The Grass Is Fake, but the Splendor Real

Abstract: Last Wednesday, the day of the snowpocalypse — or was it the snowmageddon, or the snow-my-God or whatever else the weather-fatigued headline writers had resorted to — Central Park was awash in white. Prospect Park in Brooklyn was a freezing no man’s land. And Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx was almost invisible under all that the wind had delivered. But at the park on Mulberry Street, between Kenmare and Spring in NoLIta, summer was just unfolding. Warm, happy people were peeling down to their T-shirts and soaking in the sunshine, while others were spreading picnic blankets and gazing up through the lush canopy of foliage. Some flopped down on the hearty carpet of green, curled up against one another and, lulled by the gentle chirping of birds , settled in for a nap. It’s not truly a park, at least not in any sense that the parks department might recognize; it is the simulacrum of a park, an indoor copy that in weather like this becomes more real than the city’s broad but dormant expanses. The pseudopark, which occupies the Openhouse Gallery through the end of the month and which is open to the public every day from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., beckons visitors with a vibrant gardenlike environment and a warm, sunny glow (along with, at certain hours, food vendors like Luke’s Lobster and Mexicue ). It’s no great feat of agricultural engineering. The floor covering is artificial turf, not sod, despite the example that “ The New York Earth Room ,” just a few blocks away, has set for decades. The trees are plastic foliage stapled to wooden trunks. The sunlight emanates from light boxes designed to treat seasonal affective disorder . The birds chirp through a sound system. And beyond that? Park Here , as it’s called, is just the same white walls you see in any gallery, with exposed electric fixtures, hanging theatrical lights and a big industrial heating unit. It shouldn’t fool anyone. And yet it does: office workers looking for a break, couples looking for each other’s arms, the daily yoga class in the corner and, of course, the inevitable stroller brigade, all just relaxing and playing and letting down their guard in a way they would never do if the fake foliage was not there. Some arrive when the park opens and stay all day. “This used to be an art gallery,” one of the picnickers told his barefoot friend. “This is an art gallery,” she said authoritatively. “This is someone’s installation.” Not quite. Openhouse calls itself a gallery but functions mostly as an events space, a rentable temporary home for pop-up shops, parties, publicity events and the like. The so-called installation is the work not of a solitary artist exploring the tension between nature and artifice but of a series of corporate partnerships set in motion by the people who run the place. For Openhouse, then, Park Here is nothing revolutionary, just a clever way to keep the place’s name in circulation during a slow season. Fine. But for the people who amble in, flop down, spread out, lie on top of each other, flirt, relax, catch up or check out, it’s something more: an experiment in urban sociology. Strolling around the place and watching the strangers at play, Dalton Conley, a New York University sociologist who has written about growing up in the city, observed that it was a quintessential New York phenomenon. “One of the factors which, despite perceptions, makes it easy to parent here is that there are no backyards, so you’re not atomized,” Professor Conley said. “You just go to a park,” he said, and automatically find a bunch of other kids to play with. Parks have the same effect on adults, throwing them into close and easy proximity, and promoting unexpected social encounters. Similar results have been achieved in other unnatural settings, most recently when Pipilotti Rist took over MoMA’s second-floor atrium with an oversize video installation and an enormous round couch on which viewers could just lie back and take it — and each other — all in. But that was under the protective cover of high art. It was critically sanctioned. It was safe. Park Here, in contrast, is just some random storefront, and the people flopped about it don’t necessarily have anything more in common than a preference for being inside to being outside. (Or is it the other way around?) “As a permanent thing, people probably would say, ‘We need real grass,’ ” Professor Conley said. “But as a temporary thing, they accept the lack of verisimilitude. In fact, I bet some of it is ironic.” Maybe it’s more fun, that is, because it’s more fake. Or maybe, in a city so starved for nature that a stroll through a greenmarket can feel like a restorative encounter with the great outdoors, New Yorkers are simply willing to cling to whatever crude substitutes we can find. Maybe we are like those monkey babies in the psychology experiments who pathetically tried to hug a terrycloth doll. In the depths of a January snowstorm, even a terrycloth doll is better than nothing. And the results of this experiment suggest that the ability to respond to even such unconvincing stimuli is an adaptive trait for urban survival. New Yorkers like to think no one can put anything over on them. But the field data from Park Here shows we enjoy putting one over on ourselves. At some point, during a long and lazy afternoon — sometime after lunch but before my nap — I sneezed. “Gesundheit,” said one of the people lounging by the seesaw. “Allergies,” said her friend.

Art
Parks and Other Recreation Areas
Openhouse Gallery


With Mark Teixeira Out, Blue Jays End Yankees’ 6-Game Streak

Abstract: Mark Teixeira had hit three home runs in nine career at-bats against Toronto Blue Jays starter Marco Estrada. So with Estrada on the hill Wednesday, it seemed likely that Teixeira, who has three homers in 149 at-bats this season, would be in the Yankees’ lineup, feeling good about the prospect of ending a prolonged slump. But before the game, a recurring ailment that has been as distressing as Teixeira’s struggles with the bat “reared its ugly head again,” Manager Joe Girardi said, and for the second time in two weeks, Teixeira was benched because of neck spasms. Girardi said that he was not told about any problems after Tuesday’s game but that Teixeira, who is hitting only .195, told him Wednesday afternoon that his neck “kind of locked up.” “It definitely concerns me because we don’t want to be without him,” Girardi said. Without Teixeira, the Yankees fell to the Blue Jays, 8-4, at Yankee Stadium, ending a six-game winning streak. Ivan Nova took the loss as Russell Martin, a former Yankee, led the Blue Jays with two home runs. Nova was seconds from putting the cap on four scoreless innings to open the game, but Kevin Pillar barely beat out a throw at first base after Chase Headley made a diving snare on a ground ball along the third-base line. Image The Yankees’ Didi Gregorius, left, with pitcher Ivan Nova, who was charged with four runs and left the game in the seventh. Credit Julie Jacobson/Associated Press When the umpire Jim Joyce signaled safe, Headley snapped his head and cursed, having not gotten the third out of the inning. Pillar’s speed would haunt Headley and the Yankees. Devon Travis followed by hitting a slow grounder toward Headley, who cleanly fielded the ball but lost his grip trying to transfer it to his throwing hand. With two runners on, Ryan Goins laced a fastball into the right-center-field gap. Pillar scored easily, and as Travis rounded third, shortstop Didi Gregorius fired the relay throw home. It beat Travis, but catcher Brian McCann could not handle the throw, and Travis was safe. “I made a mistake there,” Nova said of Goins’s run-scoring double. “That ball went inside, and he took advantage of it.” Martin hit his first home run off Nova in the sixth, a solo shot. He added a two-run blast in the seventh off Chasen Shreve, who also gave up a two-run homer to Michael Saunders in the inning. Martin came close to a third home run, but Jacoby Ellsbury caught the fly ball against the center-field wall in the eighth. Nova, who moved into the rotation May 9, had his longest outing of the season, lasting six and two-third innings, but the Blue Jays scored four runs off him, the most he has allowed this season as a starter. “He pitched better than what his line was,” Girardi said. “I thought he threw a pretty good game.” The Yankees’ best chance to throw Estrada off balance came in the third when they loaded the bases with no outs. Ellsbury then lined out, and Brett Gardner drove in a run on a fielder’s choice to second. Carlos Beltran flied out as Estrada escaped relatively unscathed. In recent days, Teixeira had occasionally hit third in the order and could have been up against Estrada in Beltran’s place. “That was a chance to put up a crooked number, and we weren’t able to do it,” Girardi said. Teixeira, who had a magnetic resonance imaging scan during the day, did not speak to reporters after the game. “There’s a chance we won’t have him for a few days here,” Girardi said, adding that a trip to the disabled list for Teixeira was not a consideration. “It’s something I believe we can get through.” Dustin Ackley started at first base in place of Teixeira, going hitless in three at-bats. If Teixeira’s injury sidelines him for an extended period, the backup catcher Austin Romine and, if necessary, McCann or Ronald Torreyes could play first, Girardi suggested. Romine pinch-hit for Ackley in the ninth and hit a solo home run. While Teixeira may sit over the next few days, one sliver of positive news for the Yankees was the imminent return of Alex Rodriguez. Girardi said after the game that the plan was to activate Rodriguez and have him play against the Blue Jays on Thursday. Rodriguez has been on the disabled list since May 4 with a strained right hamstring and has been rehabbing with Class AA Trenton. He homered in the second inning of Wednesday’s game with Trenton. INSIDE PITCH X-rays on the Yankees’ top catching prospect, GARY SANCHEZ, revealed a nondisplaced fracture of his right thumb. Sanchez, who was with Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre after briefly being called up this month, will be re-evaluated and have new X-rays taken in two weeks.

Baseball
Mark Teixeira
Sports injury
Yankees
Blue Jays


Online-Only TV Shows Join Fight for Attention

Abstract: In the television pilot that Cheyenne Jackson taped recently, he played an aggressive young news anchor whose ascendancy threatened an older colleague. It was a fitting metaphor for the industry itself, because while Mr. Jackson had taped pilots for ABC, NBC and USA before, this was his first time doing one for a new challenger to those alphabet networks: Amazon.com. When Amazon sizes up the television marketplace, it sees opportunity. Internet-delivered TV, which until recently was unready for prime time, is the new front in the war for Americans’ attention spans. Netflix is following up on the $100 million drama “ House of Cards ” with four more series this year. Microsoft is producing programming for the Xbox video game console with the help of a former CBS president . Other companies, from AOL to Sony to Twitter, are likely to follow. The companies are, in effect, creating new networks for television through broadband pipes and also giving rise to new rivalries — among one another, as between Amazon and Netflix , and with the big but vulnerable broadcast networks as well. “These are the very first lab tests in a very grand experiment,” said Jeff Berman, the president of BermanBraun, a media company that makes programming for NBC, HGTV, AOL and YouTube, among others. As he suggested, the competition has only just begun. Amazon is making pilot episodes for at least six comedies and five children’s shows, with more to be announced soon. Sometime this spring it will put the episodes on its Amazon Prime Instant Video service and ask its customers which ones they like, then order full seasons of some of them. Image Kevin Spacey, left, and Michael Kelly in Netflix’s first series, “House of Cards,” which the company calls a “great success.” Credit Melinda Sue Gordon for Netflix Netflix has been ordering entire seasons of its shows without seeing pilots first. Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive, said last week that “House of Cards,” the political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, had been a “ great success ” for the company. Its next program, a horror series called “ Hemlock Grove ” from the film director Eli Roth, premieres in April. Microsoft has said comparatively little about its plans. But all three companies are commissioning TV shows because they have millions of subscribers on monthly or yearly subscription plans. Though the shows may be loss leaders, executives say that having exclusive content — something that cannot be seen anywhere else — increases the likelihood that existing subscribers will keep paying and that new ones will sign up. The proliferation of shows is generally seen as a good thing for viewers, who have more choices about what to watch and when, and for producers and actors, who have more places to be seen and heard. But the trend may inflame cable companies’ concerns about cord-cutting by subscribers who decide there’s enough to watch online. At the same time, the rise of Internet-only shows may make viewers more dependent on the broadband cord. In many cases, though, both cable and broadband are supplied by the same company. Unlike the early stabs at Internet television, these shows look and feel like traditional TV. That is partly because more viewers are watching Internet content on big-screen TV sets, but it is mostly because the companies involved are throwing money at the screens: each of the Amazon comedy pilots cost the company upward of $1 million, according to people involved in their production, which is less than the $2 million invested in a broadcast comedy pilot, but more than is typically invested in cable pilots. Not only are the budgets comparable, so are the perks for actors and creators — like trailers and car-service pickups. The writers are guild members. The actors have what the people involved say are standard television contracts, with options for several seasons if shows succeed. “There’s absolutely no difference” between TV and these new productions, said Jeffrey Tambor, who starred in HBO’s “Larry Sanders Show,” then Fox’s “ Arrested Development .” Now, at 68, he is an online pioneer: earlier this year he reprised his character for Netflix’s new season of “Arrested,” which will make its premiere in May. While taping that show, he read the script for “ The Onion Presents: The News ,” an Amazon pilot. He signed up, and played the older rival to Cheyenne Jackson. Video The Times's Brian Stelter discusses the new, high-quality programming that shuns traditional broadcast TV for the Web. The “Onion” producers took over half of the newsroom of NY1, a New York news channel, in mid-February and reimagined it as the headquarters of an unscrupulous news corporation. (In the pilot episode, a reporter kidnaps a child to increase ratings.) NY1 had rented out its space to the producers of “Gossip Girl,” “Damages” and “The Good Wife” before — but never to a show being made for the Web. For most of the actors there, like Mr. Jackson, a Broadway star whose TV credits include “30 Rock” and “Glee,” the taping was their one pilot of the season — and thus represented a bet on Amazon over the broadcasters. Mr. Jackson recalled that his manager called about “The Onion” with a note of apprehension in her voice. “It’s online,” she said. “We have to talk about this.” But when he read the script, he said, he felt confident — the tone of it reminded him of “30 Rock.” “This is kind of a leap of faith,” he said between tapings. “We’re all taking a leap together.” Analysts say they expect more TV investment to come, including from companies that do not have monthly subscribers to please. YouTube, for instance, the biggest video Web site of all, makes its money from ads, not from subscriptions. But it has paid dozens of outside producers to start channels so that it has original, professional content. And its owner, Google, can afford to pay many more. Similar logic is spurring cable channels, which each receive a small piece of cable subscribers’ monthly payments, to come up with more dramas and sitcoms that they can call their own. This brings up a conundrum, of course: too much great TV to watch, and not enough time. “Viewers find organizing and managing all of their beloved TV options to be a bit stressful,” said Christy Tanner, the chief executive of TVGuide.com, which conducted research that found respondents who said “it feels like work” and “I’m afraid of missing something.” Nonetheless, the number of companies trying to elbow into the TV space is only going up — further proving the nearly 20-year-old adage that “content is king.” Witness DirecTV, the biggest satellite distributor in the country, which is planning to introduce its first homegrown show, a thriller called “Rogue,” next month. Christopher Long, who runs DirecTV’s original programming, said he wanted to buy several more shows: “Our opinion is, if we build good enough television, people will find it.”

Web television
TV
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Amazon
Netflix
YouTube
Microsoft


Clothing Brands Sidestep Blame for Safety Lapses

Abstract: PARETS DEL VALLÈS, Spain — From a sleek gray distribution center near Barcelona, the global fashion brand Mango ships 60 million garments in a year. Automated conveyor belts whir through the building like subway lines, sorting and organizing blouses, sweaters and other items to be shipped around the world. Human hands barely touch the clothes. Five thousand miles away in Bangladesh, the Phantom Tac factory in the industrial suburb of Savar was a hive of human hands. Hundreds of men and women hunched over sewing machines to produce garments in an assembly line system unchanged for years. Speed was also essential, but that just meant people had to work faster. Last spring, as it pushed forward with global expansion plans, Mango turned to Phantom Tac to produce a sample order of polo shirts and other items. Then, on April 24, the Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people in the deadliest disaster in garment industry history, and destroying Phantom Tac and other operations in the building. Now, eight months later, the question is what responsibility Mango and other brands should bear toward the victims of Rana Plaza, a disaster that exposed the murkiness and lack of accountability in the global supply chain for clothes. Under intense international pressure, four brands agreed last week to help finance a landmark $40 million compensation fund for the victims. But many other brands, including Mango, have so far refused to contribute to the fund. Mango argues that it is not responsible because it had not “formalized a commercial relationship” with Phantom Tac. Company officials say that Mango was still conducting quality inspections and factory audits of Phantom Tac, and that the factory had not started producing samples for an order of 25,000 items. But in interviews conducted over several months, supervisors and other employees from Phantom Tac said work to make samples for Mango had already begun when Rana Plaza collapsed. Fabric was being marked and cut, and some workers say some sample shirts were already being stitched. “There was an urgency among the bosses,” said Mohammed Mosharuf Hossain, 28, who worked in a cutting section. “The managers told us to finish the Mango products urgently. They said if we could finish this work quickly, we might get more orders from Mango.” For global brands and retailers, Rana Plaza has forced a reckoning over how to reconcile the mismatched pieces in their supply chains. Technology and investment are transforming the upper end of the industry, enabling Mango and other brands to increase sales, manage global inventories with pinpoint precision and introduce new clothes faster than ever — all as consumers now expect to see new things every time they visit a store. But these brands depend on factories in developing countries like Bangladesh, where wages are very low and the pressure to work faster and cheaper has spawned familiar problems: unsafe buildings, substandard work conditions and repeated wage and labor violations. Consumers know little about these factories, even as global brands promise that their clothes are made in safe environments. Phantom Tac could be regarded as an unlikely attempt to prove that a Bangladeshi factory could be socially responsible and make a profit. It was partly owned by a Spaniard, David Mayor, who had won orders from several Spanish brands. He had teamed up with a Vatican missionary in rural Bangladesh to offer a training program for female workers. And he had experimented with creating a website to allow consumers in the West to connect virtually with the workers sewing their clothes. But the pressures on Phantom Tac to meet deadlines and make money made those social goals difficult to achieve. Employees said the factory was busy but had suffered setbacks: Inditex, the global clothing giant that owns Zara and Lefties, had canceled orders a year earlier after the factory failed a social compliance audit. And several employees said other problems had arisen after underage workers were discovered working as helpers. Now, Mr. Mayor has disappeared. He did not respond to email requests for interviews, and his family in Spain declined to reveal his whereabouts. His Bangladeshi business partner, Aminul Islam, is in jail in connection with the collapse. Image The Mango company last year shipped some 60 million garments from its Barcelona site to stores. Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times Factories like Phantom Tac in Bangladesh and the Mango operations in Spain are part of the same supply chains, but might as well be from different worlds. In Spain, visitors to Mango’s design center, a short drive from the distribution warehouse, are greeted in the lobby by an installation from the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. A Picasso hangs in the office of Mango’s chairman, Isak Andic. Employees eat in a light-filled cafeteria or can relax in an upstairs area filled with ferns called “the greenhouse.” These state-of-the-art facilities are just the beginning: Mango already operates other distribution centers in China, Hong Kong and Turkey, and it has broken ground for a massive new complex in Spain. Last year, Mango produced a total of 110 million garments and accessories; within a decade, company officials say, the company hopes to produce 300 million garments and roughly quintuple annual sales to 10 billion euros, or about $14 billion. This growth strategy comes after Mango responded to the global recession by slashing prices, expanding offerings and opening stores in countries like China and Russia. This increased sales but has placed a premium on efficiency, cost and speed. In the past, Mango sent new items to stores every four to six weeks; now it is every 15 days. Technology has enabled Mango’s distribution center in Spain to track global sales, down to a single item in a single store, and then ship out boxes of refill orders within eight hours. “The new facility will be faster, bigger and more efficient,” said Jordi Torra Marin, a project manager. In Bangladesh, the business environment presents a sharp contrast. Phantom Tac was on the fifth floor of Rana Plaza, which was named after the family of the building’s owner, Sohel Rana. Mr. Rana, now in jail awaiting charges in the collapse, was a local political strongman, with close ties to elected officials in Savar and a reputation for criminal activities. Workers inside Rana Plaza say that when Mr. Rana needed people to stage a political march or a protest, he demanded that factory bosses release some workers from each factory to participate. Mr. Rana also extracted profits: He controlled food services that served snacks to workers during overtime. Several workers complained about the foul taste of the food. Mr. Rana also claimed the leftover remnants of fabric produced by each factory and sold them into the lucrative local recycling market. And, workers say, he took any garments that did not meet quality standards and sold them in local markets. “He was so powerful,” said Mohammad Liton, 25, a quality controller at Phantom Tac. “He had his own gang. They used to operate businesses.” David Mayor was a buyer when he met Aminul Islam, who was operating a different factory in the center of Dhaka, the national capital. They started Phantom Tac together, which seemed like a good fit, since Mr. Mayor had connections with foreign brands, especially those in Spain. Soon, Mr. Mayor was bringing in orders, workers said, or leading foreign buyers on tours of the factory. Mr. Mayor also had a social agenda. In 2007, Mr. Mayor joined with Brother Massimo Cattaneo , a Roman Catholic missionary, and financed a training program for young girls from rural Bangladesh. He eventually hired about a dozen of the graduates into his own factory. He also wanted to give consumers a better understanding of how their clothes were made. Ashley Wheaton, who had worked for a nonprofit group in Dhaka, was hired to develop a website where consumers could type in a code taken from the sales tag of an item and then learn about the Bangladeshi women who made the garment they had bought. As an experiment, Mr. Mayor opened a shop in Dhaka where the clothes were marked with the codes. “He had this idea about what he wanted to accomplish,” Ms. Wheaton said. “He really did want to change the way things are done. But he was pragmatic. He knew it had to make money and be sustainable.” But money became a problem. Ms. Wheaton left after about seven months, as the factory began tightening expenses. Eventually, Mr. Mayor also stopped funding the training program, which Brother Massimo has kept afloat through church money and donations. Image A Mango store in Barcelona. Credit Samuel Aranda for The New York Times Workers at Phantom Tac said deadline pressures were relentless. Margins were so tight that several workers say midlevel managers used two sets of accounting ledgers to hide excessive overtime or other wage violations. Workers also said a problem with child labor arose in 2012 after a buyer discovered several teenagers working as helpers, the lowest-level position in the factory. By January 2013, Phantom Tac had corrected the child labor issue and was trying to win new business, including from Mango. Mango had sent buyers to the factory as well as inspectors to conduct an audit of working conditions, workers say. “We all knew about Mango’s audit team,” said Mr. Hossain, the man from the cutting section. “There was an announcement on the loudspeaker. They told everyone to work properly. They wanted to impress them.” It worked. Labor activists searching the rubble of Rana Plaza found order forms from Mango to Phantom Tac for adult polo shirts and some children’s items. By April, but before the collapse, the fabric for the Mango order had already arrived, several employees say. Work was underway on samples to be sent to Mango for approval. One worker, Mohammed Sohel, said some sample shirts had already been sent for quality testing by Mango, only for Phantom Tac to be told of a flaw in the collar. “David came to the factory and explained how to correct the collar,” Mr. Sohel said. Another employee, Mohammed Sumon Prodhan, who worked in quality control, said seamstresses had been making samples of green polo shirts for Mango the day before Rana Plaza collapsed. In a recent interview at Mango’s design center in Spain, Jose Gomez, vice president of international business development, cited Mango’s involvement in a major consortium of brands that have agreed to help finance safety upgrades to Bangladeshi factories as evidence of the company’s commitment to improve conditions. But on the separate issue of compensation for victims, Mr. Gomez denied that Mango had started production at Phantom Tac because, he said, the company’s auditing process was not complete. Asked if he was certain no work was underway, Mr. Gomez said, “What I understand is what I told you.” Eva Kreisler, a coordinator for the anti-sweatshop group Clean Clothes Campaign in Spain, said that Mango’s explanation was unconvincing and that the company had a moral obligation to help the victims of Rana Plaza. Another Spanish retailer, El Corte Inglés, is one of four brands that have agreed to contribute to the $40 million fund. Officials say other brands must come forward if full funding is to be achieved. “Definitely, they should contribute to the fund,” Ms. Kreisler said of Mango. “It is quite shameful that they still won’t contribute to bring justice to the workers.” On the day before Rana Plaza collapsed, cracks appeared in the third floor of the building. It was temporarily closed, and an engineer, upon inspecting the cracks, said the building should remain closed. But Mr. Islam, the co-owner of Phantom Tac, called a longtime factory supervisor and implored him and others to return to work, citing pressing deadlines. Mr. Islam even went to the building himself and made his ritual evening prayers. “He called me,” said Mohammad Minhaj Uddin Nannu, the longtime supervisor. “He said, ‘Why are you all scared? You shouldn’t be. I’m here.’ ” The next morning, Rana Plaza collapsed, before Mr. Islam arrived at his office.

Rana Plaza Building Collapse
Manufacturing
Fashion
Clean Clothes Campaign
Bangladesh
David Mayor


Profit Rebounds for McDonald’s, Helped by New Menu Items

Abstract: Consumers helped bring McDonald’s back to profitability in the second quarter by spending on breakfast biscuits, chicken sandwiches and drinks despite the tough economy. But the hamburger chain, the nation’s biggest, also warned on Wednesday that it expected beef and chicken costs to rise substantially in the United States and Europe through the rest of this year, and it said it was testing several options that might change the makeup of its popular dollar menu. McDonald’s earned $1.19 billion, including a gain from the sale of its stake in the sandwich chain Pret A Manger, solidly topping Wall Street estimates. McDonald’s shares fell 46 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $59.66.

McDonald's Corp
Restaurants
Sales
Company Reports
United States


Should Taxpayers Back a High-End Electric Carmaker?

Abstract: THE Tesla Roadster is an electric car that goes fast, looks sensational and excites envy. The seductive appearance, however, obscures some inconvenient truths: its all-electric technology remains woefully immature and don’t-even-ask expensive. If enough billionaires step forward to inject additional capital to keep the doors of its manufacturer, Tesla Motors , open, I’m happy for all parties. If investors pass up the opportunity, however, why should taxpayers fork over the capital that Tesla needs? The company is requesting $400 million in low-interest federal loans as part of the $25 billion loan package for the auto industry passed by Congress last year. The program is intended to encourage automakers to improve fuel efficiency , but should it be used for a purpose like this, as the 2008 Bailout of Very, Very High-Net-Worth Individuals Who Invested in Tesla Motors Act? Can you conceive any way that federal dollars could be put at greater risk — and for no equity in return, keep in mind — to benefit fewer people? Tesla Motors, a privately held company based in San Carlos, Calif., has spent almost all of the $145 million in capital it has raised to date. It says it will soon receive another round of $40 million from its private investors to sustain operations. In the start-up ecosystem of Silicon Valley these would be respectably large numbers, but in the automotive world, fully developing an entirely new line of technology can easily run $1 billion. That is what General Motors’ first attempt at an electric vehicle, the EV1, was estimated to have cost to develop in the 1990s. Tesla is seeking the loans for development of a second-generation car, a five-passenger sedan that after tax credits would cost about $50,000 — less than half the Roadster’s price tag of $109,000 — and for a project to supply components for other manufacturers. Tesla is also counting on rapid improvements in the core component of its powertrain — a thousand-pound pack of lithium-ion batteries — but such improvements don’t happen at the pace Tesla needs them to happen. The company’s backers in Silicon Valley can be forgiven for hoping for a miraculous technical breakthrough, because Moore’s Law makes miracles appear in the Valley every day: costs drop by half every two years, again and again and again. The law is actually a rule of thumb, not a scientific law, and is based on the recurring doubling of transistors placed on an integrated circuit. Unfortunately for Tesla, batteries are based on chemistry and have nothing to do with Moore’s Law. Lawrence H. Dubois, chief technology officer at ATMI, a semiconductor industry supplier, said, “With batteries, you can’t just squeeze more energy into a smaller and smaller space the way you can squeeze more transistors.” Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, said his company would benefit from what he called “a weak Moore’s Law,” referring to the 8 percent annual improvements in the price performance of lithium-ion batteries. But 8 percent, compounded, would bring too few benefits, too late to Tesla: it would take nine years to halve the price of its battery pack. The company would not be saddled with such costly components had it not elected to pursue a design that endows its car with both high performance and a long range between charges — 244 miles, Tesla says. Earlier this month at the Los Angeles auto show, BMW unveiled its all-electric Mini E, with a smaller battery, a motor with about 20 percent less horsepower than Tesla’s and a shorter range, 150 miles. BMW believes that current technologies used in the all-electric vehicles have not been tested enough in real conditions to be ready to be sold to the public. It will begin by leasing for one year a fleet of 500 Mini E’s for $850 a month each. At the end of the lease term, the cars will be returned to BMW for testing. Tesla would have needed a much smaller battery pack had it forsaken the all-electric design and instead offered a plug-in hybrid, a more affordable design that many auto manufacturers are readying for production, like that for the Chevrolet Volt. An electric motor provides the primary motive force, and a small internal combustion engine serves as an auxiliary source of power to extend the range that the car can go between charges. The battery need be no bigger than what is necessary to provide enough juice to go 40 miles, the maximum daily round-trip commuting distance for 78 percent of surveyed households, according to a widely quoted Department of Transportation study in 2003. Tesla pitches all-electric cars as the greenest form of personal transportation, eliminating vehicle emissions and helping to wean the United States from its dependence on foreign oil. The cars reduce air pollution indirectly, to whatever degree the power generation on the grid uses energy sources other than coal. And for households that install their own power-generating solar panels, electric cars can rightfully claim to attain truly zero emissions today. LAST week, I visited the Tesla showroom in Menlo Park, Calif., and took the Roadster out on the highway. As I headed back to the showroom and waited at red lights, ready to hit the accelerator and fly, I realized that I was experiencing a guilty pleasure derived not just from the speed available at my touch but also from temporarily possessing something that shouted to the world its exclusiveness. Tesla says it is assembling about 15 cars a week and has delivered only about 80 to date. Many of those have gone to the Valley’s billionaires and centimillionaires who are Tesla investors as well as early customers; these include Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, and Jeff Skoll, co-founder of eBay. The company’s principal financier is Mr. Musk, who attained considerable wealth as a co-founder of PayPal. I wonder how Tesla’s course has been influenced by at least some of its investors being helplessly smitten by the world’s quietest dragster. Mr. Musk said: “I’m not doing this because I think the world has a shortage of sports cars.” But his customers must be loaded with green in order to go green.

Tesla Motors
Electric Vehicles
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Automobiles


Gas Facility in Algeria Is Attacked With Rockets

Abstract: ALGIERS — Unknown attackers fired rockets on Friday at a gas facility in the Sahara in Algeria, the energy companies Statoil and BP said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. The gas facility, Krechba, which is jointly operated by Statoil of Norway and BP of Britain, is overseen by the Algerian state-run gas company Sonatrach. Statoil said the Krechba facility had been “hit by explosive munitions fired from a distance.” The company said it had been in touch with its three employees there, who were safe and had not been hurt. BP said in a statement that there had been no reports of injuries to its employees and that the facility had been shut down as a safety precaution. It did not say how many people worked there. Shots “were fired from outside into the facility,” the head of Statoil media relations, Bard Glad Pedersen, told the Norwegian broadcaster NRK. He said he did not know who had been behind the attack. Krechba is part of the In Salah gas fields, about 750 miles south of Algiers, in the Hassi Messaoud region, a major gas-producing area in Algeria, about 440 miles from the border with Libya. In January 2013, a band of militants affiliated with Al Qaeda attacked the In Amenas complex in Algeria , near the border with Libya. After a four-day standoff, the Algerian Army moved in and in the ensuing battle, at least 37 hostages, mostly foreign workers, died. The attackers were thought to have crossed into Algeria from Libya. As in Krechba, the In Amenas facility is jointly run by BP, Sonatrach and Statoil.


Mariano Rajoy Fails to Gain Backing for Spain’s New Government

Abstract: Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s caretaker prime minister, failed on Wednesday to gain Parliament’s endorsement to form a new government, raising the likelihood that a third national election would be needed to try to break the country’s political deadlock. Mr. Rajoy’s proposed government was voted down by lawmakers, 180 to 170. Mr. Rajoy will have another chance to win Parliament’s backing on Friday, but the chances of that vote producing a different outcome appear minimal, particularly after a debate on Wednesday that highlighted how fragmented Spanish politics has become. Spain has been without an elected government since December, after two inconclusive elections. Addressing Parliament before Wednesday’s vote, Mr. Rajoy accused opposition lawmakers of sabotaging his government program as a way to oust him. “What this is about is to send Mr. Rajoy on holidays,” he said. But Mr. Rajoy, 61, is showing no signs of wanting to retire. Instead, he has been calling on the main opposition Socialist Party to abstain from voting and to recognize his right to govern because his party won the most votes in the last inconclusive election, in June. In Friday’s vote, Mr. Rajoy needs only a simple majority. That goal, however, seems out of reach. In his speech on Wednesday, Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist leader, left no room open for an 11th-hour compromise with Mr. Rajoy, rejecting any suggestion that his party could be held responsible for prolonging the deadlock and possibly forcing a third election. He also used his speech to accuse Mr. Rajoy of leading a corrupt party that could not be trusted to run Spain. “Spain urgently needs a government, but not a bad government,” Mr. Sánchez said. “Nobody can ask us to support what we aspire to change.” Mr. Rajoy is trying to form a new government after negotiating a deal last weekend with Ciudadanos, a small centrist party led by Albert Rivera. But even with the votes of Ciudadanos, Mr. Rajoy fell six short of the majority of 176 votes that he needed on Wednesday. In his speech, Mr. Sánchez also criticized Mr. Rivera for switching sides and backing Mr. Rajoy, almost six months after Ciudadanos backed Mr. Sánchez’s attempt to form a Socialist-led government of his own. Wednesday’s parliamentary debate also raised tensions between Mr. Rajoy and Catalan separatist lawmakers. Francesc Homs, the parliamentary leader of the Catalan Democratic Party, said the party would file a criminal lawsuit against Jorge Fernández Díaz, the interior minister in Mr. Rajoy’s government, after the minister was heard in a leaked recording of a private conversation trying to dig up dirt to incriminate Catalan political opponents. “You have acted like in a real banana republic,” Mr. Homs said Wednesday. Even if Mr. Rajoy is rejected again on Friday, he and other party leaders could still hold another round of government negotiations, most likely after two regional elections on Sept. 25. Failing that, Mr. Rajoy has already agreed to schedule a third election three months later, on Dec. 25, with the hope that voters will hold the Socialists rather than his party responsible for spoiling their Christmas.

Mariano Rajoy
Spain
Legislature
Election
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Ciudadanos


In Finance, Japan Sees an Opening

Abstract: TOKYO — Just six months ago, five or six “bulge bracket” investment banks stood astride the globe virtually dictating the terms of engagement of international finance — managing deals, pronouncing companies (or countries) investment-worthy or not, and dispensing advice that companies (and countries) ignored at their peril. Now those brash American institutions have been swept away or tamed. And as the global financial order convulses, some Japanese leaders say they believe their country should take a more active role in economic leadership. While many European leaders cast recriminations and “I told you so’s,” Japan and much of Asia are considering how to fill some of the voids left behind. The United States will commit as much as a trillion dollars to bailing out its banks, but the Asians are flush with cash, even as countries like Japan — the world’s second-largest economy — face recessions of their own. Japan could use some of its formidable $1 trillion in reserves to help troubled nations, including South Korea, should that country’s own recent bailout of its banks prove inadequate. “The dominance of American financial giants has been shaken,” said Takatoshi Ito, a professor of economic policy at the University of Tokyo. “Now the tables have turned, and an Asian country like Japan can have the role of white knight and capital provider.” Some may wonder how Japan, which suffered its own severe downturn in the 1990s and has a stalling economy now, has the right to tell others what to do. But in recent days, lawmakers have begun floating proposals about how Japan, traditionally passive, might use its deep pockets and bitter experience from the 1990s to help global growth and, along the way, Japan’s own export-driven economy. Recently, Shoichi Nakagawa, Japan’s finance minister, offered some of Japan’s $996 billion in foreign currency reserves to rescue smaller nations threatened with bankruptcy by the global credit crisis . Other lawmakers have suggested using yen loans to help developing countries build roads and power plants, to revive global growth and rekindle demand for Japanese bulldozers and other goods. Another idea taking shape here calls for sending accountants and lawyers experienced from Japan’s 1990s financial cleanup to help American banks and regulators sift through mountains of toxic American mortgage debt. While it is unlikely that the nascent proposals would stem what many call the biggest financial crisis since the Depression, the fact they are being discussed at all underscores the vacuum in leadership felt across the world in the wake of an American-led economic debacle. The fact they are appearing in Japan, a nation long content to follow Washington’s lead, reflects what many here call a movement toward a new economic order in which no single country dominates. “With the relative decline in U.S. economic and financial power, it is inevitable that U.S. leadership will also decline,” said Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a former chief cabinet secretary. “We are seeing a new, multipolar economic regime starting to emerge.” Mr. Shiozaki and others are careful to point out that no one is talking about replacing Washington as guardian of the global economy. Rather, what they envision is a world where America shares oversight of the global economy with emerging powers like China and India, as well as Europe and Japan. They are also talking about each country bringing its various strengths to the table as a new, post-subprime world economic order takes shape. Many political leaders favor using Japan’s foreign reserves as a sort of war chest for combating the economic malaise. The finance minister’s offer, made at a meeting in Washington of the International Monetary Fund earlier this month, would keep Japanese money ready as a lifeline to strapped countries. While lawmakers here refuse to say so in public, their biggest source of concern appears to be neighboring South Korea, whose currency and stock markets have both been hard hit by flight of foreign capital. The finance minister’s plan calls for financing bailouts that will be administered by the International Monetary Fund. Japanese finance officials, however, have also been talking with the fund about easing the terms of its bailouts, said Naoyuki Shinohara, the vice minister for international affairs. Asia still has bitter memories of the harsh terms the fund imposed after the region’s 1997 financial crisis. Other proposals call for Japan to spur the global economy through increasing the billions in overseas development loans and other aid it spends building new infrastructure in developing countries in Asia and Africa, for example, as China has also done. A column in Asahi Shimbun, a leading daily, likened the idea to the Depression-era New Deal. “We need to create new sources of demand, or the global economy is in trouble,” said Hakuo Yanagisawa, a former financial services minister who now heads the Liberal Democratic Party’s project team on responding to the current financial crisis. “A purely financial response to the crisis is not enough.” Plans are also afoot to assemble teams of financial experts from Japan’s private sector and 1990s-era government bodies like the Resolution and Collection Corporation, which led Japan’s cleanup of its nonperforming real estate loans a decade ago, according to Mr. Yanagisawa. He said the Japanese government would soon put out feelers through its embassy in Washington about whether such help would be welcomed by American regulators, who face a similarly formidable task of calculating the worth of mountains of mortgage-backed securities polluting the American financial system. But many Japanese say Japan’s biggest contribution would be simply keeping its own economic house in order. They say it should bolster government spending to offset declines in exports to the United States, which appear to be pushing Japan’s $5 trillion economy into recession. A strong economy, and Japan’s relatively healthy banks, which largely avoided the subprime mess, would give the nation a new authority in global economic affairs.

Japan
Economic Conditions and Trends
Banks and Banking
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Apple Updates iPad With Some Refinements

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Apple updated the iPad on Wednesday with a high-definition screen, a faster wireless connection and several other refinements, all packaged in a device without any major design changes. As recent history has shown, though, Apple may not need a bold overhaul of the look of its tablet computer to attract waves of new buyers. The company said the new iPad would go on sale on March 16 at a starting price of $499, unchanged from the last generation of iPads. The product will have a screen that provides a comparable level of clarity to the iPhone ’s “retina display,” with higher resolution than conventional high-definition televisions, according to Apple executives. “That is distinctive and is a kind of leapfrog above existing and announced products,” said A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. And in a sign that Apple intends to more seriously protect its share of the tablet market, which is expected to get more competitive this year, the company said it would continue to sell its second-generation iPad, dropping the price to $399 from $499. At a company event, Apple also showed a new version of Apple TV, the company’s $99 set-top box for accessing Internet video, which streams movies in the sharpest of the high-definition video formats, called 1080p. The initial reaction to the tablet computer was mixed, as has frequently been the case of late with Apple’s new iterations. Apple’s stock price was about flat in regular trading, ending up 43 cents higher, at $530.69, a 0.1 percent gain. The new tablet, called simply the new iPad, with no numbers or letters after the name, is an effort to keep growth chugging along in a two-year-old business that has turned into a major franchise for the company. Apple’s $9.15 billion in iPad sales over the holiday quarter was almost double the amount of revenue Microsoft reported from its Windows software and not far from Google ’s total revenue as a company during the same period. Speaking from the same stage where Steven P. Jobs , the company’s late chief executive, introduced the second-generation iPad almost exactly a year ago, the company’s new chief executive, Timothy D. Cook , said the iPad last quarter outsold the number of personal computers sold by any individual manufacturer. “In many ways, the iPad is reinventing portable computing and outstripping the wildest predictions,” Mr. Cook said. The new iPad, the third generation of the device, is nearly indistinguishable from its predecessor, though it is slightly heavier and thicker. The most visible of its changes is the screen, which can display text and images that appear as sharp as they would on a printed page. The company said the screen has more than 3.1 million pixels, or four times more than the current iPad. It will also operate on the fourth-generation cellphone network technology known as LTE. In the United States , the new iPad will work on AT&T ’s and Verizon ’s networks to get data. The iPad will also allow users to dictate e-mail, though Apple did not introduce an iPad version of Siri, a voice-command virtual-assistant feature that proved popular on the iPhone 4S. Last fall, Apple disappointed some pundits and enthusiasts by making mostly incremental enhancements with the iPhone 4S. That product ended up squashing doubts to become a smash hit, leading to record sales over the holidays. During that time, Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., solidified its lead as the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of almost a half-trillion dollars, well ahead of its nearest rival, Exxon Mobil . At times, Apple has wowed people by radically rethinking the design of its products. Several years ago, it overhauled its MacBook Air with a drastically thinner case. It gave the iPhone 4 a novel, hard-edged case that looked very different from the design of early iPhones. Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company, said those kinds of radical redesigns did not happen every year, partly because the smaller components and other underlying technologies that made them possible did not change at that pace. Mr. Wolf said he believed that more of Apple’s innovation was happening in software because it was not as encumbered by the development of outside technologies in that area. “I always look at Apple as a software company,” he said. The new iPad may show how durable Apple’s hold on the tablet market is. For most of the two years the iPad has been on sale, Apple has faced a phalanx of competitors from Hewlett-Packard , Research in Motion , Samsung and Motorola, yet none has established a firm beachhead in the tablet business. A few of those competitors, like H.P., gave up. In a recent survey of American consumers with tablets by Forrester Research , 73 percent said they owned an iPad. That is a sharp contrast to the smartphone business, where Apple’s market share has steadily eroded as phones based on Google’s Android operating system have swept the market. Phones with Android software accounted for 51.6 percent of smartphone shipments worldwide in the fourth quarter, compared with 23.4 percent for the iPhone, according to Canalys, a research firm. Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester, said the iPad had maintained its grip on the market because most consumers bought it through retail stores rather than wireless carriers. “Android smartphones are selling like hot cakes because that’s what the carriers push,” she said. “With tablets, carriers are not the main destination for tablets.” The new iPad, though, is likely to face more serious challenges to the product’s dominance than in the past. Over the holidays, Amazon is estimated to have sold more than five million of its Kindle Fire, a smaller tablet that has attracted a new group of consumers to the category with a $199 price tag. Later this year, the first tablet devices to use Windows 8, a new operating system from Microsoft, are expected to hit the market. The software has been redesigned by Microsoft to take advantage of touch-screen devices. Apple sold 15.4 million iPads over the holiday quarter and has sold 55 million iPads in total since they first went on sale in 2010. Mr. Cook told the audience Wednesday that Apple had sold 315 million iOS devices through the end of 2011 and that iPads, iPhones and iPods were now responsible for 75 percent of the company’s revenue. The chief criticism that some stalwarts of the PC industry have leveled at the iPad is that the device is not well suited for creating content, even if it is good for consuming it. Apple, though, sought to undermine that argument with a number of new apps. Those include a new version of its Mac software for editing digital photographs, iPhoto. A new version of Apple’s GarageBand music software lets up to four people play together in a virtual band with iPads that are connected wirelessly.


Howard Seals Win

Abstract: The American goalkeeper Tim Howard made a series of outstanding saves in the second half, helping Everton to a 2-1 upset win at Manchester City. Before the game, Manchester announced that the Argentine striker Carlos Tévez had withdrawn his transfer request. ¶The Los Angeles Galaxy said David Beckham was expected back at the team next month rather than going on loan to another club during the M.L.S. off-season. The 35-year-old Beckham had said that he hoped to play in Europe during the winter to increase his chances of being recalled to England’s national team. beckham

Howard Tim
Everton Football Club
Manchester City (Soccer Team)
Soccer


Athletes Tentatively Walk in Protesters’ Shoes

Abstract: When the Phoenix Suns wore the name Los Suns on their jerseys Wednesday night, it was construed by many of their fans as a political statement against the new Arizona law regarding illegal immigrants. But as Phoenix Coach Alvin Gentry noted, the Suns had worn Los Suns twice during the season before the law was passed — and now have won all three games in the jerseys. Plus, Wednesday was Cinco de Mayo, the celebration of Mexican heritage . As a political gesture, it fell far below the black gloves worn by two American sprinters in the 1968 Olympics. However, there definitely was a measure of criticism of the law from high up on the team — including from the Suns’ owner , Robert Sarver ; the general manager, Steve Kerr; and players like Grant Hill, Amar’e Stoudemire and Steve Nash. It was refreshing to hear reaction to current events from sports figures. It is easy to take pot shots at athletes and team officials for living in a bubble, isolated by money and fame. When athletes care about something, conservative or liberal, it is a sign they are alive. But nobody should be waiting for basketball or baseball players to dump over their water pails and walk out of the mine — the signal for a wildcat strike in coal country. These lads are not going out. The new law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, and apparently supported by a slim majority of Americans, empowers law-enforcement officers to stop anybody who appears to be an illegal immigrant. Kerr described the new law as something out of Nazi Germany. He is entitled to his vision of what happens when passion and prejudice get out of hand, inasmuch as his father, Malcolm H. Kerr, was assassinated in 1984 while serving as president of the American University in Beirut. Nash, a Canadian originally from South Africa, has his world view, as does Hill, whose parents, Calvin and Janet , are prominent in public life. • Some baseball players have also spoken out against the law, raising the prospect of players’ developing the Arizona Flu heading toward the 2011 All-Star Game, currently scheduled for Phoenix. Only recently diagnosed, the Arizona Flu manifests itself with a low-grade ache, a few twinges of migrainelike headache, vague tightness in the hamstrings, throbbing in the rotator cuffs. From what I hear, it tends to strike professional athletes. This illness is nothing like the Blue Flu , that mysterious ailment that strikes police officers suddenly, overnight, during times of labor disagreements, causing them to miss a shift. However, there will be no outbreak of any flu, Arizona or Blue, leading to that All-Star Game. Baseball is particularly sensitive to the new law because 30 percent of its players are Latino and because half of the 30 teams now train in Arizona. Michael Weiner, the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, recently criticized the law and said he hoped it would be “repealed or modified promptly,” or else the union would consider “additional steps,” which he did not specify. One of the steps will not be a walkout because the current contract is not believed to permit any form of strike. Still, if enough players expressed symptoms of the Arizona Flu, this might even force Commissioner Bud Selig to take pro-active steps to move the All-Star Game out of Arizona. But the implications of the new law are much too serious to be foisted on Selig, who is just one person, serving 30 owners. The new law mandates that officers pick out illegal immigrants among people walking the street. It’s easy to spot them, Rep. Brian Bilbray, Republican from California, recently told Chris Matthews on MSNBC — just check out his footwear . “They will look at the kind of dress you wear, there’s different type of attire, there’s different type of right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes,” Bilbray said. “But mostly by behavior, it’s mostly behavior.” With guidelines like this, it is not hard to imagine a visiting athlete walking down the street in Phoenix, wearing some cutting-edge shoes with faux mud on them, holes in the knees of his $1,000 jeans, a designer T-shirt that said Alcatraz on it, and getting hauled off by somebody with a badge and a pistol. Then who’s going to play center field that night? • One thing the new Arizona law might do is encourage solidarity among players of color. Torii Hunter of the Angels, a really good guy, recently made an ill-phrased comment , including the word “impostors,” about Latino players being counted with black players. Hunter knows better. The fear is real that anybody in Arizona, any athlete, anybody of color, could get hauled in by the shoe posse. Speaking as somebody with relatives of various hues and backgrounds, I wouldn’t want them going to Arizona during the current time of the troubles. I also worry about the health of the ballplayers. If any All-Stars feel the Arizona Flu coming on, they should lie down and rest.

Arizona
Illegal Immigrants
Hispanic-Americans
Phoenix Suns
Major League Baseball Players Assn
Law and Legislation
Basketball
Baseball


2 Plead Guilty to Falsifying Green Cards

Abstract: A former immigration official and his sister pleaded guilty yesterday to fraud and conspiracy charges in a million-dollar scheme to arrange sham marriages in order to obtain illegal green cards. The former official, Phillip Browne, 41, worked until December 2005 as a district adjudication officer for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services in Manhattan. His sister, Beverly Mozer-Browne, 50, once owned a financial and legal service business in Queens called Help Preparers Professional Services. The authorities say the business was a front for the procurement of illegal permanent-residence documents, known as green cards. Mr. Browne and Ms. Mozer-Browne were originally charged in the scheme with nearly two dozen others in June 2006. All but one of them, Wendy Harrison, have either pleaded guilty or been convicted in the case. Ms. Harrison, the authorities said, is a fugitive. Prosecutors said that from April 2001 through November 2005 Help Preparers Professional Services provided hundreds of illegal green cards for its clients, charging $8,000 to $16,000 a person and generating more than $1 million in revenue. Mr. Browne and his sister pleaded guilty to arranging for some clients to marry American citizens under false pretenses and to producing documentation of nonexistent marriages for others. The authorities said that Help Preparers used the false marriage documents, along with fraudulent financial documents like fictitious letters from employers, to apply for green cards for its clients. The applications were mailed to the New York office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of the Homeland Security Department, where Mr. Browne approved them without interviewing the applicants as required by law. The original indictment in the case charged 13 employees of Help Preparers, two other people who scouted citizens willing to marry clients, two citizens who were paid to enter sham marriages and 11 clients. Mr. Browne and Ms. Mozer-Browne each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison when they are sentenced this winter.

Immigration and Refugees
Frauds and Swindling
Marriages
Manhattan (NYC)


How Jennifer Vaughan Maanavi, Co-Founder of Physique 57, Spends Her Sundays

Abstract: As the chief executive and co-founder of the ballet barre studio chain Physique 57 and a mother of three, Jennifer Vaughan Maanavi has a full schedule. A former Morgan Stanley employee, she now oversees nine Physique 57 locations, from Bangkok to New York, in addition to attending her children’s soccer games and ballet classes and fitting in a few date nights with her husband. Ms. Maanavi, 45, lives in an Upper East Side apartment with her husband, Dar Maanavi, 50, who works in trade finance and commodities, and their children, Alec, 12, Halle, 7, and Cameron, 4. DUBAI TIME I am awake and ready to go at 6:30 a.m. I have three children, so sleeping in on the weekends is not an option. Plus, it is easier to get up early in order to plan the day, and week for that matter. Our Sunday is Dubai’s Monday (their workweek is Sunday through Thursday), so I usually check in with our studios there first thing in the morning. They are growing very quickly, and we usually have quite a lot of business to discuss. Image The family plays games in the dining room. From left, Alec, 12; Cameron, 4; Dar Maanavi, 50; Halle, 7; and Ms. Maanavi. Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times PREPARE TO PLIÉ At 8, I take a class at our 57th Street location. I feel so much better when I start or finish a weekend day, or any day for that matter, with a workout. The best part of weekend workouts is that I can spend some extra time connecting with various teams. If I am really lucky, I bring Alec, my 12-year-old son, to the studio with me. Since he was 8, he has been pitching in and loves putting our clients’ weights back in their bins. THE RUNAROUND After picking up a venti green tea from Starbucks and healthy egg sandwiches for my husband and children at Fresh&co, I head home so the activities can begin. Mixed martial arts for Cameron, ballet for Halle and soccer or basketball for Alec. Hustle and bustle for a solid three to four hours. If we’re lucky, about once a month we find a golden half-hour of free time to run across the street to the Met to check out the new exhibits. We really love the costume exhibit every year. Image While the kids have their fun running around Central Park, Ms. Maanavi uses the time to catch up with friends Jennifer Billet (in yellow) and Jennifer Rowe (in gray). “The park is basically our backyard,” Ms. Maanavi said. Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times ME TIME After trekking through Manhattan for so many hours, I need just 15 minutes to myself. I go into my room for quiet time, and 15 minutes is all I need. I meditate or try to sleep. This is totally refreshing, and usually my family doesn’t even know I’m gone. SUNDAY DRIVE One of my favorite family times on Sunday is actually running errands because it’s also our version of a Sunday drive. Whether it’s stopping at Whole Foods to stock up on healthy food for the week, making our monthly drop off at Goodwill Industries of the children’s outgrown clothing or giving old toys to the Inwood House , an amazing charity that cares for pregnant and parenting teenagers, we are together and having fun. No matter what, we love listening to music and must play “ Jessie’s Girl ” at least once for Cameron. Image Each month, the family donate the children’s outgrown clothing to Goodwill Industries. Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times OFF TO THE PARK In the afternoon we head to Central Park with the children. We live across the street, so the park is basically our backyard. We meet up with some other Dalton or All Souls families and let the kids run loose. I can also use this time to catch up with my professional network, such as YPO friends . I love to meet with upstarts in the consumer retail or fitness arena. The Columbia University entrepreneur network is thriving, and I offer my time as often as I can. Around this time I am also ordering green juice or a mint chip smoothie from Juice Press. They use Postmates for delivery and will find you anywhere, even at the playground. It’s a miracle service. DEVELOPING PALATES We head out for family dinner. We like to introduce new cuisines to the children, anything from Thai to Indian or Japanese. Our 12-year-old is much more game than our 4-year-old, but we keep trying. ALL BUSINESS After the kids are bathed and asleep, it is back to work for me. At night I check on all of the studio numbers and also start returning other international correspondence. Bangkok is opening its second location, and I plan to bring the entire family there for the opening. This is also when I catch up on personal email, as well as plan out the calendar for the week. My husband, Dar, and I wind down with some cherished quiet time. I love Harvard Business Review and try to read at least one article a week. Right now I am also reading “The Endangered Customer,” by Richard Shapiro.


Steve Moore Settles Lawsuit Against Todd Bertuzzi and Canucks

Abstract: Steve Moore, a former Colorado Avalanche forward, announced Thursday that he had settled his lawsuit against Todd Bertuzzi and the Vancouver Canucks, closing one of the most violent on-ice episodes in N.H.L. history. “This day comes with mixed emotions,” Moore, 35, said in a statement. “These years have been very difficult for me and my family.” The lawsuit, in which Moore asked for $68 million, had been scheduled to go to trial next week in Ontario. Moore’s career ended after he sustained spinal injuries as a rookie when he was attacked from behind by Bertuzzi during a game on March 8, 2004. Bertuzzi, a forward, was acting in retaliation for a hard check Moore had thrown three weeks earlier against Canucks captain Markus Naslund. Moore sustained three fractured vertebrae and a concussion and never played again. “The injuries I sustained in my rookie year, the years I spent trying to return to my N.H.L. career, and dealing with the loss of my career and the ensuing legal case, have been long and trying experiences,” said Moore, whose brother, Dominic, is a forward with the Rangers. “While nothing replaces the loss of one’s dream, I am happy my family will no longer be burdened by an unresolved legal case, and I am grateful to be able to move forward,” Moore said. Bertuzzi, a free agent after playing five seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, pleaded guilty to criminal assault causing bodily harm and was sentenced to one year of probation and 80 hours of community service. He also served a 15-month suspension from hockey. Terms of the settlement were not released. In his statement, Moore did not mention Bertuzzi by name. The sides reached a tentative deal on Aug. 19 , and Bertuzzi’s lawyer, Geoff Adair, called it binding and final. News organizations and the Canucks reported that the case was settled, but Moore’s lawyer objected to parts of the deal, which resulted in two weeks of negotiations. “It was my legal opinion that there was no binding and enforceable settlement until the language of the settlement documents was agreed to by all parties and I was in possession of executed settlement documents,” Moore’s lawyer, Tim Danson, said Thursday. “That happened today.”

Ice hockey
Steve Moore
Todd Bertuzzi
Lawsuits
Canucks


Dane Takes Giro Stage

Abstract: Chris Sorensen of Denmark won the first uphill finish of the Giro d’Italia, and Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan maintained the overall leader’s pink jersey by 30 seconds. Taking advantage of an early breakaway, Sorensen clocked 4 hours 50 minutes 48 seconds in the eighth stage, a 117-mile leg from Chianciano Terme to Terminillo, Italy.

Giro d'Italia (Bicycle Race)
Bicycles and Bicycling
Sorensen Chris


Czech Leader Won’t Attend Moscow Parade After Criticism

Abstract: PRAGUE — Reversing course after a storm of criticism, President Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic said on Friday that he had decided not to attend a military parade in Moscow on May 9 after all. Other European Union leaders are boycotting the parade, which commemorates the end of World War II in Europe 70 years ago, because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. Mr. Zeman, who had said he would attend, announced on Friday that he would take part in other commemorative events in the Russian capital but would skip the parade. Jiri Ovcacek, the president’s spokesman, said that Mr. Zeman had made his decision independently, and that he had not been influenced by pressure from other Czech political leaders or from Andrew H. Schapiro, the American ambassador to the Czech Republic. “President Zeman will lay wreaths, and he will use the time designated for the parade for a bilateral meeting with the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico,” Mr. Ovcacek said. Mr. Fico has not yet confirmed that he will go to Moscow.

Czech Republic
Milos Zeman
Russia
Ukraine
Parade
Boycott
Moscow


By Beating Australia, U.S. Women Exorcise Some Painful Demons

Abstract: BEIJING — With a star-crossed history of Olympic heartbreak, the United States women’s water polo team faced more than its nemesis, Australia, on Tuesday for a spot in the gold medal game. It was also swimming with ghosts. And as the United States women squandered a three-goal lead in the fourth quarter in the Olympic semifinals at Yingdong Natatorium, they could feel the bad memories from 2000 and 2004 splashing at their heels. But with the score tied and one minute remaining, the quintessential star of the United States team added another fluorescent highlight to her incandescent career. Brenda Villa, a three-time Olympian, skipped home a power-play goal to give the United States a 9-8 victory and, perhaps, help exorcise a few demons. “It was a beautiful shot,” United States goalkeeper Betsey Armstrong said. “It’s amazing because Brenda will do those things and make them look so easy. Those are the types of things that happen in these situations. You step back and everything comes together perfectly.” But the previous two Olympics were full of heartbreak and tears for the American women. At the 2000 Sydney Games, the Australians scored a controversial goal with 1.3 seconds left to win the gold-medal match. That game planted the seed for this rivalry, which United States Coach Guy Baker described as like the Yankees-Red Sox. In Athens in 2004, Italy scored with two seconds left in the semifinals to complete a stunning comeback against the Americans. Villa said that Tuesday’s game with Australia gave her “déjà vu” from 2004, but Baker joked that he was “still going to therapy over Sydney.” Villa made sure the outcome was different this time when her tricky skip shot slithered under the arm of one defender, then over the arm of Australia goalkeeper Alicia McCormack before sliding just inside the left goalpost. It nestled home for a spot in United States water polo history, giving the Americans a chance to win their first gold medal when they play the Netherlands on Thursday. The Netherlands beat Hungary, 8-7, in the other semifinal Tuesday. “I’m speechless,” United States attacker Patty Cardenas said. “Who wouldn’t want to play for a gold medal? Our fans are great, our teammates are great, our coaches. I can’t describe it. It’s a dream come true.” Villa led the United States with three goals and further secured her legacy as one of the greatest American players. She grew up in Commerce, Calif., just outside Los Angeles. Her mother worked as a cleaner at the Speedo factory there. The same skill and work ethic that defined Villa’s career are intertwined with her background in Commerce, a plucky town that prides itself on producing top water polo talent. “She is the classic rags-to-riches story,” said Christopher Ramsey, the chief executive of USA Water Polo. At 5 feet 4 inches, Villa does not fit the physical prototype for a star player. But her guile, savvy and experience have made her one of the top players in the world. “She doesn’t look like much of a water polo player, but she’s got the brain and the skills,” Australia Coach Greg McFadden said. “She has to be rated as one of the best players in the world.” McFadden had guaranteed victory in interviews with the Australian news media, but he acknowledged with a smile afterward that his attempt at being a soothsayer was “not accurate.” Villa made sure of that. She was already a star, but her greatest success in these Olympics has been her evolving into a leader. “That wasn’t an easy transition for me,” she said. “I’m definitely someone that’s not by nature nurturing.” Armstrong, who finished with eight saves, said that Villa’s greatest gift as a teammate was her ability to instill confidence in others. And as Australia roared back in the fourth quarter, Villa looked around and liked what she saw. “Everyone looked calm and confident,” she said. For Villa and her teammates, Thursday’s game offers one final chance to stash their frustrating Olympic history and forge a new legacy. They have made it their goal to bring exposure to a game they love and toil anonymously to play. They see themselves as ambassadors to increase interest in the game, in much the way the United States women’s soccer team did when it won the World Cup in 1999. Brenda Villa is their Mia Hamm. And Thursday offers her the best chance to cap her decorated career and drown all the ghosts of the team’s past heartbreak. “There’s a lot of great memories that I have about her,” Baker said of Villa. “We’ve still got maybe one more to make.”

Olympic Games (2008)
Water Polo
Beijing (China)
United States
Australia
Hungary
Netherlands


U.S. Wonders if Iran Is Playing for Time

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama got what he said he wanted when United States negotiators met with their Iranian counterparts this week in Geneva: direct engagement, without preconditions, with Iran . But the trick now for Mr. Obama, administration officials concede, will be to avoid getting tripped up. In other words, is the Iranian government serious this time? The clearest risk is that the Iranians may play for time, as they have often been accused of doing in the past, making promises and encouraging more meetings, while waiting for political currents to change or the closed ranks among the Western allies to break. After Tehran agreed to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium outside Iran to be turned into fuel, Obama administration officials were clearly walking a fine line on Thursday between celebrating what could be a possible breakthrough in international efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and sounding appropriately skeptical that the administration was not going to be played by Tehran. “Taking the step of transferring its low-enriched uranium to a third country would be a step towards building confidence that Iran’s program is in fact peaceful,” Mr. Obama said Thursday . But, perhaps aware of the country’s history of appearing to make concessions and then backing off, he quickly added: “We’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking. If Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure.” It was, in many ways, the exact opposite of what a White House usually does after major international talks. Instead of painting lukewarm concessions as major breakthroughs and going on and on about “warm substantive” meetings, officials were treating a potentially major breakthrough as if it were a suspicious package. If Iran has really agreed to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium out of the country to be turned into fuel, that is a significant concession, experts said, and much more than the Bush administration ever got over the years of its nonengagement dance with Iran. “This is actually quite important if it takes place,” said Ray Takeyh, a former Iran adviser to the Obama administration. “If you establish an arrangement whereby Iran’s fuel is exported abroad, then that relieves some degree of your proliferation concern.” For the administration, though, the problem is that no one is certain that the Iranian government will actually do what Western officials say that it has now agreed to do. In fact, on Friday, less than 24 hours after the talks in Geneva broke up, Iranian officials did not sound as if they thought they had promised anything. “No, no!” Mehdi Saffare, Iran’s ambassador to Britain and a member of the Iranian delegation to the negotiations, said, according to the Associated Press. He said that the idea of sending Iran’s enriched uranium out of the county had “not been discussed yet.” This is not the first time that Western officials have left discussions with their Iranian counterparts thinking they had a deal, only to see it melt away. In 2007, European diplomats said they thought they had wrung a concession from Iran on the same issue, enriching uranium outside the country for use in Iranian reactors, only to have Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , reject the idea as an infringement of Iran’s sovereignty. “That’s the big ‘if,’ isn’t it?” a senior Obama administration official said. “Will they do it? No one wants to do a premature victory lap.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. There are some circumstances that would seem to favor Mr. Obama, analysts said. Fresh from the turmoil in Iran after the disputed presidential election in June that secured a second term for the hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , the Iranian government is “fighting on three fronts,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University . “They’re fighting with the people of Iran, they’re fighting within themselves, and they’re fighting with the international community. They’ve just decided that they can’t fight a three-front war, so they’re trying to lower the tension on the fight with the international community, at least.” In recent weeks, Mr. Obama has also secured — at least for now — some support from Russia , which emerged after Mr. Obama decided to replace the missile defense program in Eastern Europe favored by President George W. Bush with a version less threatening to Moscow. President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia signaled for the first time that Russia would be amenable to longstanding American requests to toughen sanctions against Iran if the nuclear talks failed. Still, the administration’s caution is warranted, said Mr. Takeyh, the former adviser on Iran, especially since some Iranian officials in Tehran denied on Friday that they had assured the United States and other major powers in Geneva that they would open a recently disclosed uranium enrichment plant near Qum to international inspectors within two weeks. This was in addition to the dispute over whether Iran had agreed to send much of its low-enriched uranium, known in the field as L.E.U., to be turned into fuel in other counties. “You don’t want to go out and celebrate an achievement and then watch the Iranians backtrack,” Mr. Takeyh said. “You have to actually get that L.E.U. on a plane.”

United States International Relations
Iran
United States
Obama Barack
Ahmadinejad Mahmoud
Khamenei Ali
Takeyh Ray
Uranium
Embargoes and Economic Sanctions
Defense and Military Forces


At Top University, a Fight for Pakistan’s Future

Abstract: LAHORE, Pakistan — The professor was working in his office here on the campus of Pakistan ’s largest university this month when members of an Islamic student group battered open the door, beat him with metal rods and bashed him over the head with a giant flower pot. Iftikhar Baloch, an environmental science professor, had expelled members of the group for violent behavior. The retribution left him bloodied and nearly unconscious, and it united his fellow professors, who protested with a nearly three-week strike that ended Monday . The attack and the anger it provoked have drawn attention to the student group, Islami Jamiat Talaba, whose morals police have for years terrorized this graceful, century-old institution by brandishing a chauvinistic form of Islam, teachers here say. But the group has help from a surprising source — national political leaders who have given it free rein, because they sometimes make political alliances with its parent organization, Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s oldest and most powerful religious party, they say. The university’s plight encapsulates Pakistan’s predicament: an intolerant, aggressive minority terrorizes a more open-minded, peaceful majority, while an opportunistic political class dithers, benefiting from alliances with the aggressors. The dynamic helps explain how the Taliban and other militant groups here, though small and often unpopular minorities, retain their hold over large portions of Pakistani society. But this is the University of the Punjab , Pakistan’s premier institution of higher learning, with about 30,000 students, and a principal avenue of advancement for the swelling ranks of Pakistan’s lower and middle classes. The battle here concerns the future direction of the country, and whether those pushing an intolerant vision of Islam will prevail against this nation’s beleaguered, outward-looking, educated class. That is why the problem of Islami Jamiat Talaba is so urgent, teachers say. “They are hooligans with a Taliban mentality and they should be banned, full stop,” Maliha A. Aga, a teacher in the art department, said of the student group as she stood in a throng of protesters in professorial robes this month. “That’s the only way this university will survive.” The rhetoric of the group, like that of its parent political party, is strongly anti-West, chauvinistic and intolerant of Pakistan’s religious minorities. It was a vocal supporter of the Taliban, until doing so became unpopular last year. Its members block music classes, ban Western soft drinks and beat male students for sitting near girls on the university lawn. “It’s fascist,” said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English literature professor, of the Islamic student movement. “Every single government has averted its eyes.” The group is something of a puzzle. It may be aggressive, but it is relatively small, and has waned in popularity among students in recent years. One young teacher said association with it now brought stigma. But it still manages to dominate by deftly wielding Islam as a weapon to bludgeon its enemies, denouncing anyone who disagrees with it as un-Islamic. The tactic is effective in Pakistan, a young country whose early confusion about the role of Islam in society has hardened into a rigid certainty, making it highly taboo to question. “It’s unthinkable to talk even about human rights without reference to the Holy Book,” said Ms. Sirajuddin, referring to the Koran. “Such is the dread to be talked about as un-Islamic.” The reason goes back to history. In the 1980s, an American-supported autocrat, Mohammad Zia ul-Haq , seeded the education system with Islamists in an effort to forge a unified Pakistani identity. At the University of the Punjab, that created a pool of supporters for Islami Jamiat Talaba among teachers, making the group all but impossible to eject. It has left liberal teachers like Ms. Sirajuddin despairing for their institution, which once upon a time produced three Nobel laureates. Now, they say, it is a shadow of its former self and no longer a safe environment for young people to exchange ideas. One of the leaders of the group’s national chapter, Nadim Ahmed, condemned the beating as “shameful,” and said the main attackers had been suspended. But he emphasized that the group itself was peaceful. Its only ambitions, he said, are to welcome new students and organize book fairs. But students and teachers say the group’s aim is power, and that it uses violence to get it. A teacher, who would give her name only as Ms. Tayyib, fearing retribution, said group members twice attacked sports events she had organized, once wielding chairs. The recently formed music department has never been able to hold a class on campus. “Every second issue is a sin,” Ms. Tayyib said. The intimidation has poisoned the academic atmosphere, said another young teacher, Nazia, who was also too fearful to allow her full name to be printed. “Jamiat is a threat for teachers,” Nazia said. “That weakens the quality of education.” Mr. Baloch, the teacher who was beaten on April 1, had taken a stand against them. He identified the ringleader as Usman Ashraf, a 26-year-old geology graduate student, whose mug shot is posted in departments around campus. “I received many applications” complaining of abuses, he said while convalescing in his home. “And more or less every second one had his name on it.” Just as in Pakistan as a whole, the stakes in this power game are property and money, and the student group has both. It is deeply embedded in the life of the campus, controlling the dormitories, the cafeterias and the campus snack shops. The group created a parallel administration, according to a former member, Nadim Jamil, and has divided the university into five zones, with a nazim, or mayor, assigned to each. The dormitories are their fiefdoms, he said, where mayors monitor movements, hold Koran reading classes and recruit members. The university is as ineffectual as the group is organized: There are dormitory ID cards, but no one bothers to check them, said Ms. Tayyib, who used to live in the girls’ dormitory, which is also controlled by the group. “It’s our fault,” Ms. Tayyib said. “We are weak. The administration is lethargic.” As unpopular as it may be on campus, the group never has trouble getting recruits. Many first-year students are shy, underprivileged youths from the countryside. The group appeals to this weakness, helping with expenses and opening up a system of benefits: More milk in their tea. Better food. Cleaner dishes. “It’s an addiction,” Ms. Tayyib said, describing the thinking of the young recruits. “I’m from a remote area, and no one ever listened to me. But now I’m important.” Mr. Baloch, who received more than 30 stitches in his head, said he believed that the attack had galvanized public opinion against the group and that it would serve to turn people against it. “The wheels of justice grind slowly but surely,” he said. Others are less certain. Last week, several of the attackers were arrested, but Mr. Ashraf, the ringleader, was not among them. Besides, the group’s top leader on campus is the son of an important politician. “This opportunity will be lost,” said Nazia, the young teacher. “I know it’s pessimistic, but it’s what I’m thinking.”

Pakistan
Islam
Jamaat-e-Islami
College
Iftikhar Baloch
Islami Jamiat Talaba
Politics
University of the Punjab


Knicks’ Felton and Stoudemire Learn to Mesh Together

Abstract: Of all the hellos the Knicks have said this preseason in familiarizing themselves with one another, one of the most important new relationships on the team originated nearly a decade ago. As high school players, forward Amar’e Stoudemire and point guard Raymond Felton occasionally crossed A.A.U. and summer-camp paths, sometimes playing together. They now have the chance to perform full time as teammates, and Stoudemire and Felton, the two captains appointed to pull the Knicks out of nonplayoff purgatory, are still developing their chemistry. Like dancers who learn each other’s steps, they will need to run a seamless routine in Coach Mike D’Antoni’s pick-and-roll for the offense to be fluid. In the early preseason, the results have left room for development on Felton’s end. In overseas games against Armani Jeans Milano and the Minnesota Timberwolves , Felton had 12 assists, but he turned the ball over eight times and missed 8 of 11 shots. “A lot of times in the N.B.A., once you give it up, you don’t see it a whole lot again,” D’Antoni said of Felton’s low shot total. “That’s kind of the nature of the business.” In landing with the Knicks, Felton is moving from one offensive extreme in Larry Brown’s deliberate halfcourt sets in Charlotte to D’Antoni’s preferred pace of organized chaos. “We’ve got to find that medium where Raymond doesn’t go too fast,” D’Antoni said. “There’s a time to push and a time to calm it down. I think we’re doing better on it, and that’s something we’ll learn as we go forward. A lot of that’s in Raymond’s head, and he’ll set the tone, the rhythm of the game, and push as fast as he can without getting out of control.” Push, but not too hard. Pull back, but not too much. Somewhere, there is a medium for Felton to locate. Stoudemire should make that hunt easier. In five seasons in the N.B.A., Felton has yet to play with a multifaceted forward like Stoudemire. “He does everything,” Felton said. “We’re definitely going to try and get our own chemistry together, and that’s what practice is for and the preseason is for.” In Phoenix, Stoudemire partnered with Steve Nash for six years in one of the league’s most potent pick-and-roll duos. The chicken-and-egg-type question of who benefited more in the relationship will be answered this season when they play without each other. “It was a difficult situation, to be honest with you,” Stoudemire said of leaving Phoenix. “Playing with Steve was a great opportunity for both of us. We worked well with each other. We elevated both of our games. It was a great, great friendship and relationship there, so it was a tough decision for me to leave Phoenix. But Steve is a phenomenal player. I’m sure he’s going to be O.K. and vice versa. “I don’t want to put any extra on Raymond because Steve is a phenomenal player and he works extremely hard at his craft. But Raymond is special at his own craft, and we’re looking forward to him reaching his full potential and working hard every night.” Felton’s more immediate impact will be on defense, where he is a hard-nosed ball hawk. In Charlotte last season, Felton’s scoring average was 12.1 points, his lowest since his rookie season in 2005-6, but he shot a career-high 45.9 percent. He was the first line of defense in a unit that allowed the fewest points per game at 93.8. Once acclimated, Felton will be an upgrade over the point guards since D’Antoni has arrived. But the Knicks also spent $25 million over three years to secure him and missed out on several developing but capable point guards in the last two draft classes. “These last two practices, I think he’s getting a better feel about what we need to do,” D’Antoni said. “I don’t think he had that in Europe at all.” REBOUNDS The Knicks conducted an open practice at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Mike D’Antoni told the crowd, “We do know one thing: we don’t know how the year will go, but you won’t get a more hard-working group than you have now.” To prove the point, the Knicks spent most of the hour and a half zipping up the court and diving into the stands for loose balls, while scrimmaging and working on a full-court press. For fans, it was their first in-person glimpse of the reconstructed Knicks, who have yet to play a preseason game in the United States. The Russian center Timofey Mozgov elicited cheers after several putbacks and blocks, and his status seemed to grow with each productive play. “He must be 9-feet-6,” one onlooker said of the 7-1 Mozgov.

Felton Raymond
Stoudemire Amare
New York Knicks
Basketball