook against fading into obscurity. “Just as people used words and text to express themselves in the past, in the future more of that is going to be video,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “And more of these augmented-reality tools are going to be an important part of delivering that experience.”

Facebook
Online advertising
Earnings Reports
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Social Media


Chaos in Middle East Grows as the U.S. Focuses on Israel

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In Damascus, the Syrian government’s forces are digging in against rebels in a bloody civil war that is swiftly approaching the grim milestone of 100,000 dead. In Cairo, an angry tide of protesters again threatens an Egyptian president. At the same time, in tranquil Tel Aviv, Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up a busy round of shuttle diplomacy, laboring to revive a three-decade-old attempt at peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. He insisted on Sunday that he had made “real progress.” The new secretary of state’s exertions — reminiscent of predecessors like Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III — have been met with the usual mix of hope and skepticism. But with so much of the Middle East still convulsing from the effects of the Arab Spring, Mr. Kerry’s efforts raise questions about the Obama administration’s priorities at a time of renewed regional unrest. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once a stark symbol and source of grievance in the Arab world, is now almost a sideshow in a Middle East consumed by sectarian strife, economic misery and, in Egypt, a democratically elected leader fighting for legitimacy with many of his people. “The moment for this kind of diplomacy has passed,” said Robert Blecher, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program of the International Crisis Group. “He’s working with actors who have acted in this movie before, and the script is built around the same elements. But the theater is new; the region is a completely different place today.” Administration officials no longer argue, as they did early in President Obama’s first term, that ending the Israeli occupation and creating a Palestinian state is the key to improving the standing of the United States in the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now just one headache among a multitude. And yet Mr. Kerry, backed by Mr. Obama, still believes that tackling the problem is worth the effort: five visits to the region in the last three months. The most recent trip involved nearly 20 hours of talks, stretching almost until dawn, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Former administration officials defend that conviction. Mr. Kerry’s focus, they say, makes sense precisely because of the chaos elsewhere. With little leverage over Egypt and deep reluctance about intervening in Syria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one place that the United States can still exert influence, and perhaps even produce a breakthrough. “You don’t have instability between the Israelis and Palestinians right now,” said Dennis B. Ross, a former senior adviser to Mr. Obama on the Middle East. “But if you don’t act, there’s a risk that the Palestinian Authority will collapse, leaving a vacuum. And if we know one thing about vacuums in the Middle East, they are never filled with good things.” Resuscitating the peace process, he said, is also vital to Jordan, which is reeling from the wave of refugees from Syria and can ill afford a new wave of Palestinian unrest in the neighboring West Bank. What is less clear is whether the Arab upheaval has made a peace accord between the Israelis and Palestinian any less elusive. Some analysts say the instability has made Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas eager to resolve their dispute, while others assert that both can use it as a pretext to avoid making the hard choices needed for a deal. Image Secretary of State John Kerry spent the weekend in Israel and the West Bank as protests rattled the Egyptian government and war raged in Syria. Credit Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin “I think both sides look at what’s happening in the region right now and think, ‘Maybe we’re better off putting ourselves in a more stable situation with each other,’ ” said a senior Western diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his involvement in what Mr. Kerry has demanded be confidential discussions. But several Israeli analysts said the reverse was true: the unrest has made Israel more concerned about security than about taking risks to advance the peace process. Sallai Meridor, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said most Israelis would rank Syria, Iran, Egypt and Jordan above the Palestinians in terms of “importance and urgency.” A day after Mr. Kerry concluded 13 hours of talks with Mr. Netanyahu, Israeli newspapers were dominated by images of the vast protests in Egypt. Five of the six major daily papers did not even carry front-page reports on Mr. Kerry’s diplomacy. “Were you to ask people in the leadership of both Israel and the Palestinians whether they thought resolving the conflict now, given the developments in the region, is feasible, most people would tell you it’s quite unlikely,” Mr. Meridor said. As for the Palestinians, some analysts said Mr. Abbas felt as vulnerable as ever about protracted negotiations with Mr. Netanyahu, particularly without preconditions. A preoccupied Egypt would leave the Palestinian Authority without crucial political support. “Abbas would say that to reach a deal, you need Arab support from Saudi Arabia and Egypt,” said Ghaith al-Omari, the executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine. “With all the chaos, you might not get that.” Mr. Kerry has made efforts to enlist the Arab world in his campaign. He brought Arab foreign ministers to Washington in April and won their support for an update to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. Before his latest round of shuttle diplomacy with Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas, Mr. Kerry huddled with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Analysts say he has avoided the trap of pushing for direct talks without laying the necessary groundwork. “There is a reason Kerry has gotten as far as he has,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel and Egypt. While resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the magic bullet for the region that some once thought, it still resonates widely, whether among the crowds in Tahrir Square or the militants of Hezbollah, who cite Israel in rallying around President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. A recent survey of 20,000 people in 14 countries by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha found that Israel and the United States were seen as the top security threats. Mr. Kerry has made it clear that he will not give up his peacemaking quest. But analysts said that the gravity of the crisis in Egypt would force him and other senior officials to shift their attention to Cairo, where American policy, some say, has failed to keep up with events. “It’s good that Kerry is focusing on the peace process,” said Brian Katulis, an expert on Egypt at the Center for American Progress, “but the biggest thing they haven’t done is pursue a strategic review on Egypt.”

Arab Spring
US Foreign Policy
Palestinians
Israel
John Kerry
Benjamin Netanyahu
Mahmoud Abbas
Egypt
Syria


Trial Begins in Killings by Police in New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — On the sunny morning of Sept 4, 2005, five days after Hurricane Katrina , a team of police officers rushed to Danziger Bridge in the eastern part of this city in response to a report of shots fired. Minutes later, two civilians lay dead on the bridge and four others were severely wounded, all from police bullets. On Monday, nearly six years later, federal prosecutors and defense lawyers stood in federal court here and gave fundamentally different accounts of what happened that day. By late afternoon, opening arguments had concluded in the trial of five current and former members of the New Orleans Police Department who are charged with firing on two groups of unarmed civilians, killing James Brissette, 17, and Ronald Madison, 40. The defendants also are charged with concocting an extensive cover-up that started immediately after the shootings and ran for years. Defense lawyers are arguing, as they did in a previous trial involving a killing by the police in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that the actions of the officers must be seen in the context of the extraordinary circumstances of the time, when the city was largely underwater, swirling with rumors and cut off from the outside world. “You can’t judge them by today’s standards,” said Eric Hessler, the lawyer who represents Sgt. Robert Gisevius. “You have to go back to Aug. 29.” The trial has been long in coming. In 2006, the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office indicted seven officers in connection with the shootings, but the case was thrown out by a judge two years later on the ground that it was tainted by prosecutorial missteps. Later in 2008, the case was picked up by federal prosecutors, becoming the highest profile of numerous federal investigations into the Police Department. There have been at least nine such criminal investigations, including one into the killing of a civilian and the subsequent burning of his body by officers in another part of the city. Three officers were convicted in connection with that case in December. In March, the Justice Department issued a blistering report after a nearly yearlong civil investigation into the Police Department’s practices. This is expected to lead to a judicial consent decree, which would order fundamental changes in the way the police force does its work. But this summer, the focus in New Orleans is on what happened on the Danziger Bridge nearly six years ago. “Shoot first and ask questions later,” an assistant United States attorney, Bobbi Bernstein, said in her opening statement. “That’s how this whole case got started.” Ms. Bernstein said the police had been genuinely mistaken in thinking that the civilians on the bridge were dangerous assailants, having been called to the area by another officer reporting gunfire. But she argued that the mistake turned into a crime when, without warning, they opened fire on the unarmed civilians, a family with some friends on one end of the bridge and Mr. Madison and his brother on the other. Once the shots were fired, Ms. Bernstein said, the crime compounded in horror: some officers leaned over a railing and strafed members of a family as they lay wounded and cowering on the ground, another officer shot Mr. Madison in the back as he was running away and another stomped on Mr. Madison, who was mentally disabled, as he lay dying on the bridge. Immediately realizing this was a “bad shoot,” Ms. Bernstein said, the officers began to concoct their story, arresting two civilians on false pretenses, conjuring up fake witnesses and, eventually, planting a gun at the scene. Among the government witnesses will be people who survived the shootings that day — the first witness on Monday was Susan Bartholomew, a 44-year-old mother whose arm was shot off by the police on the bridge — and officers who were with the team and involved in the subsequent police investigation. Five officers have pleaded guilty in connection with the Danziger case. Defense lawyers dismissed parts of the government’s account and tried to instill doubts in the jury about the reliability of coming witnesses. But the defense also described in detail the life of a police officer in the chaotic days after the hurricane. In many cases, their own residences and their headquarters were flooded, leaving police leadership scattered if not absent altogether. Information was dangerously unreliable given the atmosphere of threat in those days: the defense emphasized that on the morning of Sept. 4 there were several reports of shootings and armed civilians around the bridge, and that the initial distress call had reported, erroneously as it turned out, that two officers had been hit. In this context, the defense lawyers argued that the officers on trial should be looked upon as heroes. “These five had one thing in common: they stayed,” said Paul Fleming, the lawyer who represents former Officer Robert Faulcon. “They stayed here and did their jobs, and they did their jobs the best they could under horrible, horrible circumstances.”

Hurricane Katrina
Murders and Attempted Murders
Police
Brissette James
New Orleans (La)


North Carolina Battles Back Against Maryland to Secure Lacrosse Title

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — His North Carolina shirt was soaked a deeper shade of blue, his hat was turned backward, and eye black was smeared on his shoulder. Then Coach Joe Breschi lifted his arms and began to sprint toward Section 122 here at Lincoln Financial Field. His wife and four daughters scrambled down a stairway onto the field to embrace him. All were sobbing. “Happy tears,” Breschi said. “Happy tears.” Helmets, sticks and jerseys were scattered around them, as if some nonviolent explosion had stripped the players of their belongings. They were in the opposite corner of the stadium celebrating North Carolina’s first men’s lacrosse national championship since 1991, crying and hollering until their throats were hoarse and dehydration nearly set in. They asked for water. But then they were off to cut the nets, and slap hands, and take more pictures. Never before had a team been unseeded entering the N.C.A.A. tournament and completed a run like the Tar Heels’. Their final hill was the steepest to crest — Maryland (17-3), the top seed, playing for a national title for a second year in a row. But North Carolina, as it has done, found another way. The Tar Heels (12-6) fought back from a two-goal deficit in the final five minutes to win in overtime, 14-13, on a man-up goal by Chris Cloutier. Cloutier, the left-handed linebacker of the offense, who had scored nine goals in the semifinal win on Saturday over Loyola (Maryland), ripped a sidearm shot past Maryland goalkeeper Kyle Bernlohr off a feed from Michael Tagliaferri with 1 minute 39 seconds left in the extra period. It was Cloutier’s 19th goal of the tournament, a record, and his fifth of the game. “I didn’t really know how to react,” he said later. “I just sort of stood there.” He stood there as teammates flooded the field, racing around Maryland’s stunned players, who seemed frozen in defeat. The Terrapins’ championship drought extends to 1975, despite four appearances in the title game since 2011. The Terrapins had been ahead, 13-11, with less than eight minutes left, having largely solved North Carolina’s deep offensive attack. Breschi called a timeout to regroup the Tar Heels, and instead of panicked looks, he reviewed a surprisingly calm huddle. “These guys had zero pressure,” he said. Indeed, Breschi had said before that he felt as if his team were crashing the party. North Carolina was a bubble team upon its selection for the tournament. The Tar Heels had been picked to finish last in the Atlantic Coast Conference at the beginning of the season. They started 3-3. Late Sunday, Breschi was trying to figure out how to address his team before the game. He drifted to sleep and woke up at 3 a.m. to the image of Ray Lewis, the former Baltimore Ravens linebacker, speaking on NFL Network about his team’s run to the Super Bowl as a wild card after the 2000 season. Breschi, a lifelong Ravens fan, took it as a sign. He told his players, “That’s going to be you today.” The Tar Heels burst out of the gate to a 4-0 lead. But a failed clear by goalie Brian Balkam was stolen by Dylan Maltz in front of the net, and Maltz scored to get Maryland on the board. The Terrapins scored the next three goals, tying the game. It was back and forth from there. After North Carolina retied the game at 13-13 with 3:22 remaining in regulation, both teams turned the ball over in the closing minutes, and a shot by Maryland’s Colin Heacock hit the pipe. With 3.9 seconds remaining, North Carolina’s Luke Goldstock (four goals) was called for an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty near the goal, giving Maryland an extra-man possession to start overtime. But early in the extra period, Maryland’s Connor Kelly (four goals) had a good look at a shot that Balkam managed to block with his stomach, saving Carolina’s season. “What better time to make a stop on man-down than overtime to win the national championship?” said Balkam, who made 13 saves. North Carolina also got an extra-man opportunity after a crosschecking penalty was called on Maryland’s Mike McCarney. That was when Cloutier delivered. “It was just inches away from putting that ball in the back of the net,” Maryland Coach John Tillman said of Kelly’s shot. “I’d give that guy the ball in overtime anytime.” It had been an emotional tournament for Breschi, 48, and his family. To reach the Final Four, the Tar Heels had to defeat Notre Dame at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, only a short drive from the cemetery where Breschi’s son, Michael, is buried. In 2004, Michael Breschi was killed in an automobile accident at age 3. There were tears of grief in Columbus a week ago as that memory was revisited. But as Breschi reminded his family on Monday, these now are happy tears. “We’ve been through a lot,” Breschi’s wife, Julie, said. “He’s been working for this moment for so long. This is absolutely living the dream.”

Lacrosse
NCAA Lacrosse
UNC
University of Maryland
Chris Cloutier


Stocks Soar on Hopes Fed by Wal-Mart and 2 Banks

Abstract: After several painful days of declines, stock markets moved into positive territory yesterday as the Dow Jones industrials surged nearly 320 points on sunnier forecasts from Wal-Mart and two major banks. But many analysts doubted the high spirits would last. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 2.91 percent, its best day since mid-September, picking up 41.87 points to close at 1,481.05. But investors remained anxious about the business outlook. A number of economists continued to predict slower spending as consumers are squeezed by higher prices for gasoline. Yesterday’s rally after four days of declines left the Dow, which closed at 13,307.09, well below its high of 14,164.53 on Oct. 9, and it remains down 2.6 percent for the last five sessions. “Investors better go to a drugstore and get a neck brace,” said Ed Yardeni, an investment strategist. “It’s an extremely emotional market. It goes from boom to doom on a daily basis.” The buy-in began after Wal-Mart gave a more upbeat sales forecast and reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings, soothing fears, at least for a day, that middle- and lower-income consumers were already beginning to retrench. The company’s stock leaped 6.1 percent to close at $45.97. Crude oil prices also dropped sharply, down $3.45 a barrel to settle at $91.17. Oil has retreated from what once looked to many analysts like an inevitable march toward the $100 mark. It remained near its nominal record, but yesterday’s dip encouraged some traders to predict that potential price pressures from rising energy costs might ease. “The drop in oil prices could be the start of some relief on energy costs for consumers going into the winter months,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s. Financial shares recovered after taking a beating last week, when several major banks announced new write-downs related to subprime home loans. Investors were buoyed by comforting words from top executives at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, who said they were confident their companies would emerge relatively unscathed from the subprime mess. Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s president, said his bank would not take more write-downs on mortgage-backed securities, sending the bank’s stock up 8.5 percent to $233.04 a share. Shares in JPMorgan rose 6.3 percent. Shares of Citigroup, which said it would restructure its investment banking divisions after billions of dollars in write-downs last quarter, rose 6.9 percent, to $35.90 a share. The market loathes uncertainty, and surprise write-downs by brokerage firms have shaken investors who fear a collapse in the credit market. Bank of America said yesterday that it would write down $3 billion in collateralized debt obligations in the fourth quarter, but the stock rose 5.2 percent anyway as investors hoped the company, the nation’s biggest consumer bank, had disclosed the last of its losses. Technology stocks also began to recover from their worst week in five years. Apple may begin marketing its popular iPhone mobile device in China next year, exciting investors who sent the company’s stock up more than 10 percent, but even after the big gain it was still down 11 percent for the last five trading days. The technology-heavy Nasdaq index gained 3.5 percent, its strongest performance of the year. So with all the good news yesterday, why isn’t the market breathing easier? “The jury’s out on all of this,” said Mr. Yardeni, normally a bull. He noted that much of Wal-Mart’s increase in earnings came from cutting costs and reducing prices, suggesting that consumers may be more interested in bargains than spending freely and that many other retailers may not be able to match its performance. Indeed, Home Depot lowered its annual earnings prediction in the face of the ailing housing market, a disappointing outlook that was more in line with investors’ expectations about housing-related business activity. Analysts are looking to this week’s inflation data for a clearer picture of how problems in the credit and housing market are affecting the economy. The Consumer Price Index for October, an important measure of inflation, will be released tomorrow. Analysts expect core prices — which exclude energy and food costs and are considered a more reliable measure of underlying inflation — to hold steady at a mild 0.2 percent. And as long as prices remain under control, the Federal Reserve would be in a position to cut interest rates to stimulate lagging growth without worrying about a resurgence of inflation. “We know the economy is slowing,” Mr. Stovall said. “But we’re looking beyond that, because we know the Fed is the cavalry, coming over the ridge.” Following are the results of yesterday’s Treasury auction of 3- and 6-month bills:

Economic Conditions and Trends
Stocks and Bonds
Wal-Mart Stores Inc
Banks and Banking
Nasdaq Composite Index


Phil Rizzuto, Yankees Shortstop, Dies at 89

Abstract: Phil Rizzuto , the sure-handed Hall of Fame Yankees shortstop nicknamed the Scooter who extended his Yankee life as a popular, even beloved, broadcaster, punctuating his game calls with birthday wishes to fans and exclamations of “Holy cow!” died Monday night. He was 89. The cause was pneumonia, his daughter Patricia said yesterday. Rizzuto, who had been in declining health for several years, died at a residential facility in West Orange, N.J. He had lived in Hillside, N.J. Monday was the 12th anniversary of the death of Rizzuto’s teammate, Mickey Mantle. Rizzuto joined the Yankees in 1941 and played 13 seasons (he missed three while in the Navy during World War II) until 1956. His departure was abrupt. No longer willing to carry an aging, seldom-used infielder, the Yankees cut him on Old-Timers’ Day. Soon after, he began calling Yankee games for WPIX-TV Channel 11 and remained in that job until 1996. Rizzuto played an integral role on the dynastic Yankees before and after World War II. He was a masterly bunter and defensive specialist for teams that steamrolled to 10 American League pennants and won 8 World Series championships, including 5 in a row from 1949 to 1953. He was a 5-foot-6-inch, 150-pound spark plug who did the little things right, from turning a double play to laying down a sacrifice bunt. He left the slugging to powerful teammates like Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich, Charlie Keller and Yogi Berra. “I hustled and got on base and made the double play,” Rizzuto said. “That’s all the Yankees needed in those days.” His career statistics were not spectacular: a batting average of .273, 38 home runs and 563 runs batted in. But he was named to five American League All-Star teams, and in his best season, 1950, he batted a career-high .324, drove in 66 runs and won the A.L.’s Most Valuable Player award. Rizzuto was frequently compared to other shortstops of his era, like Pee Wee Reese of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Marty Marion of the St. Louis Cardinals. But to DiMaggio, his teammate for eight seasons, Rizzuto was the best. “The little guy in front of me, he made my job easy,” said DiMaggio, one of the game’s great center fielders. “I didn’t have to pick up so many ground balls.” One of five children of Rose and Fiore Rizzuto, a construction foreman and trolley motorman, Philip Francis Rizzuto grew up in Brooklyn and moved to Glendale, Queens, when he was 12. A major league career was not foreordained. While attending Richmond Hill High School, he tried out for the Dodgers, but the manager, Casey Stengel, told him he was too small. The New York Giants also told him to get lost, but Stengel’s rejection — “Go get a shoeshine box,” he told him — was the most vivid. “When he became the Yankee manager in 1949, I reminded him of that, but he pretended he didn’t remember,” Rizzuto said of Stengel. “By ’49, I didn’t need a shoebox, anyway. The clubhouse boy at the Stadium shined my Yankee spikes every day.” The Yankees signed him in 1937 and sent him to their Class D minor league team in Bassett, Va. But attending spring training with the Yankees in 1941, he soon established himself, replacing the veteran Frank Crosetti, and hit .307 in his rookie season. After serving in the South Pacific, Rizzuto resumed his role as a bulwark of the Yankees’ infield, forming superior double-play combinations with second basemen Joe Gordon and Jerry Coleman (who in the 1960s joined Rizzuto in the broadcast booth). He also developed into an eccentric — funny, superstitious, afraid of thunder and the target of teammates’ pranks. Two plays in 1951 were emblematic of Rizzuto’s career. In the first, Rizzuto, a right-handed batter, was at the plate facing Bob Lemon of the Cleveland Indians. It was the bottom of the ninth inning, in the middle of a pennant chase, the score tied at 1-1. DiMaggio was on third base. Rizzuto took Lemon’s first pitch, a strike, and argued the call with the umpire. That gave Rizzuto time to grab his bat from both ends, the sign to DiMaggio that a squeeze play was on for the next pitch. But DiMaggio broke early, surprising Rizzuto. Lemon, seeing what was happening, threw high and behind Rizzuto, to avoid a bunt. But with Joltin’ Joe bearing down on him, Rizzuto got his bat up in time to lay down a bunt. “If I didn’t bunt, the pitch would’ve hit me right in the head,” Rizzuto said. “I bunted it with both feet off the ground, but I got it off toward first base.” DiMaggio scored the winning run. Stengel called it “the greatest play I ever saw.” Later that year, Game 3 of the World Series against the Giants provided Rizzuto with an enemy he would fulminate about for the rest of his life. With one out in the fifth inning, the Giants’ Eddie Stanky drew a walk against the Yankees’ pitcher Vic Raschi. The next batter was Alvin Dark, and the Yankees intercepted a hit-and-run sign to him. Berra, the catcher, signaled a pitchout, and his throw to Rizzuto at second base beat Stanky by 10 feet. But Stanky slid and kicked the ball out of Rizzuto’s glove into center field with his right foot. Stanky ran to third, Rizzuto was charged with an error, and the Giants scored five unearned runs. “I was nonchalanting it,” Rizzuto admitted sheepishly. “I was looking at the TV camera.” Rizzuto was shocked when the Yankees released him in 1956 to sign outfielder Enos Slaughter. But he soon accepted a job in the Yankee radio and TV booth alongside Mel Allen and Red Barber, two towering figures in sportscasting. “You’ll never last,” Howard Cosell, then a radio sportscaster, told him. “You look like George Burns and you sound like Groucho Marx.” Despite occasional threats to resign, Rizzuto lasted in the Yankee booth until 1996. To those who heard him exclaim “Holy cow!” for a play (or a cannoli) that excited him or chide a player as a “huckleberry” for committing an error, he was an endearing, idiosyncratic voice despite his lack of professional credentials. Over four decades, he transformed himself from a conventional announcer with a distinctly New York voice into an often comic presence. And he became well known outside New York. The comedian Billy Crystal parodied him, and Meat Loaf used Rizzuto’s broadcast voice in his 1978 hit song “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” Rizzuto also became a spokesman for The Money Store in its television commercials. As for his trademark expression “Holy cow,” he said he adopted it in high school at his baseball coach’s suggestion, to replace profanity. When the Yankees celebrated Rizzuto with a day in his honor in 1985, retiring his uniform No. 10, the team presented him with a cow wearing a halo, which promptly stepped on his foot and knocked him over. Rizzuto often diverged from actual game-calling, pausing to extend birthday, anniversary and confirmation congratulations. He never used the first names of his partners at WPIX-TV — they were “Coleman,” “Murcer,” “White,” “Messer,” “Seaver” or “Cerone,” never Jerry, Bobby, Bill, Frank, Tom or Rick. Listeners heard about Rizzuto’s wife, Cora (he called her “my bride”), an employment appeal for their son, Philip Jr. (known as Scooter Jr.), reports of his golf game or exultations about a new Italian dish. Rizzuto had met Cora Ellenborg at a communion breakfast in Newark in 1942; her father was a fire chief there. The Rizzutos were married 64 years, and Mrs. Rizzuto survives her husband. Besides their daughter Patricia, survivors also include Philip Jr.; two other daughters, Cynthia and Penny, and two granddaughters. Rizzuto’s ramblings and pro-Yankee sentiments maddened detractors. But his fans adored him as they would a delightful uncle, and colleagues were fond of recalling his scorecard notation of W.W. — wasn’t watching. After many years of failing to get into the Hall of Fame, Rizzuto was elected in 1994 by the Hall’s veterans committee, which reconsiders candidates not voted in by sportswriters. Friends like Berra, White and Reese sat on the committee. Rizzuto abruptly resigned from WPIX in August 1995, distraught that he had remained to broadcast a game at Fenway Park rather than join former teammates at Mickey Mantle’s funeral in Dallas. He watched the services on television from the booth. “I took it hard and knew I made a big mistake,” he said later. “I got more upset as the game went on and left in the fifth. They tried to drag me back, but I wouldn’t.” He returned in 1996 for a final season, persuaded by fans, Mantle’s sons and George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ principal owner. The pull of his cherished team was too strong. He was, after all, someone who practically saw the world filtered through Yankee pinstripes. When the news came in 1978 that Pope Paul VI had died, Rizzuto said on the air, “Well, that kind of puts the damper on even a Yankee win.”

Deaths (Obituaries)
Rizzuto Phil
New York Yankees
Baseball


Medical Practices Keep Eye on the Business Side

Abstract: They do not teach business in medical school. When doctors go into private practice, they learn about profits and losses on the job, in a complex industry that is subject to large-scale forces beyond the control of most individuals. “Overhead continues to go up, but your ability to raise prices is very limited,” said Dr. J. Fred Ralston Jr., past president of the American College of Physicians and an internist with Fayetteville Medical Associates, a group practice in Tennessee that recently marked its 100th anniversary. “Never in that time — which included the 1918 flu epidemic, two world wars and at least one depression — have we been as challenged as we are now in the changing world of health care.” Given fixed Medicare payments and nonnegotiable managed care contracts, it is difficult to move the dial on revenue. So physicians looking to maintain profits often turn to controlling costs. Based on interviews with business-minded doctors, a medical practice can become a cost-efficient machine if managers control human resource expenses, spread out fixed costs as much as possible, exploit information technology and carefully track business metrics. LIMIT STAFF COSTS “Personnel is clearly the biggest place you can save,” said Dr. Jack Flyer, a physician with CardioCare in Chevy Chase, Md. In two years, the practice of 10 cardiologists cut its support staff in half, to 20 workers, by cross-training employees and working more efficiently. At the same time, patient encounters, or visits, actually climbed 20 percent. “The days of having multiple medical assistants help you with every task is over. I do almost everything myself,” said Dr. Flyer, who prescribes and takes notes electronically and greets his waiting patients before personally escorting them to an examination room. When the practice’s echocardiographers or nuclear technologists are done with their technical duties, they phone patients with reminders or to set up appointments. This also pays off when a staff member calls in sick or takes vacation. “We don’t have to hire a temp to be a medical assistant or secretary,” he said. “We can just take one of our billers or medical records people and slide them into a different position. Everyone in the office has a list of things to do if they’re not busy doing their primary job.” Some medical practices rely heavily on part-time personnel to avoid paying benefits. But Dr. Ralston advised against getting too cheap with loyal employees whose expertise enables doctors to do their jobs. “We have low office turnover,” he said, “and we really feel that is helpful in running an office efficiently.” SPREAD OUT FIXED EXPENSES Another quick fix for bloated budgets is to stretch your fixed costs across more physicians or expanded office hours. Practices with multiple doctors enjoy efficiencies that solo practitioners cannot obtain, as well as greater power in negotiating discounts with insurance companies, paper suppliers, vaccine makers and even credit card processors. At Hopewell Dental Care outside Columbus, Ohio, for instance, the four partners see patients most evenings until 7 p.m. and on Saturdays, to spread the cost of office space over as much time as possible. “We make the most out of our physical building,” said Dr. Steve Krendl. “Compared with the single practitioner who’s only able to use his building clinically 36 hours a week, we’re using it 60 hours.” The practice recently bought equipment to mill crowns while patients wait, which cut costs to about $45 for materials, not including staff time; the nonmaterials cost to mill a crown off site had been $190. The $150,000 price tag for the equipment is affordable because it is spread over four dentists. “Once that equipment is paid for, that’s a pretty dramatic financial benefit for us and the patient as well, if they don’t have to come back a second time,” Dr. Krendl said. Big is better for Shady Grove Fertility , one of the largest fertility practices in the United States, with 13 locations around the Washington-Baltimore area, more than 400 employees and 24 physicians. “The administration is more centralized, and you’re spreading it over a larger base,” said Mark Segal, the practice’s chief executive. “You’re able to get volume purchasing discounts on supplies. That makes it very difficult for a small, one- or two-physician practice to compete. We’re seeing more and more practices consolidating.” GO ELECTRONIC The 2009 federal stimulus package included incentives of up to $44,000 for each physician for adopting electronic medical records. Moreover, effective information technology systems can save physicians valuable hours in prescribing, note-taking and communicating with staff or patients. “My time is used far more efficiently than it was in the past,” said Dr. Thomas F. Long, senior partner at the San Ramon Valley Primary Care Medical Group in California. Electronic prescribing eliminates phone calls to pharmacists or patients. “With that work-flow improvement, it gives me time for an extra patient or two in the day.” Electronic records also make it feasible to win pay-for-performance bonuses from insurance companies. For instance, when all of the San Ramon Valley practice’s diabetic patients with Blue Cross insurance complete a recommended blood test, the group gets a financial bonus. The practice needs software to track the eligible patient population and document that the benchmark has been met. MONITOR AND TWEAK AS NEEDED Given the rapidly changing landscape in medicine, it is important to keep tabs on your business metrics and adjust your procedures if necessary. Shady Grove Fertility holds monthly business meetings to track retention, yield and other metrics against past performance and industry benchmarks, on top of an annual planning retreat. New physicians are trained through a seminar on the practice’s procedures, including emphasis on first appointments to establish trust and lay the groundwork for a long-term relationship with patients. “The more hand-holding you do, the more retention you get,” Mr. Segal said. “Eighty percent of physicians out there don’t understand that concept.” Two years ago, the credit crisis caused an enormous drop-off in patients as people were unable to tap credit cards or equity lines to pay the $13,500 to $25,000 cost of infertility treatment. Shady Grove worked with an outside company to secure financing for some patients. The practice also offers a program to let patients share eggs from a single donor, cutting the cost by as much as $6,000. Hopewell Dental relies on a consultant for information about industry benchmarks and trends, like a decline in company-provided dental insurance. The practice monitors its patient population to ensure that everyone comes in for regular appointments as soon as they are due. No matter how effectively they cut costs, physicians in all specialties face uncertainty over the future of group insurance and Medicare, given the continuing debate in Washington. “It’s hard to do a traditional practice analysis,” Dr. Ralston said. “Having a good relationship with the patients and doing the right thing for them gives you an opportunity to weather what’s a difficult storm currently.”

Doctors
Small Business
Entrepreneurship
Medicine and Health


Hungarian Fashion Photographer Defends ‘Migrant Chic’ Spread

Abstract: As dramatic images of migrants being repelled at the border with Hungary flooded the news media last month, a fashion photographer in Budapest, Norbert Baksa, had an idea: Why not use the backdrop of the crisis — the barbed-wire enclosures, the clashes with the police — to display luxury clothing brands? It was not until this week, when the photographer shared the results of his “migrant chic” fashion shoot with the world, posting 13 images on his website and promoting it on Twitter, that he discovered a very large number of other people found the whole idea deeply objectionable. Image A screenshot from the website of Norbert Baksa, a Hungarian photographer, showing a model playing a migrant taking a selfie. Within hours of uploading his work to the web — a spread he titled “Der Migrant” that features a model wearing head scarves and shirts that seem to ride up or come undone, à la Marianne , as she struggles with the law — Mr. Baksa found himself ridiculed on social networks and in dozens of critical articles from across the globe. As Nathalie Hof observed in the online journal OAI13, the images that attracted the most attention showed the model, Monika Jablonczky, pausing to “take a selfie, leaning against the border fence, in her designer clothes, with a phone which bears the distinct logo of Chanel.” That the model’s shirt is half open drew particular ire, given the cultural and faith backgrounds of many of those fleeing wars in the Middle East. The criticism was so intense that Mr. Baksa, who has shot for Elle, Playboy and Cosmopolitan, felt compelled to defend his work, and motives, in a long note posted on his website. “Regarding the reactions,” the photographer wrote, “I hoped people would realize that the situation is very complex and see that they are taking stands based on partial or biased information. I do not understand how people can take a clear stand (pro or con) while we are flooded with contradictory information through the media, so no one has extensive knowledge of the situation as a whole. This is exactly what we wanted to picture: you see a suffering woman, who is also beautiful and despite her situation, has some high quality pieces of outfit and a smartphone.” Image A screenshot from the website of the Hungarian fashion photographer Norbert Baksa. The photographs were “not intended to glamourize this clearly bad situation,” he said, but “to draw the attention to the problem and make people think about it.” The images, Mr. Baksa added, were based on news photographs of actual events taken in recent weeks at the Hungarian border, many of which provoked outrage at the authorities’ treatment of migrants. Mr. Baksa did suggest, however, that he accepted the Hungarian government’s characterization of some of those caught up in clashes as “aggressive migrants or terrorists.” Despite his best efforts to explain, the vast majority of the responses to Mr. Baksa on social networks came from viewers who urged him, essentially, to quit while he was behind and stop trying to make “migrant chic” happen. Image A screenshot from the website of Norbert Baksa, a Hungarian photographer. Among those unconvinced by the photographer’s rationale was his compatriot Szabolcs Panyi of Hungary’s Index.hu. Meanwhile, images of actual migrants, who are still risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean in the thousands , continue to portray a considerably less sexy reality.

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Bolivia Says Official Sent to Negotiate With Miners Is Killed

Abstract: LA PAZ, Bolivia — A conflict between the Bolivian government and miners demanding that the country’s mining laws be changed escalated on Friday as the authorities said that protesters had kidnapped, tortured and killed a top official sent to negotiate with them. The authorities said the official, Rodolfo Illanes, 56, the deputy interior minister, was killed Thursday after being kidnapped by members of a miners’ cooperative who had blocked the highway from La Paz to the mining state of Oruro. The authorities said captors bludgeoned Mr. Illanes using sticks and stones. His body was recovered on Friday by the side of the highway, officials said. “There was flagellation,” said a prosecutor, Edwin Blanco, as he told reporters about Mr. Illanes’s killing, which included blows to the head. The dispute stems from the government’s attempts to enforce the country’s mining laws, which require the cooperatives to allow workers to form unions and put restrictions on cooperatives’ ability to work with foreign companies. The cooperatives, which operate as independent companies and employ about 120,000 miners, say the laws restrict their independence, and they have taken their case to the streets. Image Rodolfo Illanes, the deputy interior minister of Bolivia. His body was recovered on Friday by the side of the highway, officials said. Credit Reuters The groups have long been a powerful force in Bolivia , and are known to draw tens of thousands to their protests, with many demonstrators armed with dynamite. The miners’ cooperatives played a central role when they joined protests over Bolivia’s natural gas supply, which left dozens dead. In 2005, the miners supported further unrest which led to the resignation of Carlos Mesa, then the president. But the current president, Evo Morales, has long enjoyed the support of the miners’ cooperatives, which was why the developments this week were surprising to many. Along with the coca growers who Mr. Morales used to represent as a unionist, the miners are important allies for the president, who has rewarded them with political posts and who courts them in speeches. Mr. Morales’s tone on Friday changed after the killing of Mr. Illanes. “They kidnapped him, tortured him and killed him,” he said. “It’s unpardonable. I don’t understand why our brothers at the cooperatives could do this.” Mr. Morales has suffered declining support this year after accusations of cronyism and a scandal involving a child born out of wedlock. This year, Mr. Morales, a three-term president, lost a referendum that would have allowed him to run again. Analysts said support for the populist leader had weakened among the working poor and indigenous groups. On Friday, the miners had removed the roadblock and had retreated into Oruro State. The authorities said they were searching for six workers they said were connected to Mr. Illanes’s killing.

Bolivia
Rodolfo Illanes
Mining
Kidnapping and Hostages
Murders and Homicides
Evo Morales


Settlement for Company Charged in Big-Dig Death

Abstract: BOSTON — The only company charged with manslaughter after a woman died in a Big Dig tunnel collapse in 2006 has agreed to pay the state and city $16 million in exchange for the charge being dropped. The company, Powers Fasteners Inc., supplied the epoxy blamed in the collapse that killed the woman, Milena Del Valle, in July 2006 as she was going to the airport. Attorney General Martha Coakley said that with the settlement, the state was “closing out most of the civil and criminal matters” stemming from the tunnel collapse. So far, the state has negotiated about $600 million in settlements related to flaws in the project. Powers Fasteners was criminally charged last year after the National Transportation Safety Board found it had provided “inadequate and misleading” information about the epoxy used to anchor the tunnel’s concrete ceiling. It agreed a year ago to pay $6 million Ms. Del Valle’s family, which has reached settlements totaling $28 million from various other companies involved in the Big Dig construction. In addition to paying the state and city $16 million, Powers Fasteners, a family-owned company in Brewster, N.Y., has agreed to stop production and sales of the epoxy used in the tunnel, recall it and put out warnings about it. That epoxy, a fast-set type, was inappropriately used on heavy concrete ceiling panels, investigators found, saying it should have been limited to wall panels. The company, which has 240 employees, has also agreed not to sell other adhesive anchors unless an “accredited lab” approves them. The indictment can be reinstated within three years if the company does not comply. Had it been convicted of manslaughter, the company would have faced a maximum fine of $1,000. Ms. Coakley said the quicker settlement was preferable, not least because Ms. Del Valle’s family was intent on ensuring that no one else died for the same reason. “I am very relieved and comfortable that we have resolved most of the issues as well as we could,” Ms. Coakley said in a news conference. The Big Dig, one of the nation’s most complex highway projects, has cost about $15 billion over nearly two decades. While the project is considered a feat of engineering, replacing an unsightly elevated highway through Boston with underground tunnels, it has been plagued with problems. In January, the two companies that managed the design and construction of the project and a number of smaller companies involved in it agreed to pay the state and federal governments more than $450 million. Most of that money is going to a special fund to pay for repairs on the Big Dig, while the money from Powers Fasteners will go to a general transportation fund. After Powers was indicted on one count of involuntary manslaughter in August 2007, its president, Jeff Powers, said the company had been singled out because it was small and could not “buy our way out.” On Wednesday, though, Mr. Powers said the company “accepts its share of responsibility as one of many businesses” involved in the flawed tunnel construction. “The indictment alone has put enormous stress on our business and our people — in an economic environment posing its own special challenges,” Mr. Powers said in a statement. “We are very happy to bring to a close this difficult chapter for all concerned.” Lawyers for Ms. Del Valle’s husband and children said the family was happy to see the settlement, in particular because the Powers family recently suffered a loss of its own. Mr. Powers’s brother died in a motorcycle accident this fall. “It’s time for this to be brought to a close,” said Bradley Henry, one of the lawyers, “and for peace to come to the Powers family.”

Powers Fasteners Inc
Big Dig Project (Boston)
Accidents and Safety
Boston (Mass)


More DNA Problems Found in New York City Crime Lab

Abstract: The New York City medical examiner’s office said Thursday that it had discovered more than 50 cases in which it failed to upload critical DNA evidence samples from crime scenes to the state’s DNA database, preventing those samples from being compared to genetic material from convicted offenders. The error was found during an extensive review undertaken after the office learned that one of its laboratory technicians had missed detecting DNA evidence in at least 26 rape cases — an embarrassing oversight for an agency at the forefront of forensic technology, but one that the office said at the time was isolated and unprecedented. The new discovery has led to the firing of the office’s deputy director of quality assurance in the lab and the suspension of the director of the office’s department of forensic biology, Dr. Mechthild Prinz. The suspension of Dr. Prinz was made “pending further review of her management practices,” according to a statement from Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. The name of the deputy director could not be immediately determined. In some 55 instances, the medical examiner’s office had entered DNA samples taken from crime scenes into a database maintained by the city, but did not do the same for the state database, according to the statement, which did not account for how the lapse occurred. Although the city is able to compare DNA it has collected from suspects against samples taken from local crime scenes, the city’s database is much smaller than the statewide database, which is linked to a national network of other states’ records as well. As a result, the 55 samples were not searched against a larger pool of profiles of convicted offenders. Once the 55 DNA profiles were uploaded, there was apparently one instance of a DNA hit. Ms. Borakove said that a DNA sample from a 2006 burglary resulted in an “investigative lead” after it was entered into the statewide system. The remaining 54 samples did not supply any new evidence for a criminal prosecution, she said. “While 55 represents a minuscule percentage of the overall total of 25,000 profiles entered since 2000 (when the system was implemented), all profiles must be uploaded and the failure is not acceptable for a world-class DNA lab that prides itself on accuracy and attention to detail,” the statement said. Ms. Borakove said that there was a delay between when the cases were first discovered and when the executive management of the medical examiner’s office was alerted to the lapses. She said the office would retain an outside expert to review the lab’s management and that several new procedures had been put in place. Those procedures include requiring supervisors to be present in evidence exam rooms at all times, as well as the automatic uploading of all eligible DNA profiles to the state database. The latest disclosure comes as the medical examiner’s office is concluding a nearly two-year review of its handling of 800 rape cases. That review began after supervisors discovered that a longtime technician had overlooked DNA evidence on items from at least 26 rape kits, incorrectly reporting that they contained no relevant evidence. In addition, the technician is believed to have misplaced 16 pieces of evidence, returning them to the wrong rape kits, according to documents describing the office’s review. On Monday, a City Council hearing is scheduled to examine the former technician’s errors. “We want to know why it happened, what they have done to fix the problem, and how quality control procedures have been improved,” a spokesman for Speaker Christine C. Quinn said.

Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York


U.S. Chided for Delays Over Treaty on Weapons

Abstract: The American peace activist who pioneered a treaty that bans antipersonnel land mines chided the Obama administration on Wednesday for not yet having signed it after five years of review. The activist, Jody Williams, said that China — which also has not signed — now appears to have far fewer of these weapons than the United States. In a telephone interview from Maputo, Mozambique, where a conference on the treaty’s progress is underway, Ms. Williams, the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines , said the United States, to its credit, remains the biggest contributor to the goal of decontaminating land mines from old conflict zones and to helping victims of land mines. She also emphasized that even with its estimated 10 million stockpiled land mines, the United States has been observing the provisions of the 15-year-old treaty, which prohibits their production, export and use, and aims to eliminate them. The treaty now has 161 signers and is close to 162 — the Persian Gulf nation of Oman is likely to announce it is joining before the conference concludes. Yet Ms. Williams expressed impatience with the Obama administration, which had suggested it would sign the treaty during Mr. Obama’s first term but has issued mixed signals in recent months, saying the provisions remained under review. “Mr. Obama has spoken eloquently about U.S. multilateralism, not being an aggressor state, participating in negotiations and all that jazz,” she said. “If he can’t even take this treaty, which he’s already obeying, to the Senate, what does that say about more significant treaties?” Edward C. Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in an email that the United States had demonstrated its concern for the humanitarian principles of the treaty, as seen in its financial support for land mine clearance and its attendance at all meetings of treaty participants. “As we have said, we are pressing forward to conclusion of an extensive and ongoing review of our land mine policy,” he said. “We will share outcomes from that process as soon as we are in a position to do so.” An American observer at the conference, Steven R. Costner, deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, did not respond to messages. Ms. Williams said members of her organization had been meeting informally with him but did not expect any news. The treaty, which took effect in 1999, is regarded as a signature achievement of Ms. Williams and her organization, and a template for other disarmament advocacy work. They shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for stigmatizing antipersonnel land mines, indiscriminate weapons designed to explode when unsuspecting victims step on or near them. Most countries, even those that have not signed the treaty, no longer use antipersonnel land mines. But an estimated 4,000 people a year, half of them children, are killed or maimed by these weapons, which can lie dormant for decades. American defense officials have argued that antipersonnel land mines have an important strategic value, deterring an enemy infantry force from taking territory, for example. They also note that China, Russia and Iran, among others, have not renounced these weapons. Ms. Williams rejected the arguments. “The military doesn’t want to give in because it doesn’t want civil society to have any role to play in determining which weapons may or may not be appropriate in conflict,” she said. In what Ms. Williams called a sign of progress, China sent an observer delegation to the conference for the first time. She also said the delegation had said that China’s land mine stockpile was only five million, compared with the original estimate of 110 million when the treaty took effect. Disarmament experts have said universal acceptance of the treaty is possible by 2025, which has now become her group’s objective. “We’re not just imagining this and having yet another utopian dream,” she said. “We’re not just pulling something out of the air.”

International Campaign to Ban Landmines
US Foreign Policy
Explosive mine
Explosions
Accidents and Safety
Civilian casualties
US
China
Jody Williams


Blood Clot Ends Season of Penguins Forward

Abstract: Pittsburgh Penguins forward Pascal Dupuis, 35, will be out at least six months after doctors discovered a blood clot in his lung. Dupuis will use blood thinners to treat the condition but is out for the rest of the regular season and possibly longer. He was successfully treated for a blood clot in January and returned in time for training camp. Dupuis has six goals and five assists in 16 games.

Ice hockey
Pascal Dupuis
Blood Clot
Pittsburgh Penguins


Patrick Cannon, Former Mayor of Charlotte, Pleads Guilty to Fraud

Abstract: CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Tuesday morning docket in the Federal District Court here seemed mostly ordinary, as men accused of fraud and drug trafficking, clad in orange jumpsuits, came and went. Then Patrick D. Cannon, the mayor of Charlotte until March , entered the courtroom. Wearing a gray suit, a light-color shirt and a black-and-white striped tie, Mr. Cannon, 47, pleaded guilty to accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and other benefits. His plea, part of an agreement with federal prosecutors, to a single count of honest services wire fraud left him exposed to a prison sentence of up to 20 years and served as a blow to Charlotte’s reputation as an emblem of clean government. During his appearance before a magistrate judge in the city he once led, Mr. Cannon, who was elected mayor last year , said little more than variations of “Yes, sir, your honor.” Later he stood before about a dozen television cameras and apologized for a pattern of misconduct that the federal authorities said stretched back to at least 2009, when Mr. Cannon was on the City Council. “Much has been given to me in the way of the public’s trust,” Mr. Cannon read from a three-paragraph statement. “I regret having acted in ways that broke that trust. For that, I am deeply sorry.” He added, “I regret having hurt the city that I love.” A prosecutor said that Mr. Cannon, whose sentencing has not been scheduled, had cooperated with the federal investigation in the aftermath of his unexpected arrest and resignation on March 26. Court filings show that Mr. Cannon repeatedly sought and accepted bribes in exchange for his efforts on traditional municipal matters of zoning, transportation and planning. In doing so, the federal authorities wrote, Mr. Cannon embarked on a plot that would “defraud and deprive the citizens of Charlotte and the government of Charlotte of their right to Cannon’s honest and faithful services.” Beginning in 2009, prosecutors said, Mr. Cannon began seeking and accepting bribes from the owner of a strip club, including a $2,000 payment in 2013. For that bribe, the authorities said, Mr. Cannon arranged for the business owner, who was concerned about the effects of a planned extension of Charlotte’s light rail system on his club, to meet with mass transit officials. He also spoke about the business with a member of the City Council and the city’s zoning administrator. But the thrust of the accusations against Mr. Cannon emerged from an undercover operation by F.B.I. agents who claimed they worked for real estate or venture capital firms. Over a 13-month period, those agents paid Mr. Cannon more than $48,000, sent him to Las Vegas and gave him access to a Charlotte apartment. In one instance, prosecutors said, Mr. Cannon accepted a $20,000 bribe in his mayoral office. He was arrested weeks later, setting into motion a process that left Charlotte with its fourth mayor, Daniel G. Clodfelter , in less than a year after circumstances that included a cabinet appointment and a scheduled election . Mr. Cannon’s guilty plea had been widely expected after weeks passed without word of an indictment. Before his plea agreement, Mr. Cannon faced three charges that together carried possible sentences of up to 50 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines. By mid-May, court records show, Mr. Cannon and the authorities had reached an agreement, the details of which were sealed until Monday. Standing with grim-faced prosecutors and F.B.I. agents, Anne M. Tompkins, the United States attorney here, said that her office’s inquiry was continuing, and the F.B.I.’s top agent in North Carolina, John A. Strong, said that the authorities could bring charges against others. “Today’s announcement is a significant step forward in our investigation of a bribery scheme that has stunned and rightfully angered the citizens of Charlotte,” Ms. Tompkins said, adding later that “Mr. Cannon’s corrupt actions betrayed all of us.” This city of about 775,000 has a long tradition of optimism and efficiency, and the announcement of Mr. Cannon’s arrest left Charlotte reeling. In the days immediately after, many residents expressed more humiliation than fury about the events. On Tuesday, after months out of office, Mr. Cannon himself signaled that he recognized the depth of civic embarrassment. “I understand the anger, frustration and disappointment that my actions have caused,” he said.

Charlotte NC
Patrick D Cannon
Mayor
Bribery and Kickbacks
Fraud
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance
City council


England Falls to Netherlands in Cricket

Abstract: England’s dismal winter ended in ignominy as it bowed out of the World Twenty20 with an embarrassing 45-run loss to the Netherlands in Chittagong, Bangladesh. England has lost 20 of 25 international matches since October. In the day’s other game, Sri Lanka breezed into the semifinals over New Zealand by 59 runs.


Knicks Fly to London With Carmelo Anthony in the News

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y. — The Knicks practiced into the night Monday, went through an air travel security checkpoint at their practice facility, then jetted for London, their franchise cornerstone, Carmelo Anthony, all but spirited out of the country under a mysterious veil. The Knicks will play the Detroit Pistons on Thursday in London in what will presumably be the first regular-season game in a couple of weeks in which Anthony will take the court feeling fully nourished. And because the game is being played overseas, there is little or no chance that the Knicks’ enigmatic owner, James L. Dolan, will have Madison Square Garden employees aim microphones at the court to pick up every in-game conversation in which Anthony is involved, as Dolan is alleged to have done in last Friday’s game at the Garden against the Chicago Bulls. The disclosure that Anthony had engaged in a restricted diet for 15 days — no meat or carbohydrates — came from the player himself after Sunday afternoon’s victory at home over the New Orleans Hornets. Anthony said he had undertaken the diet “to get some clarity in my life” but was abandoning it because it had left him feeling “de-energized.” The disclosure that Dolan had instructed two audio technicians to stand at opposite ends of the court to record everything said to and by Anthony during Friday’s game came in The Star-Ledger of Newark, which did not cite any sources. Anthony had left the locker room on Sunday vowing to find a big steak, his modified fast at an end. But he was not available Monday to add insight into why he followed an eating plan that made him wonder “how I was out there competing at a high level,” or to offer his reaction to the notion that Dolan had been eavesdropping on him. The Knicks declined to comment on the Star-Ledger report. That left Coach Mike Woodson to fill the void. He told reporters at Monday’s practice that he “got wind of” the restricted diet only when Anthony mentioned it Sunday, but said he was not concerned that his star player had not informed him during the past two weeks that he drastically changed his eating habits and that he was feeling some energy loss as a result. “I don’t get into players and what they eat and don’t eat; I just expect them to be ready to go when it’s time to go,” Woodson said, adding: “He’s going to eat the right foods and do all of the necessary things to be ready to play basketball. I have that much faith in him.” When Woodson was further prodded with questions about the issue, he grew annoyed and said: “It’s a big thing to you guys, but it’s not a big thing to me. I’d take Melo fasting or not fasting; it doesn’t matter to me.” Image Carmelo Anthony during Sunday’s game, after which he announced he was ending a restricted diet he had been on for 15 days. Credit Kathy Willens/Associated Press Knicks fans, of course, may disagree. During the period in which he said he was on a diet, Anthony played sluggishly in first quarters — shooting 30.8 percent then, compared with 53.5 percent previously. That included Sunday’s game, in which he went 1 for 8 from the field in the first quarter. In addition, the Knicks went 3-4 in that time, with Anthony missing one of the games because of a suspension stemming from his postgame confrontations with Boston’s Kevin Garnett a week ago Monday. But if Woodson did not know what Anthony was up to, some of his teammates did. One was Steve Novak, who said he learned that Anthony was not eating in his normal fashion by dining with him. “I guess if he can keep scoring 30, 40 points a night, he can fast all he wants,” Novak said. As for the microphones, if they were indeed being aimed at Anthony on Friday night, the question is why? Anthony’s postgame confrontations with Garnett came after the veteran Celtics center and forward, a renowned N.B.A. trash-talker, clearly got under Anthony’s skin in a game in which he shot poorly and the Celtics won. What Garnett actually said to rile Anthony remains unclear. Some published reports stated that Garnett had made remarks about Anthony’s wife. Days later, however, Celtics Coach Doc Rivers adamantly disputed that interpretation. Anthony has declined to provide details. So perhaps Dolan wanted to listen in himself on the things being said to rile Anthony, particularly by a team like the Bulls, who had beaten the Knicks in a tough game late in December in which Anthony, Woodson and Tyson Chandler had been ejected. Asked to comment on the situation, an N.B.A. spokesman noted that there was no prohibition against audio equipment in a league arena. In any case, the Knicks will now spend the next few days in London, where Anthony spent part of last summer as a member of the United States Olympic basketball team. So he presumably knows where to go to find a good meal. Presumably, too, there will not be any microphones recording his dinner conversations. REBOUNDS Barring any setbacks in the next two days, Iman Shumpert will make his season debut Thursday for the Knicks. The game will be the only one in a week for the Knicks, which will be a welcome break for a team that is hobbled with injuries and is always mindful of the advanced age of many of its players.

Knicks
Carmelo Anthony
Mike Woodson
Basketball
Pistons
London


Who Ever Said No Two Snowflakes Were Alike?

Abstract: As the East Coast braces for the first ferocious snowstorm of the season, we wanted to revisit a frosty adage: Is it true that no two snowflakes are the same? Never, ever ever? Not quite, said Kenneth G. Libbrecht , a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, who found a way to create what he calls “identical twin” snowflakes in his lab. Since each snowflake faces a different turbulent path through the atmosphere, each twist, turn and fall grants it a unique symmetry. But if you subtract nature’s volatility from the equation, then these icy flowers are no longer guaranteed uniqueness. By placing two crystal seeds next to each other and growing them under the exact same conditions, Dr. Libbrecht found that he could create two snowflakes with nearly the same intricate shapes and patterns. Image This is a photo of “identical twin” snowflakes taken under a photomicroscope designed to capture tiny snow crystals dubbed the “SnowMaster 9000.” Credit Kenneth Libbrecht “I started calling them identical twins because they are like identical people,” he said. “They are too similar to just happen by chance, but not absolutely precisely identical to the last molecule.” Image Grown side by side under identical conditions, these two twin snowflakes are nearly indistinguishable. Credit Kenneth Libbrecht Dr. Libbrecht has been growing snowflakes in sunny Pasadena, Calif. — where snow falls very rarely — using a laboratory chiller and sapphire glass for two decades, though he only struck upon the recipe for identical ones last August. By adjusting the temperature and humidity he can manipulate their designs, creating a vast array of patterns. He photographs them with the help of a photomicroscope that is specially designed to capture tiny snow crystals. Negative 10 degrees Celsius creates frozen flowers with flat plates. At minus 2 degrees Celsius he can make triangular snow crystals. If he grows the crystals under high humidity levels, eccentric side branches emerge. Image Twin snowflakes, grown from crystals under the same temperature and humidity conditions, surrounded by water droplets. Credit Kenneth Libbrecht To his surprise he found that lab-grown snowflakes don’t actually grow along the glass surface that they are placed on. Instead they sprout more like mushrooms with microscopic nubs that support flat pedestals of ice. His synthetic snowflakes can take between 15 minutes and an hour to grow. “We haven’t violated any laws of physics,” he said of his “identical twins.” “We just found a loophole.” You can see more of Dr. Libbrecht’s snowflakes on his w ebsite and in his latest book, “ The Snowflake: Winter’s Frozen Artistry.” Image The identical twins start as seed crystals and take anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes to grow. Credit Kenneth Libbrecht


As Ex-Leader Awaits Sentencing, Hollinger Files for Bankruptcy

Abstract: Hollinger Inc., the Canadian company that Conrad M. Black used to control his newspaper empire, filed for bankruptcy yesterday and said it would explore options for the Sun-Times Media Group while facing payments on debt and shareholder suits. Hollinger, with a majority voting interest in Sun-Times, named six directors to the Sun-Times board to gain a majority and filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the United States, the company said. Hollinger owns about 70 percent of the voting shares and 20 percent of the equity in Sun-Times, publisher of The Chicago Sun-Times and community newspapers in the region. It asked an Ontario court to supervise a restructuring of the company, provide it protection from creditors during the process and suspend all lawsuits. A similar application was made in the United States pursuant to Chapter 15 of the bankruptcy code, Hollinger said. Sun-Times, based in Chicago, had sued Hollinger and Mr. Black, 62, to recover $542 million it says Mr. Black and the holding company looted. A federal court jury in Chicago convicted Mr. Black on July 13 on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. He is free on $21 million bail and awaiting sentencing on Nov. 30. Meanwhile, a federal judge denied Mr. Black’s request to travel to Canada while awaiting his sentencing, after receiving a letter yesterday from a Canadian official saying that American prosecutors may have difficulty retrieving him if the request is granted. Judge Amy J. St. Eve cited a possibility that Mr. Black, who is Canadian-born, could try to stay in his native country and then fight extradition to the United States. Mr. Black had offered to waive his right to contest extradition. But the Canadian official, Thomas Beveridge of the Canadian Department of Justice, wrote that “lack of express statutory authority to enforce these prior undertakings gives rise to the possibility of extensive litigation in our courts.” Shares of Sun-Times, formerly Hollinger International Inc., gained 26 cents, to $4.45, on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.

Hollinger Inc
Bankruptcies
Sun-Times Media Group Incorporated
Black Conrad M
Decisions and Verdicts