Cardinals Tie Grieving Brewers for First; Abreu Powers White Sox Past the Indians

Abstract: Adam Wainwright pitched seven strong innings, and the visiting St. Louis Cardinals sent the Milwaukee Brewers to their seventh straight loss, 10-2, on Saturday as the Brewers mourned the son of shortstop Jean Segura. Segura left the team and traveled home to the Dominican Republic a day after his 9-month-old son died. The boy had been ill, Manager Ron Roenicke said. The clubhouse was closed before the game. Tony Cruz drove in a career-high three runs and Kolten Wong homered as the Cardinals pulled into a first-place tie with Milwaukee in the National League Central. St. Louis trailed by six and a half games on July 1. The Brewers have lost 11 of 12. They had held sole possession of first place since April 9. WHITE SOX 6, INDIANS 2 Jose Abreu hit his major-league-leading 29th homer, a two-run shot that sent visiting Chicago past Cleveland. The White Sox ended a three-game losing streak. Abreu, picked for the American League All-Star team in his rookie season, broke a scoreless tie in the fourth inning with his drive off Zach McAllister (3-5). TIGERS 5, ROYALS 1 Rick Porcello outdueled James Shields as visiting Detroit won its fifth in a row, beating Kansas City. Porcello (12-5), who raised his career record against Kansas City to 8-3, yielded six hits and one run through seven innings. Alex Avila drove in three runs, putting the Tigers in position to go for a four-game sweep Sunday in what had been billed as an American League Central showdown. The Royals have lost six of their last eight. DIAMONDBACKS 2, GIANTS 0 Aaron Hill homered, doubled and scored twice, and visiting Arizona beat San Francisco. David Peralta and Gerardo Parra each added two hits for the last-place Diamondbacks, who won their fourth in six games. Wade Miley pitched seven shutout innings. ANGELS 5, RANGERS 2 Howie Kendrick celebrated his 31st birthday with three hits, including a run-scoring single during a four-run sixth inning, and Los Angeles sent host Texas to its seventh straight loss. TWINS 9, ROCKIES 3 Kevin Correia allowed one run in six innings, Eduardo Escobar homered, and visiting Minnesota pulled away to beat Colorado. Correia (5-11) scattered seven hits and cooled off the power-hitting Rockies, who stranded 10 runners and did not have a home run after slugging eight in their previous two games. NATIONALS 5, PHILLIES 3 Ryan Zimmerman singled in the go-ahead run with two outs in the 10th inning, and Jayson Werth homered and had three runs batted in to lead visiting Washington over Philadelphia. BRAVES 11, CUBS 6 Chris Johnson homered twice and pitcher Mike Minor hit his second career home run, leading Atlanta over host Chicago. Johnson and Justin Upton each drove in four runs for the Braves. Atlanta scored six times in the fourth inning for a 9-3 lead. PIRATES 6, REDS 5 Andrew McCutchen tied the game with a solo homer in the ninth inning and connected again in the 11th, rallying struggling Pittsburgh to a victory over host Cincinnati. RAYS 10, BLUE JAYS 3 Jake Odorizzi, a rookie right-hander, pitched six and two-thirds innings and notched seven strikeouts, and Kevin Kiermaier and Matt Joyce drove in three runs each as host Tampa Bay defeated Toronto. ASTROS 3, RED SOX 2 Jason Castro hit a two-run homer, and Chris Carter had a tiebreaking infield single in the eighth inning to lift host Houston over Boston.

Baseball
Diamondbacks
San Francisco Giants
Jose Dariel Abreu
Wade Miley
Brewers
St. Louis Cardinals


Sewage Spill, Check. Rerouted Race, Check. Contracting the Zika Virus ...

Abstract: Come what may, the Rio Olympics set to begin Aug. 5 will be largely covered. By insurance, that is. Many potential threats loom — the Zika virus, terrorism, civil unrest — but underwriters say a dramatic interruption or cancellation of the Games will not leave organizers empty-handed. Nearly $2 billion in insurance has been secured to cover the International Olympic Committee, broadcasters, organizers and others with a stake in operating the Games. The cost of putting on the Olympics is estimated at $20 billion, including the construction of stadiums, housing and other sites, many of which will serve a purpose beyond the Games. The policies are designed to cover some or all potential losses directly related to the Games, whether caused by a natural disaster, a terrorist attack or another “unknown peril,” in industry terms. Smaller-scale problems are likely to be covered. If, for example, protests force organizers to reroute the marathon, the costs of moving the event would be covered. Or if strong winds or sewage spills delay or cancel sailing events, organizers should expect a check for any financial damages. Zika has been a focus, as some of the biggest names in golf and tennis are not attending the Games because, they say, they do not want to risk contracting the virus. Such absences could hurt ticket sales and television ratings, prompting organizers, broadcasters and sponsors to ask their insurers to make up lost revenue. But with the start of the Olympics just two weeks away, insurers are already serving notice that they may not cover every type of loss related to Zika. In their view, rather than paying anything related to individual cases, they will cover a full-on cancellation or postponement of the Games or a sporting event. Zika falls under the category of communicable diseases, which is typically covered under standard policies. Given the unpredictable and potentially devastating consequences of such diseases, insurance brokers often recommend that clients buy the protection. Clients who bought communicable-disease coverage several years ago would be covered because the threat from the virus was unknowable at the time that the policies were written. Anyone who bought coverage for Zika-related claims after the threat of the virus became a “known peril” had to pay more for coverage or might have had a difficult time getting it so close to the start of the Games. If a policy with a communicable-disease clause “was broadly worded five years ago, we might cover it,” said Andrew Duxbury, an underwriting manager at Munich Re, which has written insurance policies for the Rio Games, along with reinsurance — coverage for insurers against their potential losses. But “if you approach the market now and you go to Brazil and were worried about Zika and wanted specific Zika coverage, our position would be it is a step too far.” Duxbury and other insurers, though, say that claims will be valid only if Zika causes events to be canceled or postponed, and the chances of that are increasingly remote. In June, the World Health Organization said that athletes and spectators, except for pregnant women, could attend the Rio Games as long as they took precautions against becoming infected. The virus , which is transmitted by mosquitoes, is less likely to be spread during the Rio Games because they are taking place in the cooler climate of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, the organization said. Even if an outbreak of Zika occurs during the Games, obtaining payouts will not be easy. According to insurers, brokers and consultants, for a claim to be valid, an established group like the W.H.O. or the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must issue a warning that an event should be postponed or canceled because of the threat from Zika. By contrast, insurers are unlikely to honor claims from broadcasters or sponsors that claim they lost money because top athletes like Rory McIlroy pulled out of the Olympics over worries about the Zika virus. Television ratings and advertising plans might be hurt, but insurers will have little sympathy. “Policies don’t trigger just because you have a fear of something happening,” said Dan Burns, the chief executive of Pro Financial Services, which has underwritten policies for the Olympic Games. “A third party has to issue guidelines or warnings.” Though events at the Olympics may not be postponed or canceled, people working at the Olympics could get be sickened by the virus. In many cases, employees would have their medical expenses covered by their company’s insurance or workers’ compensation plans. The virus, though, raises other issues. What, for instance, would happen if a man contracted the virus while working at the Olympics and passed it to his partner or wife, who then had a child with one of the birth defects caused by the virus? Someone working at the Olympics could also sue an employer for negligence after being sickened by the virus. A company’s health insurance plan typically covers the cost of childbirth, but “with a child with a challenging future, the costs will be high,” said Michael Drayer, the chief executive of the AON Entertainment Practice Group, which helps clients buy event cancellation insurance. “Some clients told us they wanted to cover the worst case because their business travel accident doesn’t respond or their workers’ comp doesn’t cover it. You have to play out the types of things that can happen.”

2016 Summer Olympics
Zika Virus
Munich Re
Personal finance


New Priorities in the ‘Hamilton’ Era

Abstract: Dear Diary: Recently one morning, Shelley, a co-worker, announced to me the good news that she was expecting. We exchanged the usual congratulatory remarks and questions. Later that day in the elevator, another co-worker asked if I had heard Shelley’s “news.” I replied that I did and that it was wonderful that she was pregnant. My co-worker replied: “No, not that. She’s seeing ‘Hamilton’ tonight.”


Romney Would Give Reins to States on Drilling on Federal Lands

Abstract: By proposing to end a century of federal control over oil and gas drilling and coal mining on government lands, Mitt Romney is making a bid for anti-Washington voters in key Western states while dangling the promise of a big reward to major campaign supporters from the energy industry. Mr. Romney’s plan, which would turn over decision-making on drilling and mining to the states, echoes the “Drill, baby, drill” strategy that another Republican presidential candidate, John McCain , used to great effect in the 2008 campaign. The federal government owns vast portions of states like New Mexico , Nevada , Utah , Colorado and Alaska . Under President Obama , officials in Washington have played a bigger role in drilling and mining decisions on federal lands in the states, and such involvement rankles many residents and energy executives, who prefer the usually lighter touch of local officials. With gasoline prices again approaching $4 a gallon, Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, is also trying to merge energy and economic policy in a way that will make voters see increased energy production as a pocketbook issue. He said that his overall energy plan, which includes speedy approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada and new drilling off the coast of Virginia and the Carolinas , would help the country achieve energy independence and create three million drilling and manufacturing jobs. “I’m going to change the regulatory and permitting process,” Mr. Romney said Thursday at a rally in Hobbs, N.M., in the giant Permian Basin oil fields, where companies are eager to begin drilling on millions of acres of federal lands. “Sometimes I have the impression that the whole regulatory attitude of the administration is trying to stop oil and gas and coal — that they don’t want those sources, that instead they want to get those things so expensive and so rare that wind and solar become highly cost-effective and efficient.” Giving states control over the energy resources on millions of acres of federal lands would be a radical shift from decades of policies under both Democratic and Republican presidents, dating all the way to Theodore Roosevelt , who first set aside vast tracts of territory to preserve wildlife. Since then, the federal government has tried to balance exploitation of mineral resources with other uses like recreation and environmental protection. “This step would be a change in national policy direction going back at least 50 years, giving control over national assets to localities,” said Michael E. Webber , associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. “Local decision makers could inhibit production that could be against the national interest or could encourage production that could pollute waters or air in another state.” Mr. Romney said that states like North Dakota and Colorado grant drilling permits on state-owned lands in days or weeks, compared with the nearly a year that it takes the federal government to grant approval. “They found a way to do a job in a more efficient way,” he said. “On federal lands, the permitting process to actually drill and get oil or gas is extraordinarily slow.” The Romney campaign acknowledged that such a significant policy change would require the approval of Congress. Getting such legislation passed, even if Republicans controlled the House and the Senate, would be very difficult, given certain opposition by Democrats and perhaps even some Republicans. But even if it never passes, the proposal is liable to generate enthusiasm among voters who favor smaller government, especially in Western swing states like Nevada, which is about 80 percent federal land. “We love it,” said Ally Isom, a deputy chief of staff to Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a Republican. “We understand better than Washington how to better manage our lands. We actually live here.” An individual close to the Romney campaign said that Mr. Romney’s staff drafted the proposal in consultation with industry executives, including Harold Hamm, an Oklahoma billionaire who is the chairman of the campaign’s energy advisory committee and chief executive of Continental Resources , an oil and gas driller. Just this week, the oil and gas industry gave nearly $10 million toward the Romney election effort in two fund-raisers. The Romney aide, who said she was not authorized to speak on the record about the plan, said that any consultation with industry officials was simply to tap their expertise and did not mean the proposal was being shaped to serve their interests. Mr. Romney’s proposal drew immediate praise from the industry, which has complained that gas production on public lands has slowed under President Obama, even while it has surged on private lands. “Empowering states, rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all federal government approach, is the right way to increase American energy,” said Kathleen Sgamma, a vice president at Western Energy Alliance, a group of oil and gas producers. But environmentalists and former Interior Department officials called the proposal an irresponsible break from traditional federal protection of wildlife. “It is a preposterously bad idea — we are talking about federal trust lands that belong to the whole nation,” said Bobby McEnaney, a senior aide at the Natural Resources Defense Council , an environmental group. Federico Peña, secretary of energy in the Clinton administration and now a co-chairman of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign, said Mr. Romney’s plan would cause more problems for the oil and gas industry. “I cannot imagine a world in where there are 50 different kinds of rules and regulations for industry,” Mr. Peña said. “To see Balkanization of rules and regulation I think would drive the industry crazy.” The federal government owns about 28 percent of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States . But as of March 2012, only about 37 million acres were under lease for oil and gas operations, of which about 16.3 million acres have active oil and gas production or exploration, according to the Interior Department. Under Mr. Romney’s proposal, the federal government would still be able to set national standards for air and water pollution, which equally apply to drilling on federal and private lands, an aide said. But states would be authorized to conduct their own environmental reviews and issue drilling permits as quickly as they would like, as long as the drilling was not in protected wildlife areas or national parks. Elected officials in states like Utah have called for federal officials to transfer or sell federal lands to the states, echoing the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, when politicians and landowners in the West advocated a similar move. The George W. Bush administration allowed individual drilling permits to be issued without a detailed environmental review, resulting in a surge of oil and gas production. But never before has the federal government offered simply to cede control over how federal land is developed to state officials, said John Leshy, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law and an Interior Department lawyer in the Clinton administration. “It is pretty revolutionary to say we are going to keep title but turn it over to the states,” he said. “It is a Sagebrush Rebellion with a twist.”

Land use
Oil and Gasoline
Mitt Romney
2012 Presidential Election
Federal lands
Regulation and Deregulation
Environment
Coal
Natural gas
Mining


The Haves and the Have-Nots

Abstract: BRIGHTON, England — To judge from the more strident news reports, it almost seems as if migrants gathered across the Channel from here are bent on a modern-day reversal of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, when an army from England overran the French. At best, though, it is an uneven contest. Today’s threadbare warriors — fugitives from newer war zones — have no visible lances, swords, ships, shields or longbows. They number only around 3,000, yet they stir alarm and fear in Britain, a nation of 60 million that once saw itself as a haven for the needy and oppressed, from the Jews of Germany and Russia to Muslims in flight from Idi Amin’s Uganda. This time, though, some inner switch has been thrown, blocking the circuitry of compassion and replacing it with hard-nosed calculations about who should be embraced by Europe’s few resurgent economies. Call it asymmetric warfare — a battle of haves versus have-nots, between the sense of entitlement of those who have and the expectations of those who crave inclusion. In recent months, migrants fleeing war, tyranny and penury in parts of Africa and the Arab world have assembled near the French port of Calais. From there, often in a televised frenzy, they attempt a final leap into lands of opportunity that the authorities in France and Britain are bent on denying them. “Many see Europe, and particularly Britain, as somewhere that offers the prospect of financial gain. This is not the case,” the interior ministers of France and Britain said in an article in The Telegraph , a British newspaper. “Our streets are not paved with gold.” This summer, a strike by French port workers offered migrants an unexpected chance to smuggle themselves aboard trucks snarled in lines on their way to the tunnel that runs under the Channel. The Global Refugee Crisis, Region by Region In the latest crisis, tens of thousands are racing to Hungary before a border fence is finished. British vacationers reported that migrants tried to break into the mobile homes towed behind their cars. News footage showed hooded figures advancing under cover of darkness. Compared with many of those who live in places like this prosperous southern English town, with its pebbly beaches and elegant stuccoed squares, those ghostly figures bear the scars of far more fragile, desperate lives. Just recently, reports citing DNA and other evidence pieced together the doomed voyage of two men from Syria , Mouaz al-Balkhi, 22, and Omar Kataf, 28, who bought wet suits and perished, probably while trying to swim the choppy, chilly, 22-mile passage from France to England. Biniam Habte, a 20-year-old Eritrean, who had crossed the Sahara in his quest to reach Europe, told a British newspaper reporter in Calais: “On the journey I have made, you carry your life like an egg in your hand.” The European response, by contrast, plays into a broader debate driven by populist, xenophobic parties tugging political discourse to the right. That, perhaps, is why the British government announced plans to abolish subsistence payments to failed asylum seekers and to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to rent homes — a signal to those in Calais to look elsewhere, and an effort to convince their own citizens that, despite all appearances to the contrary, the authorities have the crisis under control. Since the failure of the Arab Spring to create anything close to a summer of content, the latest surge has written new chapters in a protracted chronicle of enforced migration in Europe provoked by successive waves of post-Cold War conflict since the 1990s. “Starting with helping the French on their side of the border, we're going to put in more fencing, more resources, more sniffer dog teams, more assistance in any way we can,” Prime Minister David Cameron said. But Britain’s response is seen by some critics as attacking the symptoms, not the cause, and Mr. Cameron’s remark conjured a far more recent historical parallel than Agincourt. “If the British carry on like this,” the columnist Nick Cohen wrote in The Observer , “the Channel will become our Berlin Wall.”

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Saving Best for Last Backfires on Maddon

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — Rays Manager Joe Maddon had almost two days to decide when, where and how he would use David Price in the resumption of Game 5 of the World Series. It was a game the Rays needed to survive, so Price figured to have a prominent role. He has the best arm in the Rays’ bullpen. Although Price warmed up in the sixth and the seventh innings Wednesday night, he was not used until the eighth. By then, the Rays were losing. By then, it ended up being too late for him to help the Rays extend the series for at least one more game. The Phillies nicked two relievers not named Price for two runs, and they quieted the Rays, 4-3, to win their first World Series since 1980. In a game that was delayed for 46 hours by the awful weather, the Phillies produced enough offense against Grant Balfour, J. P. Howell and Chad Bradford to prevail. As the Rays sank, Price waited and waited. Madden had three opportunities to use Price before he eventually did. When Price, the dynamic rookie, finally pitched, he struck out two in one inning. Maddon said he would be comfortable letting Price toss 50 to 60 pitches, but he did not call on Price until the Rays trailed. “Joe went with his gut,” Price said. “That’s what he’s done all year and that’s why we’re here.” As Maddon stood outside a quiet clubhouse, he insisted that he would not have changed any decisions. Maddon refuses to second-guess his plans, even if they fizzle. “We had it all thought out,” he said. “It just didn’t work tonight.” What Maddon planned to do was let Balfour, who was pitching when the game was suspended, continue. He wanted Howell, a left-hander, ready to pitch to Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, two left-handed sluggers. Then Maddon had Bradford, a ground-ball specialist, penciled in for the right-handed hitters at the bottom of Philadelphia’s lineup. Price was the late-inning wild card. Even as Maddon discussed his failed strategy, the conviction in his voice expressed how much he believed in it. Maddon said he did not seriously consider using Price, 23, to start the resumed game because he “didn’t want to put all that on him and require him to do all that.” Price had notched the save in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox, so this seemed to be a strange time for Maddon to coddle him. Price said on Monday that he would be prepared to pitch as early as needed, including the sixth. Instead, the winning run scored before Price threw a pitch. “Actually, all the stuff that happened, we had planned out before the game,” Maddon said. “They just got some very untimely hits.” Before the do-or-die game, Maddon was coy when he discussed Price. Asked if Price would be warming up before the clash, Maddon said, “What would you do?” Managers do not normally solicit advice from reporters, but Maddon did it in a playful way. Still, his response seemed to indicate there was a chance that Price would be pitching in the sixth. But it was Balfour. Not only did the game resume after a protracted delay, it resumed with a jolt as pinch-hitter Geoff Jenkins doubled off the scoreboard in right-center field. He moved to third on a sacrifice bunt, then the Rays’ infielders crept in. Although Balfour induced Jayson Werth to hit a pop fly to shallow center, second baseman Akinori Iwamura was unable to catch it. Iwamura dashed to center and tried to catch the ball over his back, but it hit off his glove and chest and dropped for a tie-breaking single. It was the left-handed Howell, not Price, who replaced Balfour and retired two straight. After Rocco Baldelli’s leadoff homer tied the score, 3-3, in the seventh and Jason Bartlett singled, Maddon left Howell in to bunt Bartlett to second. He called it “a crazy thing.” Iwamura hit an infield single over second, but Utley corralled the ball and threw Bartlett out at home. If Baldelli had not homered, Maddon would have pinch-hit for Howell and used Price. When Howell tried to flip a curveball past Pat Burrell, a right-handed hitter, leading off the seventh, Burrell doubled off the center-field fence. Pinch-runner Eric Bruntlett moved to third on a groundout and scored on Pedro Feliz’s single off Bradford. The Rays could have walked Feliz and forced the Phillies to pinch-hit for Carlos Ruiz, but they did not. During batting practice, Price wore a blue hooded sweatshirt and a blue neck warmer that he pulled up under his eyes. Price seemed as if he were ready to go skiing, but he later showed he was ready to pitch. By the time he had the chance, though, it was too late.

Maddon Joe
Price David
World Series
Tampa Bay Rays


Off to Practice Before a Round of Golf? Think Again

Abstract: Last week’s main On Par article was about golf injuries, and it included advice on how to warm up properly for a golf round. The P.G.A. professional Jerry Mowlds, selected as one of the top 100 teachers in the United States, told me earlier this year that one of the worst things golfers could do before a round was hit golf balls on the practice range. “Going to the range usually messes the average golfer up for the whole day,” Mowlds, the director of instruction at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club outside Portland, Ore., said. “If they hit it good on the range, it’s pretty common that a bout of nerves will make them hit a few bad shots as soon as they get on the golf course. That frustrates them to no end, and they start wondering why they couldn’t bring their range swing to the course. “And if they hit it poorly on the range, they start changing everything in their normal swing, get more frustrated and head to the course a wreck. Either way, they play worse once the real golf starts.” So what does Mowlds recommend that average golfers do on the range? “They should start by just swinging several different clubs without hitting anything,” he said. “Warm up your swing and your muscles for maybe 10 minutes. Then, if they want to hit some 50-yard shots to get some feel for contact and control, that’s fine. But no full shots. None. It’s a warm-up, nothing more. Talk to pro golfers. If they want to practice, they do it after they play. “The average golfer should just get loose, get the blood flowing and then walk to the first tee with a clear mind.”


Northwest Airlines Appeals Ruling on Strike

Abstract: MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 18 (AP) — The Northwest Airlines Corporation filed an appeal yesterday aimed at blocking a strike by flight attendants that could begin as early as Friday. The airline says a strike would be illegal, but on Thursday, Judge Allan Gropper of Federal Bankruptcy Court, who is overseeing Northwest’s reorganization, said that he had no power to block a strike. A Northwest spokesman, Bill Mellon, said on Friday that the airline was seeking either an expedited appeal or an injunction while its appeal proceeds. A clerk of the court confirmed the appeal had been filed. But any judicial intervention would probably be last minute. A hearing is not scheduled until Friday afternoon, hours before flight attendants have threatened to begin random, unannounced work stoppages. With a judge’s permission, Northwest imposed pay cuts and new work rules on flight attendants on July 31 after those workers rejected a negotiated agreement for the second time. Both sides have said they are willing to negotiate, although Northwest has not moved from its demand for $195 million a year in savings. A general counsel for the Association of Flight Attendants , David Borer, said no talks had been scheduled.

Northwest Airlines
Strikes
Flight Attendants
Airlines and Airplanes
Association of Flight Attendants


Yale Hockey Player Mandi Schwartz Dies of Leukemia

Abstract: Mandi Schwartz, the Yale player who confronted her leukemia with support from hockey fans from Connecticut to western Canada, died Sunday in Regina, Saskatchewan. She was 23. Her death was confirmed by the university. Schwartz learned in December 2008 that she had acute myeloid leukemia, and her teammates organized drives to find a bone-marrow donor on the Yale campus and across North America. In January 2010, she regained enough strength to return to practice, but in April her cancer returned. She had a stem-cell transplant in September, but in December, a biopsy showed that her cancer had returned. Schwartz’s brother Jaden was a first-round draft pick of the St. Louis Blues last year and played for Canada in the world junior championships. When her cancer was in remission, she had grown healthy enough that she was able to help coach a girls youth hockey team in the Seattle area, where she had her transplant, and even return to the ice to skate with them in December. But only days after she returned to the ice for the first time since her transplant, a biopsy showed that her cancer had returned. Schwartz returned to her native Saskatchewan shortly thereafter. She is survived by her parents, Rick and Carol Schwartz, and two brothers, Jaden and Rylan, a sophomore center for Colorado College.

Leukemia
Hockey Ice
Schwartz Mandi
Yale University
Deaths (Obituaries)


Fossil Trove Shows Diverse Creatures of Cambrian Did Not Disappear

Abstract: Ever since their discovery in 1909, the spectacular Burgess Shale outcrops in the Canadian Rockies have presented scientists with a cornucopia of evidence for the “explosion” of complex, multicellular life beginning some 550 million years ago. The fossils, all new to science, were at first seen as little more than amazing curiosities from a time when life, except for bacteria and algae, was confined to the sea — and what is now Canada was just south of the Equator. In the last half century, however, paleontologists recognized that the Burgess Shale exemplified the radiation of diverse life forms unlike anything in earlier time. Here was evolution in action, organisms over time responding to changing fortunes through natural experimentation in new body forms and different ecological niches. But the fossil record then goes dark: the Cambrian-period innovations in life appeared to have few clear descendants. Many scientists thought that the likely explanation for this mysterious disappearance was that a major extinction had wiped out much of the distinctive Cambrian life. It seemed that the complex organisms emerging in the Cambrian had come to an abrupt demise, disappearing with few traces in the later fossil record. Not everyone was convinced, however, and now a trove of 480-million-year-old fossils in Morocco appears to strike a blow to the idea of a major extinction. The international team of scientists who discovered the 1,500 fossils said their find shows that the dark stretch in the fossil record more probably reflects an absence of preservation of fossils over the previous 25 million years. The team reports in the current issue of the journal Nature that the large number of “exceptionally preserved” Moroccan species exhibits apparently strong links to Cambrian species known from fossil beds in China , Greenland and, most notably, the Burgess Shale. The scientists think this solves the mystery. The Moroccan fossils, they said, establish that Burgess Shale-type species “continued to have an important role in the diversity and ecological structure of deeper marine communities well after the Middle Cambrian.” The Moroccan fossils include sponges, worms, trilobites and mollusks like clams, snails and relatives of the living nautilus. Another fossil was similar to today’s horseshoe crab, a biological throwback familiar to beachcombers. Now, the scientists said, its antiquity appears to be even greater — some 30 million years earlier than previously thought, possibly in the late Cambrian. The discovery team’s principal scientist and lead author of the journal article was Peter Van Roy, a Belgian paleontologist who is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University . He has worked in Moroccan fossil beds the last 10 years, but it was only last year on a field trip, financed by the National Geographic Society , that he and other scientists uncovered the riches of a site near the Atlas Mountains and the city of Zagora. Scientists from Britain , France , Ireland , Morocco and the United States participated in the research and were co-authors of the team report. A local fossil collector, Mohammed Ou Said Ben Moulal, directed Dr. Van Roy to the rock outcrops he had scouted. Soon it became clear, Dr. Van Roy said last week in an e-mail message from Morocco, that the team had “really discovered the whole gamut of these Burgess animals, the majority of which had never been found after the Middle Cambrian.” A leading member of the team, Derek E. G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, cut his academic teeth studying the Burgess Shale. Dr. Briggs figured prominently in “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History,” the 1989 book by Stephen Jay Gould about what the author called the “weird wonders” of the Cambrian period. In the book, Dr. Gould, who died in 2002, pondered the mystery of the relatively sudden burst of new life designs in the Cambrian, followed by their apparent disappearance. “What turned it off so quickly?” he asked. A few pages before, quoting Charles Darwin , he seemed to despair of finding the fossils to answer the question. “Darwin wrote,” Dr. Gould recalled, “that our imperfect fossil record is like a book preserving just a few pages, of these pages few lines, of the lines few words, and of those words few letters.” Darwin’s metaphor pertained to the chances of preservation for bones and teeth. So referring to the predominance of soft-body anatomies of Cambrian life, Dr. Gould asked, “What hope can then be offered to the flesh and blood amidst the slings and arrows of such outrageous fortune?” Dr. Briggs said in an interview that scientists for some time have suspected that “we were just not finding the right deposits and only seeing a small piece of the picture of what was going on in life back then.” For that reason, Dr. Briggs said, he expected other scientists would be less surprised by the discovery than reassured. The fossil record for a long stretch after the Middle Cambrian may be spotty and minimal, but has not vanished. The Moroccan fossils not only reveal the continuation of many Cambrian life forms, he said, but show “the high potential that there are other places for finding these Cambrian-like organisms persisting in time.” As a consequence, the discovery team wrote, the Moroccan sediments offer promising links between the Cambrian Explosion of multicellular life, exemplified in the Burgess Shale, and the early stages of what is known as the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, which is considered “one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of marine life.” This led to the emergence of fish about 400 million years ago and the migration of four-limbed vertebrates from water onto land 360 million years ago. After the catastrophic mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, about 250 million years ago, the dinosaurs came to the fore in a reptilian world, and after their extinction 65 million years ago, mammals came into their own, hominids evolving probably less than 8 million years ago, modern humans less than 200,000 years ago. That any of these early Ordovician remains endured verges on the miraculous. Some with shells could be expected to fossilize, but most of these were soft-bodied creatures, prone to rapid decay. The Moroccan fossil beds, Dr. Briggs noted, were once the muddy bottom of an ocean. Storms stirred up the seabed, burying doomed creatures safe from scavengers and in recesses with little or no oxygen to promote decomposition. The sediment chemistry transformed iron and sulfide into pyrite, which coated and preserved the shapes of the animals, including their appendages, and mineralized internal tissue. “The exquisite preservation of the soft anatomy,” Dr. Van Roy said, “allows more complete, accurate reconstructions of their genetic affinities and ecology than has hitherto been possible.” Hard at work last week in the Moroccan fossil beds, Dr. Van Roy said, “I obviously intend to exploit this fantastic research opportunity to the fullest.”

Fossil
Paleontology
Morocco
Science and Technology


Tiananmen Now Seems Distant to China’s Students

Abstract: BEIJING — On April 30, the cellphones of the 32,630 students at Peking University , a genteel institution widely regarded as one of China ’s top universities, buzzed with a text message from the school administration. It warned students to “pay attention to your speech and behavior” on Youth Day because of a “particularly complex” situation. Few students had to puzzle over the meaning. Youth Day, on May 4, commemorates a 1919 student protest against foreign imperialism and China’s weakness in resisting it. Seventy years later, in 1989, students from Peking University were again massing in the center of Beijing, demanding democracy. The student movement shook the ruling Communist Party to its core and ended with a military crackdown and hundreds of deaths. And if a student today proposed a pro-democracy protest? “People would think he was insane,” said one Peking University history major in a recent interview. “You know where the line is drawn. You can think, maybe talk, think about the events of 1989. You just cannot do something that will have any public influence. Everybody knows that.” Most students also appear to accept it. For 20 years, China’s government has made it abundantly clear that students and professors should stick to the books and stay out of the streets. Students today describe 1989 as almost a historical blip, a moment too extreme and traumatic ever to repeat. But whether democracy still inspires them is a more complex question. Interviews with students and teachers at Peking University, as with experts on China here and abroad, draw a layered portrait of today’s students: disinclined to protest, but also lacking the economic grievances that helped ignite protests in 1989; proud of China’s achievements and flocking to the Communist Party, but seldom driven by ideology. They are disturbed by government corruption and censorship and are eager to study in the West, especially the United States. And despite the government’s attempts to wipe the 1989 protests from Chinese history, some have learned what happened. All but one of eight Peking University students interviewed for this article, for instance, said they had managed to download an acclaimed — and banned — documentary on the Tiananmen protests and view it in their dorm rooms. “There is a stereotypical view that students are not interested in democracy. I don’t buy it,” Cheng Li, research director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution , said in an interview. “At the very least, they have a mixed opinion of the Communist Party.” Xia Yeliang, a Peking University professor, said many students supported democracy in theory but did not want to risk their futures to fight for it. Students joke that they will get involved once pro-democracy forces gather steam, he said. “A rather high percentage of students are not interested in politics,” he said. “They say, ‘We know this is a good thing, but what relation does it have to us?’ They think about their personal affairs, how to get a job, how to go abroad.” Even the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, People’s Daily, laments a general lack of idealism on campus. “Many university students are clearly very utilitarian in their thinking,” People’s Forum, a magazine published by People’s Daily, complained this month after a conducting a student survey. “Everything is based on ‘whether or not it is useful to me,’ ” the magazine said. In fact, today’s students have more to lose than did protesters 20 years ago. Then, university students believed that their futures were endangered by a soaring inflation rate of 28 percent, rampant government corruption and shrinking job prospects, according to a 2001 book on the Tiananmen movement by Dingxin Zhao, a University of Chicago sociology professor. Many had lost hope in the government’s economic reforms. Today, even students who criticize Communist rule are gratified by China’s great strides. “Sometimes we don’t like the policies of our government,” said Wang Yongli, a fourth-year physics major. “But on the other hand, nowadays we are proud of the country and the government because they have moved so many people to a better life.” The Communist Party is careful to cultivate this image, while seeking to defuse longings for democracy by vowing to govern “democratically.” Officials say they oppose Western-style multiparty democracy as wrong for China, but embrace the idea of consultation, public review and balloting under party rule. China will open up the political system, step by step, as the country becomes wealthier and more stable, officials promise. Some China analysts suggest that student discontent could rise if the current economic crisis clouds their futures. China sends nine times as many students to institutions of higher education now as it did in 1989, and competition for good jobs is fierce. Nearly one in four graduates last year could not find work, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported. But since 1989, Communist Party leaders have realized that they ignore youth at their peril. The government is now trying to ease job anxieties with training programs and incentives for graduates to work in rural areas. “If you are worried, then I am more worried than you,” Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told one student group in December. The party has also ratcheted up recruitment and political education, making college students the party’s fastest-growing segment, said Susan L. Shirk, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. More than 8 percent of all students were party members in 2007, compared with fewer than 1 percent in 1989. At elite institutions like Peking University, percentages are much higher. Some of those students echo the party’s line that Western-style democracy does not suit China. “China has a large population, and education has a long way to go,” said Song Chao, a Peking University ecology major. “Considering that, we need to put some regulations on people. The major task for China now is development.” Others hope to nudge the party toward reform. “Of course, if we could become a democratic society, we would like that,” said another history major and party aspirant. “But this is not something you can achieve by radical means. What if there is chaos?” But a majority of students seek party membership not as an ideological statement but rather as a means to a better job, the survey published by People’s Forum concluded. At Peking University, many students say they nap through the university’s much mocked, though mandatory, political thought classes. “Even the teachers know they are teaching rubbish,” one senior said. Most students will make such statements only anonymously because government control of campus speech remains tight. Professors say some students are assigned to report to administrators if they hear teachers adopting antigovernment lines. Most students interviewed for this article did not want to be identified, saying their comments might be negatively noted in their files. Five years ago, the university shut down a computer bulletin board — a vibrant hub of information for 300,000 users — after the central government’s education minister complained that it did not always reflect “the right view.” Students say they are careful about what they write on the new, restricted and monitored board because their identities can be traced. Surveys show that four of five university students still rely on China’s heavily censored media for their news. But in a digital age when nearly 70,000 Chinese students are studying in the United States and roughly 163,000 foreign students study at Chinese universities, walls against information are porous. One senior recalled an excruciating roundtable discussion with foreign journalists who visited Peking University in 2007 and asked about the government crackdown on student demonstrators in 1989. “They always ask about this June 4 incident, and we just keep silent,” she said. “It is not because we don’t want to talk. It is because we have no idea what exactly happened! “I felt a little bit humiliated because we don’t know our own history,” she said. “So I went to the library and I read about June 4. Basically, everything was written by foreign journalists.” The curbs on public debate can reduce even political controversies on campus to the status of rumors. Two Peking University professors were among the first to sign Charter 08, an online pro-democracy manifesto released in December and backed by many intellectuals. After signing, Professor Xia, the economist, said he was forced to resign from positions at two research institutes. His fellow signer, He Weifang , a celebrated law professor, was transferred to an obscure college in China’s far west. Professor He’s exile was news overseas. But much like the coming anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, it drew little notice from students. One student defended the professor with an anonymous post on the campus’s computer bulletin board. “The day will come,” he wrote, “when Professor He can go where he wants.”

Tiananmen Square (Beijing)
China
Democracy (Theory and Philosophy)
Colleges and Universities
Politics and Government
Demonstrations and Riots


Former Pitcher, Pascual Perez, Is Killed in Dominican Republic

Abstract: The former pitcher Pascual Perez, who had a troubled career, was killed at his home in the Dominican Republic in an apparent robbery, the police said Thursday. He was 55. Perez, who last played in the majors for the Yankees in 1991, was found with a severe head wound in a town west of Santo Domingo, and there was evidence at the scene to suggest that whoever killed him had been searching for money, said Joel Valdemiro, a prosecutor who is involved in the investigation. Perez played 11 seasons in the majors and compiled a career record of 67-68 with the Braves, the Pirates, the Expos and the Yankees. But he was in and out of trouble for much of his career, including suspensions for drug use. Perez was first signed by Pittsburgh in 1976 as an amateur free agent. He came from a baseball family that included his brothers Carlos, a left-hander with six years in the majors, and Melido, a right-hander with nine professional seasons, including four with the Yankees. In 1982, Perez missed a start with the Braves because, as he later explained, he missed a highway exit sign and spent almost two hours circling Atlanta Stadium. He was suspended in 1984 after his arrest in the Dominican Republic on charges of cocaine possession. He spent two months in drug rehabilitation in 1989 while with the Expos, after failing to complete rehab programs twice before, and avoided a suspension only by agreeing to accept a minimum one-year suspension if he tested positive for cocaine again. In 1992, the commissioner’s office suspended him after a failed test the day he arrived for spring training with the Yankees. He never returned to major league baseball.

Perez Pascual
Murders and Attempted Murders
Baseball
Dominican Republic


City Plans to Target Cabdrivers Who Join in Sex Trafficking

Abstract: They arrange prostitutes’ schedules and ferry them to hotels for appointments, drum up clients for pimps and pocket half the proceeds. Cabdrivers who transport prostitutes between clients are coming under scrutiny as the sex trafficking industry has grown. After a series of hearings over the past six months in which victims have spoken of the drivers’ role, the City Council plans to pass legislation on Wednesday that would raise fines on drivers who knowingly shuttle trafficking victims, and would direct the Taxi and Limousine Commission to educate drivers about the issue. In the months since Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, a Democrat of Queens, introduced the legislation in December, advocates for sex trafficking victims have raised concerns that cabdrivers might discriminate against some customers in an effort to avoid picking up fares who appear to be engaged in sex work. “It was almost discriminating against some women from getting picked up by livery-cab drivers because of this fear that this woman could be involved in trafficking,” said Jimmy Lee, the executive director of Restore NYC , a victims’ advocacy group. That concern prompted the bill’s sponsors to add language emphasizing that drivers would not be penalized for responding to regular passenger hails. Drivers “may not refuse fares solely based on the appearance of an individual,” the revised bill reads, adding that “it is unlawful to refuse a fare based upon an individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender.” The bill, along with a second piece of legislation that aims to punish drivers who operate unregistered cars as livery cabs, is part of what Christine C. Quinn , the Council speaker, said was a broader effort to curb sex trafficking in New York City. “It’s unimaginable that the cars have become such a linchpin in this operation, but they have,” Ms. Quinn said. On Wednesday, the Council will also announce a partnership with Delta Air Lines and American Airlines aimed at tracking sex trafficking on airplanes and in airports. About 4,000 minors are trafficked through New York City each year, largely through airports, Ms. Quinn said. “It’s not a fact we’re proud of, which is why we as a municipal government are going to break any infrastructure that’s out there for sex trafficking,” she said. Advocates for sex trafficking victims say that they have seen the number of reported trafficking cases rise over the past several years, and that drivers have increasingly figured in the victims’ stories. One sex trafficking victim who testified before a joint hearing of the City Council’s Transportation and Women’s Issues Committees in December estimated that she had worked with 70 drivers who had brought her to 5,000 clients, who often found the drivers’ numbers in newspaper advertisements or cards passed out on the street. And in April, prosecutors broke up what they said was one of the first sex trafficking rings run largely by livery drivers, six of whom were indicted on charges of helping a father-son team traffic prostitutes between Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The drivers were accused of ferrying the women to upscale hotels and clubs to solicit clients, telling the women about clients’ sexual preferences, and taking a cut of the profits. The women, whom the operation’s leaders tattooed with their street names and a bar code, were allowed to keep a few dollars each night to buy food and other necessities, according to prosecutors. The proposed legislation was praised by Laurel W. Eisner, executive director of Sanctuary for Families , an organization that works with sex trafficking victims. Ms. Eisner said some drivers were “effectively operating brothels on wheels,” and said many victims “have been brutalized by drivers who play an active and vicious role in this forced prostitution.” Under the terms of the City Council legislation, a driver would face a $10,000 fine and the loss of his or her license if convicted of a felony related to sex trafficking. The city’s taxi commission is taking on what David S. Yassky, the taxi commissioner, has said could be a costly responsibility: educating drivers about the penalties for trafficking and training them to spot trafficking victims. The training would be required for drivers applying for or renewing a taxi or livery license. In an effort to address critics, including Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, Republican of Queens, who had attacked the training program as a financial burden, the bill’s sponsors said the revised measure would allow the commission to cut costs by producing a video for first-time licensees and pamphlets for drivers renewing their licenses. The program is expected to cost about $75,000.

Taxicabs and Taxicab Drivers
Human Trafficking
Prostitution
New York City
Law and Legislation
Taxi and Limousine Commission
Quinn Christine C


Anshu Jain to Join Cantor Fitzgerald as President

Abstract: Anshu Jain, who was forced to step down from the top job at Deutsche Bank after a series of regulatory mishaps, will join the private trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald this month as group president. The appointment, which was announced in an internal email on New Year’s Day by Cantor’s chairman and chief executive, Howard Lutnick, comes 18 months after Mr. Jain resigned under pressure from his job as co-chief executive of Germany’s largest bank as concerns mounted over Deutsche’s financial health and the many investigations it was facing. A Cantor spokeswoman confirmed the appointment on Monday. Mr. Jain, 53, was among a small group of Merrill Lynch executives who were persuaded to join Deutsche in 1995, with a mandate to build an investment bank that would challenge large firms like Barclays, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. Deutsche’s global markets division would do exactly that during its first 10 years in existence, becoming a market leader in derivatives, fixed income and foreign currency sales and trading. But its hard-charging culture of pursuing profits and risk — and paying its bankers and traders magnificent sums along the way — proved to be the division’s undoing in the years after the financial crisis. Deutsche Bank became one of the primary targets of regulators worldwide, and it was penalized as a primary offender in two of the largest financial scandals of the era — selling toxic mortgages to investors and manipulating for profit benchmark interest rates in London. Many other businesses at Deutsche that Mr. Jain had broad oversight for have paid penalties or are under investigation for charges that include misstating derivatives positions and money laundering activities in Russia. As group president, Mr. Jain will, in effect, become a partner to Mr. Lutnick, helping him oversee Cantor’s various businesses and, crucially, providing strategic insights. According to a Cantor spokeswoman, Mr. Jain will not have a group of executives reporting to him. Instead, he will strategize and engage with clients at a senior level. Mr. Lutnick called the hiring of Mr. Jain “a strong next step in broadening our franchise.” “He will work alongside me as my partner as we expand our global footprint and drive the firm’s momentum,” Mr. Lutnick said. The two men have been friends for years and have on occasion even spent vacations together. People who know Mr. Jain well say they are not surprised that he would soon return to the front lines of finance. From an early point in his career, he had seen himself as a Wall Street chief executive — in the classic style of wielding unchallenged power and influence. Deutsche was the focus of that dream, and along the way, he declined many offers to leave and join rival banks. But his three-year tenure as the bank’s leader was marked by repeated setbacks in a new environment that favored financial rectitude, damaging the reputations of both Deutsche and Mr. Jain. Although his successor, John Cryan, has kept in place the basic structure of the investment bank that Mr. Jain helped form, he has said that Deutsche will be a different institution, culturally and ethically, under him. In many ways, becoming president of Cantor Fitzgerald will be a step down of sorts for Mr. Jain. A private company with an expertise in trading fixed-income securities and servicing hedge funds, Cantor is not the global colossus that Deutsche was during its heyday — or is even today in its diminished form. Born in India, Mr. Jain built his reputation at Deutsche on his expertise in selling complex, high-margin securities to hedge funds and other risk-loving investors. In that regard, his talents will be a good fit for Cantor’s trading and hedge fund businesses. There may be questions, however, about Mr. Jain’s capacity to serve for a long period as a No. 2 executive. He has always seen himself as having chief executive timber and has a history of champing at the bit when it comes to waiting for the top job, as he did with Josef Ackermann, who was chief executive of Deutsche from 2002 to 2012. Mr. Lutnick is a strong-willed leader who has been chairman of the firm since 1996. He became well known for his efforts to keep his firm going after it lost about two thirds of its employees during the attacks of Sept. 11. Cantor had its offices on the top floors of the World Trade Center’s north tower.

Appointments and Executive Changes
Anshu Jain
Cantor Fitzgerald
Deutsche Bank


Virus Is Seen as Suspect in Death of Honeybees

Abstract: Scientists sifting genetic material from thriving and ailing bee colonies say a virus appears to be a prime suspect — but is unlikely to be the only culprit — in the mass die-offs of honeybees reported last fall and winter. The die-offs, in which adult bees typically vanished without returning to hives, were reported by about a fourth of the nation’s commercial beekeepers. The losses captured public attention as rumors swirled about causes, like climate change , cellphone signals and genetically-modified crops. Scientists have rejected those theories. Now, one bee disease, called Israeli acute paralysis virus, seems strongly associated with the beekeeping operations that experienced big losses, a large research group has concluded, although members of the team emphasized that they had not proved the virus caused the die-offs. “I hope no one goes away with the idea that we’ve actually solved the problem,” said Jeffrey S. Pettis, an entomologist with the Department of Agriculture and co-director of a national group working on the puzzle, which has been given the name colony collapse disorder . The project involved an unusual partnership between entomologists and scientists working at the leading edge of human genetic research. It employed the same technology being used to decode Neanderthal DNA and the personal genome of James Watson, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. The research was described yesterday in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science. Details are available at eurekalert.org/bees . Even with the caveats, the possible identification of a virus involved in large bee die-offs is “exceptionally important,” said May Berenbaum, who heads the entomology department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and was not involved in the study. “Among other things, figuring out where this one came from will help us prevent future problems.” Dr. Berenbaum, who led a 2006 National Academies study of problems with bees and other pollinators, said that finding ways to swiftly home in on novel diseases is ever more important in a globally linked economy. She noted that the first reports of the latest bee die-offs in the United States came in 2004, the first year the country allowed the import of honeybees — from Australia in this case — since 1922. The new study found evidence of the virus in some Australian bee samples, although that country has not reported die-offs like those seen in the United States. Dr. Pettis said that even if the virus was involved, it was likely that more than one factor had to align for a hive to collapse, with another possible influence being poor nutrition. Most of the colonies that had big losses last winter were in areas that experienced drought a few months beforehand, and thus a lack of nectar in flowers, he said. Another factor, Dr. Pettis said, could be the stress that comes from the increasingly industrial-style beekeeping operations in the United States, in which truckloads of hives crisscross the country to pollinate California almonds or Florida orchards each season. But the virus stands out as a top suspect. While seven viruses and a host of bacteria and parasites were identified in the genetic screening, only the Israeli bee virus, first identified in 2004, was strongly tied to the samples taken from keepers who reported the collapse disorder. While the virus was first identified by scientists in Israel, it appears to exist in many parts of the world, said W. Ian Lipkin, an author of the new study and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity of Columbia University. In Israel, the virus also seems to produce bee symptoms not reported in the United States, including a pattern of finding dead bees near hives. Dr. Lipkin, whose focus is human disease, became involved because the quest for a cause for the beehive collapses employed new genetic sifting techniques that he said might also prove useful in investigating outbreaks of human diseases. One hint of the involvement of an infectious agent, he said, was the recent finding that abandoned hives sterilized with radiation could be repopulated with healthy bees. The study initially examined bees from four beekeepers who reported die-offs, as well as healthy bees from Hawaii and Pennsylvania. Genetic material was extracted and analyzed with a machine from 454 Life Sciences, a company immersed in the race to make gene sequencing a fast, cheap technology. Statistical analysis showed that a colony with the Israeli virus was 65 times more likely to have had the collapse disorder than one without it. To try to clarify cause and effect, the researchers said they were preparing a new suite of tests in which isolated bee colonies would be intentionally infected with the virus, both with and without possible secondary causes like certain parasites.

Bees
Viruses
Genetics and Heredity
Insects
DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)
Agriculture Department


Owners of Struggling Café des Artistes Decide to Close

Abstract: No one got the chance to say goodbye to Café des Artistes, the storied New York City restaurant that served up Old World fare under the gaze of the painted nubile nudes that perkily graced its walls. The restaurant had closed on Aug. 9 for a monthlong vacation and was to reopen Sept. 14. But on Friday, facing steady losses and a union lawsuit, its owners made what they described as a wrenching decision to close the landmark cafe on West 67th Street for good. “It’s a very sad day for us,” said Jenifer Lang, whose husband, George Lang, has owned the restaurant since 1975. “It’s a death in the family.” It was also the death of an intrinsic part of old New York. Countless couples got engaged in the glow of the restaurant’s dim, romantic lighting. Stars flocked there during its heyday. Business deals were forged. Yet for better or worse, as the latest foodie craze swept the city, the restaurant kept serving its standbys, like pot-au-feu and salmon four ways, considered classics by some and relics by others. It stayed frozen in time, like an Upper West Side Miss Havisham. Mrs. Lang, 58, said that the restaurant’s business had been hurt by the economic crash but that its problems ran deeper. Café des Artistes was unionized, and she said the restaurant paid about $250,000 a year to cover its employees’ health and pension benefits, an amount she said the restaurant struggled to cover. Mrs. Lang also said the couple, whose home is half a block from the restaurant, put in $2 million of their own money to keep it running over the last 10 years. “It makes it difficult to run a restaurant most of the time,” Mrs. Lang said of the union benefits. “When the economy is down, it makes it impossible.” The final straw, Mrs. Lang said, was a lawsuit recently filed against the restaurant by the union demanding past benefit assessments. Bill Granfield, president of Local 100 of Unite Here, the union representing the cafe’s 50-odd employees, said the restaurant had fallen behind on its payments for medical insurance and welfare funds, forcing the union to demand payment in court. He also said workers in 2003 took a pay cut and agreed to switch to a cheaper medical plan to ease the restaurant’s financial pressures. “And here we are six years later, facing what might’ve been inevitable,” said Mr. Granfield. “We think Mr. Lang is a great figure in the restaurant industry, a great person, and it’s a great restaurant. But it feels like time passed it by a while ago.” The Café des Artistes sits in the lobby of Hotel des Artistes, a part Gothic, part Tudor revival co-op building designed by George Mort Pollard that opened as artists’ studios in 1916; the restaurant opened a year later. Howard Chandler Christy painted its walls in the ’30s, according to Mr. Lang’s memoir, “Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen,” creating 36 nudes, including one man, speculated to have been modeled after Buster Crabbe. It is unclear what will become of the space, or the murals, all of which belong to Hotel des Artistes, Mrs. Lang said. Mr. Lang, 85, was a violinist and a child prodigy from Hungary. He bought the restaurant in 1975, transforming it, for a while, into the toast of the town. “It was one of the places that we would go all the time, after concerts,” said Itzhak Perlman, the violin virtuoso and conductor, who still fantasizes about a Café des Artistes dessert: pound cake flavored with fresh orange and topped with whipped cream. The restaurant became a home away from home for many, including journalists at ABC News, whose studios are across the street. “I loved it,” said Lynn Sherr, a longtime ABC News correspondent. “Eating at a place with naked women on the walls is not my favorite venture,” she added, “but I guess they’re artistic.” Café des Artistes faced tough competition from illustrious restaurants in the neighborhood, including Picholine on West 64th Street, Jean Georges at the Trump International Hotel and Daniel Boulud’s Bar Boulud on Broadway, all vying for the Lincoln Center crowds. “The pie is certainly smaller for us now,” said Terrance Brennan, Picholine’s chef and proprietor. Passers-by and longtime customers lamented the closing, though several had noted a decline in foot traffic. Richard Perl, who lives in Hotel des Artistes, said while he liked the cafe, he would rather spend the money at Jean Georges. Rita and Bernard S. Berkowitz recently bought an apartment across the street, partly because of its proximity to the cafe where they had been regulars for 30 years. “Now we’ll have to sell the apartment!” Mrs. Berkowitz said, only half in jest. Through its windows on Sunday, the restaurant was already emanating an abandoned air. Sunlight filtered in weakly, catching dust particles hanging midair. Faint traces of dust lined the stilled ceiling fan, and the leaves of the abundant potted plants had begun to wilt. It was only the naked nymphs, with their glowing skin and warm eyes, that seemed able to stay suspended in time.

Cafe des Artistes
New York City
Restaurants
Organized Labor
Shutdowns (Institutional)


Bills Get Their First Win, to the Lions’ Dismay

Abstract: Elated and relieved, guard Eric Wood could not contain himself as he skipped toward the Buffalo Bills ’ locker room door. “Holy cow! We won a game!” Wood yelled, his voice echoing in the tunnel at Ralph Wilson Stadium. Ten weeks in, the Bills have their first victory. And the Detroit Lions have the league record for futility on the road. Fred Jackson ran for a season-best 133 yards and scored twice in leading the Bills (1-8) to a 14-12 win over the Lions on Sunday. Detroit (2-7) lost its 25th straight road game, breaking the record it set from 2001 to 2003. The Lions have not won outside Detroit since a 16-7 victory at Chicago on Oct. 28, 2007. In a game billed as a Futility Bowl, something had to give in a contest that was not at all pretty. It was played under rain-soaked conditions, befitting the sloppy — and sometimes laughable — performances of two perennial losers. The most comical play came late in the second quarter, when Buffalo linebacker Arthur Moats tipped Shaun Hill’s pass into the air. Three Bills players converged on the ball, only to crash into each other and drop it. The Lions were equally inept. They were penalized 11 times for 60 yards and had difficulty getting their offense going until the fourth quarter. Detroit’s chances to pull off a comeback ended after Hill hit Calvin Johnson for a 20-yard touchdown pass to cut the Bills lead to 14-12 with 14 seconds left. Hill could not find an open receiver on the 2-point conversion, eventually overthrowing tight end Brandon Pettigrew in the back of the end zone. Bills safety George Wilson recovered the ensuing onside kick and immediately ran to the sideline to hug Coach Chan Gailey, who earned his first win since taking over in January. Wild Finish in Jacksonville Mike Thomas hauled in a 50-yard touchdown pass from David Garrard that Houston cornerback Glover Quin batted into his hands on the final play in regulation, giving the Jaguars a 31-24 win over the visiting Texans. The play is called Rebound, and Thomas always serves as “the scoop guy.” The Jaguars never actually run it during practice; Garrard always fakes the deep throw and teammates act out the results. But it rarely ends the way it did Sunday, with the 5-foot-8 Thomas catching a deflection at the half-yard line and then stepping across the goal line. “We definitely lucked out on that one,” running back Maurice Jones-Drew said. The Jaguars (5-4) went into a frenzy and drew a celebration penalty that could not be enforced because they never kicked off. The Texans (4-5) trudged off the field in disbelief. It was their third straight loss, dropping them from the top of the A.F.C. South to the bottom. ¶The Colts overcame Peyton Manning’s season-low 185 yards by scoring 17 points off five Cincinnati turnovers and stopping the visiting Bengals twice in the final 2 minutes 40 seconds to preserve their 23-17 victory. The Colts (6-3) regained sole possession of first place in the A.F.C. South when Tennessee lost at Miami, but their injury problems may have finally caught up to the offense against the Bengals (2-7). Playing again without the All-Pro tight end Dallas Clark, running back Joseph Addai, the short-yardage specialist Mike Hart and receivers Anthony Gonzalez and Austin Collie, the Colts’ only offensive touchdown came on a 3-yard run by the undrafted rookie Javarris James. With Manning off his game, Indianapolis relied on its defense. Cornerback Kelvin Hayden scored on a 31-yard interception return, the backup linebacker Tyjuan Hagler nearly scored on another interception, and Antonio Johnson’s fumble recovery set up Adam Vinatieri for a short field goal late in the first quarter. Quarterback Troubles Anything-goes play-calling helped the Dolphins compensate for the loss of quarterbacks Chad Pennington and Chad Henne in a 29-17 victory over the Titans, Miami’s first win at home in four tries. Pennington sustained a right shoulder injury that could be career-ending, and Henne was on crutches after the game because of a left knee injury. Miami’s Wildcat offense proved a capable substitute, netting 41 yards in five straight snaps to buy time until the fourth quarter when Tyler Thigpen — the emergency third-stringer — led an 85-yard touchdown drive for the game’s final points. “They beat us with basically no quarterbacks,” Titans defensive tackle Jovan Hayes said. Randy Moss had only one catch in his first game with the Titans (5-4), and takeaways by Miami (5-4) led to two touchdowns. ¶Barely in postseason contention when the day began, Brett Favre and the Vikings (3-6) could be just about out of it after their 27-13 loss to the Bears at Soldier Field. Jay Cutler passed for 237 yards and 3 touchdowns as Chicago (6-3) held Adrian Peterson to 51 yards rushing and tied Green Bay for the N.F.C. North lead. Favre passed for 170 yards a week after posting a career-best 446 in a comeback win against Arizona. Asked if he would keep playing this season if Minnesota was mathematically eliminated, Favre said, “Let’s not worry about that.” Broncos Pour It On Kyle Orton threw a career-high four touchdown passes and Knowshon Moreno had his first 100-yard rushing performance as the Broncos routed the visiting Chiefs, 49-29. Ending a four-game losing streak, the Broncos (3-6) kept alive their thin hopes of getting back into the playoff race by handing the Chiefs (5-4) their second straight loss. The Broncos jumped out to a 35-0 lead behind three touchdown passes from Orton, a 1-yard run by Tim Tebow and a 75-yard fumble return for a touchdown by linebacker Jason Hunter. Tebow also threw his first N.F.L. pass, a 3-yard score to fullback Spencer Larsen. ¶Josh Freeman threw two touchdown passes and the rookie LeGarrette Blount ran for a score to lead the Buccaneers, the league’s youngest team, to a 31-16 victory over the struggling Panthers. Freeman threw scoring passes to Kellen Winslow and Arrelious Benn, one of seven rookies in the starting lineup as the Buccaneers (6-3) rebounded from a 6-point loss to Atlanta that knocked them out of first place in the N.F.C. South. Visiting Carolina fell to 1-8. In Other Games Matt Hasselbeck, back after a one-game absence, passed for 333 yards, and Mike Williams had the biggest game of his rejuvenated career in the Seahawks’ dominant 36-18 victory over the Cardinals. Williams, who spent the past two seasons out of the league after flopping in Detroit, caught 11 passes for 145 yards, both career highs, for the Seahawks (5-4). Host Arizona (3-6) lost its fourth in a row. ¶Joe Nedney kicked a 29-yard field goal with 9:38 left in overtime after Troy Smith passed for 356 yards while leading the 49ers’ late rally in a 23-20 victory over the visiting Rams. Smith, who earned his second straight victory as the starter for the 49ers (3-6), threw a go-ahead 16-yard touchdown pass to Michael Crabtree with 2:10 left in regulation. After Sam Bradford and Steven Jackson led the Rams (4-5) back for Josh Brown’s 33-yard field goal as regulation ended, St. Louis failed to get a first down after winning the overtime coin toss.

Football
Buffalo Bills
Detroit Lions
Jackson Fred


Noble Molecules Found in Space

Abstract: Atoms of noble gases like helium, neon and argon — odorless, colorless, single-atom gases with low chemical reactivity — have long been known to exist in outer space. But molecules involving them have escaped detection, despite years of searching. Now, European astronomers say they have detected noble gas molecules in space for the first time, even though they were not looking for them. Image The Crab nebula. Credit Hubble/NASA/European Space Agency Researchers at University College London were using the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory to measure the amount of dust in the remnants of various supernovas when they detected strong, mysterious emissions of light in the Crab nebula. Based on the frequency of the emissions, it was determined that they must be coming from spinning molecular ions of argon hydride. Beyond being a scientific first, the discovery helps confirm existing theories of how argon is formed. “We can tell from the frequency we observed which isotope of argon we’re looking at,” said Michael J. Barlow, the lead author of the study , which was published in the journal Science, “and it was definitely argon-36. That’s 18 neutrons and 18 protons.” Scientists had previously predicted that a supernova like the Crab nebula would produce argon-36 and not, say, argon-40, which is created by the radioactive decay of rocks on Earth. Most previous searches for noble gas molecules in space had focused on molecules containing helium, which is more abundant in the universe than other noble gases. Why they escaped detection for so many years remains a mystery, Dr. Barlow said. DOUGLAS QUENQUA

Space
Physics
Research
Chemistry
Science Journal


Scrum Drives Australia’s Success at Rugby World Cup

Abstract: WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The hero of Australia’s Rugby World Cup campaign so far might not be who you think it is. While the star fullback Israel Folau was the focus of attention before the tournament kicked off and flyhalf Bernard Foley was the key in the Wallabies’ 33-13 destruction of England, it is a coach behind the scenes who has proved to perhaps be the most important figure for Australia. In just a few months, the former Argentine hooker Mario Ledesma has turned the horror that was the Australian scrum into one of the team’s major weapons. Twelve months ago the Wales scrum was so dominant against the Wallabies that it won the Welsh a penalty try in Cardiff, which would have won the game had Foley not kicked a late drop goal and penalty for the Australians. Three weeks later, after losses at France and Ireland, the weak Australia scrum crumbled repeatedly under pressure as England won, 26-17, at Twickenham Stadium. But in a remarkable turnaround, Australia won six scrum penalties against England last weekend and knocked the hosts out of the World Cup. It is all thanks to Ledesma, who played 84 tests for Argentina, a team renowned for its scrum play. Ledesma first linked up with Michael Cheika earlier this year when Cheika was head coach of both the Wallabies and the New South Wales Waratahs of Super Rugby. The 42-year-old Ledesma, who arrived in Australia on a tourist visa, initially started out as a video analyst with the Waratahs. But his input on the Waratahs’ scrummaging was so valuable that he was given a short-term deal to stay with the franchise before being offered the chance to fix the Wallabies’ scrum problems before the World Cup. That decision to get the Argentine on board has proved to be a stroke of genius. Ledesma has changed the way Australia approaches the scrum, using a method similar to what the Argentine national team does, with all eight men directing their power through the hooker while pushing hard and straight. England simply could not cope with that last weekend. Australia has rarely given away easy points by failing at a scrum this tournament. The scrum has also provided an excellent platform for Australia’s much-vaunted backs to create try-scoring opportunities, even thought the team has not always been able to finish them. Image The head coach of the Australian rugby team, Michael Cheika, left, with his assistant coach, Mario Ledesma, who has turned the team's scrum from a weakness into a strength. Credit Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images That has gotten Wales forwards coach Robin McBryde wary as he prepares for Saturday’s game against Australia, which will determine who finishes first in Pool A and most likely avoids a quarterfinal against South Africa. “They’re benefiting from Ledesma as a coach, so there is a certain Argentine flavor to their scrum,” McBryde told the official World Cup website . “It’s very much gone back to the art of scrummaging under the current laws. You have to have a different mind-set and a different approach. Australia have certainly benefited from those changes and are scrummaging well as a unit.” But even before Ledesma arrived, there were signs of positive changes this year under Cheika. Cheika took over last November after Ewen McKenzie quit as coach just days before Australia was to start its November tour of Europe. Cheika had little time to mold a group that was struggling with internal divisions between players from two competing Super Rugby franchises, the Brumbies and Waratahs. But during this year’s Super Rugby season, Cheika began to lay down what he wanted from his Wallabies during training camp: players who had a passion, understanding and pride in playing for the national team; toughness; a sense of camaraderie; and a willingness to put their bodies on the line during a match. The straight-talking Cheika has also implemented some no-frills, old-school ideas, like full-contact sessions in training before tests. Ireland flyhalf Johnny Sexton, who was coached by Cheika at the Irish provincial team Leinster, said there was another reason why the coach has probably managed to instill confidence, discipline and an attacking mentality in Australia in such a short time. “Because everyone’s probably scared” of him, Sexton told Reuters, adding a vulgarity for emphasis. “He knows his rugby as well, he’s a very clever guy, but he does have that presence where he’s a pretty scary guy when you get on the wrong side of him.” But perhaps Cheika’s other coup was persuading the Australia Rugby Union to reverse its policy and allow him to pick players for the national team even if they were playing for clubs outside the country. (There was caveat: it would apply only to those who previously had played 60 or more tests). It has meant the return of two experienced backs, Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell, who play professionally for the French club Toulon. The changes have already resulted in Australia winning one trophy in 2015, the Rugby Championship, its first title in the Southern Hemisphere tournament since 2011. The changes also have set up the Wallabies for a possible World Cup title, something that would have been unthinkable 12 months ago, when most were predicting they would not get out of this year’s “Pool of Death.” No team is in better form right now than Australia, and it has a very real chance to repeat its success in the 1991 and 1999 World Cups and win its third world title on British soil.

Australia
2015 World Cup Rugby
Australian Rugby Union
Argentina


Stay Thirsty Wins Gotham, and Owner Dreams Big

Abstract: Mike Repole and Todd Pletcher were a long way from the sunny skies of Florida, the glamour of Gulfstream Park and their big horse Uncle Mo, whom they are counting on come Triple Crown season. Instead, the owner, Repole, and the trainer, Pletcher, were hunched against a cold wind here at Aqueduct as a colt named Stay Thirsty shrugged his shoulders as his saddle went on. Stay Thirsty is Repole and Pletcher’s second-string horse. His real home is Barn 11 in Boynton Beach, Fla., but he had come north to run in the Gotham Stakes and perhaps prove that he, too, belonged in the Kentucky Derby . Repole, a Queens native, had thought the trip would do the colt good. Stay Thirsty is not exactly in Uncle Mo’s shadow — in fact, he is far from it. He finished fifth to Uncle Mo, his undefeated stablemate and the 2-year-old champion, in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last November. “I think when Stay Thirsty gets into the starting gate, he’s going to look to his left, look to his right, and have a big smile on his face when he sees Uncle Mo isn’t there,” Repole had said before the race. It took Stay Thirsty 1 minute 44.78 seconds across a mile and a sixteenth to put ear-to-ear grins on Repole and Pletcher. Stay Thirsty, a son of Bernardini, was the Big Horse at the Big A — as Aqueduct is known — rolling home a three-and-a-quarter-length winner over the 47-1 long shot Norman Asbjornson in the Grade III $250,000 Gotham. It was not exactly a one-for-the-scrapbooks score. Low-flying jets rumbling into Kennedy Airport provided the soundtrack, and the glass-covered seating enclosures were dusty from the building of a casino that will be opened this fall. Stay Thirsty was the odds-on favorite in a solid, but hardly spectacular, field of seven. But for Repole, a 40-year-old multimillionaire who used to ride the bus here as a teenager, Stay Thirsty’s victory could not have been more validating. “I’ve always said one win in New York is equal to five wins everywhere else,” he said. Repole paid $500,000 for Stay Thirsty at a 2-year-olds-in-training sale last February in Florida, and the colt showed promise last year, finishing second in the Hopeful Stakes. But it was his performance Saturday that Pletcher and Repole had purchased him for. “I thought he ran huge,” Pletcher said. “He’s coming in off only five breezes, going a mile and a sixteenth, and he hasn’t run since Nov. 6. It was very encouraging.” For an instant at the start, Stay Thirsty looked as if he might have left his game in Florida. He staggered out of the gate and had to hurry to find his bearings. “At the very last second, he threw up his head and missed the break,” his jockey, Ramon Dominguez, said. “That’s always a concern after they break like that — after you encourage them to get into the race, they might get too rank.” Instead, Stay Thirsty relaxed beneath Dominguez, who loped him down the backstretch in fourth place, waiting for the far turn to ask for the colt’s motor. He drifted a bit in the stretch as he passed Norman Asbjornson, prompting that colt’s rider, Julian Pimentel, to lodge an objection. The stewards, however, ruled Pimentel’s horse was not impeded and was already beaten. “There was barely any contact,” Dominguez said of the objection. “My colt gave me whatever I asked him, and he galloped out very strong, too.” With Uncle Mo pointed toward the Wood Memorial here on April 9, it appears that Stay Thirsty will next run in the Florida (April 3) or Arkansas (April 16) Derby. Stay Thirsty rewarded his backers with $3.80 on a $2 bet to win and Repole with a $150,000 check and his second victory of the day at Aqueduct. His horse Calibrachoa won the Grade III Tom Fool earlier in the day. Repole said he liked his chances in the Derby even more. “I couldn’t be any happier for this horse, because I keep hearing about ‘Mo’s shadow’ and ‘stablemate,’ ” he said. “This is one of the top six 3-year-olds in the country. This is a pretty special horse. Most people get one in their lifetime, and here I am blessed to have two in the same year.” BIG WIN FOR FEMALE JOCKEY Game On Dude edged Setsuko by a nose in the $750,000 Santa Anita Handicap in Arcadia, Calif., running one and a quarter miles in 1:59.47. Ridden by Chantal Sutherland and trained by Bob Baffert, Game On Dude paid $31.60 on a $2 bet to win. Sutherland became the first female jockey to win the 74-year-old race. (AP)

Horse Racing
Triple Crown (Horse Racing)
Aqueduct Racetrack
Repole Mike
Pletcher Todd


Amid Politics, Obama Drifted Away From Kin

Abstract: BOSTON — After Zeituni Onyango, the woman President Obama once called Auntie, died in a South Boston nursing home this month, her closest relatives gathered her belongings at her nearby apartment. There, framed photographs of her with the president covered the wall. Weeping before a polished wood coffin at her wake this past Saturday, they described Ms. Onyango, the half sister of the president’s father, as “the spirit of the Obama family” and talked about raising money to send her body back to Kenya. Mr. Obama helped pay funeral expenses and sent a condolence note, Ms. Onyango’s family members said, but the president did not attend, as he was golfing. Every complicated family is complicated in its own way. The Obamas, in that sense, are ordinary. But the natural drift that has occurred within the family — already separated by oceans and languages — is exacerbated by politics. “He leads his life, and I lead my life,” said Mr. Obama’s half brother Malik Obama, who flew in for the wake and spoke emotionally about Ms. Onyango, his aunt, who was 61. He said he “wouldn’t say” he and the president had stayed close. “Because even my other brothers and sisters, they are all over the place,” Malik Obama added. “Right now, I would say that things have changed.” As president, Mr. Obama has kept his distance from, and even failed to acknowledge, members of this eclectic clan. In the time-honored tradition of eccentric presidential relatives, the assorted Obamas have faced deportation and drunken-driving charges, started Obama-branded foundations and written memoirs. But they also made for a powerful element of the president’s Kansas-meets-Kenya narrative as a candidate who could connect different worlds. A delegation of African relatives flew in for Mr. Obama’s inauguration in 2009 and received royal treatment. An aunt beamed when the first couple admired her traditional dress on the platform, brothers and uncles partied at special balls and the whole family proudly posed with the new president after he led them on a tour of the White House. Now, as the president has embraced the family more culturally near to him — the half sister on his mother’s side with whom he remained close, the Ivy League-educated brother-in-law he bonds with over basketball, the mother-in-law who lives upstairs — the Obamas are often relegated to the farther branches of his family tree. In the White House, officials who have seen the president’s reaction to his African relatives say that he is unfairly expected to answer for people with whom he has little relationship. “This is the president’s personal family, so we are not going to have any comment,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. Today, many are doing their own things, although often that has something to do with their connection to Mr. Obama. Malik Obama, the president’s half brother and best man at his wedding, now splits his time between Nairobi and Maryland and runs the Barack H. Obama Foundation . Image The president visited Kenya in 2006, when he met his stepgrandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango. Credit Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “What can I say? It’s not doing as well as I would like for it to do,” said Malik Obama, 54, who has raised money for the charity from friends in Yemen and Libya, where he was supportive of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. “I’m committed to it, and the reason for setting it up was the memory of my old man.” For years, Malik Obama has been promoting his book, “Barack Obama Sr.: The Rise and Life of a True African Scholar.” But he is hardly the only Obama relative with a book to sell. A younger half brother of the president, George, published “Homeland: An Extraordinary Story of Hope and Survival.” A half sister, Auma, the African relative closest to the president, wrote a memoir, “And Then Life Happens,” and was featured in the documentary “The Education of Auma Obama.” (She declined to comment through her publicist.) Her former husband, Ian Manners, who is white and has met the president several times, is finishing a book about corruption in Kenya with the working title “Our Brother, Mr. President.” He also unsuccessfully ran for the British Parliament in an Obama-inspired campaign. Ms. Onyango also published a memoir, “Tears of Abuse.” She met Mr. Obama in 1988, during his first trip to Kenya, and warned him about losing track of their African family. In 2000, Ms. Onyango moved to the United States on a valid visa, and in 2001, when Mr. Obama was an Illinois state senator, she helped take care of his newborn daughter, Sasha, and did household chores for the family in Chicago, according to Obama family members. But she stayed illegally after unsuccessfully seeking asylum. When reporters found her in Boston public housing during the 2008 election, Mr. Obama’s aides said he did not know she was in the United States illegally and returned her $265 in campaign contributions. In 2010, she received asylum and celebrated by telling an interviewer: “President Obama, I’m his aunt. If he does a wrong thing, I’m the only person on earth allowed to pinch his ears and smack him.” Back in 1988, connecting to his African family was critical to Mr. Obama’s path to self-discovery and ultimately to his political ambitions. In his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” he meditated on Auntie Zeituni’s use of the term “getting lost” to describe a family member who had lost touch. The family’s principal example at the time was the president’s uncle, Onyango Obama, known as Omar, who moved as a young man to Boston and went on to live there illegally for decades. In 2011, he was arrested in nearby Framingham on drunken-driving charges and told the booking officer, “I think I will call the White House.” With an election on the horizon, the White House seemed to want nothing to do with the uncle, who also had an outstanding deportation order. White House officials said they had no record of any meeting between the president and his uncle, but in court last December, Omar Obama said his nephew had stayed with him for weeks in Cambridge before starting Harvard Law School in 1988. “It’s a good thing to let your nephew stay with you,” he said after the hearing, adding that in his family, “your brother’s kids are your kids as well.” Image Malik Obama, a half brother of President Obama, outside the funeral home where a wake was held for Zeituni Onyango. Credit Evan McGlinn for The New York Times Mr. Schultz acknowledged awkwardly at the time that the president did live with his uncle in the late 1980s, and “after that, they saw each other once every few months, but after law school they fell out of touch.” He added, “The president has not seen him in 20 years, has not spoken with him in 10.” It was Omar Obama, a taciturn man who now works in a Framingham liquor store, who helped take care of Ms. Onyango in her last weeks. He arranged her wake and held a fund-raiser afterward to collect more money to send her body to Kenya. On a recent afternoon, as he disposed of a stray bottle in the liquor store parking lot, he declined to comment about his contact with the president, saying only, “You don’t know more about my family than I do.” Another of the president’s uncles, Said Obama, said in an interview from Kenya that he did not resent the president for staying away. “He can choose to get along with those people who he feels comfortable with,” he said. The people the president feels at home with include Maya Soetoro-Ng, who is the daughter of his mother and her second husband, an Indonesian man. He is considerably less close to another half sibling with a foot in that part of the world. Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo took a path that most parallels the president’s own. Mr. Ndesandjo, another Ivy League-educated son of a white American woman, is a China-based pianist, writer and businessman who has an Obama-branded cultural foundation and is publicizing a memoir, “An Obama’s Journey: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery Across Three Cultures," which unflatteringly depicts his late father and explores a rocky relationship with the president. Visiting Nairobi at Christmas, Mr. Ndesandjo said by phone that he and the other African Obamas had not heard from the president for some time. “Barack is almost trying to leave behind the family that he so passionately engaged in those early years as he moves through the presidency,” Mr. Ndesandjo said. Afterward, Mr. Ndesandjo followed up with an email: “Just a small point, but when I said it would be nice for Barack to call Kenya once in a while, I was specifically referring to Granny Sarah. He hasn’t done so for a number of years now, and she is the oldest member of our family and may leave us any day. Perhaps your article can note that.” Granny Sarah, or Sarah Ogwel Onyango, is the president’s stepgrandmother, and is considered the matriarch of the Obama family. On a recent morning in Kenya, she sat in a bright orange dress and blue head scarf on the veranda of the Obama homestead. Recovering from a bout of malaria and rubbing the left knee that she blamed for keeping her from attending Mr. Obama’s second inauguration, she said in the Luo dialect that language barriers impeded communication between her and the president. But at the end of March, she said, Auma Obama, the president’s half sister, called with a birthday wish from Mr. Obama. The president and his stepgrandmother also spoke through a translator this year when he called to wish her a happy New Year. She then gestured around the homestead and attributed the electricity, paved roads and running drinking water to Mr. Obama. “He is still very central to my life today,” she said.

Barack Obama
Family
Zeituni Onyango
Funerals