Paterson Dismisses Democrats’ M.T.A. Rescue Plan

Abstract: In an intensifying battle among Democrats, Gov. David A. Paterson on Tuesday flatly rejected a Senate version of a rescue plan for the financially troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority and said he would continue to push for tolls on the East and Harlem River bridges. Mr. Paterson chided the Democratic majority in the Senate for choosing what he described as a short-term solution that left big holes in future budgets at the authority. His strong stance suggested that the debate over how to prevent sharp fare increases and service cuts could drag late into the budget season. “The solution must be taken now,” Mr. Paterson said. “Unfortunately there seems to be a belief that these types of issues can be deferred into some sort of future activity. This is what’s gotten Albany in trouble time and time again.” The governor was asked if there were any way the Senate plan could be adopted and provide a solution for the authority’s problems. He answered bluntly, “No.” The governor suggested he may seek Republican support to break the impasse, saying he is willing to sit down with leaders from both parties in the Senate to discuss the issue. So far, however, Republicans have refused to back any version of the rescue plan. Mr. Paterson spoke at an animated news conference at his Midtown Manhattan office where transit officials and advocates derided the Senate’s plan. H. Dale Hemmerdinger, the transportation authority’s chairman, said that the Senate plan fell short of meeting the authority’s needs by about $1 billion. To make up for it, he said, the Senate plan would require a fare increase of 17 percent instead of its proposed 4 percent. “We believe their math is wrong, and they just didn’t take the time to do their homework,” Mr. Hemmerdinger said. A spokesman for the Senate Democrats, Austin Shafran, later said there were no mathematical mistakes and that the Senate plan was based on financial data from the authority. Mr. Paterson supports a plan developed by Richard Ravitch, a former authority chairman, that calls for a tax on payrolls in the 12-county region served by the authority and for new tolls on the East River and Harlem River bridges. It would also impose an 8 percent fare increase in June. The Democratic Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, supports a modified version of that plan. The Ravitch plan would help close the authority’s $1.2 billion deficit this year and avoid a series of deep service cuts and a 23 percent increase in fare revenues proposed by the authority. It would also provide billions of dollars over the next several years for the authority’s capital program, which pays for large-scale maintenance and improvements. The Senate’s alternative plan was announced by Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith on Tuesday in Albany. The Senate version also calls for a payroll tax, but at a lower rate, 25 cents for each $100 of payroll, instead of the 34 cents proposed by Mr. Ravitch. It eliminates the proposed bridge tolls — which have been strongly opposed by several Democratic senators — and sets the fare increase at 4 percent. Mr. Smith said that the Senate plan would provide enough money to keep the authority going for the near future , giving the Senate time to develop a long-term financing plan. Mr. Smith also said that the authority must disclose more information about its finances and capital spending plans. To act sooner would be like handing the authority a “blank check,” he said. “We don’t want to have an A.I.G. situation with the M.T.A,” he added. Senator Pedro Espada Jr., a Bronx Democrat who has strongly opposed the Ravitch toll proposal, defended the Democratic conference against its critics. “The arrogance of saying, we told you senators what we need, and you will rubber-stamp it,” he said. “There’s a new day in the Senate. It’s that kind of arrogance that has given us tunnels to nowhere and some of the worst service around.” If no rescue plan is passed, the authority’s board is expected to vote on March 25 to move ahead on its plans for service cuts and a 23 percent rise in fare revenues.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Paterson David A
Transit Systems
New York State
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
State Legislatures


Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport

Abstract: The Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport is not regarded as much of a factor in relieving congestion in regional air traffic. It is used by just one commercial airline — US Airways Express — and oversees a handful of daily flights to only one city, Philadelphia. (In Philadelphia, connections can be made to the rest of the country.) Tweed, which straddles New Haven and East Haven, is an hour-and-a-half drive from New York City, a fact that may discourage many potential passengers. Just 66,000 passengers passed through Tweed in the year ending in August. Tweed opened in 1931 as New Haven’s municipal airport, and three years later American Airlines inaugurated passenger service there. The airport was renamed Tweed in 1961 after John H. Tweed, its first manager. It sprawls across more than 394 acres and has two runways, with lengths of 5,600 feet and 3,626 feet. At various times the airport had flights to Washington, Chicago and Cincinnati, but those have fallen away. Pan Am Clipper Connection, which operated a turboprop route to Baltimore-Washington International Airport, ended it in 2007 after just five months because it rarely attracted more than a handful of people — 483 passengers over 132 days. New Haven at one time contemplated luring other airlines by lengthening the main runway to 7,600 feet, but, as has happened with other regional airports, residents of suburban East Haven have squelched the efforts. JOSEPH BERGER

Airports
New Haven (Conn)
US Airways
Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport


Charges Dismissed Against 6 Ex-Employees of Rentboy.com

Abstract: Federal authorities have dismissed charges against six former employees of the website Rentboy.com, while continuing to move forward with a case against the chief executive on counts of money laundering and promoting prostitution, according to court documents posted on Wednesday. On Friday, Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom granted a motion by the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn to dismiss the charges against the former employees. The move came less than a month after the former chief executive, Jeffrey Hurant, was indicted and two days after he was arraigned and pleaded not guilty. At the time that Mr. Hurant and the six others were originally charged in August, the authorities, who raided and shut down the website, called it the largest online male-escort service and described it as an Internet brothel that made millions of dollars by promoting prostitution. The original complaint against the seven defendants laid out prosecutors’ allegations and descriptions of the service in lurid details, including a list of sexual terms and definitions they said they culled from the website. Though the site had a disclaimer noting that paying for sex was illegal, “the entire website is designed for the purpose of advertising prostitution,” the complaint charged. When the case was announced last summer, it drew wide press coverage and condemnation by gay rights activists, who compared it to police raids of gay bars in the 1950s and ’60s, and criticized the federal investigation of a website that had been operating in open view for more than 15 years. The Homeland Security Department became involved, apparently because the authorities believed the site promoted prostitution across state and national borders. A spokeswoman for Robert L. Capers, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, declined to comment on the dismissals. The charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning that they could later be refiled. Lawyers for some of the former employees whose charges were dismissed expressed relief. Aaron Mysliwiec, a lawyer for Shane Lukas, a former chief operating officer, said: “It’s unfortunate that Mr. Lukas was ever arrested. But we’re happy that he’s able to move on with his life.” Mr. Hurant continues to maintain his innocence. “Mr. Hurant did not commit a crime,” his lawyer, Michael Tremonte, said on Wednesday night. “It makes no sense to single him out for prosecution.” In addition to Mr. Lukas, the other former Rentboy.com employees whose charges were dismissed were Michael Sean Belman, the director of the site; Edward Lorenz Estanol, an escort and former social media coordinator for the site; Diana Milagros Mattos, a former saleswoman; Clint Calero, a sales executive; and Marco Soto Decker, an accountant. On Wednesday, Mr. Estanol posted on Twitter a picture of himself retrieving his passport from the federal courthouse. “This trial has been nothing but a huge inconvenience to me, but now that my case has been rightfully dismissed I can start to put back the pieces of my life that were taken from me,” Mr. Estanol wrote in the statement accompanying the picture. “I am forever grateful to everyone who supported me during the past few months. We will meet injustice with justice.”

Money laundering
Prostitution
Rentboy.com
Jeffrey Hurant


Pettitte Pitches Into 7th, but Yankees Need 14 Innings vs. Nationals

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Oh, the lengths the Yankees must go just to win a game without a home run. On Saturday, they required 14 innings, 20 players, 4 hours 49 minutes and 16 fruitless at-bats with runners in scoring position. But the Yankees eventually prevailed with a couple of ground ball singles and a double before the sun finally went down on an exhausting day. Mark Teixeira hit a two-run double in the top of the 14th inning that paced the weary Yankees to 5-3 victory over the Washington Nationals and extended their winning streak to eight games. Before Saturday, the Yankees were 0-12 when they did not hit a home run. Andy Pettitte , making his first start since turning 40 on Friday, pitched extremely well and left with a lead after seven innings. But by the time the game ended, it seemed as if he had aged another year. “Winning helps,” third baseman Eric Chavez said. “I’m sure they’ll be a little more exhausted than we are.” Chavez was one of several unexpected stars, a group that also included Freddy Garcia, Jayson Nix and Dewayne Wise. The only players the Yankees did not use were their four other starting pitchers and Dave Robertson, the relief pitcher who is recovering from a strained oblique muscle and had pitched the night before. Even C. C. Sabathia had his spikes on, ready to pinch-hit in case the game was extended even longer. “He was pretty excited,” said Joe Girardi, who was so tired after the game that he conducted a postgame news conference in a chair, instead of standing as he usually does after a road game. Garcia, the long forgotten pitcher, played a pivotal role. Pitching for the first time since June 5, and only the second time since May 21, he tossed two scoreless innings of relief to earn the win. Rafael Soriano came on in the bottom of the 14th and got his 12th save, despite allowing two hits. Those hits enabled Bryce Harper, the Nationals’ 19-year-old rookie sensation, to come to the plate with a chance to win the game with a home run. It was what all the remaining Nationals fans wanted desperately to see. But Harper finished a miserable 0 for 7 — with five strikeouts — by grounding out to Robinson Cano to end the game. “It’s like one of those storybook endings you are hoping it wasn’t going to be,” Teixeira said. “That would have been too good to be true for Harper to get a walk-off right there. The place might have fallen down.” Teixeira’s winning hit was made possible when Nix reached on an infield single off Brad Lidge leading off the top of the 14th. He stole second and went to third when Derek Jeter, in a terrific at-bat that started with him in an 0-2 hole, punched a single through the left side of the infield. Jeter hit three balls hard earlier in the game, but each was caught for an out. His most productive at-bat ended with a dribbler through the hole, which was the Yankees’ first hit with a runner in scoring position in 17 at-bats. But the runner did not even score. Curtis Granderson struck out with the runners at first and third, bringing Teixeira to the plate with no hits in his five previous at-bats. He was waiting on a slider from Lidge, and when he got it, he ripped a double into the right-field corner. Nix scored, and Jeter followed right behind. Harper made the mistake of trying to get Jeter at the plate. Teixeira took third on the throw, and when he slid in, he popped up and pumped his fist toward the exuberant Yankees dugout. Pettitte allowed only two runs in seven innings and had three strikeouts against Harper, who is not even half his age. Pettitte was in position for the win, but he tired and came out after 95 pitches. “I was pretty gassed,” he said. “I don’t know if it was from the heat, the day game, having to do a little bit different routine. Maybe being 40, I don’t know.” He was replaced by Cory Wade in the eighth inning, and Wade surrendered a game-tying home run to Ian Desmond that changed the complexion of the lengthy day. The Nationals then came within inches of taking the lead, when Adam LaRoche singled to right with Tyler Moore on second base. But Wise, who had just moved to right field from left field on a double switch, fired home to catcher Russell Martin, who applied the tag to the sliding Moore to end the inning. “I don’t want to say it,” Wise said sheepishly, “but I heard it was a good throw. The umpire called him out, and it kept us going.” And going, and going until they finally discovered a way to win, even as the ball stayed in the park. INSIDE PITCH Nick Swisher sustained a bruised left quadriceps sliding into home plate in the sixth inning and left the game. Joe Girardi said he did not know if Swisher would be able to play Sunday. Russell Martin’s availability was also uncertain after he caught all 14 innings Saturday.

Baseball
Washington Nationals
New York Yankees
Pettitte Andy


12 Tips for Using Your Android Phone

Abstract: Mobile phones that run Google’s Android operating system come in various shapes, sizes and features, unlike Apple’s iPhones. And Android phones are available on a variety of carriers, including Boost Mobile, where a data plan can cost as little as $35 a month. But despite the variety of Android phones, and of carriers, there are a lot of useful features common to all. Here are some tips on finding them: THE LONG PRESS The key to many of these tips is the long press: Instead of tapping a button, word or icon on the screen, press and hold your finger on it for two seconds. Often, this will bring up a menu of options specific to the type of item, like one to bookmark a Web link. You can also long press the hardware keys on the phone, and the background of the home screen, to reveal various options. In general, long-press functions are intended to save you from tapping through a series of menus to perform a common task. It’s the equivalent of right-clicking your mouse on a PC screen. So, for example, you can long press the home key on your phone’s case — the one that looks like a little house — to bring up a menu of your eight most recently used apps. This lets you hop quickly between, say, an e-mail you are composing and your Web browser. You can also long press the search key — it looks like a magnifying glass — to pop up a microphone icon labeled “Speak Now.” Android’s Voice Commands system understands at least 10 commands, like “Send text to Alison Wright, running late will see you at 6,” “Navigate to the nearest pizza place,” “Listen to Taylor Swift,” and of course, “Note to self.” If you don’t begin with a special command, Android will assume you are speaking a Web search. Within the browser app, long press the back key — the one labeled with an arrow U-turning left — to snap open a screen with your bookmarks, most visited pages and browsing history displayed in tabs. Long press on your home screen’s background to bring up a menu of options that includes Shortcuts. You can create a shortcut, which looks just like an app on your home screen, that links directly to a bookmarked Web page, a person in your contact list or a navigation destination. Android will label the shortcut with the Web site’s logo, the person’s face or an icon you choose for destinations. Too many icons on your home screen? Long press on the screen to pop up a menu that includes a Folders option. You can create a folder icon and call it, say, Games, into which you can drag all your game apps. Long press a link on a Web page to pop up a menu that lets you open the link in a new window. To switch windows, press the menu key — the one that’s a grid of four squares — and tap Windows in the options that appear onscreen. And long press can also be used for accent marks. To insert, say, an e with an accent grave into a message, long press the “e” on your keyboard. That pops up a menu of “e” characters with various accent marks. FAST ACCESS TO PHONE, TEXT AND E-MAIL In your address book, don’t tap the person’s name. Tap their photo. That pops up a menu of icons to call, text or e-mail. There are also options to send messages through Twitter and Facebook. TAKE PHOTOS OF YOURSELF Android cameras without a second camera for self-portraits have a Self Portrait mode in the camera app. Tap it, and the camera will begin searching for faces in its viewfinder using facial-recognition software. The phone will shoot a new photo of you every few seconds, adding the pictures to your camera roll. It’s more hit or miss than taking your photo in a mirror, but it’s more fun, like mugging in an old-fashioned photo booth. FASTER SENTENCES Android picked up a trick from old-school BlackBerry phones: When typing a text or e-mail message, you don’t need to fumble for the period key at the end of a sentence. Just press the spacebar twice. Android will insert one period and one space much faster than you could type them yourself. E-MAIL SHORTCUTS If you use Gmail on your Android phone, you can create separate shortcut icons, as described above, to specific accounts, folders and Gmail labels. This lets you have separate icons for work e-mail and personal e-mail, rather than opening whatever you last read when you tap the Gmail icon. Once you’re in the e-mail app, you can also switch folders by tapping the name of the current folder at the top of the screen. SILENCING A CALL Most users figure out they can get rid of a phone call by sliding the red arrow that appears onscreen when the phone is ringing. But not everyone realizes you can stop the phone from ringing by pressing the power button on top of the phone or either of the volume buttons on the right. FIND ON PAGE To search for words within a Web page, press the menu key, tap More, and then tap “Find on page.” A search box and keyboard will appear to let you type in search terms. SHARE A PAGE ON FACEBOOK Another option on the browser’s More menu is the Share page. One of the options to share is Facebook. Tapping it will open Facebook in the browser (rather than using Facebook’s Android app) and set up the link to be shared, complete with a thumbnail image and a space to type your comments. SEE TODAY’S DATE Android shows the time but not the date on your home screen. If you drag down the notification tray at the top of the screen, today’s date appears in the upper left corner. FOREIGN LANGUAGE KEYBOARDS Most domestic Android phones come with only English and Spanish keyboards installed for the touch screen. To add, say, a German keyboard, go to Android Market and search for “German keyboard.” Expect to pay around $3 for most keyboard apps. GET RID OF PESKY CALLERS Do you have a frequent caller whom you never want to answer? Add them to your address book if they’re not already there. Then edit their entry, and scroll to the bottom for the option “Additional info.” It’s tricky to open the option; you have to tap the arrow key at the right, which will pop open more options, possibly out of sight below the bottom edge of your screen. But if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the extra options, you’ll find a welcome surprise: “Send straight to voice mail?” Click once for peace of mind.

Mobile Applications
Android (Operating System)


A Bartender With a Magic Touch

Abstract: The bartender delivered another round to the couple at the end of the bar, and then laid a small black mat in front of them. “Come on over,” he said, motioning to other patrons. “The more witnesses, the better.” On Tuesday night at Cronin & Phelan’s bar and restaurant, on Broadway near Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens, things were in full swing for the bartender, Dave Cremin, 54, who provides both the service and the entertainment, doing bar-top tricks while serving drinks and food. Lulls between drink orders turn into brief magic shows, and this one began with Mr. Cremin pulling a deck of cards out of his mouth, a dozen at a time. Somehow the cards were dry. The couple reared back in laughter and amazement. “Just to see the astonishment on people’s faces, that’s payoff for me,” Mr. Cremin said later. “To make them laugh and say ‘wow’ at the same time.” Mr. Cremin, a native of Ireland, told them he could find the four aces in the deck with one hand. He shuffled the deck with one hand, calling it “an Irish shuffle.” “What makes it Irish is this,” he said, grabbing a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey with his free hand and tipping it into his mouth while shuffling. He pulled out the aces, one by one, and then moved on to the dozen other customers at the long bar, pulling drafts, mixing cocktails and pouring shots. Mr. Cremin works Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 6 p.m. until after the bar closes at 4 a.m. In his 23 years as a barman at Cronin & Phelan’s, Mr. Cremin has gained a loyal following of patrons who come for both his pour and his powers to dazzle with sleight of hand, misdirection, mentalism and other magic techniques. Mr. Cremin also performs professionally, at private parties, weddings and corporate events. He said constantly doing tricks behind the bar, besides bringing better tips, helps keep him sharp. “When you’re in the bar, you’re performing close up, right in their faces,” he said. “I try my new stuff late at night because people are drunk. Sometimes when I do a trick, people will say, ‘Is there something in the drink? Is it because I’m drunk?’” On Saturdays at 11 p.m., Mr. Cremin comes out from behind the bar and does a 45-minute performance, including escaping from a straitjacket. He also helps run monthly open-mike events at Cronin & Phelan’s, which draw many magician friends. After doing magic behind a busy bar, he said, performing onstage is a breeze. “You can focus on the presentation and magic and not worry about anyone waving you down for a drink,” said Mr. Cremin, who is married, has two grown daughters and lives in Woodside, Queens. He grew up in Cork, Ireland, immigrated to New York at age 22 in the 1980s and began bartending. Within a few years, he was learning magic out of books and practicing the tricks on customers while tending bar at Molly Malone’s on Third Avenue in Manhattan. “For Dave, the two things go hand in hand: He loves magic, and he loves being behind the bar,” said Rene Clement, a longtime magician friend of Mr. Cremin’s who showed up Tuesday night at Cronin & Phelan’s. Mr. Cremin began doing tricks with a metal cup and little red foam ball, for Megan Peterson, 30. He seemed to make the ball appear and disappear, and then began making limes appear under the cup, each time he lifted it again and again. “He’s the best bartender I ever had,” Ms. Peterson, who was drinking a Coors Lite, said. “From the first time I was here, he remembered my name and what I drink. The magic is just the cherry on top.” That night Mr. Cremin’s card tricks often involved his guessing which card the customer covertly picked and then buried in the deck. He would “find” the right card in his fly, or under a nearby glass of whiskey, or just pop it out of the deck into his other hand. During one trick, a waiter checked on an order: “Dave, is that chicken or salmon on the salad?” “Salmon,” Mr. Cremin said without pausing. He finished the trick, grabbed the plates and delivered them to his customers. “You use your peripheral vision, you know the food’s coming out and the people at the end of bar who ordered it,” said Mr. Cremin, who was doing another trick when a waitress brought him the salads. “Just drop those there, love,” he said, and he completed the trick, then whisked the salads down to the end of the bar and checked on his customers. “When Dave’s working, you’ll never see an empty glass,” said Tom Bibla, a regular. “I just wish he could make my bar tab disappear.”

Dave Cremin
bars,nightclubs
Astoria Queens
Magic
Bartender


National Debt Reduction Poses Challenge for Lawmakers

Abstract: WASHINGTON — As bipartisan negotiations were to begin over how to limit the spread of federal red ink, Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, said Wednesday that he was open to imposing a “trigger” that would force spending cuts if the government exceeded prescribed deficit levels. “These trigger proposals have the potential to bring members from both sides of the aisle together and ensure action to reduce our debt,” said Mr. Baucus, a Montana Democrat and one of six Congressional representatives scheduled to meet Thursday morning at Blair House with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. His made his comments as the Finance Committee heard from former Senator Phil Gramm, the godfather of the 1980s budget-cutting weapon known as the Gramm-Rudman law. Mr. Gramm, now an investment banker, said he believed Congress needed to raise the federal debt ceiling but only in conjunction with serious measures to deal with the nation’s fiscal problems. “To raise the debt ceiling again without requiring action now to deal with the problem is irresponsible and dangerous to the future of America,” Mr. Gramm said. One of the major questions surrounding such a trigger is whether it would require only spending cuts or if it could also spur automatic tax increases if Congress and the White House were unable to stay under the deficit target. Mr. Gramm, long an antitax crusader, predicted the automatic tax increases would “never fly.” “To do a mechanism where if the government fails, the taxpayer pays just seems alien to me,” Mr. Gramm told the committee. Other witnesses and some committee members disputed that stance, saying that it would not work to address the deficit strictly from the spending side of the budget equation. The committee session was part of the maneuvering heading into Thursday’s meeting between the lawmakers and Mr. Biden, who has become President Obama’s favored negotiator with Congress over difficult fiscal issues. Trying to force the administration to tip its hand, the two Republicans set to attend, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, asked the White House to reveal how much it was seeking to raise the debt ceiling and what its plans were for attacking the deficit. “For these discussions to be productive and so that we can appropriately consider the president’s request to increase the statutory debt limit,” the Republicans said in a letter to the vice president, “we anticipate that the president will submit a request outlining the amount requested to increase the debt limit, along with any policy proposals to reduce spending and reform the budget process.” But indications are that the initial meeting will not delve deeply into details and instead will review the various existing budget plans as negotiators search for some common ground to establish a basis for future sessions. House Republicans have been skeptical of the prospect that the Biden talks will produce concrete results. Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican and Budget Committee chairman, said Wednesday that he believed the swirl of presidential politics heading into 2012 would limit what lawmakers can accomplish. “We’re not going to get a big, comprehensive agreement because of just the political parameters that have been set now,” Mr. Ryan told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by Bloomberg News. “I’m hoping we get a single or a double,” he said using a baseball metaphor. “I’m hoping the debt limit is the opportunity to get a down payment on some spending cuts, to get a down payment on some spending reform to put the crisis off. But I don’t think you’re going to see everything fixed.” Mr. Ryan noted that his spending proposal employed a variety of budget enforcement mechanisms like spending and deficit caps. Those approaches appear to have the potential to become central to the deficit talks, though lawmakers disagree on how they should be structured. At the Finance Committee hearing, Mr. Baucus made clear that he was strongly opposed to one bipartisan spending cap plan promoted by Senators Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, and Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri. Under that proposal, spending would be restricted to 20.6 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product within a decade, requiring cuts if the cap was breached. “These cuts would have a huge, negative impact on the most vulnerable Americans who count on these programs to make ends meet,” Mr. Baucus said. Mr. Gramm recommended that if Congress did impose a spending cap, lawmakers should tighten it to prevent abuse. He recounted how lawmakers of both parties regularly abused the emergency spending exemption to get around the restrictions of Gramm-Rudman. One example was when lawmakers declared spending for the census to be an unexpected emergency expense, “despite the fact that the Constitution had required that a census be taken every decade for 200 years,” Mr. Gramm said. He recommended that an emergency be declared only with the approval of 60 percent of the members of both houses of Congress. “In reality,” he said, “if you can’t get that vote, you don’t have a real emergency.”

Federal Budget (US)
United States Politics and Government
National Debt (US)
Law and Legislation


Now Working Without a Net, an Ex-Islander Is Live on the Air

Abstract: Rick DiPietro is delighted to say that his 15-month-old son, Milo, often greets the day with a mini hockey stick and ball, which he uses to score lots of goals. “The only regret is that I wish I had him when I was playing,” DiPietro said recently. “He’s obsessed with hockey.” Although he said he has not filed retirement papers, DiPietro, 34, has not played a competitive game since nearly two and a half years ago, when he told the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League that he was abandoning a comeback attempt after five games. “It’s probably safe to say no return is coming soon,” he said. DiPietro, a goaltender who was the No. 1 overall choice in the 2000 entry draft, was so prone to injury during his 10-year, 318-game N.H.L. career, all with the Islanders, that he adopted as his Twitter handle @HDumpty39, as in the Humpty Dumpty who had a great fall. He is now on the daily sports-talk show “Hahn and Humpty” on ESPN Radio in New York. He is partnered with Alan Hahn, who used to cover DiPietro and the Islanders for Newsday. A television highlight version of the show is to run on MSG Network this summer. “He’s a natural, just like his days as an athlete,” said Hahn, who is also an analyst on Knicks telecasts on MSG. “In fact, he treats this job much like he does a sport: He has great passion, puts in great preparation and is a quick study. You rarely see that when a pro athlete moves into this side of the business.” Three years ago, the Islanders bought DiPietro out of a then-record 15-year, $67.5 million contract that he had signed in 2006. He is to receive $1.5 million annually through 2029. Image While Rick DiPietro has found success in sports-talk radio, he still wishes he was in uniform and playing for the Islanders. Credit Kathy Kmonicek/Associated Press “I’d rather be playing,” he said. “I’m more disappointed than anything that I wasn’t able to prove to everyone that I was worth the deal.” His new career has taken an interesting turn. In addition to the radio show, DiPietro was hired by MSG to serve as a commentator before, during and after Islanders telecasts. NBC has taken over for the Stanley Cup playoffs, but DiPietro is working a postgame show on MSG. “We’ve all been impressed with Rick’s ability to connect and engage with fans with his fresh, bold and insightful analysis,” Andrea Greenberg, president and chief executive of MSG Networks, wrote in an email. “Rick has taken broadcasting very seriously, and we’re happy to have him as part of our esteemed talent team.” But DiPietro is still very much an Islander. When John Tavares scored in the second overtime against the Panthers last week to lift the Islanders to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 1993 — nearly eight years before DiPietro’s first N.H.L. game — he was at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, watching the game. He remembers jumping into the arms of a security guard after the goal. Tavares, the Islanders’ No. 1 overall draft choice in 2009, could well have been a teammate. The 15-year contract DiPietro signed in 2006 would have had several years remaining. “In a perfect world, I’d be playing for the team, but that didn’t work out,” DiPietro said. He said he still considered himself to be an unabashed Islanders fan, but he added, “I’m just trying to be objective.” “It’s something I try to do, regardless of the sport,” he said. Of the radio show, he said, “The Rangers fans tell me all the time, ‘We hated you when you were playing for the Islanders, but we love you on the radio.’ ” DiPietro grew up in Winthrop, Mass., near Logan International Airport, and went to Boston University after playing at St. Sebastian’s School in Needham. He was at B.U. for one season, compiling an 18-5-5 record, before the Islanders drafted him. Hours earlier, they traded goaltender Roberto Luongo to Florida in a four-player deal. Luongo, 37, a first-round pick of the Islanders in 1997, has played in nearly 1,000 games in his N.H.L. career — the most recent, in a twist, being the Panthers’ playoff loss to the Islanders and Tavares. DiPietro’s playing career was shattered by injuries, especially after he signed the long-term contract. When the Islanders made a gallant last-week run to the playoffs in 2007, a journeyman goaltender, Wade Dubielewicz, led the team to a postseason berth. “I always thought I would get into coaching,” said DiPietro, who played 175 games after signing the contract. When Hahn started filling in on a sports-talk show on ESPN Radio two summers ago, DiPietro often called in. Hahn asked DiPietro to come into the studio. The two clicked. “I like to talk,” DiPietro said. “There’s something in my personality that really enjoys talking.” For both his radio and television gigs, DiPietro is articulate, but he is also sincere and thoughtful, saying, “When you’re doing a radio show three hours a day, five days a week, you can’t fake it.” Along the way, DiPietro has gained a new audience. Before the decisive Islanders-Panthers game in the first round, he wore a jacket with a camouflage pattern to emphasize that the Islanders had to battle to move to the next round. When he signed the 15-year contract, he hoped to lead the Islanders to their first Stanley Cup since 1983. Now, Tavares, 25, drives the team. DiPietro has a much smaller role. “You’re really trying to capture what it’s like for the people who casually follow the sport and are just tuning in,” DiPietro said. “You teach people the sport.”


Court Papers Offer Glimpse of Government Rationale in Federal Terror Cases

Abstract: The terrorism case landed on the public docket in Federal District Court in Brooklyn last year like a riddle. Prosecutors charged three foreign men arrested overseas with supporting a Somali terrorist group. They did not reveal details of the allegations against the men, their nationalities or even their connections to the United States. Then on Wednesday, some details finally emerged in government documents, though much about the case remains to be seen. The court documents offer a glimpse of the government’s rationale for bringing suspects accused of being foreign terrorists into the federal court system — something that has happened with greater frequency in the last few months, even as the approach has been criticized for not having clearly defined limits. The men, prosecutors said, participated in attacks against Americans by consorting with others whom the American government believes to be terrorists. These kinds of charges, called material support of terrorism charges, are allowed under America’s broad terrorism laws, which allow prosecution of those suspects believed to have associated with accused terrorists. Some personal information also emerged about them: Madhi Hashi is a British citizen, and Mohamed Yusuf is a Swedish citizen. The nationality of the third man, Ali Yasin Ahmed, was not revealed, but he was assisted by Swedish counsel at a previous hearing. A defense lawyer for Mr. Yusuf, Ephraim Savitt, said that the men were freedom fighters in a cause that had nothing to do with the United States and that the men would offer that defense at trial. All three, who were arrested in Africa while traveling to Yemen, have pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say they traveled to Somalia to join Al Shabab, a United States-designated terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda. In addition, the documents charge that the men were connected to two American citizens from Minnesota’s Somali community, Shirwa Ahmed and Farah Mohamed Beledi, suicide bombers who died in recent years in Somalia. In October 2008, Swedish authorities intercepted phone calls between Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mr. Yusuf, in which the men discussed their plans to travel to Somalia to join Al Shabab and die as martyrs, according to the documents. The conversation came after suicide bombings in two Somali cities targeting the government there, and the two men discussed the attacks. After an attack in Mogadishu in 2009, Ali Yasin Ahmed said during an intercepted phone call that he was an associate of the suicide bomber responsible for that bombing. Prosecutors then also pointed to the men’s suicide bomber training in 2011 in Somalia and association with Mr. Beledi, who prosecutors said bombed a government checkpoint in Mogadishu that year. None of the bombings — in Somalia, Burundi and Uganda — targeted American locations, according to court documents; however, one American was killed in Burundi and several more were injured.

Terrorism
Federal Courts
Al Shabab
Al Qaeda
Somalia
Brooklyn
Madhi Hashi
Ali Yasin Ahmed
Mohamed Yusuf


Filth Found in Airline Food Operations at Los Angeles Airport

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A federal inspector on a routine visit to food service facilities at Los Angeles International Airport in January found conditions that, she wrote, could compromise the safety of food meant for airline passengers. Bathrooms where employees washed their hands were dirty. Machines used to control bacteria were not adequately maintained. And clutter in the food storage area created a potential for pests, the inspector for the Food and Drug Administration wrote, according to a report to be issued Wednesday by Unite Here, a union representing airline food workers. The Los Angeles facilities were one of several catering operations owned and operated by Flying Food Group, which prepares meals for some of the world’s largest airlines. Inspectors over the past few years have found unsanitary conditions in several kitchens operated by the company. In 2011, the company recalled food prepared at its facility in Lawrenceville, Ga., after tests by the State Health Department found it was contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a bacteria that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, older adults and others with weakened immune systems. Last year, according to the report and inspection records, the company had to recall meals prepared for a British Airways flight from Miami. Health experts said the report and past problems at the vendor’s facilities raised troubling questions about the safety of food served by the company, which prepares meals for 70 of the world’s leading airlines, including Air France, British Airways, China Southern Airlines and Etihad Airways. “There is a real risk of illness and injury to tens of thousands of airline passengers on a daily basis,” said Roy Costa, a public health consultant and former Florida state food inspector who writes extensively about airline food safety . Paul A. Hall, the vice president for food safety and quality at Flying Food Group, acknowledged the findings of the F.D.A. inspections cited in the union report, but added that the problems at the facilities had been fixed. The company also said the report from the union was part of an effort to organize workers at the company. “While we strive for perfection in all we do, F.F.G. acknowledges that at times we fall short of that goal,” he said in an email. “However, once issues are identified, a root cause analysis is conducted and actions taken based on that analysis. If repeat problems occur, we keep looking for solutions until we find the effective one.” Dr. Hall said workers were encouraged to take problems to the attention of their managers. But workers at the Los Angeles facility said in interviews that managers rarely listened to their complaints. They said that dishwashing machines regularly broke down, leaving workers to wash plates and other dishes by hand, often without detergent; that managers had ordered workers to change the dates indicating when food was prepared; and that they had seen insects and rodents in areas where food was being prepared. Flying Food disputes these accusations. In a statement, the company said it had received no complaints from employees about problems with food safety or unsanitary conditions at its Los Angeles facilities. It said an outside auditor hired by several airlines, including Air France, had recently inspected the facilities and given them high marks for quality and food safety. “We believe this is simply another example of labor union Unite Here making false allegations in a desperate attempt to disrupt our business and organize our employees through misinformation and falsehoods,” the company said in a statement. The union denies that its scrutiny of Flying Food is an attempt to disrupt its business. The airline industry and catering companies say the problems found in F.D.A. reports are minuscule given the millions of meals produced for airline passengers each day. They also say there have been no reported instances of widespread food-borne illness related to airline meals. Jean Dible, an airline food safety expert in Georgia, said that was because there was a lack of data on the number of people who got sick from eating airplane food. “No one keeps track of this so it’s hard to know how big the problem is,” Ms. Dible said. Flying Food is not the only airline catering company where the F.D.A. has found potential food safety problems. The agency’s records show that last year, inspections of facilities operated by LSG Sky Chefs, a catering company owned by the German airline Lufthansa, turned up potential “food-borne biological hazards.” Four of the inspections occurred at facilities serving Kennedy International Airport in New York. The company also received a warning letter from the F.D.A. for mislabeling meals because it failed to properly list potential allergens like milk and nuts. David Margulies, a spokesman for the company, said LSG Sky Chefs was holding meetings with the F.D.A. to “outline an agreed-upon industry labeling standard and implementation process.” “The quality and safety of the food we produce are among our company’s highest priorities,” Mr. Margulies said in an email. “LSG Sky Chefs works diligently to meet or exceed all local, state and federal agency regulations.”

Food Safety
Airlines,airplanes
Los Angeles International Airport
Flying Food Group
Unite Here
Los Angeles
Airport
Labor Unions


Billy’s Antiques Is Losing Its Tent, Vestige of an Older Bowery

Abstract: Billy Leroy stood outside his antique shop on East Houston Street on Saturday afternoon wearing a brown overcoat with a fur collar and holding a long brass hunting horn. Raising it to his lips, Mr. Leroy used the horn as a speaking tube, announcing, “Billy’s Antiques is having a sale.” As passers-by gazed at him, Mr. Leroy, 52, took a puff on a cigar and told them, “Welcome to the old Bowery,” before turning to enter the shop, housed beneath a faded and tattered canvas tent between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street. Since 1986, the tent has sheltered furniture, paintings, sculptures and assorted other flotsam, including signed baseball cards, a collection of belt buckles and a stuffed mountain lion that looks ready to spring. For the last 10 years, the business has been owned and run by Mr. Leroy, a tall, Barnumesque figure who grew up in Paris and Manhattan with a taste for oddities and antiques. Along with that came an appreciation for the sort of grit and gaudy charm that used to define the Bowery before going the way of the flophouse and the cheap saloon. Soon, Mr. Leroy said, he will hang a banner at the store announcing that the tent is coming down. He said his landlord planned to start construction on a two-story brick building there in late winter. Mr. Leroy said he would reopen the store, Billy’s Antiques and Props , in a part of the new building, with the trusty tent playing the part of symbolic burial shroud: wrapped up, stuffed in an Italian cherry-wood coffin and interred beneath the foundation of the new structure. But with the disappearance of the tent, Mr. Leroy and his employees said, another vestige of the neighborhood’s history will vanish. It is a prospect that some of them anticipate with gloom. “It’ll be part of that final transition to a landscape of Pottery Barns and Starbucks,” said Jesse Sommer, a member of Mr. Leroy’s staff. Mr. Leroy said he began hanging out in the store, first known as Lot 76, in the 1990s. In 1998, he said, he began working there as a manager for the original owner, Rob Fennick , and he took over the business in 2002. Running the shop has been something of a vocation, but it has also come with a number of burdens. On two occasions, he said, he was assaulted by would-be thieves and was left badly injured both times. The tent, patched in several places, has a tendency to leak and had to be reinforced with a vinyl pool lining. Last year, about 100 old subway signs left the shop in an unexpected manner, removed during a raid by police officers who said they had been stolen. Mr. Leroy was charged with theft, but eventually the charges were dismissed and most of the signs were returned to him. On Saturday, the contents of the tent included an eight-foot-tall, 19th-century French armoire; a framed poster of a movie from 1938; wooden sculptures from Java; an array of chandeliers suspended from aluminum pipes; a bamboo-and-brass hashish pipe from Sri Lanka; and a hand floating in a jar filled with a murky liquid. Mr. Leroy said the burial of the tent was prefigured in an independent film called “Dirty Old Town,” released last year, that used the antique shop as a setting and featured him playing the role of a beleaguered antiques dealer facing eviction by a landlord. His actual landlord, Tony Goldman, liked the film and supported it financially, Mr. Leroy said. Later this month, he said, Mr. Goldman and one of the film’s directors, Jenner Furst, will help him organize a weeklong wake for the tent that will include poetry readings and concerts. While he is waiting for the new building to be finished, Mr. Leroy said, he will appear in a pilot for the Travel Channel that features people who attend auctions around the world. As Mr. Leroy described those plans, a group of visitors entered the store, browsed and then gathered in a knot as they gazed at the hand in the jar. Mr. Leroy noticed their interest and informed them that the hand was fake. The visitors laughed. Mr. Leroy took a puff on his cigar. “We have real ones, too,” he said. “If you’re interested.”

Antiques
Bowery (NYC)
Leroy Billy
Billy's Antiques and Props (NYC)
New York City


Told to End Protests, Organizers in Hong Kong Vow to Expand Them

Abstract: HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday called for the pro-democracy demonstrators who have blocked major roads in the city to return home immediately, but protest leaders responded with defiance, threatening to expand the demonstrations and to occupy government buildings. In his first public remarks on the protests since the Hong Kong police used tear gas against demonstrators on Sunday, Leung Chun-ying, the Beijing-selected chief executive of the semiautonomous Chinese territory, called on one of the two main groups organizing the protests, Occupy Central With Love and Peace, to end the demonstrations. Image Protesters continued to mass near government headquarters in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Credit Anthony Kwan/Getty Images “Occupy Central founders had said repeatedly that if the movement is getting out of control, they would call for it to stop,” Mr. Leung said. “I’m now asking them to fulfill the promise they made to society and stop this campaign immediately.” He gave no sign that he was prepared to meet with protest organizers or compromise on their demands for open elections to choose his successor. The crowds outside the local government headquarters swelled even larger on Tuesday night as people of all ages came to join the demonstration before public holidays on Wednesday, China’s National Day, and Thursday, which is a local holiday. A government observation of National Day on Wednesday morning proceeded relatively smoothly, despite chants by protesters outside calling for Mr. Leung’s resignation. Image Some protesters slept on the street overnight. Credit Carlos Barria/Reuters On Tuesday, after Mr. Leung had called for the demonstrations to end, Alex Chow, secretary general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, said at the main protest encampment downtown that “residents may occupy various government departments” unless the government responds to their demands by Thursday. The protests, which started on Friday when students took to the streets , expanded considerably when Occupy Central announced early Sunday that it was joining the demonstrations earlier than it had previously signaled. The protesters want Beijing and the Hong Kong government to scrap a decision by China to limit who can run in the 2017 election to choose the next chief executive. China’s plan for that election would let the public vote, but the candidates would be vetted by a committee friendly to Beijing. Image Organizers have threatened to occupy government buildings if officials do not respond to their demands by Thursday. Credit Paula Bronstein/Getty Images The demonstrators have also demanded that Mr. Leung resign. He said Tuesday that until a new procedure was approved, any successor would be chosen by a committee dominated by Beijing’s allies, which is the current method. Mr. Leung acknowledged Tuesday that the protests were likely to continue, and he urged the demonstrators to consider the damage he said they could do to the city. “It will last for a relatively long time,” Mr. Leung said. “As a result, its impact on people’s lives and their personal safety in emergencies, as well as Hong Kong’s economic development and the cost to Hong Kong’s international image, will grow bigger and bigger.” Areas of Skirmishes and Protests in Hong Kong The pro-democracy protesters have occupied parts of Hong Kong for more than three weeks. He complained that the protesters were delaying ambulances, fire engines and other emergency vehicles that needed to reach residents. Later Tuesday, a deputy chief with the Fire Department, Leung Wai-hung, said that the city’s ambulances normally reached more than 90 percent of emergency callers within certain time targets, but that this had fallen to 60 or 70 percent in the downtown area during the first two days of the protests. The police, whose use of tear gas on Sunday seemed only to motivate more people to join the protests, gave no indication Tuesday that they were preparing to disperse the demonstrators. Hui Chun-tak, the chief spokesman for the police, acknowledged that “the majority of protesters have expressed their views in a legal way” and praised organizers for being willing to discuss opening some lanes of the blocked roads in the city center for use by emergency vehicles. Hong Kong Protesters Defy Demands to Leave 9 Photos View Slide Show › Image Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images Asked whether the police had enough personnel to clear the streets if ordered to do so, Mr. Hui responded, “I assure you, the police have enough manpower to deal with every single incident.” Hong Kong officials have consistently said that they do not need to seek Beijing’s help to deal with the protesters — a harrowing possibility for Hong Kong, where the memory of China’s brutal suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989 is vivid. Long lines formed at supermarkets Tuesday as shoppers stocked up on rice and other essentials — a sign that many residents were concerned about the possibility of a prolonged confrontation. Wednesday is a public holiday marking the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and crowds could swell as many people use the holiday to come out and show their support. Michael DeGolyer, a longtime political analyst at Hong Kong Baptist University, said that the university professors and politicians who proposed Occupy Central a year and a half ago as a civil disobedience campaign appeared to have less influence with many of the demonstrators than the student leaders did. Polls conducted by academic institutions over the past year have indicated that the most disaffected and potentially volatile sector of Hong Kong society is not the students, the middle-aged or even the elderly activists who have sustained the democracy movement here for decades. Instead, the most strident calls for greater democracy — and often for greater economic populism, as well — have come from people in their 20s and early 30s who have struggled to find well-paying jobs as the local manufacturing sector has withered away, and as banks and other service industries have increasingly hired mainland Chinese instead of local college graduates. An essay published on Tuesday by an influential Communist Party ideologue, Li Shenming, underscored the party’s deep aversion to political liberalization of the kind sought by Hong Kong’s democracy advocates. The essay in the party’s main newspaper, People’s Daily, defended China’s legislature, which is controlled by the party. Mr. Li wrote that to have a legislative body with multiple parties would invite chaos. “In current-day China, competitive elections with ‘one man, one vote’ would be sure to quickly lead to a state of turmoil, chaos, even civil war,” he wrote.

Hong Kong
Leung Chun-ying
C.Y. Leung
Civil Unrest
Occupy Central,Umbrella Movement
Election
National People's Congress China
China


Ex-Judge’s Script Recalls Era When Heroin Came to Harlem

Abstract: Maybe it’s habit, but when Edwin Torres, the judge and novelist, entered La Fonda Boricua in East Harlem for lunch, he took a corner table, back to the wall, with a great view of any and all who entered. He’s retired now, though maybe some of the bad guys he dispatched to prison with eloquent oratorical flourishes may not be. “By the way, all those guys I gave life sentences to are hitting the streets,” he said. “I hope they don’t come looking for me. The problem is I don’t remember them. There’s too many.” In his 30 years on the bench, Justice Torres presided over some high-profile Criminal Court and State Supreme Court cases, gaining a reputation as a no-nonsense jurist with a sharp mind and wit to match. He declared to a convicted murderer during sentencing, “Your parole officer has not yet been born.” So knuckleheads in all five boroughs probably cheered in January when Justice Torres reached the mandatory retirement age of 77 and stepped down. But he’s still tangling with dope slingers, mobsters and junkies — all of whom figure in his screenplay “Pleasant Avenue,” which chronicles the era when the mob introduced heroin to his neighborhood and eventually the country. He has staged a couple of readings of the script, including one with his friend, the actor Tony Lo Bianco, in the part of Fat Tony Salerno, the mob boss who presided over East Harlem’s numbers racket. A lot of actors who played wiseguys on screens silver or small have seen the script and told him they love it, he said. Then they take what can only be seen as some sort of actor’s omerta that goes something like this: “I sent him the script. He liked it. And then I never heard from him.” None of this seems to have dimmed Justice Torres’s enthusiasm. He knows this is how the business works, since three of his novels — “Q & A,” “Carlito’s Way,” and “After Hours” — became films (the latter two were combined into “Carlito’s Way,” the movie.) Al Pacino reportedly patterned Carlito Brigante’s speech after Justice Torres’s own soulful Nuyorican swagger. Lately, Justice Torres was named to the New York State Athletic Commission, helping to enforce safety standards in boxing, a sport he enjoys. And he has also tinkered with his script. The idea to write “Pleasant Avenue” came a few years ago during a conversation he had with a director, who had heard him talk about East Harlem over the decades. He had grown up in the area, living through some hard times. Later, as a judge, he sent some of the neighborhood guys away to do hard time. In between, he was a lawyer who knew how to have a good time. He remembers his childhood as one where people grew up knowing — and respecting, for better or worse — the dividing lines that kept the Italians, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans in their own little patches of East Harlem. These chunks of the city were fiercely defended. “In 1948, I was here in the midst of this, a cauldron of gangs,” he said. “Then the ethnic lines started to be crossed with the introduction of heroin. All of a sudden, mothers of some of my friends wanted to know why their sons were stealing clothes, appliances, anything. They didn’t know what heroin was. Even hip guys like me had never seen a street junkie.” But by the time he returned from serving in the military in the early 1950s, he and everybody else in East Harlem knew. His screenplay covers this turbulent era, framed in the story of two brothers, Mario and Nino LoPresti, the sons of a man who stood up to the mob and paid for it. One is a hero police officer; the other is a pug who gets lost in dope. They move through a world rendered in sharp detail, where people show up at house parties in suits and ties to dance to mambo, living rooms have plaster saints and sofas have plastic covers. The dialogue — especially the lines he wrote for the leading men — snap with the kind of gleeful profanity familiar to anyone who ever grew up in a neighborhood where different nationalities were bumping up against each other. Slurs are hurled fast and often, and one seven-letter curse is so common that it is becomes nothing more than a word that heralds the imminent arrival of a noun. Justice Torres’s ear for that banter is a gift he honed on the bench and on the streets. “Dialogue is my strong suit,” he said. “I’m a listener. I am a chronicler of El Barrio. I remember walking the streets listening to the different guys in the park.” Memories might be all that are left of the old neighborhood. On Monday afternoon he went over to Pleasant Avenue, which actually looked like it could live up to its name. “All this misery came out of here once,” he said. “Pleasant Avenue, they called it. It’s a nice name. It’s only six blocks.” From the corner of 115th Street, just down the block from where Fat Tony had his social club, Justice Torres spotted an old-timer. “They called him the Oarsman,” he said. “Before he got sent away, he used to mix up the heroin in a pot with a big paddle.” The Oarsman looked old and tired as he half-shuffled across the street, followed by a waddling pit bull. “These are the last guys around here,” Justice Torres said. “You can’t make this stuff up. You just can’t.” That’s why more than a few people have suggested he write a memoir, but he isn’t exactly thrilled by the idea. Apparently, some of his friends share that sentiment. “The best stuff, I can’t talk about,” he said. “I have to protect the guilty. Many of the guys I grew up with are still extant, and I don’t want to embarrass anybody. Maybe when they’re dead. And I swear, I’ll live to be an old man. My mother’s 96. So I’ll write it when they’re all gone. They know who they are.”

Books and Literature
Torres Edwin
Carlito's Way (Movie)
Harlem (NYC)
Drug Abuse and Traffic
Motion Pictures


A Finicky Thief of the Finest Silver Is Arrested Again

Abstract: ATLANTA — Even before someone carefully removed a windowpane from a secluded Buckhead home here one rainy June night and slipped away with a 1734 silver mug that had belonged to George II, it was clear to detectives that a meticulous thief with a singular obsession was stealing the great silver pieces of the Old South. For months, exquisite sterling silver collections had been disappearing, taken in the dead of night from historic homes in Charleston, S.C., and the wealthy enclaves of Belle Meade, Tenn. Nothing else was touched. The police in different states did not at first connect the thefts, some of which initially went unnoticed even by the owners. But as the burglaries piled up, a retired New Jersey detective watching reports on the Internet recognized a familiar pattern. He called an Atlanta detective and said, “Let me explain how your burglaries occurred.” Early Monday, outside an apartment building in the tiny northern Florida town of Hilliard, the police arrested Blane Nordahl, 51, the man they believe is connected not only to the recent Southern silver burglaries but also to 30 years’ worth of antique silver thefts in several states. He was charged with burglaries in Atlanta and will most likely face charges in other states. “I’m just relieved it’s over,” said Lonnie Mason, the retired New Jersey detective who made a career out of chasing — and twice capturing — Mr. Nordahl, whose skill as a thief is so notorious it has earned him his own Wikipedia page and the nickname “burglar to the stars.” In one of the biggest recent hauls in which Mr. Nordahl is a suspect, a thief disabled the alarm at the Cooleemee Plantation House in North Carolina and walked away with silver spoons forged by Paul Revere and a coffee and tea set that a slave had once buried for safekeeping when Union soldiers moved through during the Civil War. Image Blane Nordahl after his arrest in Hilliard, Fla., Monday morning. He was charged with burglaries in Atlanta. Credit Courtesy of Lonnie Mason Detectives who chased Mr. Nordahl for decades say he is responsible for crimes that have had him in and out of prison since the 1980s. He might ultimately be responsible, they say, for more than 500 burglaries that netted him several million dollars’ worth of some of the best domestic silver pieces in the country. They include 120 pairs of salt and pepper shakers taken from Ivana Trump’s Greenwich, Conn., home in 1996 and the priceless collection of period silver in the Edgewater mansion in the Hudson Valley where Richard Hampton Jenrette, a Wall Street financier and restorer of historic homes, was robbed in 2002. Mr. Nordahl’s first burglary arrest was in New Jersey in 1983. He has had dozens since. “He doesn’t abuse drugs and he doesn’t abuse alcohol,” said Mr. Mason, in an interview Monday from his home near the Jersey Shore. “This is his high. This and trying to beat the police.” One of a string of girlfriends whom the police persuaded to help them pursue Mr. Nordahl told Mr. Mason that “he would be 80 years old and still running down the street with his cane and a piece of silver in his hand. He is just fascinated with this stuff.” Mr. Nordahl is barely 5 foot 4 with a muscular build and the ability to squeeze into homes through small spaces. Over the years he developed a routine that he rarely varied, the police say, tracking his targets through architectural magazines, in libraries and by scouting rich neighborhoods. He learned to gently pry the putty from windows and disable alarms, the police say, often stacking molding from a door neatly nearby or replacing the glass so victims would sometimes not know they were burglarized until a holiday rolled around and it was time to pull out the good silver. Mr. Nordahl, whose father, David, is a noted painter, has a deep knowledge of the artistic and cultural value of silver, the police said. In previous cases, he was specific about his haul, leaving behind other valuables and knives with hollow silver handles or trays made of silver plate. Image Lonnie Mason, a retired New Jersey detective, suspected that a series of thefts in the South might be the work of an old nemesis. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times Those signatures are what made Mr. Mason think that the nation’s most notorious silver thief had gotten back into the game after being released on parole in 2010. Mr. Nordahl, who had been in prison six years, had headed to Florida, where he had a sister. So Mr. Mason would occasionally search for reports of silver thefts in Florida. When he found nothing, he expanded his search to other states in the South and in February found a rash of silver thefts in the Atlanta area and other states. He set to work. By the end of March, Mr. Mason had become the adviser to a team of 24 members of law enforcement agencies in six Southern states who worked on the case through the summer. When they became frustrated with the careful, tedious police work it took to track Mr. Nordahl and match his movements with the locations of burglaries, he told them it was a marathon, not a sprint. “Once you cross that finish line, it’s going to be a feeling I can’t describe,” he told them. And it was. Officers who helped arrest Mr. Nordahl on Monday called the detective throughout the day. Some wanted tips on how to interrogate him so they could stay a step ahead of someone experienced with prosecution. In 1998, Mr. Nordahl, in return for a lighter sentence, made a deal with federal prosecutors that involved detailing how he had burglarized more than 100 homes. Whether any of the victims will ever see their precious silver again is on the minds of many, Mr. Mason said. Image Court documents and 1995 police photographs of Mr. Nordahl. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times Probably not. In the past, he said, Mr. Nordahl used an extensive fencing network and shipped his goods off almost immediately. The police suspect that much that he may have stolen has disappeared into the secondary market for antique silver either in the United States or Europe, where a set of spoons made by Paul Revere would not raise the same suspicions as well-known paintings. Although several pieces of evidence were seized in connection with the arrest, it was not clear whether any of them are some of the most valuable items. Mr. Mason said detectives did not want to raise the hopes of victims, of whom there are hundreds. One of them is Beverly DuBose III, an Atlanta collector known as Bo, who with his father amassed what is considered the largest collection of Civil War artifacts in the country. His own security cameras, and even the ones down the street that protect the home of the filmmaker Tyler Perry, were not able to capture an image of the thief, but detectives told him they believe Mr. Nordahl crept in while Mr. DuBose and his wife were sleeping that stormy night in June and stole more than $77,000 worth of silver, including the mug connected to George II. Mr. DuBose now has a better security system, and he turns on the motion detector when he goes to bed. But he does not have much hope he will get his goods back, and knowing he may have been robbed by one of the best in the business is little comfort. “To be here asleep and have it happen, you realize how good he really is,” he said. “But it’s a small consolation.”

Blane David Nordahl
Lonnie Mason
Robbery
Silver
Antique
Southern US
New Jersey


Iraq: Dozens of People Killed in Wave of Bombings

Abstract: A wave of car bombings rocked central and northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people, the police and officials said, and extending the deadliest eruption of violence to hit the country in years. In Diyala Province, three parked car bombs exploded around a market in the town of Jidaidat al-Shatt. The blasts killed 15 people and wounded 46. Another car bomb went off near a market in the northern Baghdad suburb of Taji, killing seven shoppers and wounding 25. In the northern city of Tuz Khurmato, a car bomb killed three people and wounded 22. In the evening, more car bombings exploded in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 24 people and wounding 114, mostly at security checkpoints, said the Nineveh provincial governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi. A suicide car bomber also struck a security checkpoint near Madaen, about 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, killing four soldiers and wounding 10. Four people were killed when a bomb exploded in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad late Monday.

Terrorism
Murders
Baghdad
Diyala Province
Explosion
Iraq
Bombs


Alonso Wins; Schumacher Ends Career

Abstract: SÃO PAULO, Brazil, Oct. 22 (AP) — Fernando Alonso became a Formula One champion again on a day when Michael Schumacher retired to end one of the great careers in sports. Alonso won his second consecutive title with a runner-up finish to Felipe Massa at the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday. He entered the race needing to finish eighth or better to win the championship. Last year, the 25-year-old Alonso became Formula One’s youngest champion. “The important thing today was to become champion again for the second time and we did it,” Alonso said. “Yes, it has been a fantastic weekend.” Schumacher, a seven-time Formula One champ, needed to win his farewell race to keep alive his remote chance of another title. But he punctured a tire less than 10 laps into the race, dropped out of contention early and finished fourth. “Today my racing career comes to an end,” Schumacher said. “Obviously, it is a special moment for me, and I am proud to have lived my career with some fantastic people, namely everyone who is part of the Ferrari family.” Schumacher, 37, retires after 16 years in Formula One with most of the driver records, including 91 victories and 68 pole positions.

Formula One
Alonso Fernando
Schumacher Michael


Jack T. Kirby, Southern Historian, Dies at 70

Abstract: Jack Temple Kirby, a historian who decried stereotypes of the American South and traced the ways its people and landscapes have shaped one another, died Aug. 6 in St. Augustine, Fla. He was 70. The cause was heart failure, said Constance Pierce, his companion. Dr. Kirby, whose roots in the South reach back to the 1600s, was a professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, from 1965 until 2002, when he retired and moved to St. Augustine. Dr. Pierce was a professor of English at Miami University. In 2007, Dr. Kirby was one of two recipients of the Bancroft Prize, which is awarded annually by Columbia University to the authors of books “of exceptional merit” in American history, biography and diplomacy. The Bancroft jurors cited Dr. Kirby’s 2006 book, “Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South” (North Carolina University Press), a passionate recounting of the history of human settlement. It discusses how the land sustained and shaped people’s lives but also how humans damaged the land. Calling the book “elegantly conceived and beautifully written,” the jurors said that “although ‘Mockingbird Song’ is set in the South, it is about more than the South.” “Kirby reflects profoundly on the relationships of Americans — and of humankind — to the natural world,” the jurors said. Dr. Kirby, who in recent years was president of the Southern Historical Association, edited or wrote seven books. Before “Mockingbird Song,” he was best known for “Media-Made Dixie” (Louisiana State University Press, 1978), which traced the South’s role in the nation’s imagination. In movies, for example, he said, the South has been trapped by clichés of racists, graceful landed gentry, poverty, homespun rural values, stock-car racers and moonshiners. “We need some new tropes,” Dr. Kirby told The New York Times in 1997. “I think what we’re doing is making Northern white folks feel good about themselves by telling the same story over and over again about the South.” Born in Portsmouth, Va., on Aug. 22, 1938, Jack Temple Kirby was one of three children of Clifford and Theodosia Palmer Kirby. His father was a machinist on the docks in Norfolk, Va. Besides Dr. Pierce, his companion of 17 years, Dr. Kirby is survived by a son, Matthew, of Manhattan; a daughter, Valerie Kirby of Fort Wayne, Ind.; two sisters, Susan Kirby of Portsmouth, Va., and Betsy Andrews of Midlothian, Va., and two grandchildren. His marriage to the former Ann Bulleit ended in divorce. Dr. Kirby received his bachelor’s degree in history from Old Dominion University, then his master’s degree and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, all in history. He was steeped in Southern history, Dr. Pierce said. One of his distant great-grandfathers (she could not say how many greats) was Thomas Kirby, a mill mechanic who arrived from England in 1634 and prospered as a farmer in Virginia. Other distant relatives became militia captains in the Revolutionary War; still others fought in the War of 1812 and in the Civil War, for the Confederacy.

Kirby Jack Temple
History
Southern States (US)
Deaths (Obituaries)
Writing and Writers


To Many in China, Bai Ling’s Role in Documentary Is a Step Too Far

Abstract: BEIJING — Nearly 20 years after government officials barred Bai Ling from returning to China, the Chinese-born Hollywood actress has once again found herself at the tense intersection of entertainment and nationalism. A new television documentary series commemorating the Long March , a pivotal event in Communist Party history, has instead provoked public outrage for featuring Ms. Bai, who is seen by some as anti-China, in one episode. After the uproar last week, CCTV, the state broadcaster that produced the series, removed the offending episode from its websites and reposted a new version without the scenes featuring Ms. Bai. “I am deeply sorry for all those things in my past that friends on the internet have brought up,” Ms. Bai, 50, wrote in a lengthy open letter posted last week on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. “From now on I want all of you to see a brand new Bai Ling, a Bai Ling who is full of positive energy, a Chinese Bai Ling.” “I will bring the wonderful and beautiful culture of our motherland to Hollywood and to the whole world!” she added. Ms. Bai is the latest in a growing list of entertainers who have been pilloried in China for holding “incorrect” political views. Many, like Ms. Bai, have issued public apologies , fearing the consequences of losing access to one of the world’s biggest markets. This time around, some online commenters cited Ms. Bai’s role in the 1997 movie “ Red Corner ,” in which she played a Chinese defense attorney who helps an American framed for murder (played by Richard Gere) navigate China’s corrupt legal system. (Ms. Bai has also spoken out about sexual abuse she said she endured as an entertainer for the People’s Liberation Army in Tibet.) Soon after “Red Corner” was released, it was banned in China, and Ms. Bai was prohibited from returning to see her family. “I was in tears,” Ms. Bai told Paper Magazine in 2004 regarding the ban. “I couldn’t sleep. I requested a meeting with the government, and I wrote an apology letter. I solved my problems.” Years later, Ms. Bai is apologizing again. “I love China, and I love Chinese culture,” she said last week in her letter, which was written in Chinese. “I always say that every bit of goodness and wisdom in my body comes from Chinese culture and what growing up in the land has given me.” Ms. Bai’s letter came just days after CCTV debuted the eight-part series, called “Long March Shakes the World.” The documentary is one of many programs that have been released this year to commemorate what China considers the 80th anniversary of the end of the Long March, the fabled trek across China by embattled Chinese Communists as they fled Chiang Kai-shek’s advancing Nationalist troops. Ms. Bai, also known for her work in films like “ The Crow ” (1994) and “ Nixon ” (1995), was originally featured in the sixth episode of the series. During the course of filming, Ms. Bai is said to have spent about a month retracing the route of the Long March — a journey that she closely documented on her social media accounts. In photos posted online, she is seen wearing a light-blue Red Army uniform and braids. Videos on her social media accounts show her singing with schoolchildren in Sichuan Province and making traditional sticky rice in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. In one photo, she is dressed in a red-and-white sleeveless jumpsuit, leaning seductively in the doorway of Mao Zedong’s former residence in Yan’an. “You are not suited to perform in the Long March,” one person wrote on Weibo. “Even though you are not at fault given freedom of speech, good actors have to take positions.” A post by another user said, “Don’t come to my country, you disgusting person. Get out!” The sentiment was echoed by many others. A commentary published last week in Global Times, a nationalist-leaning newspaper, cited Ms. Bai’s “many vulgar nude photographs” and her arrest in 2008 for shoplifting two magazines and a pack of batteries at Los Angeles International Airport as additional reasons Chinese have a “very negative impression” of her. “The Long March is sacred in everyone’s hearts,” said the commentary, which was written under a pen name usually used by Hu Xijin, the newspaper’s chief editor. “Everyone thinks that to have Bai Ling put on a female Red Army outfit to play a small role is to blaspheme this great historical event.” The commentary sought to tamp down the public uproar, calling CCTV’s decision to cast Ms. Bai a “slip-up.” Still, it continued, the overall message was clear: “This incident is yet another warning that mainland Chinese audiences are gradually forming specific political requirements, particularly in regards to ‘problematic’ entertainers. The people now have higher standards for moral behavior and political positions.”

China
Bai Ling
Communist Party of China
Documentaries
People's Liberation Army


Doctor-Patient Deceit (1 Letter)

Abstract: To the Editor: Re “ The Lies We Tell in the Exam Room ” (Hard Cases, April 23): As managed care has evolved, the wall between financial and clinical operations has become inadequate. Patients will be better protected if there were greater symmetry between doctors and managed care organizations. It would lessen the incentive for doctors to “lie,” because M.C.O.’s would have an incentive to act with caution, knowing their decisions had consequences for their companies. Barry B. Perlman, M.D. Yonkers


Drones Offer Journalists a Wider View

Abstract: The best way to film the destruction wrought by Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban, the Philippines, said Lewis Whyld, a British photographer, was from the air. But Mr. Whyld did not want to beg for a ride on a military helicopter, taking the space of much-needed aid. So he launched a drone into the skies above the city. In addition to shots that showed the scale of the damage, broadcast by CNN recently, his drone discovered two bodies that were later recovered by the authorities, he said in an interview. “The newspaper was for still images,” said Mr. Whyld, who builds his own drones, “but the Internet is for this.” Mr. Whyld, and CNN, are not alone in exploring the potential of drones. The Associated Press and News Corporation have used them to show the scale of large disasters. News Corporation has also used them to shoot sports in Australia. Sophisticated nature documentaries use them to get intimate shots of wildlife. Paparazzi use them to chase celebrities in Europe, and reports suggest they have been used to pursue celebrities in the United States, too. Drones, or “unmanned aerial systems,” as many of their handlers prefer to call them, are meant to fly automatically, without skilled pilots. They were largely developed for, and remain associated with, the military. But they are increasingly being used for civilian purposes, including journalism. The machines have proved most valuable in providing film footage or photography of things that are difficult to reach, like wildlife or geographic formations. In the future, however, their capabilities may be expanded to include sensors that can help with environmental coverage, for instance, by providing readings on air quality. “What drones give you is anywhere, anytime access to the sky,” said Chris Anderson, a former editor of Wired magazine who runs a drone company. “That perspective is something a journalist just wouldn’t have unless he waited for officials, or hired a plane.” Image The BBC used a drone to gather information for a report on a high-speed train planned to travel from London to Manchester. Credit BBC News Early this fall the BBC launched an 18-inch, six-rotored unmanned machine into the sky to report on a high-speed train being planned to travel from London to Manchester. The train is controversial because it would cut through and, some argue, despoil some of the most pristine rural land in England. “The idea was we needed to get above to give our viewers the full scope of the problem,” said Tom Hannen, who operates the program. Mr. Whyld is exploring long-range drones, which can fly 10 or 20 miles from their handler, and looking into new sensors like heat-seeking cameras. “I’m also thinking about detection devices for chemical weapons, so you could fly into Syria,” he said. “You can do journalism that wasn’t previously possible.” Regulations, however, have taken a different flight path. In Britain, extensive testing and several thousand dollars are required for permission to fly, Mr. Whyld said. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration allows only drone manufacturers and public entities like law enforcement agencies to test the aircraft. The agency will begin wider testing, which should lead to rules for other purposes, such as journalism. Journalism programs, including those at the University of Missouri and the University of Nebraska, and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, have started drone journalism courses. Columbia does not teach hands-on skills, but students at Missouri have used drones over the Missouri River for a report about hydraulic fracturing and over the prairie for a story about controlled burns. But in August, the F.A.A. ordered journalism schools to stop flights unless they obtained permission from the agency. Many drone enthusiasts remain optimistic that restrictions will be loosened because the Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 requires that the F.A.A. safely integrate unmanned aerial vehicles into United States airspace by 2015. (The agency recently released a map that indicated that journalism could be among interesting potential uses for drones.) “It is definitely in the early days,” said Fergus Pitt, with the Tow Center, “but there is so much potential when the regulations come off.” Earthflight, a 2011 BBC documentary about birds, offers one vivid example of the technology. A drone with especially small and quiet rotors took astonishing shots of a flock of two million flamingos. Whereas a helicopter would have spooked the skittish birds, the narrator explains, “the drone hardly ruffles a feather as it captures a view of the greatest gathering of flamingos seen for 20 years.” Image Owain Rich, a pilot for the BBC, prepared to launch the smallest of the news organization’s three drone aircraft. Credit Bbc News Using drones around people is more problematic. The aircraft are often heavy, powerful machines. In recent episodes they crashed into skyscrapers in Midtown Manhattan and fell to a sidewalk, and spun out of control and into the crowd at a bull-running event in Virginia. Another concern is that drones, which can sneak into situations not accessible to a regular photographer, will be used to invade privacy, particularly of famous people. In August, a drone watched the private wedding in Switzerland of the singer Tina Turner. The same month, a photographer on Coney Island launched a drone to capture footage of the singer Beyoncé on a roller coaster, according to Carlo Allegri, a freelance photographer on assignment for Reuters who took a picture of the aircraft. The drone was two or three feet across, and flew autonomously, perhaps by GPS, for about 10 minutes before it returned to its operator, Mr. Allegri said. “It was mesmerizing,” he said. But Nabiha Syed, a First Amendment lawyer in private practice who also works under contract for The New York Times, said it was not likely that drones start an era when cameras will hover outside Alec Baldwin’s window unmolested. “The idea of privacy is not a new one,” she said. “We have grappled with new technologies, like cellphones with cameras, before. We have a thicket of privacy law already and don’t need new laws at this stage.” Mr. Anderson said that whether the F.A.A. has privacy concerns or otherwise, the likelihood is that drones will soon become a tool of journalism, for good or ill. The technology is getting cheaper and better, he said. Soon it will be possible to open an application on an iPhone or iPad, click a map coordinate and have a drone fly to that point with little or no technical skill, he said. “This is very much like the personal computer. It’s going from industrial machines to personal ones.”


Ohio State Tops Michigan but Loses J. T. Barrett for the Season

Abstract: COLUMBUS, Ohio — J. T. Barrett lay flat on his back, looking up at the sky, his arms spread wide, and Ohio Stadium watched in silence as Ohio State trainers attended to his right leg. In the fourth quarter, against the team’s rival Michigan, Barrett’s leg had been caught beneath a pile of maize and blue. More people gathered around. Michigan quarterback Devin Gardner came over to check on him. An air cast was placed on Barrett’s leg, and he was carted off the field. Later, he was found to have an ankle fracture and was ruled out for the rest of the season. Barrett, a redshirt freshman, had emerged as a Heisman Trophy contender. He had been the engineer of Coach Urban Meyer’s spread offense. Earlier in Saturday’s game, he had broken the Big Ten record, set by Drew Brees, for most total touchdowns in a season. No. 7 Ohio State held on to beat Michigan, 42-28, and became the first Big Ten team to win every one of its regular-season conference games for three consecutive years, a run that started with Meyer’s arrival. College Football Scenarios: Six Teams, Four Spots We cut through the rankings turmoil to tell you which teams have the inside track. But the Buckeyes’ more pressing issue was Barrett’s health and how that affected their chances to qualify for the College Football Playoff. They have lost two starting quarterbacks to injury: Braxton Miller, just before the season, and now Barrett. And they have only one more game, for the Big Ten championship next week, to prove they can still be contenders. “We got to go; we got to go,” Meyer said. “We’ve got a lot of confidence in the guy that’s going to be doing it. His name is Cardale Jones.” For Michigan, this was a gut-wrenching end to a disastrous season. As linebacker Jake Ryan put it, a new distraction seemed to pop up each week. There was a concussion scandal and a domestic violence case involving a star player. Dave Brandon, the athletic director, resigned under pressure from alumni, students and fans. With Saturday’s loss, Michigan will miss a bowl game for just the third time since 1975. And Michigan Coach Brady Hoke may follow Brandon out. Every morning on his way in to work, Hoke had walked past a bronze statue of one of his heroes, the former coach Bo Schembechler. Sometimes, lately, Hoke would think to himself, Bo, are we messing this up? When Hoke was hired in 2011, he said he would have walked to Ann Arbor; this was his dream job. He had coached under Lloyd Carr and considered Schembechler a friend. Those close to him say he is fiercely loyal. He is still a defensive line coach at heart. So through all the turmoil, he did not campaign for himself. Image J. T. Barrett left the game on a cart after he injured his leg in the fourth quarter. Credit Jamie Sabau/Getty Images At his weekly news conference Monday, Hoke declined to make one last case to keep his job. He preferred to keep those conversations private, at least for now. “We’ll have another press conference, I’ve got a feeling, sometime here,” he said. After Hoke left the lectern, Greg Mattison, his defensive coordinator and close friend, delivered an impassioned speech for more than four and a half minutes, arguing that Hoke should keep his job. He noted that every senior had graduated under Hoke. He suggested that four years was not enough time to build a program. “I’ve done this a long time,” Mattison said. “I’ve been with a lot of head coaches, seen a lot of them. You don’t know how lucky you are here.” Likewise, Hoke’s players came to his defense. And they played inspired football early on Saturday. Gardner led Michigan on two long touchdown drives in the first half, of 80 and 95 yards. Slowly, though, Barrett found his rhythm. Barrett was made the starter just before the season, after Miller sustained a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Miller had been considered a Heisman Trophy contender. But Barrett proved to be a better passer who was more dangerous in Meyer’s system. N.C.A.A. Fan Map: How the Country Roots for College Football We’ve published maps showing where fan support for one team begins and another ends for baseball and basketball. Now we’re pleased to offer another one: the United States according to college football fans. Just before halftime, Barrett wove his way for a 25-yard touchdown. Then he showed his touch on a 52-yard pass to set up another touchdown run. That gave Barrett 45 touchdowns this season, ahead of Brees’s 42. And Barrett led a meticulous touchdown drive to give Ohio State a 28-21 lead. The next time Barrett carried the ball, he faked a handoff and was swarmed by Michigan defenders. His right leg appeared to be caught at an awkward angle. An official offered to help him up, but he stayed down. Jones took over, but he was not necessarily needed. Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott broke one tackle and otherwise ran untouched for a 44-yard touchdown on a fourth-and-1. Joey Bosa, a defensive end, sacked Gardner and forced a fumble that was returned for a touchdown. Afterward, Meyer tried to minimize the potential effects of losing Barrett. Meyer indicated that the offense would not change drastically because Jones has a similar skill set. “I’ve said this many times: The quarterback is a product of the guys around him,” Meyer said. “And the guys around him are playing pretty good right now.”

College football
Urban Meyer
Brady Hoke
University of Michigan
Ohio State


Air India Has Trouble on the Books and in the Cabin

Abstract: MUMBAI — In what has been a bad year for airlines everywhere, Air India has suffered from a series of particularly painful — and at times embarrassing — misfortunes. The struggling government-owned carrier’s already uneven reputation has been further tarnished in recent months by rats on a plane, a strike by senior pilots and a midair fistfight between pilots and flight attendants. In September, a flight to Riyadh was grounded after a passenger saw sparks coming from an engine. The embarrassing chain of events and the airline’s dire financial situation — it is expected to lose more than $1 billion in the current business year, and the government tentatively pledged about $1.1 billion in bailout money to it recently — has prompted many to ask: Why is the Indian government still running an airline? The question is particularly relevant in a country that has more poor people than any other nation and where just a tiny percentage of the people fly. Frequent domestic and international fliers prefer airlines other than Air India, which has lost significant market share since the country liberalized commercial aviation in the 1990s. Rajeev Malik, an economist with Macquarie Securities, said Air India’s problems are becoming a metaphor for India’s incomplete economic reforms: policy makers have a long to-do list but they are handling the tasks inadequately or not at all. “There is little certainty over the final outcome,” he said. Many analysts say government ownership is a root cause of Air India’s most pressing problems. In 2007, for instance, the government forced the airline into a poorly conceived merger with Indian Airlines, which was also state-owned. Politicians have influenced the company’s dealings with labor unions, leaving the airline with a much bigger and better-paid staff of 31,000 than it can afford. Sanat Kaul, a former board member of Air India who also was a senior official in the aviation ministry, said policy makers had frequently overruled the airline’s management on major decisions and had been “erratic and irrational” in removing top executives. Since mid-2003, for instance, the airline has had four managing directors, the carrier’s highest-ranking manager. At well-run government-owned airlines like Singapore Airlines and Emirates Airlines, which is owned by the Dubai government, politicians hire experienced professionals and give them significant authority, analysts say. Employees, too, say Air India is rudderless. “We feel like an orphan. Every three years we get a new mother and a new father,” said Capt. Shailendra Singh, president of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association. He said he had repeatedly asked government officials and the newest managing director, Arvind Jadhav, “What is your plan?” So far, Captain Singh said, “They cannot come up with one.” A spokesman for the airline, Jitendra Bhargava, said the carrier had a three-year turnaround plan. Acknowledging that Air India’s losses were big, he attributed them to high oil prices, intense competition and a sharp drop in demand. He estimated that Indian carriers received only 13 cents of revenue per mile that each passenger was flown, compared with 40 cents in Western countries. “All airlines worldwide are in a problem. The Indian airlines are in more of a problem,” he said. Air India lost $1.1 billion on revenue of $3 billion in the most recent fiscal year at current exchange rates, or 37 percent of revenue. The two largest privately owned competitors also lost money: Kingfisher Airlines lost about $350 million on revenue of $1.1 billion, or about 30 percent; Jet Airways lost $209 million on revenue of $2.8 billion, or 7 percent. Mr. Bhargava said Air India’s performance could not be directly compared with those of other airlines because it did not outsource functions like ground handling and because policy makers required it to fly unprofitable routes to remote areas and to religious pilgrimage destinations. The government bailout proposal calls on Air India to match $1.1 billion in aid with a similar amount in cost reductions and increased revenue, said Praful Patel, the minister for civil aviation. Air India needs to fly more passengers, lease unused aircraft and defer the delivery of other planes, he said. A committee of senior ministers has to approve the plan. But Mr. Patel said the government was not interested in privatizing the airline. “Air India is under a lot of social responsibility,” said Mr. Patel, who has led the ministry since 2004. Without it, “a large part of India would not be well connected in case of an emergency.” Moreover, he said, Air India transported government employees. Air India was founded in 1932 as Tata Airlines by J. R. D. Tata, a member of the Indian business family, and Nevill Vincent, a former pilot with the Royal Air Force. The government took a minority stake in the airline after independence in 1947 and nationalized it fully in 1953, though Mr. Tata stayed on as chairman of the board. Several efforts to privatize the airline have faltered because of political opposition. In 2001, the government scrapped a plan to sell a stake in the airline after Singapore Airlines walked away from a proposed deal in which it and the Tata Group would have taken operational control of Air India. In the last 15 years, both the airline’s reputation and its market share have eroded. While it continued to fly years-old planes, and passengers complained that its staff treated them in the surly manner Indians have come to expect from government employees, more nimble rivals like Jet Airways and Kingfisher flew shiny new planes and built reputations for indulgent service. Air India has recently begun adding dozens of new planes to its fleet. The series of unfortunate events in the last two months has only heightened the perception that Air India is troubled. Late last month, a flight to Toronto was delayed 11 hours as employees hunted rats that had scurried onto the plane while it was being cleaned. The airline worried that the rats might chew through wiring. That same day, senior pilots began calling in sick to protest the airline’s plans to cut their pay as much as 50 percent. The incident disrupted dozens of flights for four days, ending only after senior policy makers promised that pay packages would not be reduced without negotiations with the senior, or executive, pilots, who are not represented by a union. Earlier this month, pilots and flight attendants brawled in front of passengers on a plane flying to India from the United Arab Emirates. One attendant said a pilot had molested her and shoved her. The pilots said that was not true. One of the pilots told a local reporter that the cockpit had been unmanned for 10 minutes during the fight, a claim that the airline has denied. The public travails of Air India have been “worse than the drama in a bad Bollywood movie,” said Mr. Malik, the economist, referring to India’s film industry. But, he added, “even the worst Bollywood movie has a happy ending.”