In Letter, Warren Buffett Concedes a Tough Year

Abstract: The renowned investor Warren E. Buffett chided himself and the business world at large in his annual letter to shareholders of his holding company on Saturday as he sifted through the wreckage of his worst year in four decades. Mr. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway , reported a 62 percent drop in net income for 2008 and posted a decline in book value per share for only the second time since he took control in 1965. Shares of the company, which peaked in late 2007 at more than $148,000 apiece, closed Friday at $78,600. With characteristic candor, Mr. Buffett, 78, took the blame for some of the declines, stating that he “did some dumb things,” lamenting in particular an ill-timed bet on oil and the purchase of shares in two Irish banks, which have fared poorly. But he also needled regulators and an assortment of unnamed chief executives as he predicted that fallout from the credit crisis would leave the stock market a shambles through 2009. The letter, as ever, gives shareholders an overview of Berkshire’s annual performance, but it also doubles as a folksy state-of-the-economy address from Mr. Buffett, one of the country’s most revered investors. In language that was by turns blunt and witty, he decried what he called “a series of life-threatening problems within many of the world’s great financial institutions.” An inveterate optimist about the American economy, Mr. Buffett also forecast an eventual recovery, asserting that the country has faced even more severe economic travails in the past. “Without fail,” he noted, “we’ve overcome them.” Despite its record losses, Berkshire Hathaway still has about $25 billion of cash on hand and has been buying preferred shares of General Electric and Goldman Sachs, as well as the debt of companies like Harley-Davidson and Tiffany & Company. Mr. Buffett is shopping for bargains while the share prices of most companies are sliding — his own portfolio included. Shares of many of his top 20 holdings suffered losses last year, among them Coca-Cola, American Express and ConocoPhillips. Since the beginning of the recession, Mr. Buffett has taken on a part-time and unofficial role as the United States economy’s éminence grise. He also served on President Obama’s transition team. In his letter, though, he lambasted the decisions and habits that led to the credit crisis. In reviewing the performance of Clayton Homes, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary that sells manufactured homes, he pointed out that its lending arm had managed to keep foreclosure rates to less than 4 percent, even among subprime borrowers, or those with weak credit ratings. He contrasted that relative success with the failures of just about everyone else in the same business. “The stupefying losses in mortgage-related securities came in large part because of flawed, history-based models used by salesmen, rating agencies and investors,” he wrote. He went on: “These parties looked at loss experience over periods when home prices rose only moderately and speculation in houses was negligible. They then made this experience a yardstick for evaluating future losses. They blissfully ignored the fact that house prices had recently skyrocketed, loan practices had deteriorated and many buyers had opted for houses they couldn’t afford.” Also blissfully ignored, he wrote, were the perils of relying on mathematical models devised without worst-case situations in mind. Too often, he wrote, Americans have been enamored of “a nerdy-sounding priesthood, using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like.” Some skepticism about these models is overdue, he added. “Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.” Mr. Buffett was just as scathing on the subject of derivatives , which he had likened to weapons of mass destruction long before they started eviscerating the balance sheets of banks around the world. In his letter, Mr. Buffett explained that the danger of derivatives was not merely the difficulty in assessing their value; rather, it was the “web of mutual dependence” they create among financial institutions. Derivatives contracts keep various parties entangled for years, which, as he vividly explained, can create real hazards once those assets start deteriorating. “Participants seeking to dodge troubles face the same problem as someone seeking to avoid venereal disease,” he wrote. “It’s not just whom you sleep with, but also whom they are sleeping with.” Mr. Buffett’s report was greeted with sighs of relief among some shareholders. “I’m delighted,” said Janet Tavakoli, a derivatives expert and author of “Dear Mr. Buffett,” about the credit crisis of 2008. “Of course it was a tough year — the toughest year of his life. But I was concerned about the impact in operating earnings and I was prepared for much worse.”

Buffett Warren E
Berkshire Hathaway Inc
United States Economy
Company Reports


Honda and Takata Discussed Faulty Airbag at 2009 Meeting

Abstract: Explosions in Takata’s airbags raised alarms at the highest levels of the airbag manufacturer and its biggest customer, Honda , more than five years ago, according to internal documents unsealed by a Florida court on Wednesday. Safety investigators additionally linked yet another death to the defect, bringing the total to eight in the United States and nine worldwide. Twelve automakers have recalled more than 19 million cars to repair components in the defective airbags, which can explode when they deploy, sending metal fragments flying. The documents were unsealed as part of a lawsuit brought against Takata in Florida. According to minutes of a meeting at Honda’s American headquarters in Torrance, Calif., on July 22, 2009, Hidenobu Iwata, who at the time oversaw the automaker’s manufacturing operations in the United States, pressed Takata’s president, Shigehisa Takada, on the extent of the defect. “I am constantly worrying how far it spreads out,” Mr. Iwata told Mr. Takada and other Takata executives at the meeting, according to the minutes. “I want you to study the reason quickly.” An engineer identified only as Otaka pressed Takata on the reasons for the defect, according to the minutes. “Why does the propellant deteriorate with age? Why does it explode? I want to know the truth.” That meeting was called two months after the first known death linked to a Takata airbag rupture. Ashley Parham, 18, of Oklahoma bled to death after her driver-side airbag ruptured in a crash in May 2009, shooting out a piece of debris that sliced open an artery in her neck. At that time, only about 4,000 vehicles had been recalled over what Takata and Honda described at the time as a limited manufacturing problem. Five days after the meeting, Honda recalled an additional 440,000 vehicles over the defect, but both companies continued to assert that the defect was limited to isolated manufacturing issues. In November of that year, regulators began an investigation into those recalls, but shut down that inquiry six months later, saying it had found insufficient information to suggest that Honda had not been forthcoming to regulators over the defect. Takata declined to comment on the internal documents. Bloomberg first reported on the documents. Also on Wednesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had identified another death linked to the defective airbags. The victim was in a 2001 Honda Accord whose driver-side airbag exploded after an accident near Pittsburgh in July, said Gordon Trowbridge, spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration . The victim, who was not identified, had severe injuries and died several days later, he said. The safety agency learned of the crash last week when lawyers retained by the family contacted the agency. Regulators will examine the vehicle with Honda and Takata representatives, Mr. Trowbridge said. Honda said it had sent several recall notices to the previous owner of the Accord between 2010 and 2012, but the car’s airbag had not yet been repaired. Honda mailed an additional recall notice to the car’s current owner on July 21, a day before the crash, said a Honda spokesman, Chris Martin. He declined to give further details. “Our thoughts and sincere sympathies are with the family,” Mr. Martin said in a statement. “We are working hard to understand this crash and the cause of the injuries that resulted in this fatality.” A Takata spokesman, Jared Levy, also expressed condolences to the victim’s family. In addition to disclosing another fatal crash, Mr. Trowbridge said that the safety agency was expanding the recalls to include several hundred thousand Honda, Mazda and Subaru vehicles. The new recalls are being issued for 2005-8 Subaru Legacy and Outback vehicles, 2005-8 Mazda 6 cars, and 2002-4 Honda CR-Vs, Mr. Trowbridge said. These were being recalled based on results of continuing testing, he said. The recalls, in addition to the millions of cars already recalled, are intended to replace a component in the airbag called an inflater, which contains the propellant that can unexpectedly cause the airbag to explode. Experts in explosives have questioned the stability of that compound, ammonium nitrate, which is typically used in large-scale applications like mining. The agency has said that unless Takata can prove that ammonium nitrate is stable and safe to use, all airbag inflaters that use the compound will eventually be recalled — potentially vastly expanding an already widespread recall. “That is almost certainly an additional tens of millions of inflaters,” Mr. Trowbridge said. The safety agency has fined Takata $70 million for failing to disclose the defect promptly, and warned that the penalty could increase by $130 million if Takata did not live up to the terms of the consent order. That condition would make the fine a record civil punishment for the auto industry. To oversee Takata’s airbag testing and recall efforts, Mr. Trowbridge said that the agency had appointed John D. Buretta, a former principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division, as an independent monitor. The appointment was part of the consent order that Takata agreed to. Two senators on Wednesday expressed concern over the pace of the recall. “The current pace of recall efforts is completely unacceptable and a massive disappointment,” Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said in a statement. Only about 27 percent of cars with recalled driver-side airbags had been repaired as of Dec. 4, the safety agency said, though Mr. Trowbridge said the number of cars being taken in for repairs was “accelerating rapidly.” Automakers have been prioritizing recalls in some more humid states, including Florida, Georgia and Hawaii, where investigators say ruptures are more likely to happen because the high humidity is thought to degrade the ammonium nitrate propellant over time. In those humid areas, about 34 percent of cars with driver-side airbag recalls have been serviced, the agency said.


Energy Mergers Born of a Production Boom

Abstract: For decades, American oil and gas companies were preoccupied with scarcity. But in recent years, the growing realization that huge volumes of oil and natural gas could be efficiently extracted from beneath the contiguous 48 states has reset the deal-making priorities of nearly every segment of the energy industry. “If you go back five years, the U.S. onshore was viewed as very mature, with limited upside,” said Stephen Trauber, global head of energy banking at Citigroup. “To the extent there was growth in the U.S., it was in the Gulf of Mexico. But with the development of fracking technology and horizontal drilling, the reserves that were in the U.S. have been unlocked.” As a number of mergers and acquisitions in recent months demonstrate, energy company executives say they believe that the shale revolution is here to stay. “The industry is in the midst of a significant transformation as companies position themselves to be able to develop and exploit unconventional resources,” said Rob McCeney, a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ energy practice. The most recent such deal came in late September, when the German engineering conglomerate Siemens agreed to pay more than $6 billion for Dresser-Rand, a Houston-based maker of equipment used for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Siemens already produces some products for the oil industry. But its deal for Dresser-Rand will expand its offerings markedly and is an acknowledgment that the United States is indeed what Siemens’s chief executive, Joe Kaeser, has said is “the place to be for oil and gas.” Though overall deal volumes this year are down from the previous several years, they remain higher than they were a decade ago, according to Dealogic. Many of the mergers and acquisitions have come from traditional natural gas producers that are looking to diversify into the oil sector, which has been revived thanks to fracking technology. “Companies that have been more focused on gas have refocused their capital allocation and M.&A. emphasis and are looking to diversify into more oil production,” said Grant Porter, Barclays’s chairman of global natural resources investment banking. Similarly, some traditional oil companies have looked to diversify into the natural gas industry. The biggest such move came in 2009, when Exxon Mobil paid $31 billion for XTO, a big natural gas producer. But other major oil companies like Chevron, Shell and BP have not followed suit with such megadeals, instead taking smaller stakes in and forging partnerships with smaller companies. “There was a view a few years ago that the acquisition activity was going to be the majors taking over the independents, but we haven’t seen that at all,” Mr. McCeney said. That is because “being smaller, entrepreneurial, has afforded the independent companies the opportunity to be successful,” he said. That means that companies like Linn Energy and Devon Energy, two independent oil and gas producers, have thrived in recent years, acquiring smaller rivals while avoiding being taken over. In November, Devon struck one of the biggest energy deals of the last year, paying $6 billion for the GeoSouthern Energy Corporation, a collection of oil-producing assets in the Eagle Ford shale formation in Texas. GeoSouthern was backed by the private equity firm Blackstone, making it one of a number of such companies. Private equity firms have piled into the energy industry in recent years, buying up huge swaths of oil- and gas-producing land, spending money to develop the assets and flipping them for a profit. “There’s been a lot of activity by sponsor-backed companies,” Mr. McCeney said, referring to private equity firms. “As those companies come online and reach scale, they’re going to be ripe for takeovers.” Another major focus of energy mergers and acquisitions has been the development and consolidation of the pipelines needed to transport the enormous new quantities of oil and gas being produced around the United States. Several so-called midstream companies, consisting mainly of pipeline groups, have gone public as master limited partnerships, tax-advantaged partnerships that grow through further mergers. Kinder Morgan, Enterprise Products, Energy Transfer Partners and Plains All American Pipeline have all become multibillion-dollar companies by gobbling up competitors. But many of these groups have grown up as regional concerns. Now industry watchers think they are poised for several deals to gain scale and access to additional cash needed for costly new projects. “There’s been a tremendous amount of midstream activity,” Mr. Trauber said. “Now you’re starting to see consolidation. Companies are becoming bigger and projects need more capital.” The boom in United States oil and gas production has reshaped the landscape for energy mergers and acquisitions, just as it continues to exert pressure on the global energy markets, even in the face of wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. “From a supply standpoint, the oil markets have been somewhat soft lately in spite of some geopolitical problems,” Mr. Porter said. “Normally when you see this geopolitical pressure you would see prices rise. The fact that they haven’t is primarily because of the growth in U.S. production.”

Oil and Gasoline
Natural gas
Fracking
Mergers and Acquisitions
US


What Exactly Is ‘Locker-Room Talk’? Let an Expert Explain

Abstract: My father was a coach and the manager of a sporting goods store that installed and maintained equipment at athletic facilities. By the time I was in third grade, I had already spent countless days and nights in locker rooms — at colleges, high schools, prep schools, private adult clubs, you name it. Then I became a football player and track athlete, something that continued into my college years. Until I was 20 years old, it felt as if half my life took place inside a locker room. Not long after I stopped competing seriously, I became a sportswriter. What was my job day after day? Hanging out in a locker room. I’ve been paid to be there — and listen to what is said there — for the better part of 30 years. Thanks to Donald Trump, the term “locker-room talk” suddenly is widely discussed. It is a pretty broad term; I’ve heard athletes in locker rooms deeply engrossed in conversations on their municipal bond portfolios and what to feed their cats and, of course, traffic. Trump was recorded talking about forcibly kissing and groping women, and after an uproar, he chalked it up to “locker-room talk.” The episode raised the question of how common such extreme talk is in locker rooms. Yet I would say that while I have heard distasteful boasting and crude talk about the attributes of a recent date or a new girlfriend — wives never seem to come up — I’ve never heard anything that could be described as an assault, or any crime. Not even close. This is not the same as saying those acts do not happen. I’m just saying it is not any kind of locker-room talk I have heard in my decades working and functioning in that space. Granted, the professional athletes have hours to themselves when the news media is not present. But reporters’ access to teams throughout a long season is considerable, especially in a sport like baseball where you’re part of the traveling circus crisscrossing North America for as long as nine months. You are together with the players far more than any other group of people in your life. (To be clear, I am speaking only about covering male teams. Female athletes almost always speak outside their locker rooms, especially to male reporters.) In general, it has been my experience that the talk about women in a men’s locker room is much rarer than most people want to believe, and much rarer than it was many years ago. Image When Donald J. Trump apologized after a recording of him talking about forcibly kissing and groping women was released, he called it “locker-room talk.” Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times That does not mean the locker room is the most enlightened, progressive environment on the planet. There have been many, repeated episodes in which players accosted, harassed and berated women reporters in men’s locker rooms because of their gender. Some have exposed themselves to female reporters in a way that appeared to go beyond undressing for the shower, though this kind of behavior was far more common when female reporters first began working in male locker rooms. But if it is the talk in locker rooms that America is focusing on these days, it tends to be more generic and routine than frequently depicted. There is much more talk of aches and pains, and, as always, a lot of talk about cultural interests: music, concerts, films, video games and TV shows. One of the funniest if most unlikely conversations I heard was about traffic. In the late 1990s, I remember listening to Giants cornerback Jason Sehorn and his friend Danny Kanell, a quarterback, in a conversation that bordered on something from Abbott and Costello. “Why can’t you make a left turn on these New Jersey roads?” Sehorn asked. “That’s only true on a divided highway,” Kanell answered. “You mean on a freeway?” the California-raised Sehorn said. “Well, it is free unless it’s the turnpike,” Kanell said. “There’s a turnpike, a highway and a freeway?” “It doesn’t matter,” Kanell said. “And instead of taking a left turn, you use the jughandle.” Sehorn: “What’s a jughandle?” There is, especially these days, a certain amount of political chatter. It is usually playful, with a few jabs yelled across the room about a candidate. But after Trump uttered his “locker-room talk” line over and over in the debate with Hillary Clinton on Sunday night, athletes everywhere — and anyone who frequents gyms — might have taken offense. Several professional athletes lashed out on Twitter. “Have I been in every locker room?” Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Chris Conley wrote on his Twitter account. “No. But the guys I know and respect don’t talk like that. They talk about girls but not like that. Period.” Oakland A’s pitcher Sean Doolittle said on Twitter, “As an athlete, I’ve been in locker rooms my entire adult life and uh, that’s not locker-room talk.” But Atlanta Falcons tight end Jacob Tamme may have had the last word, and spoke for many. Having just left the locker room after his team’s victory over the Broncos in Denver on Sunday night, Tamme wrote: “I showered after our game but I feel like I need another one after watching the debate.” He added: “The attempt to normalize it as any type of ‘talk’ is wrong. I refuse to let my son think that this is ‘just how men speak.’”

Sports
Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
Audio Recordings
Downloads and Streaming


Merkel Picks Team to Govern in Germany

Abstract: BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Saturday announced a center-right government with her new coalition partners, the pro-business Free Democrats, saying it would “bravely solve the problems that are lying ahead of us.” After a final marathon round of talks that ended four weeks of negotiations here, Mrs. Merkel, who was re-elected as chancellor a month ago, made a surprise appointment by choosing Wolfgang Schäuble as finance minister. It is one of the most important positions in Germany, requiring close coordination with the chancellor, as well as European and American financial authorities. Mr. Schäuble, who has used a wheelchair since 1990 when a man who was later declared mentally ill tried to assassinate him, was the interior minister the past four years in Mrs. Merkel’s first term. Mrs. Merkel will visit the United States in early November, soon after she is sworn in for a second time as the leader of Europe’s largest economy. Government officials said economic and security policy would dominate the agenda during her visit. Mrs. Merkel faces big challenges in her second term in both domestic and foreign policy. On the domestic front, Mrs. Merkel, who is also the leader of her party , the conservative Christian Democratic Union, pledged Saturday to cut taxes, starting in January. “The burden on families has to be lessened; the burden on companies and inheritance tax has to be reformed,” she said during a news conference here after she had clinched an accord with the Free Democrats. The proposal calls for taxes to be cut by 24 billion euros, or about $36.1 billion, even though Germany’s budget deficit is projected to increase. The tax cuts would come at a time when Germany’s finances are in poor shape. According to the Finance Ministry, net new borrowing is expected to soar next year to $129 billion from a record $71 billion this year. Separately, Mrs. Merkel is also expected to embark on an ambitious plan to reform health care in two years’ time, the details of which are not yet known. Foreign and defense policy should prove to be difficult, too. The new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, who is the leader of the Free Democrats, wants to rid Germany of the remaining American nuclear weapons stationed here, signaling a big shift in relations with NATO and the United States because the issue until now has been largely taboo. But the biggest foreign policy challenge for Mrs. Merkel is expected to be Afghanistan. The new defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who is a member of the Christian Social Union, the sister party of Mrs. Merkel’s party, will undoubtedly be under pressure from the United States to send more German troops to Afghanistan. Germany has more than 4,000 troops there.

Politics and Government
Merkel Angela
Germany
Social Democratic Party (Germany)
Free Democrats (Germany)


Bigger Might Have Been Better for Goldman

Abstract: Goldman Sachs’s second-quarter showing may for once leave it wishing it was a sprawling mega-bank. The Wall Street firm put in a far worse showing than rivals in fixed-income, currencies and commodities trading, known as F.I.C.C., traditionally its revenue powerhouse. Broader institutions like Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase benefit from the cushion provided by sleepier but consistent businesses like treasury services and commercial banking and lending. These areas bring with them often simple trades in foreign exchange, interest-rate swaps and the like. Combined, they bring in a lot of volume, and in some cases they can be executed cheaply on electronic platforms. Goldman, with its greater and often more profitable focus on institutional investors as opposed to corporate clients, lacks some of this bread-and-butter flow. The effect shows in a couple of ways. Two of the big three American universal banks now routinely rake in more revenue trading bonds, foreign exchange and commodities than Goldman — a reversal in some cases from the position before the 2008 crisis. That division at Goldman, for example, contributed $1.6 billion to the top line in the three months to June. Citigroup and JPMorgan cranked out $3 billion, while Bank of America, whose F.I.C.C. results aren’t as high, hit $2.1 billion. A second consequence is the volatility of F.I.C.C. revenue. Goldman’s top line in the segment plummeted 49 percent from a strong first quarter: Clients took a back seat as uncertainty returned to financial markets, especially in June. Its competitors also saw trading revenue decline, but not as much. JPMorgan’s fell 29 percent, Bank of America’s 22 percent and Citigroup’s just 12 percent. On the other hand, Goldman got a taste of one of the downsides of being a mega-bank. It set aside $1.45 billion to cover potential litigation costs in the second quarter, an amount that significantly dented profit, albeit far less than some bigger rivals have paid. And Goldman’s returns on equity are generally higher than those of larger rivals. Strip out the legal charges and the company’s annualized return on equity for the second quarter was 11.7 percent, easily beating the big three. When F.I.C.C. is giving the firm a roller-coaster ride, though, the relative stability of the giants’ businesses might seem appealing. Goldman’s more focused model is not always an advantage.

Banking and Finance
Goldman Sachs Group
Lloyd C Blankfein


Saks Posts a Loss, While TJX Shows a Profit

Abstract: The widening gulf between luxury and discount retailers could not have been more obvious on Tuesday. Saks posted a first-quarter loss while the TJX Companies — which owns the T. J. Maxx and Marshalls chains — reported the strongest quarterly results ever. Saks, the upscale department store chain that sells $700 shoes and $1,000 handbags, reported a loss of $5.1 million, or 4 cents a share, in contrast to a profit of $17.3 million, or 12 cents a share, for the period a year ago. Sales at stores open at least a year declined 27.6 percent in the first quarter, which ended May 2. While Saks has already made significant cost cuts, it plans to become even leaner. Beginning in June, many salaried employees will take 3 to 7 percent pay cuts, including Stephen I. Sadove, chairman and chief executive, and Ronald L. Frasch, president and chief merchandising officer. Mr. Sadove told investors Tuesday that he was reinventing the way Saks does business: lowering inventory and capital expenditures, offering a wider range of prices within brands, getting rid of unprofitable brands and introducing more exclusive brands. Saks is also taking a cue from Macy’s, and creating local marketing plans for its full-price stores to better serve customers in different regions. “The dire environment that we’ve been in has changed the culture of this company,” Mr. Sadove said in a conference call. In stark contrast to Saks’s results, the TJX Companies made a profit of $209 million, or 49 cents a share, compared with $193.8 million, or 43 cents a share, a year ago. Sales at stores open at least a year rose 2 percent for the quarter. And customer traffic was up, bucking industry trends. Luxury chains have endured the greatest pain in this economy as consumers cut back on spending. What people are shopping for nowadays can be summed up in a word: necessities. Sales trends at Home Depot, the giant home improvement chain, which also reported earnings on Tuesday, underscored the trend. None of the retailer’s major merchandise departments had year-over-year growth, but in a conference call with investors, Home Depot executives said there was some strength in certain product categories, like basic repair and maintenance. Outdoor projects, like landscaping, also fared well, as did sales of vegetables and herbs. (Executives suggested more consumers are growing their own food.) Better-performing categories included repair and maintenance products like caulk and water heaters; basic remodeling and décor products like interior paint, carpet and window coverings; and safety and security-related products. “We believe tougher economic times have made consumers focus on safety,” Craig Menear, the company’s executive vice president for merchandising, said during a conference call. “Categories like door locks and exterior security lighting performed better than the company average.” For the three months that ended May 3, Home Depot made a profit of $514 million, or 30 cents a share, in contrast to a profit of $356 million, or 21 cents a share, for the period a year ago. Same-store sales fell 10.2 percent. At Saks, sales at the flagship store in Manhattan were worse than sales at other stores, which was particularly hard on the retailer because the flagship accounts for about 20 percent of the company’s business. Saks’s Internet business also fell: down 14.6 percent for the quarter, in contrast to an increase of more than 40 percent a year ago. On Monday, P. Schoenfeld Asset Management, which owns 1.5 percent of Saks and thinks the retailer has not performed as well as its competitors, urged shareholders to vote against the way the company elects directors, calling for directors to be elected annually, rather than serving staggered terms. While Saks had not been expected to report a profit in the quarter, given the months of double-digit sales declines, its results were not as bad as analysts were expecting. Some praised the chain for how it is managing in the downturn. And same-store sales at the company’s Off 5th discount stores showed “relative strength,” Saks said. All of that was enough to send Saks shares up 18 percent, or 73 cents, on Tuesday to close at $4.81. TJX shares rose almost 4 percent, or $1.09, to close at $29.03. Home Depot shares fell more than 5 percent, or $1.39, to close at $24.63.

Saks Incorporated
Company Reports
TJX Companies Incorporated


Obama Presses Chinese on Global Warming

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — President Obama, emboldened by his use of executive powers to fight climate change at home, challenged China on Tuesday to make the same effort to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and join a worldwide campaign to curb global warming. Declaring that the United States and China — the world’s two largest economies and largest polluters — bear a “special responsibility to lead,” Mr. Obama said, “That’s what big nations have to do.” The president’s remarks at the United Nations Climate Summit, delivered in a packed chamber of the General Assembly, were broadly aimed at marshaling more than 100 world leaders to confront climate change. But his words were directly focused on putting the onus on China, an essential partner of the United States if a global climate treaty is to be negotiated by 2015. Unless Beijing and Washington can resolve their differences, climate experts said, few other countries will agree to the treaty and it will most likely founder. Mr. Obama made it clear that after taking the political risks in June of proposing a far-reaching Environmental Protection Agency regulation to force American power plants to curb their carbon emissions, he now expected the Chinese to do likewise. There were indications that China might be ready with its own plan, although many experts say they will be skeptical until Chinese officials reveal the details. The decision of President Xi Jinping of China to skip the summit meeting also sent a less-than-enthusiastic message. Image Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of China spoke at the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday in New York. Credit Don Emmert/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images But a senior Chinese official sent in Mr. Xi’s place said his country would try to reach a peak level of carbon emissions “as early as possible.” That suggested that the Chinese government, struggling with air pollution so extreme that it has threatened economic growth, regularly kept millions of children indoors and ignited street protests, was determined to show faster progress in curbing emissions. “As a responsible major developing country, China will make an even greater effort to address climate change and take on international responsibilities that are commensurate with our national conditions,” said the official, Vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli, who addressed the chamber after Mr. Obama. The president and Mr. Zhang met briefly at the summit meeting on Tuesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech. In his remarks, Mr. Obama said he had pressed Mr. Zhang on the urgency for both countries to take the lead, and noted that he and the Chinese president had already reached an accord to cut the use of hydrofluorocarbons, a potent category of greenhouse gases. The United States, he said, would meet a pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 17 percent, from 2005 levels, by 2020 — a goal that is in large part expected to be met through the proposed E.P.A. regulation. Now, Mr. Obama said, the United States is preparing ambitious new targets to cut emissions further by 2050, with specifics to be made public ahead of a climate summit meeting in Paris in 2015. Other nations are expected to submit their own plans. With its surging use of coal, China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter. But in the past year, as thousands of Chinese have protested the reliance on coal and its contribution to some of the world’s dirtiest air, Chinese authorities have signaled that they intend to adopt policies to reduce the use of coal. “We’ve been working hard on this plan, looking at what kind of changes we will make to industry,” Li Junfeng, director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy, said in an interview. Image President Obama before speaking Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly, where he urged more than 100 world leaders to confront climate change. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times Mr. Li said that his center had prepared “multiple choice” options for a proposed climate plan, and that Beijing would choose one to put forth based on the perceived stringency of the American plan for emissions cuts by 2050. In recent years, the Chinese government has sent other signals about addressing carbon pollution, some of them encouraging to environmental experts. It has created seven regional cap-and-trade plans aimed at cutting carbon pollution from coal plants, and in August, a Chinese government official suggested that China was exploring the possibility of a national cap-and-trade plan. “Five years ago, it was almost unimaginable to discuss China putting a cap on carbon, but now that is happening,” said Lo Sze Ping, chief executive officer of the World Wildlife Fund’s office in Beijing. “Chinese leaders have seen that it is imperative to move toward a low-carbon economy.” The modest Chinese steps are ahead of some other major polluters who are unlikely to submit emission-cuts plans ahead of 2015. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia remains an outspoken skeptic of climate-change science, and voters in Australia recently repealed a national carbon tax. India, the world’s third-largest carbon polluter, has so far resisted outside pressure to cut its coal use, although under its new prime minister, Narendra Modi, it has begun researching a plan. Without new climate policies, India is projected to surge ahead of the United States and China in carbon emissions in coming years. For Mr. Obama, the climate summit was the first time he had spoken to such a gathering, having enacted a significant carbon cutting plan. In urging other countries to take steps, Mr. Obama pointed to his E.P.A. regulation to cut carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, the No. 1 source of greenhouse gases. “There should be no question that the United States of America is stepping up to the plate,” he said. “We recognize our role in creating this problem; we embrace our responsibility to combat it.” Mr. Obama, who sought to erase years of skepticism abroad about American resolve to tackle climate change, reminded his audience that his action carried a political cost: At home, Republicans and the coal industry deride the new rules as a “war on coal” and an energy tax. Reciting a litany of record-setting temperatures and natural disasters, Mr. Obama warned that the climate was changing faster than the world’s response to it. Recent efforts to curb the problem, he said, would fail without more cooperation from countries around the world. “We can only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this effort by every nation, developed and developing alike,” the president said. “Nobody gets a pass.” If strong carbon-cutting policies are not enacted quickly, scientists warn, the current trajectory of fossil fuel emissions will raise the temperature of the global atmosphere by two degrees Celsius, a tipping point that is projected to lead to a future of rising sea levels, extreme droughts and food shortages, floods and more powerful storms. To reach a deal by the end of 2015, United Nations officials said, countries must unveil concrete plans by April 1 that are to specify how they will cut their energy-related fossil fuel pollution after 2020. To be taken seriously, the plans must show how the governments will enforce disruptive shifts to their economies, transitioning away from the fossil fuels that have powered their homes and vehicles for a century. Scientists said they were encouraged by the prospect of new climate policies, but warned that for now, the efforts under discussion would not be enough to prevent the first ravages of climate change. “In the world that we live in, this is probably the best we can do right now,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University. “It’s worth the effort. But it’s not going to solve the problem. It’s not going to get us to two degrees. It‘s not even enough to stave off three degrees.”

Greenhouse gas
Climate Change
Global Warming
China
UN
Barack Obama
UN General Assembly


Dispatches From the Foxholes of Business Travel

Abstract: FREQUENT business travelers are called road warriors for a reason — most of them have a collection of war stories, ranging from minor annoyances to full-combat nightmares. Ask Ron Goltsch, an electrical engineer from West Caldwell, N.J., about the roughly 1,000 business trips he’s made since 1988, and he pulls his finger from a dike of dammed memories. There was the time his boss sent him to visit a client in a Tennessee town “near Memphis.” When Mr. Goltsch arrived at the rental car counter late that night, the flummoxed clerk, after consulting several maps, informed him that his destination was outside Knoxville, a four-hour drive away. On a flight to Puerto Rico, the passenger in front kept reclining his seat into Mr. Goltsch’s knees, igniting a classic struggle for personal space. When Mr. Goltsch, who is 6 feet 4, described his discomfort, the man rang for the flight attendant and created such a scene that one of the pilots was summoned. The situation was resolved when, to the man’s dismay, Mr. Goltsch was moved to first class. But his favorite story occurred when the lock on a hotel bathroom’s door became stuck. Clad only in a towel, he twisted, turned, jiggled and shook the knob to no avail. The walls at his fine hotel were so thick no one could hear his banging or calls for help. Channeling his “inner MacGyver,” he considered various options before discovering he could use the rod in the back of the toilet to pop the hinges on the door. “To this day,” he reports, “I won’t close the bathroom door when I’m alone in a hotel.” Business travel has never been smooth sailing, as Odysseus’s 10-year voyage home attests. Modern globe-trotters do not typically have to deal with seductive sirens, but the difficulties they face are legion. Some complaints are so common and generic that people would barely mention them except that they just can’t help themselves: crying babies and sneezing adults, fellow passengers unfamiliar with soap or too familiar with cologne, people with small bladders who love window seats, travelers who pretend to need a wheelchair to breeze through security, those who are drunk on words or just plain drunk. Hefty seat mates have always been a problem, now aggravated by the swelling ranks of the obese and ever-tighter seats. “We’re packed in so tight, you wonder why you even need a seat belt,” said Addison Schonland, a partner at AirInsight.com, an aerospace consulting firm in Baltimore. “Perhaps there’s a future for flying on U.P.S. and FedEx — they can give you a roomy box, pick you up at your door and, best of all, get you there on time.” Uncomfortable seats and limited leg room topped the list of air travel complaints, according to a 2013 survey by TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel site. Prices for tickets and services, unpredictable flight delays, long security lines and other passengers rounded out the top five — and this was before the furloughs of air traffic controllers amid sequester-related budget cuts. Complaints about airline service were up nearly 33 percent last year as airlines tried to squeeze profits from fewer flights with fuller planes. Load factors (passenger-miles as a percentage of available seat-miles) set a record last year, according to the Transportation Department. The result is crowded boarding areas, ferocious struggles for overhead space and straitjacket seating — all of which have sharply increased the stress-heightening “claustrophobia quotient” for passengers and crews, said Tim Winship, publisher of FrequentFlier.com. Passengers aren’t the only ones complaining. A 2012 survey of international cabin crews by the global travel search site Skyscanner created a top 10 list of complaints that included passengers who snap their fingers to get attention, talk through the safety demo or ring the attendant bell to complain about the temperature onboard. Extra fees for bags, meals and “priority” seats — can the coin-operated lavatory be far behind? — add to the annoyances for travelers. So does the tacit gag order against passengers in place since the security crackdown of 9/11; though precautions have eased a bit in recent years, they still make airports and planes feel to some like police states. And so most passengers — excluding, of course, Alec Baldwin — turn off their electronic devices during takeoffs and landings upon command, even though there is little evidence cellphones and tablets pose safety issues. Musicians who travel with bulky, expensive instruments encounter special problems in this environment. Delta Air Lines recently stripped the cellist Lynn Harrell of half-a-million frequent miles he had accumulated for himself and his nearly 300-year-old seat mate. “Cello Harrell” is welcome to have a seat , but can’t earn miles. Another musician, Dave Carroll, became so frustrated when he couldn’t get any satisfaction after his instrument was damaged in transit that he filmed a music video, “United Breaks Guitars,” where he sings: “You broke it, you should fix it You’re liable, just admit it I should’ve flown with someone else Or gone by car Image Credit Ron Barrett ’Cause United breaks guitars.” His video has been viewed more than 13 million times on YouTube, and he has published a book by the same title on his battle with the airline. In the current climate, business travel has become a bitter Darwinian struggle for leg space and breathing room. The great escape for grizzled veterans — frequent-flier perks — are worth less and less as airlines give away more miles through credit cards and other arrangements. The lounges that once offered a calm refuge from frenetic terminals are increasingly packed, Mr. Winship said, and the competition for seat upgrades means that those without the highest frequent-flier status are forced to face off with hoi polloi. “An upgrade today doesn’t mean moving to first class, but getting to board the plane first so you can find some space for your bag,” said Mr. Schonland, who flew 62,000 miles in the first three months of 2013. “Having high status with an airline used to bring you privileges. Now it just means you have fewer limitations.” This search for an edge among passengers may explain why a J. D. Power & Associates survey of 14,000 travelers last year found that 70 percent of passengers approved of fees for priority early boarding and more than half felt that the fees for seat upgrades were reasonable, even within coach (some seats have more leg room than others). Problems do not end when passengers leave the unfriendly skies. The ground war often begins with directionally challenged cabdrivers who eventually ferry business travelers to hotels. Upon check-in, accommodations can feature alarm clocks that go off in the middle of the night; showers that only trickle; weak, expensive Wi-Fi; electrical outlets that seem part of a game of hide-and-seek; and free pets, including bedbugs and mold on drinking glasses. When Jane Collins asked readers of her column on BlogHer.com to share their travel nightmares , one woman recalled opening her hotel room’s door to find her company’s chief operating officer tapping away on his laptop in his boxer shorts. He wasn’t a masher, just a hard-working guy sent to the wrong room. “Since then,” Ms. Collins said, “I have heard so many underwear and boxer-shorts stories that it must be quite common for hotels to mix up their room cards.” And yet, even as business travelers are becoming inured to breakdowns in service, many strive for special treatment, perhaps in a quest to maintain some dignity. Kim Reicherter-Specht, an agent with The Travel Business, an affiliate of the corporate travel management company Tzell Travel, said frequent fliers accustomed to upgrades sometimes called her to complain from the purgatory that is coach. “I guess,” she said, “this way all the surrounding coach passengers know that, ‘Hey, I travel all the time, I was really supposed to be in first class, not in the back.’ ” Her Tzell colleague Rina Anoussi said many of their clients wanted personal service for the material comforts it brings and the psychological boost. “Everybody likes to be treated well, making you feel how important you are,” she said. “If a hotel can give you a $1,200 room for $800, you think that people respect you and appreciate your position.” Ms. Anoussi said this mind-set could lead to unusual requests or complaints. One client wanted a certain reading lamp and a specific kind of linens in his hotel rooms. Another insisted that all decorative pillows be removed from his room. “One client,” she said with a laugh, “would not press the button on the phone for the concierge, so he called me from halfway around the world to arrange a spa treatment and dinner booking in the hotel.” Not all business travelers stay at five-star resorts. James Albright, who inspects radioactive materials for the state of North Carolina, is allotted $62 a night from the government for lodging. “I’ve never actually stayed in a place called the Bates Motel, but I’ve come close,” he said. When he went to turn on the light in one room, he found a hole in the wall with one cockroach and two dangling u-shaped copper wires. “As long as you held them by the black plastic casing, it was easy to connect and disconnect them,” said Mr. Albright. “But it could get tricky when you needed light in the middle of the night.” When he stepped into a room at another motel, he felt something under his steel-toed boot — a poisonous copperhead snake. When he lifted his leg, it slithered under the bed. “I started to go after it, and then sanity set in,” he recalled. The motel manager disputed his account, but assigned Mr. Albright to another room. “A little later I saw him going to the room wearing sandals, with no socks, carrying a broom and a dust pan. I thought, ‘Good luck with that.’ ” Another morning he heard a knock at 7:30 a.m. He opened his door to find a young woman in a sheer Carolina blue negligee, asking if she could borrow his iron, much as someone else might ask for directions to the Waffle House. He obliged. “Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I’m not complaining.”

Business travel
Travel,Tourism
Airlines,airplanes
Hotels
Airport security


Bloomberg Allows One Last Peek at His Tax Returns

Abstract: It is so hard to keep track. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg bought a 12th residence last year, but his staff overlooked it when first explaining his finances to reporters. For the final time, City Hall reporters were ushered on Thursday into the office of Mr. Bloomberg’s accountant for an annual ritual: a chance to look at a redacted version of the mayor’s tax returns, as well as public disclosures of his property holdings and income. In previous years, among the juiciest revelations have been the mayor’s real estate purchases. By last year he had acquired 11 residential properties, including his town house on East 79th Street; homes in London, Bermuda, Vail, Colo., and Wellington, Fla.; several properties in Westchester County; and, in 2011, a 35-acre estate in Southampton, N.Y., the oceanside weekend retreat of hedge fund managers, politicians and celebrities. On Thursday, his spokesman, Marc LaVorgna, at first pointed reporters to the acquisition of just one new property: 4.8 acres of vacant land next to his estate in Southampton, and described only as valued at $500,000 or more. Later in the afternoon, Mr. LaVorgna e-mailed to correct himself and note that, in fact, Mr. Bloomberg had also bought a second house in Southampton last year, adjacent to the original estate and to the vacant land. Mr. LaVorgna said that the city’s disclosure rules allowed Mr. Bloomberg to leave both his primary residence and one other property off the forms, and Mr. LaVorgna had forgotten that the second Southampton house had been chosen for omission. Oops. He said the new home was worth at least $500,000, but would say no more about why Mr. Bloomberg had added to his Southampton spread. Politicians are not obliged to disclose their tax returns, although many, including President Obama, do so. Mr. Bloomberg takes a middle road, allowing reporters to view, but not to take with them, a redacted version of his returns. Mr. LaVorgna said that disclosing the full returns would allow competitors of Mr. Bloomberg’s media company to learn too much about its business practices. Next year, as a private citizen, Mr. Bloomberg will presumably not disclose any part of his tax returns, so this year was the last chance for a glimpse — if not much of one — at the waxing of his $27 billion fortune , estimated in March by Forbes magazine, which ranked him as the world’s 13th richest person. In the forms given to reporters, actual numbers are replaced by letters, each designating a range of values, the highest being “G,” which signifies $500,000 or more. From the forms, then, it is possible to say only that Mr. Bloomberg paid at least $1.5 million in federal, state and city income taxes. He also paid at least $1.5 million in taxes to foreign countries. Each year, Mr. Bloomberg’s staff discloses his income tax rate before deducting his considerable charitable contributions from his taxable income. In 2012, his federal income tax rate, before deductions, was 34.69 percent. His state tax rate was 8.82 percent, and his city rate was 3.88 percent. Maintaining all those homes takes a lot of work, of course, and Mr. Bloomberg spent at least $500,000 last year in total wages on household staff, a similar amount as in previous years. His tax returns for the first time also revealed that he had bank deposit accounts with HSBC in London, Paris and Hong Kong, each of which at some point in the year had at least $500,000 in it. Another HSBC account in Bermuda never held more than $100,000. Amid the many “G’s” Mr. Bloomberg earned in dividends, interest, capital gains and other sources were a few more modest sources of income. He earned from $2,000 to $9,999.98 in horse show winnings, thanks to his daughter Georgina’s feats riding horses owned by him. He earned $1,000 to $4,999.99 in residuals from appearances on “Law & Order” and in the movie “The Adjustment Bureau.” And, as in previous years, he earned from $5,000 to $43,999.99 from a 2001 movie he produced, “Focus,” starring William H. Macy and based on a 1945 novel by Arthur Miller, about a man who, after acquiring a new pair of glasses, is mistakenly identified by his anti-Semitic neighbors and colleagues as a Jew.

Mike Bloomberg
Income tax
NYC
Real Estate
Housing


Cass Ballenger, Provocateur in Congress, Dies at 88

Abstract: Cass Ballenger, a nine-term congressman from North Carolina, died on Wednesday at a hospice in his hometown, Hickory. He was 88. His death was confirmed by Tommy Luckadoo, a longtime aide. Mr. Ballenger, a Republican, served in the North Carolina House from 1975 to 1977 and in the State Senate from 1977 to 1986 before being elected to Congress. He introduced the first substantive open-meetings law enacted in North Carolina. In Congress, Mr. Ballenger made headlines in 2001 when the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, showed up at his home in Hickory with most of his cabinet for a barbecue. The two often met while Mr. Ballenger was chairman of a House international subcommittee. Near the end of his tenure in Washington, Mr. Ballenger became a magnet for controversy. He cast a key vote in December 2001 that helped pass hotly contested legislation giving President George W. Bush authority to negotiate global trade agreements and submit them to Congress for a yes-or-no vote. Waiting until time had expired on the roll call, Mr. Ballenger was one of the few Republicans who stepped forward to ensure a one-vote majority for the measure. He also said that Cynthia McKinney, a black congresswoman from Georgia known for her abrasive style, had stirred in him “a little bit of a segregationist feeling.” He later apologized for what he called “pretty stupid remarks.” Thomas Cass Ballenger was born on Dec. 6, 1926, in Hickory, and attended Amherst College. Survivors include his wife of 63 years, Donna Davis Ballenger; three daughters, Cindy Ballenger, Missy Jordan, and D. D. Weaver; and three grandchildren.

Obituary
Cass Ballenger
North Carolina
House of Representatives
Congress


Irving Returns From Injury and Duke Coasts Past Hampton

Abstract: CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A smile came across Kyrie Irving’s face Friday afternoon as the final minutes ticked off in No. 1-seeded Duke ’s 87-45 blowout of No. 16 Hampton in its West region game at Time Warner Cable Arena. It wasn’t about the game, which had long been decided. The teams were in garbage time when Irving made two 3-pointers to become the game’s leading scorer with 14 points. It was about pouring it on Hampton (24-9), a team hopelessly overmatched against the Blue Devils, the defending national champions. It was about Irving, Duke’s prized freshman point guard, finding his game after missing the last three months of the regular season with a toe injury. Irving played 20 minutes off the bench in his return to the lineup, including 13 in the second half when the score was out of reach and he was free to work on his game. The smile meant he thought his game was back. “It was a good feeling,” Irving said. “I felt a sense of relief. A lot of weight was taken off my shoulders. I was just like, ‘I’m back.’ That was a good feeling.” It was a feeling shared by everyone in the Duke locker room. Irving had been the Blue Devils’ best player in the first eight games of the season, when he averaged 17.4 points, 5.1 assists and 3.8 rebounds. But he sustained the toe injury against Butler on Dec. 4, and was left to watch as Duke developed into a dominant team without him, winning the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament title last Sunday. Now that he’s back, he will give Duke (31-4) one more weapon for opponents to stop, beginning on Sunday when the Blue Devils face No. 8 Michigan in a Round of 32 game. “I know we were a good enough team to have a chance of winning it without him, but that chance is even greater with him,” forward Miles Plumlee said. FLORIDA ST. 57, TEXAS A&M 50 Showing the suffocating defense that has made it the second stingiest team in the nation, Florida State ground out a win against Texas A&M in Chicago. The Seminoles and the Aggies both sort of staggered through a first half that was void of highlights. Neither team was particularly impressive from the floor, shooting a combined 15 of 49. But Florida State Coach Leonard Hamilton had some stern words in the locker room for his team at halftime, and soon they were pounding the ball inside to Bernard James (10 points) and opening up cutting lanes for guard Derwin Kitchen (15), who put the game out of reach with a little under five minutes left to play. Kitchen drove to the basket, converted his shot and was fouled, completing a 3-point play and putting the Seminoles ahead by 8. Florida State will meet Notre Dame on Sunday. JOE DRAPE NOTRE DAME 69, AKRON 56 Akron shot 35.9 percent as a team and was no match for No. 2 Notre Dame in Chicago. Notre Dame led, 34-30, at halftime before scoring the first 9 points of the second half. Ben Hansbrough scored 15 points but made only 4 of 11 shots. He is 7 for 27 in his last two games. JOE DRAPE OHIO STATE 75, TEXAS S. A. 46 The top-seeded Buckeyes had little trouble with 16th-seeded Texas-San Antonio, shooting 62.5 percent in the first half to take a 16-point halftime lead and breezing the rest of the way. Ohio State (33-2) will face George Mason (27-6) on Sunday. Devin Gibson had 24 points for U.T.S.A. (20-14). Red-wearing Buckeye fans dominated the crowd of 20,164 at Quicken Loans Arena, the largest crowd ever for college basketball game in Ohio, according to the N.C.A.A. PAT BORZI TEXAS 85, OAKLAND 81 A disjointed performance like Friday’s explains why Texas received a No. 4 seed in the West Region. The Longhorns looked ready to overwhelm an offensively skilled Oakland team, building a 17-point lead, but Texas lost its competitive zeal along the way and had to hold on for an 85-81 victory in Tulsa. Texas’ seeding did not look like an injustice after all. For a long stretch the Longhorns resembled a team that could be a national championship contender, but Texas still has issues in managing its wealth of talent. The reserve guard J’Covan Brown led Texas with 21 points, and made all 12 of his free throws. A more dominant performance was turned in by the freshman forward Tristan Thompson, who had 17 points, 10 rebounds and 7 blocks. Texas will play fifth-seeded Arizona, which beat 12th-seeded Memphis, 77-75. RAY GLIER KANSAS 72, BOSTON U. 53 For 30 minutes, Kansas did not give off a championship feeling. There were 10 minutes remaining and Boston University, a 16th seed, was still clinging to the Jayhawks, a top seed, 47-41. After working hard to throw the ball in to the twins Marcus and Markieff Morris, the Jayhawks started shooting 3-pointers. That finally did it. Kansas made three straight and pulled away in the BOK Center in Tulsa, which was filled with nervous Kansas fans. On Sunday, Kansas will play Illinois, which beat U.N.L.V., 73-62. RAY GLIER N. CAROLINA 102, L.I.U. 87 Long Island University Coach Jim Ferry insisted he was insulted by his team’s No. 15 seeding in the East Region after his Blackbirds led the country with 13 road wins. That chip on L.I.U.’s shoulder was evident against No. 2 North Carolina in Charlotte, as the Blackbirds had the Tar Heels on the run for much of the game. But North Carolina is a running team, and the Tar Heels outran the Blackbirds and advanced to the Round of 32 on Sunday. The Tar Heels will play No. 7 Washington, which beat No. 10 Georgia, 68-65. The Blackbirds made a game of it until the final minutes, but ultimately they had no defense and no answer for North Carolina’s inside duo: the 7-foot center Tyler Zeller and the 6-10 John Henson. “We don’t see size like that,” Ferry said. “I don’t think there are many teams in the country that are that long.” JulianBoyd had 18 points and 12 rebounds for L.I.U. (26-8). “I hope we did prove something,” said the Blackbirds’ Jamal Olasewere, who scored 15 points. “We played as hard as we could.” VIV BERNSTEIN PURDUE 65, ST. PETER’S 43 Purdue’s JaJuan Johnson dominated the inside, scoring 16 points and grabbing 16 rebounds in Chicago as the Boilermakers beat a St. Peter’s team filled with seniors who once lost 18 games in a row. Purdue will play Virginia Commonwealth, which beat Georgetown, 74-56. JOE DRAPE MARQUETTE 66, XAVIER 55 In a matchup of small Jesuit universities from the Midwest, No. 11 Marquette (21-14) advanced past sixth-seeded Xavier in Cleveland with a stifling defense that held the Atlantic-10’s player of the year, Tu Holloway, without a point until well into the second half. Holloway, who had been averaging 20.2 points, missed his first six shots and finished with 5 points on 1-for-8 shooting. Darius Johnson-Odom had four 3-pointers among his 19 points for Marquette, which will face the Syracuse-Indiana State winner in Cleveland on Sunday. PAT BORZI ILLINOIS 73, U.N.L.V. 62 In Tulsa, Illinois never gave U.N.L.V. a chance in a victory that was not as close as the final score indicated. The ninth-seed Illini got out to a 26-12 lead in the first 13 minutes and didn’t let up. They will face top-seeded Kansas on Sunday. RAY GLIER

Irving Kyrie
Duke University
NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
College Athletics
Basketball
Hansbrough Ben
Basketball (College)
Hampton University
NCAA Basketball Championships (Men)


Jay Cutler Will Miss Bears’ Game, and Todd Collins Will Start

Abstract: Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler will sit out Sunday’s game at Carolina because of a concussion. The Bears spokesman Scott Hagel said Thursday that Cutler was examined by team and independent doctors after practicing on a limited basis Wednesday. Hagel said the doctors all agreed that Cutler’s participation in practice went well but felt that sitting out “was the right way to go.” Cutler was expected to do some work Thursday, but he mostly stood around while Todd Collins, who will start in his place, and the backup Caleb Hanie threw to receivers during the early portion of practice, which is open to reporters. Cutler was also expected to practice Friday and to have his status re-evaluated early next week. Cutler was injured in Sunday night’s 17-3 loss to the Giants, in which he was sacked nine times. Collins, who took over to start the second half and left the game with a stinger, will make his first start in three years against the Panthers . Collins said Coach Lovie Smith told him late Thursday morning that he would be starting. This will be the first time Cutler has missed a start because of injury. He had made 57 in a row. MCFADDEN WILL MISS GAME Oakland Raiders running back Darren McFadden sat out his second straight practice with a sore hamstring and is almost certain to miss Sunday’s game against San Diego. Michael Bush, who missed the first two games with a broken left thumb, will most likely start. BRADSHAW’S STATUS UNCERTAIN When Ahmad Bradshaw missed practice on Wednesday because of a sore ankle, he played down the seriousness of the injury. But there are new questions about his status for Sunday’s game against the Houston Texans after he sat out again on Thursday. “He’s a little better,” Coach Tom Coughlin said. “I think we’ll get him tomorrow.” Bradshaw did not speak with reporters, but he smiled as he walked off the field, carrying a football tucked high and tight underneath his arm, a reference to his fumbling problems. MARK VIERA

Football
Concussions
Chicago Bears
Cutler Jay
Carolina Panthers
Bradshaw Ahmad


No Charisma, No Glamour: Michael Gove Makes His Case to Lead Britain

Abstract: LONDON — Michael Gove made his case on Friday to become the next British prime minister , arguing that the new leader should be someone who had backed an exit from the European Union, while vowing to spend less than a third of what his “Leave” campaign had promised on the National Health Service. Mr. Gove spoke a day after he shocked Britain by announcing his candidacy in the Conservative Party competition, having promised to serve as campaign manager for Boris Johnson , the former London mayor seen as the front-runner for the post. Mr. Johnson, one of the leaders of the Leave campaign with Mr. Gove, has withdrawn his candidacy, making the home secretary, Theresa May, 59, the odds-on favorite. But Ms. May had quietly backed staying in the European Union, and Mr. Gove, the justice secretary, argued on Friday that he best represented the mood of the party and the country. Mr. Gove, 48, laid out his program in a long and slightly wandering speech in London, acknowledging that he possesses no glamour or charisma and that he “did almost everything not to be a candidate for the leadership of this party.” Image Theresa May, at a regatta in Henley, England, on Friday, is the favorite of five candidates seeking to be prime minister. Credit Jonathan Brady/Press Association, via Associated Press He said he was “so very reluctant because I know my limitations.” He added, “Whatever charisma is I don’t have it, whatever glamour may be I don’t think anyone could ever associate me with it.” But Mr. Gove, having betrayed Mr. Johnson, had to justify his decision. He listened to his heart, he said, and decided that running was “the right thing to do.” He portrayed himself as a politician of conviction who broke with Prime Minister David Cameron, a friend, over a longstanding belief that Britain could not be truly sovereign inside the European Union, and with Mr. Johnson because “I came to realize this week that, for all Boris’s formidable talents, he was not the right person for the task.” Like Ms. May, who spoke in a polished opening of her candidacy on Thursday, Mr. Gove said that he would not begin the formal process of leaving the European Union until next year and would not hold an early election. He also said that controlling immigration to Britain was a goal, which would almost surely prevent Britain from retaining access to the duty-free single market of the bloc. He promised to “end free movement, introduce an Australian-style points-based system for immigration, and bring numbers down.” Money saved from leaving the European Union would be spent principally on the National Health Service, he said, pledging to spend 100 million pounds more a week, or about $133 million, by 2020. Before the referendum, t he Leave campaign bus had been emblazoned with a promise to spend £350 million a week on the N.H.S. — a pledge that it said was equivalent to the amount Britain sent to the European Union and one that it refused to abandon even when it was shown that the figure was bogus. Mr. Gove argued that he was “the candidate for change,” pointing to his experience as justice secretary and especially as education secretary, even though he became so unpopular in that post that Mr. Cameron moved him out of the job. That move was the source of great resentment from Mr. Gove and his wife, Sarah Vine, a journalist. Video The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, said that in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union, the central bank would need to increase monetary stimulus for Britain’s economy over the summer. Credit Credit Matt Dunham/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Mr. Gove spoke of being an adopted child lucky to find loving parents in Aberdeen, Scotland, who instilled in him “a belief in human potential.” And Mr. Gove, through intelligence and hard work, rose to graduate from Oxford and join the nation’s political elite. Only five Conservative members of Parliament were in the audience, and Mr. Gove will need more support than that to emerge as a plausible prime minister and a real competitor to Ms. May. She is considered a safe continuity candidate who is to the right of Mr. Cameron but slightly to the left of Mr. Gove. Ms. May is not a natural politician or a glad-hander, but she has concentrated on doing her work. She has been generally praised for her six years as home secretary, one of the country’s most difficult jobs, in particular for standing up to the police unions and for pushing through antiterrorism legislation. Mr. Gove had little to say on Friday about the budget or the economy, which has taken a big hit from the vote for the British exit, known as Brexit, as the Treasury warned. During the campaign, he dismissed all such warnings as “Project Fear” and said that “people in this country have had enough of experts.” George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer and a friend of Mr. Gove’s, said in a speech of his own in Manchester on Friday that he would abandon his pledge to balance the budget by 2020, the end of this Parliament, because of the effect that the referendum would have on growth and the uncertainty surrounding it. “We will continue to be tough on the deficit, but we must be realistic about achieving a surplus by the end of this decade,” Mr. Osborne said. Few economists believed that Mr. Osborne would deliver a budget surplus so soon in any case, given the size of the deficit and the impolitic scale of the spending cuts or tax increases that would be required to achieve one. On Thursday, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney , warned that Britain was suffering “economic post-traumatic stress” from the referendum and that a downturn and possibly a recession were on the way. Mr. Carney said that he expected to order “some monetary easing” in the next few months to promote growth — in other words, a cut in interest rates. But the bank can only do so much. “Monetary policy cannot immediately or fully offset the economic implications of a large, negative shock,” he said. Had Mr. Cameron and the “Remain” campaign won the referendum, Mr. Osborne would have been seen as a potential successor for prime minister. Those hopes have evaporated, and there is speculation that he may support Mr. Gove. There are three other candidates: Stephen Crabb, a young lawmaker who is the work and pensions secretary; Liam Fox, a former defense secretary; and Andrea Leadsom, the energy minister, a Leave campaigner who is fast picking up support. Conservatives will start winnowing the five candidates down to two in rolling votes, and then the 150,000 or so party members will choose between the final two, expected now to be Ms. May and Mr. Gove. A decision is likely to be announced on Sept. 9.

Brexit
Conservative Party
Michael Gove
Theresa May
EU
Great Britain
Boris Johnson


Again, BlackBerrys Are Disrupted by a Technical Snag

Abstract: OTTAWA — For the second time in less than a year, a technical failure on Monday idled the thumbs of many BlackBerry users by severing their wireless link to e-mail and the Web. Representatives of several North American carriers said they were told by Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s maker, that a significant failure had occurred somewhere in the servers it operates to connect the popular hand-held devices with the Internet. The carriers were told that all operators in North America were affected, though not all customers. “R.I.M.’s having a big shutdown,” said Jim Johansson, a spokesman for Telus, a major Canadian telecommunications company based in Vancouver, British Columbia. “It’s potentially up to half their customers. It seems to be hit and miss.” Stephanie Vinge-Walsh, a spokeswoman at Sprint Nextel, said R.I.M. told the company’s technical staff that the unspecified trouble began about 3:20 p.m. Eastern time. Earlier Monday evening, Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T, said that R.I.M. told his company that the problem had been fixed. “This is not an issue with the AT&T network, this is an issue with the R.I.M. network,” said Mr. Siegel. But he added: “It’s going to take some time with the backlog of messages that developed. As you might imagine, quite a number have built up.” Odette Coleman, a spokeswoman for Rogers Wireless, Canada’s largest carrier, said it was also told by R.I.M. about 6:45 p.m. that service had been restored. Like AT&T customers, however, Rogers’s BlackBerry users were still having delays because of the message backlog. About 8:10 p.m., Ms. Vinge-Walsh said that R.I.M. had told Sprint Nextel that the backlog had been fully cleared and service was back to normal. R.I.M., which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, sent a brief statement by e-mail earlier in the evening acknowledging the disruption but offering no details. The company did not respond to requests for further comment. There are about 12 million BlackBerry users, about 8 million of them in North America. While some may have welcomed a temporary respite from e-mail, many people, particularly in the financial industry, use the devices to perform time-sensitive transactions. They are also popular communications tools for emergency personnel. The lapse in BlackBerry service is another embarrassment for a company that has long emphasized reliability and security as selling points for its premium-priced variety of wireless e-mail. In April 2007, e-mail stopped making its way into about five million BlackBerrys over a period of about 10 hours. As was the case on Monday, R.I.M. left its customers and carriers largely in the dark about the situation. Once service was fully resumed, the company said the problem involved the network operations center near its head office in Ontario, which processes every e-mail message produced by a BlackBerry or destined for one. That problem began with the installation of a new piece of software that was supposed to accelerate the servers’ handling of e-mail. The company acknowledged that the software had not been adequately tested and caused a series of problems with a database that manages e-mail traffic. R.I.M.’s attempt to switch to a backup system also failed and compounded the problem. Since then, the company has repeatedly assured investors and customers that it has fully resolved the problem. R.I.M. is trying to expand beyond its traditional base of corporate and government users by marketing less costly, multimedia BlackBerrys. That strategy has pitted the Canadian company against much larger consumer electronics companies, including Apple. By coincidence, earlier on Monday R.I.M. announced a consumer marketing deal with the Vodafone Group.

Wireless Communications
Research In Motion
Telephones and Telecommunications
Ottawa (Ontario)
BlackBerry


A Series of Troubling Events, a Change of Career

Abstract: “IF I couldn’t be a reporter, then who was I? What would I do?” I had read these words of Michael Weisskopf, senior correspondent for Time magazine, in an excerpt from his book “Blood Brothers,” published in the magazine in September 2006. The excerpt begins on Dec. 10, 2003, the day Mr. Weisskopf’s writing hand was blown off by a grenade in Iraq. As a police reporter for The Hartford Courant, I had roamed drug-infested areas, gone 140 miles per hour in a police cruiser, even been bitten by a police dog. But covering a war zone? I couldn’t begin to imagine the pain that Mr. Weisskopf went through . And yet I understood exactly how he felt. I had wanted to do nothing other than be a reporter since I was 9. His words had brought me to tears. Two years later, they brought me to a crossroads. In the spring of 2008, as buyout packages were being strewn about the newsroom where I had worked for 23 years, and more and more of my colleagues either took the buyout or were laid off, I asked myself, with far greater urgency than ever before: What would I do if I weren’t a reporter? The answer came in bits and pieces, held together by a string of bad news. Somewhere between my teenage daughter’s hospitalization, my breast surgery and my mother’s cancer , I decided to become a nurse. This was a decision made by fate as much as by the economy. The idea came not so much as an epiphany, but as a seed planted one night in November 2007 at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, where my oldest daughter, Sarah, was suffering a painful bout of pancreatitis . As Sarah began to feel better, she talked to the nurses about their jobs. All of them seemed to love the flexibility and diversity, and the feeling at the end of the day that they had helped someone. “Mommy,” she said, turning over in bed to look at me, “you should be a nurse.” That night, as I slept in a cot beside her, I watched out the window as a Life Star helicopter landed across the street on the roof of Hartford Hospital. I had witnessed the Life Star crew work countless times at the scenes of accidents, once a triple fatality a mile from my house. I had tuned my ear to listen for the “Code 100” on the police scanner, which means an emergency call for a critically injured person. Now I wondered what it would be like to be on the lifesaving end of a tragedy rather than on the observer’s side. I may have discarded the idea had nothing else gone wrong in 2007 and 2008. Just three weeks after Sarah recovered, an inflammation and infection in my breast that I had had the year before came back with a vengeance. Fearing I had breast cancer , I went to a comprehensive breast center at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford. By chance and, as I later realized, luck, Dr. James L. Frank, director of surgical oncology, was assigned my case. He told me he would have to operate to take out the offending tissue and rule out breast cancer. He and his nurses were kind and reassuring, and helped ease my fears. The biopsy was negative. I had dodged a bullet, but another one was headed straight for my mother. After years of writing about people’s travesties and tragedies, I had come to believe life was random chaos, not a predetermined path. Of that I am no longer certain. That breast infection , which had no apparent cause, had one major effect: I had met a top oncology surgeon and knew whom to contact when my mom learned she had uterine cancer three months later. In a 10-hour surgery in April 2008, Dr. Frank and Dr. Allan Mayer removed the cancer and benign pancreatic tumor . Sitting in my mother’s hospital room during her recovery, I watched how the nurses cared for her and kept her comfortable. And when she returned home and needed her bandages changed twice a day, I put on blue surgical gloves and gently applied gauze pads and tape, just as I had seen the nurses do. I liked the feeling of helping her, of being needed, of nursing her back to health. But how could I, a divorced mother of three in my mid-40s, reinvent myself? All I ever knew was writing and reporting, having completely avoided math and science in college. What would I do if I weren’t a reporter? The push I needed to walk away from a 23-year career came last June in a strange, fateful way, less than 12 hours before I had to decide whether to take the newspaper’s buyout offer. I had to pick Sarah up from work at 10:30 p.m. and stopped to get gas at a small, deserted convenience store in my hometown. A car pulled in front of mine as I was pumping gas, and out stepped a man dressed in bright blue scrubs and Crocs. I stared at him as if he were some kind of mirage, and asked, “Are you a nurse?” Yes, he was. And he was headed for his shift at St. Francis Hospital, where he worked on one of the floors where my mother had been taken after surgery. I told him that I was thinking about becoming a nurse, but that I wasn’t sure I could get through the program at Three Rivers Community College, where I had already enrolled in a summer math class. He told me he had just graduated from Three Rivers’s two-year registered nursing program . He said he had been in the military, had never gotten a four-year college degree and had gotten through it. He told me that I could do it, that I should do it. What were the odds of a chance meeting with a nurse who had gone to my college, at a place 30 miles from the hospital where both my mother and I had been treated, on the night before I had to make a decision about the buyout? The next day I signed my buyout papers and enrolled in full-time classes at Three Rivers. Since then, after getting B’s in two math classes and an A in biology, I’ve come to realize that the work habits I had developed as reporter — taking copious notes, staying focused, finishing what I started — had translated into good study habits. And my experience in dealing with people as an observer has been very helpful in my current role, as a hands-on volunteer in the emergency department at St. Francis. Sometimes, when the list of classes I still have to take to become a nurse seems overwhelming, I think of William J. Dopirak Jr., who was my biology professor at Three Rivers Community College last semester. Mr. Dopirak was 19 when he suffered traumatic brain injury in a horrific car wreck, and he had to relearn to walk, talk and think. Now, in his 40s, with the use of only his left side, he teaches science. He tells his students they can do anything they put their minds to. And I think, yes, I will be a nurse.

Nursing and Nurses
Medicine and Health
Connecticut
Vocational Training


Last Chance for Drogba at African Cup

Abstract: The outstanding matchups this weekend in soccer The Bundesliga is back after its winter hibernation, but the big boys of the English league play without key African stars wanted, reasonably enough, by their countries for the Cup of Nations.  Sunday Ivory Coast vs. Sudan This is Didier Drogba’s last chance to fulfill his promise to lead the Ivorian “Elephants” to the African title. The Chelsea striker is almost 34, and served by the long-striding midfield power of Manchester City’s Yaya Touré and the swift wing play of Arsenal’s Gervinho. Though it is 20 years since Ivory Coast won the cup, the absence of Egypt, the dominant force in the last three editions, leaves the door open. Manchester City vs. Tottenham; Arsenal vs. Manchester United Four fashionable teams in the English Premier League meet in Manchester and London at the same time as the African Cup gets under way in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. United is the only club among them not directly affected by African absentees. It travels to Arsenal, the team it overran, 8-2, back in August, when Arsenal was still devastated by the loss of Cesc Fàbregas to Barcelona and Samir Nasri to Manchester City. Since then, Arsenal has climbed back toward respectability, but it was outplayed at its own passing game at Swansea last weekend. The City versus Spurs encounter is significantly affected by the African call-ups. City lacks the brothers Kolo and Yaya Touré, but Tottenham is without four African players. Among those, however, striker Emmanuel Adebayor would not have been eligible to face City. He is on loan from the Manchester team to the Spurs, and City even pays some of his salary to play for the opposition — except against City. Real Madrid vs. Athletic Bilbao; Málaga vs. Barcelona The calm between the storm of the second Madrid-Barça clasico in a week, the return match of the King’s Cup between the two outstanding sides in Spain, and arguably in the world. The King’s Cup is the only trophy that Barcelona allowed Real to hold in 2011, and after Barça’s clear victory in the first leg Wednesday, at Bernabéu stadium in Madrid, that hold is tenuous. However, they both have testing games in La Liga on Sunday. Madrid beats everyone at home — bar Barcelona — but Bilbao is far from a pushover. Indeed, the Basque team, under its erudite Argentine coach, Marcelo Bielsa, has one player, the striker Fernando Llorente, who loves to compete against Madrid at the Bernabéu. The burning question for Real is whether its coach, José Mourinho, or its president, Florentino Pérez, dare to do the decent thing and drop the Portuguese brute, Pepe, after his malicious stamp on the hand of Lionel Messi during the cup game Wednesday. Málaga, beaten only once at home this season, must still raise its game if it is to turn the spending of the Qatari royal family into, at the very least, a top-four position this season. And Barcelona, apart from when it plays Madrid, has not traveled well lately. Pep Guardiola’s players have lacked a degree of intensity that used to be as reliable as their skills. Hamburg vs. Borussia Dortmund The most intriguing German contest of the weekend, this tests the resolve of the champion, Dortmund. A few months ago, it would have been expected to travel to Hamburg and win fairly comfortably. But since Coach Thorsten Fink left Basel to take over at Hamburg in October, his new team has been unbeaten. The Hamburgers have climbed from the basement of the Bundesliga to midtable. “Fink is a wizard,” says Franz Beckenbauer, whose own record from playing to coaching to organizing a World Cup is legendary. Der Kaizer Beckenbauer writes for the German tabloid Bild, and in his latest column, he forecasts that Fink is destined to be the next coach at Bayern Munich. Fink played for Bayern, as Beckenbauer imperiously once did. The prediction, which no doubt comes with insider knowledge, is on hold for quite a while. Fink is contracted to Hamburg until 2014, and Munich’s incumbent coach, Jupp Heynckes, is considering an invitation to continue his good work with Bayern beyond his contracted date of 2013. Age will come into it. Heynckes is 67, Fink is 44. “Jupp Heynckes,” notes Beckenbauer, “does not have the genes of Trapattoni.” By that he means that Heynckes neither expects, nor is he likely, to carry on coaching until he is 72, like Giovanni Trapattoni, who is still active as Ireland’s national team coach.

Soccer
English Premier League
Real Madrid (Soccer Team)
Barcelona (Soccer Team)
Manchester City (Soccer Team)
Manchester United (Soccer Team)


Ex-Players May Testify in Bonds Trial, Judge Rules

Abstract: Despite repeated efforts by Barry Bonds ’s lawyers to bar the testimony of several current and former major league players in Bonds’s perjury trial this month, those athletes will be allowed to take the stand, a federal judge ruled on Monday in San Francisco. Bonds’s defense team had asked Judge Susan Illston of United States District Court to reconsider her previous ruling to let the players testify about their connection to Greg Anderson, Bonds’s former trainer, at the trial, which begins March 21. Those lawyers said the jury was likely to apply “guilt by association” to Bonds when other athletes talk about their dealings with Anderson, who prosecutors say dealt performance-enhancing drugs to those ballplayers — and to Bonds. But Illston ruled — yet again — in the government’s favor, which becomes important because Anderson has refused to testify at the trial. Bonds is facing charges of knowingly lying to a federal grand jury in 2003 about his suspected use of steroids and other drugs that helped his performance. In a ruling filed Monday, Illston wrote that the athlete witnesses would provide evidence that “is relevant to the question of guilt or innocence in this case.” Prosecutors say those witnesses will testify that Anderson gave them performance-enhancing drugs, told them how to use those drugs and explained the efficacy of those substances. At the trial, the prosecutors plan to argue that Bonds, like Anderson’s other clients, was “not unwittingly duped into taking steroids.” Allen Ruby, Bonds’s lead lawyer, said that he had “no reaction” to the ruling. Prosecutors did not return a phone call for comment. Mathew Rosengart, a partner at the Manatt, Phelps & Phillips law firm and a former federal prosecutor who is not involved in the case, said it was logical for the defense to try to keep the athlete witnesses off the stand. “The fact that they were so intent at moving to strike that evidence shows that they know it’s a focal point of the government’s case,” Rosengart said. “It’s a very good strategy.” Last week, Ruby sent a letter to Illston that included excerpts from the grand jury testimony of six of the seven athletes on the government’s witness list, including Jason Giambi, Jeremy Giambi and Bonds’s former teammates Bobby Estalella and Benito Santiago. In the snippets of testimony, the athletes are asked about the substances they received from Anderson. They answer that Anderson never specifically told them he was giving them steroids. Ruby said that the excerpts were consistent with the rest of those athletes’ testimonies. Santiago was asked, “Did he ever tell you that the things he was giving you were steroids or had steroidlike effects?” He answered no. He was then asked: “So, I’m sorry I have to ask, you injected those items into your body, but didn’t know exactly what they were. Is that correct?” He answered, “Believe it or not.” Still, Illston ruled that the government could use the athletes’ testimonies to try to prove that Bonds knew Anderson was giving him steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. INDIANS SIGN NICK JOHNSON First baseman-designated hitter Nick Johnson, who played 24 games for the Yankees last year in his latest injury-plagued season, signed a minor league contract with the Cleveland Indians and was invited to spring training. Johnson , 32, injured his right wrist last May and went on the disabled list for the eighth time in his nine-year career. He had surgery in February. No timetable was given for when he will be able to play again. He has a career on-base percentage of .401 with the Yankees, Washington and Florida but has reached 150 plate appearances only once in the last four seasons. (AP) M.L.B. OFFICIALS FIRED Major League Baseball fired three executives as part of the restructuring that put Joe Torre in charge of baseball operations. The commissioner’s office said it had dismissed the vice president for umpiring, Mike Port; the vice president for operations and administration, Ed Burns; and the senior specialist for on-field operations, Darryl Hamilton. (AP)

Bonds Barry
Baseball
Perjury
Doping (Sports)
Illston Susan


Music Industry Pushes Unified Message on Compensation

Abstract: When it comes to the music industry’s lobbying efforts in Washington, it is time for some harmony. That message has gained momentum among music executives, who worry that squabbling among the various players — record labels, music publishers, artists, songwriters — will undermine broader initiatives to push for new legislation and regulatory reform. On Wednesday, the head of the organization behind the Grammy Awards will host a dinner in Washington attended by some of Capitol Hill’s most powerful lawmakers and call for the industry to set aside its differences and lobby under a single message of fair compensation for all. The speech, to be given by Neil Portnow, the president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, will suggest that disparate messages from the different constituencies have stymied previous campaigns and will argue that a single, all-purpose bill is needed, according to industry executives. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, and Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority whip, are expected to attend the event. Music groups are pushing for a range of new laws and regulations that they believe are vital to help their businesses survive in the digital era. But the interests of these parties do not always align. Record companies, for example, have long wanted to change the federal laws that require AM/FM radio broadcasters to pay royalties to the publishers that control songwriting copyrights but not to record labels. Yet publishers have feared that any gain by record companies could come at their expense. Radio broadcasters have fiercely opposed and successfully fought the record labels on this issue. The industry’s different groups have also butted heads over compensation paid out by popular streaming services like Pandora and Spotify. Federal courts oversee the royalty rates paid out by those services, and the publishers complain that the record labels earn far more than they do. According to Pandora’s financial statements, the company pays about 4 percent of its annual revenue to publishers and more than 50 percent to record labels. “While we and record labels may agree that Pandora should pay a maximum amount possible of their revenue for music, it doesn’t mean that we agree that the money should be split 13 to one,” said David Israelite, the president of the National Music Publishers’ Association. In February, publishers backed a new bill, the Songwriter Equity Act, which would allow rate-court judges to consider the royalties that record companies receive when setting rates for publishers. The publishing world, frustrated by recent court decisions, is also trying to get the Justice Department to change the 73-year-old regulatory agreements governing Ascap and BMI, the two large organizations that handle performing-rights licensing. Image Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, will call for industry unity behind a message of fair compensation. Credit Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images In addition to those efforts, music groups are hopeful for a broad review of copyright law that is being led by Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. While record labels and publishers have been in conflict before, the disputes have grown more urgent with the shift to digital media, which has led to steep declines in sales and sometimes bitter disagreements over what constitutes fair royalty rates. “To a degree it’s always been this way, but it’s been exasperated by the decline in revenues,” said Jay L. Cooper, a veteran music lawyer who recently gave a speech at the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles called “The Music Industry at War With Itself.” Past failures have burned painful memories into the minds of lobbyists and music executives, like an effort in 2006 to streamline music licensing. Distrust between songwriters and publishers divided support among music groups, and the bill expired. The Stop Online Piracy Act, or Sopa, introduced in 2011, was supported by Hollywood movie studios and music industry groups, but the huge opposition to it — bolstered by Internet giants like Google and Wikipedia — beat back the legislation and left the Washington media-industry lobby stunned. Now, with the increasing influence that technology companies like Pandora, Spotify and Google are having on the music business, its leaders are making a renewed call for cooperation. “Generally speaking, most people are on the same side,” said Chris Castle, a music lawyer who frequently comments on technology issues. “The main concern is that we don’t allow the people who want to divide us from coming in and manipulating both sides against each other.” Wednesday’s dinner is a prelude to Grammys on the Hill, an annual advocacy day in which music industry executives and lobbyists mingle with lawmakers, usually with the help of some musical star power. This year Lady Antebellum, a Grammy-winning country-pop trio, will be on hand for the event. The Grammys lobbying day has traditionally been more of a hobnobbing event than one for gritty policy debates. And with the music industry fighting for every dollar, there is no guarantee that Mr. Portnow’s call for unity will be heeded. But the academy hopes its message will be strengthened by its position as an inclusive organization for all kinds of musicians. “The Recording Academy,” said Daryl P. Friedman, its top official in Washington, “is the only industry group that speaks for all music creators.”