Walker (Who Else?) Leads UConn to Big East Title

Abstract: Late in the second half of Connecticut’s victory in the Big East tournament final against Louisville, Kemba Walker came to the sideline and told his coach, Jim Calhoun, that he couldn’t feel his legs. “That’s usually a sign that you’re tired,” Calhoun said. But as Walker and ninth-seeded Connecticut finished off their five-day marathon through Madison Square Garden that was equal parts improbable and impressive, Walker just kept running. He didn’t stop until Connecticut won, 69-66, as both Walker and his team put an indelible mark on the Big East record book with the most impressive individual and team performances in the conference tournament’s history. “What these kids accomplished during this week has been as moving for me as anything that I could possibly think of,” Calhoun said. Walker smashed the Big East tournament scoring with 130 points, and Connecticut became the first Big East team to win five games in five days. But it wasn’t easy against a pressing and scrapping Louisville team that used 10 players and had received a double bye. Fittingly, Walker made the game’s defining play to help give UConn the lead with 33.6 seconds left. He drove past Louisville guard Peyton Siva, drew two other Louisville defenders and dished a pass to Jeremy Lamb for an easy lay-in that gave Connecticut the lead for good at 65-64. “It was tough, but we pulled it out,” Walker said. “Words can’t describe it.” Walker had no problem describing his fatigue. He scored 19 points in 33 minutes and helped seal the game’s outcome by draining a pair of free throws down the stretch. “I was tired,” he said. “I can tell you now, I was tired, but my teammates stepped up for me.” They needed to after Walker nearly made a critical blunder, fouling Louisville forward Mike Marra, who committed a critical turnover on an inbounds pass on the previous Louisville possession, with 3.9 seconds remaining and Connecticut clinging to a 3-point lead. But Marra missed the second of his three free throws, and Louisville’s Preston Knowles came up short on a 3-point attempt at the buzzer to give the victory to Walker and UConn. Walker, who hails from the Bronx, got to hear his name echo through the Garden. “Wow,” he said. “That’s a special feeling.” No college basketball team had ever won a tournament by winning five games in five nights. After squandering a 14-point lead and trailing in the final minute, Connecticut looked as if may not become the first. But after Walker went to the sideline with two minutes remaining and told Calhoun he couldn’t feel his legs, he still managed to make plays to win the game. “I wanted to win this game so bad,” Walker said. “My heart took over.” In the second half, Louisville Coach Rick Pitino screamed to the officials about Walker at one point, “He’s not Michael Jordan.” But Walker did show glimpses of Jordan’s indomitable will. Walker scored 130 pointes this week, crushing the previous individual record of 84 by Syracuse’s Eric Devendorf. Walker set the record by defying all normal athletic bounds of rest and recuperation, playing with the same bounce and energy on Saturday night against Louisville that he did on Tuesday afternoon against DePaul. Calhoun said his performance should be the gold standard in the Big East tournament for years to come. “If anyone can bring more heart and more competitiveness and more leadership along with incredible play, they’re going to have to be very good,” Calhoun said. Entering Saturday night, the former Syracuse guard Gerry McNamara had set the standard for weeklong performances at the Big East tournament. His flurry of buzzer beaters will long be remembered as the most clutch run in tournament history. But McNamara’s performance can no longer be considered the most prolific; Walker carried the Huskies for five nights with a dazzling combination of hypnotizing crossovers, deft assists and kinetic energy. Walker showed no signs of slowing early on against Louisville. He scored 10 points in the first half and led Connecticut to a double-digit lead. UConn dominated the first half, displaying no ill effects from its grueling run at the Garden. The tournament title could propel UConn as high as a No. 3 seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament, a stunning jump for a team that finished ninth in the conference. Louisville’s run here should help it land a seed in high as No. 3 as well. The Cardinals showed with a bench that goes 11 deep that they will be a difficult team to beat. But no one will take more out of this week than Walker, who dominated from wire to wire. It is difficult to imagine him and his team tiring anytime soon. They spent the week on a deep run into Big East lore.

Big East Conference
University of Connecticut
University of Louisville
Walker Kemba
College Athletics
Basketball
Basketball (College)
Records and Achievements


Not So Much a Car as a Mobile Device

Abstract: FORGET about thinking outside the box — or inside it, for that matter. Nissan Motor is betting an estimated $20 million during the worst automotive sales slump in a generation that a spirited campaign can get drivers to forgo the box for the cube. Actually, it is the Cube, as in the Nissan Cube, a cute, smallish car scheduled to go on sale on May 5. And scratch the word “car,” for the campaign to introduce the Cube in the United States, which begins on Monday, takes a big step, er, outside the box by calling it a “mobile device.” The phrase, borrowed from the digital domain, signals that the intended market for the Cube is younger drivers. It also signals the focus of the campaign: presenting the Cube as a part of a fun, busy life that can be customized and personalized as easily as a cellphone ring tone or a Facebook page. To underscore all that, the campaign borrows terms from technology like “search engine,” “browse,” “storage capacity,” “add friends” and “set preferences” to describe features of the Cube. And the media mix skews decidedly toward nontraditional elements like iPhone games, wallpapers, text messaging , the Internet and MP3 downloads. The ads in the traditional media also come in 2.0 versions. For instance, commercials are labeled “all-screen videos,” because they are meant to appear on computer screens, screens in movie theaters and cellphone screens as well as on television screens. The Cube is entering a crowded category of the depressed auto market composed of niche models meant as emotional purchases rather than rational. Such cars are intended to attract attention for unusual design rather than horsepower, bling or fuel economy. Examples include Chevrolet HHR , Fiat Qubo, Ford Edge , Honda Element , Honda Fit , Kia Soul, Mini Cooper, Smart Fortwo and Toyota Scion. Niche models tend to appeal to younger drivers, as should the Cube, or at least its price: starting at $13,990 (and $695 in destination charges). For many, the Cube is likely to be their first car — assuming, that is, they have jobs, credit and enough confidence to face the uncertain economy. As challenging as the climate may be, “we think the Cube’s a perfect vehicle for this time” because “it offers a tremendous value,” said Erich Marx, director for marketing communications for the Nissan division at Nissan North America in Nashville, a unit of Nissan Motor of Japan. For those who may still need a boost into the driver’s seat, said Phil O’Connor, senior manager for marketing communications at the division, “we’ve got a number of plans in place to help that customer,” including enabling buyers with “a limited amount of credit history to get financing.” Still, conditions may deter even the most determined customers. Nissan sales in this country in March fell 37.7 percent from March 2008. They declined 35.2 percent in the first quarter, compared with the same period last year. “We’ve certainly assessed various options through the filter of what’s going on with the economy,” Mr. Marx said, “but we’re sticking with our launch plan.” “The first half of 2009 is protected in every sense,” he added, referring to elaborate introductions for the Cube and the Nissan 370Z sports coupe. “There’s no hunkering down.” The campaign is starting a month before the Cube goes on sale to pique curiosity — or, as the intended audience would say, build buzz — about the car, whose offbeat looks and quirky sales pitch may prove polarizing. The first look at the campaign will come during the episode of “Heroes” scheduled to be broadcast by NBC on Monday night. The Cube plays a cameo role, part of a long-running branded entertainment deal between Nissan North America and NBC, part of the NBC Universal unit of General Electric. After the episode appears, a Cube commercial — or all-screen video, if you are Cubean — will go up on a Facebook fan page for the car. The Cube will also be featured in an online graphic novel devoted to “Heroes” that is sponsored by Nissan North America; it can be read on a section of the NBC Web site ( nbc.com/heroes/novels ). Plans include a contest on the Web site to give away a Cube. “This is a tough time to bring anything out, whether a car or a new TV,” acknowledged Kerry Feuerman, group creative director at the Playa del Rey, Calif., office of TBWA/Chiat/Day, part of the TBWA Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group, which is the Nissan North America creative agency. “So we decided we wouldn’t think about it as a car,” he added, but rather “position it as designed to bring young people together — like every mobile device they have.” Of course, TBWA/Chiat/Day is not unfamiliar with such devices; it is the creative agency for the iPhone. TBWA/Chiat/Day is creating the aspects of the Cube campaign that include the videos, print and outdoor ads, social media like Facebook, the iPhone games and the music downloads. The “Heroes” appearance was handled by a sibling Omnicom agency, OMD, along with media buying. OMD is also working with TBWA/Chiat/Day on events and other so-called experiential marketing elements of the introduction. The Designory, a Long Beach, Calif., agency, is working on Cube content for the Nissan Web site ( nissanusa.com ). Those with long memories may recall a soundalike brand, Qube, a cable TV system begun in 1977 that prefigured services like pay-per-view shows.

Nissan Motor Co
Automobiles
Advertising and Marketing


Vonn’s at Ease, but Never Far From the Edge

Abstract: Lindsey Vonn , the defending World Cup ski champion and multiple Olympic medal favorite, tried other sports as a child. Figure skating was a struggle, and she was not very accomplished at gymnastics, either. “The worst was soccer,” Vonn said with a laugh in an interview late last year. “My mom finally made me quit because I kept kicking the ball in my own team’s goal. Ask anybody who knows me, I’m kind of a klutz off my skis.” Vonn was walking from a coffee shop in Vail, Colo., as she spoke. “I’m dead serious,” she said. “Just doing something like this — stepping off a curb — my coaches worry that some day I’m going to trip and break something.” Truth be told, she was not all that good on skis at first. Her youth coach in Minnesota, the Austrian-born Erich Sailer, said of Vonn’s earliest races, “You could walk faster than she skied.” But that changed quickly. Like many a prodigy, Vonn soon exhibited an indefinable gift, a oneness with the snow. She easily won race after race, and when she advanced to steeper courses, she maintained a cool, graceful style and won by bigger margins. She was confident soaring in the air, usually a daunting experience for a child. As the challenges and the mountains got bigger, when other junior skiers would instinctually hesitate, Vonn would charge. Not much had changed by the time she joined the United States ski team as a teenager. “I remember in her first year with the team, I was standing with Bode Miller next to a course at Mammoth Mountain, and she came flying by and I said, ‘Who is that?’ ” Daron Rahlves, a former American downhill great said, recalling a training camp in California in 2001. “And Bode said, ‘I don’t know, but she’s the only girl trying to take the same line down the mountain that we are.’ ” Rahlves laughed. “I watch her now and I see the same thing,” he said. “She skis like a guy. Always attacking.” According to the coaches who have tutored her throughout her career, Vonn’s inherent talent was always accompanied by a herculean work ethic. “Up and down the mountain, day after day — nights, weekends, holidays — Lindsey was always there and she never complained,” Sailer said. “She would go until we turned off the lights at night.” When Vonn was 11, she began training at Ski Club Vail, an elite snow sports academy. One of her coaches there, John Cole, said that at first, he would sometimes lose track of her. “We would be inside with the other kids because it was cold, raining or it was lunchtime, and somebody would say, ‘Where’s Lindsey?’ ” Cole said. “And you know what? We learned to look back up the hill because she had stayed out there and was taking more runs through the race course.” Though she is now 25 and one of the signature American athletes heading into the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, she still pushes just as hard — perhaps too hard sometimes. Vonn revealed Wednesday that she had sustained a leg injury last week during training. “If you want to know why Lindsey is so good, go to the gym 90 minutes before the rest of the team is scheduled to start working out,” said Jim Tracy, a coach for the United States team. “Lindsey will already be there.” Vonn has a limited number of serious pursuits, but she tends to approach each with similar determination. She spent at least half the year racing in Europe, and it frustrated her that she could not communicate more adeptly. So she learned German, and not just a little bit. When Vail Resorts was negotiating to become a major sponsor of Vonn’s, the corporation’s chief executive, Rob Katz, happened upon a YouTube clip of Vonn on a German television talk show. “It was a David Letterman-type show, and there was Lindsey cracking jokes and making repartee with the host in German,” Katz said. “I was blown away that she had taught herself that well. She’s focused, genuine and does things in a way that people admire. When you’re going to link yourself to an athlete, you are looking for Derek Jeter. We got ski racing’s Derek Jeter.” Vonn, if healthy, is the favorite in the Olympic downhill, super-G and super combined, which is one run of slalom combined with one run of downhill. She will be a more distant medal contender in her other events, slalom and giant slalom. Counseled by her husband, the former Olympic skier Thomas Vonn, who also acts as an adviser and coach, Lindsey has tried to normalize the situation she faces in Vancouver. “It’s definitely weird to have your face everywhere, but I’m as prepared for it as I can be,” she said. “I have worked very hard, and I’ve always wanted an Olympic medal. Everyone should know that I will try my best.” And then, when the Olympics are over, Vonn could achieve the second biggest goal in her life: appearing in an episode of television’s “Law & Order.” “I am obsessed with the show,” she said. “I’ll play a stiff on a mortuary slab, I don’t care. Or I could be a bystander on the street, someone who points and says, ‘They went that way.’ I could do that. I don’t know if they want me running somewhere or doing anything athletic, but I could stand still and do something. I’d be good at that. I really would.”

Vonn Lindsey
Olympic Games (2010)
Skiing


James E. Burke, Ex-Johnson & Johnson Chief, Dies at 87

Abstract: James E. Burke , whose leadership of Johnson & Johnson during the Tylenol poisonings in the 1980s is regarded as a textbook example of how to handle a public relations crisis , died on Friday at a health care facility near New Brunswick, N.J. He was 87. His death was confirmed by his son, James. As Johnson & Johnson’s chairman and chief executive from 1976 until his retirement in 1989, Mr. Burke oversaw a vast expansion of the company, which now sells a variety of products like baby shampoo, prescription drugs and artificial hips. Sales tripled to $9 billion a year, and the company began doing business in many more countries. But Mr. Burke is best known for his handling of the Tylenol crisis in 1982, when seven people in the Chicago area died after taking capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol that had been laced with cyanide. In 1986, another poisoned capsule killed a woman in Yonkers. The crimes have never been solved. The company spent more than $100 million recalling 32 million bottles of Tylenol capsules from store shelves in 1982, and even more on another recall in 1986. And Mr. Burke placed himself before news cameras and apologized. In a news conference in 1986 announcing that Johnson & Johnson would stop selling its over-the-counter products in capsules, which could be tampered with, and switch to solid caplets, a reporter asked if Mr. Burke was sorry the company had not acted sooner. “Yes, indeed I am,” he said. “That taught corporations a lesson about candor,” John F. Welch Jr., the former chairman and chief executive of General Electric, said on Monday in a telephone interview. “It was a huge legacy to leave: When you have a problem, deal with it openly, up front.” Those who knew Mr. Burke said he thrived on lively debate and sought opinions wherever he went. Three days into the first Tylenol poisonings in 1982, he traveled to Vermont to visit his son for parents’ weekend at Middlebury College. His son said he had assumed that his father would be too busy to make the trip, but Mr. Burke insisted and took eight of his son’s friends out to dinner. “He sat and he asked each one of them, ‘If you were me, what would you do?’ ” James Burke, who is an independent film producer, recalled on Monday. “He asked everybody he could think of what would be the right thing to do, and then took what made sense to him and his values.” Within months in 1982, Johnson & Johnson had returned Tylenol to the market in new, tamper-resistant packaging — the scare prompted Congress to pass antitampering legislation — and it took just one more year before the company recovered its position as the top-selling over-the-counter pain reliever. James Edward Burke was born in Rutland, Vt., on Feb. 28, 1925, a son of James and Mary Barnett Burke. He grew up in Slingerlands, N.Y., a small town outside Albany. During World War II, Mr. Burke was an ensign in the Navy. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1947 from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and continued on to Harvard Business School, graduating in 1949. After a stint as a sales representative for Procter & Gamble, Mr. Burke went to work at Johnson & Johnson in 1953 as a product director. Over the next two decades, Mr. Burke took on increasingly important roles as a marketing executive on the consumer side of the company’s business. He became vice president of marketing in 1964. In 1973, he became president of Johnson & Johnson, and three years later he was named chairman and chief executive. After his retirement, Mr. Burke became chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America , a position he held until 2005. He also served on the boards of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Carnegie Institution of Washington and on the Chairman’s Council of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Mr. Burke the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, for his business leadership and his antidrug efforts. Mr. Burke was a longtime resident of Princeton, N.J. Besides his son, he is survived by his wife of 31 years, Didi; a daughter, Clo Burke; a sister, Phyllis Burke Davis; and four grandchildren.

Burke James E
Tylenol (Drug)
Deaths (Obituaries)
Johnson & Johnson
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)


Kimbo Slice Is Back, and He’s Fighting a High School Classmate

Abstract: What can a smaller mixed martial arts organization do to be noticed when the talent-rich Ultimate Fighting Championship sucks up almost all the attention? For Bellator, the answer is to schedule attention-grabbing fights that make up in color what they lack in top-flight talent. On Friday in Houston, the organization is rolling out a bout featuring Kimbo Slice, the former street fighter, as well as a rematch of a classic M.M.A. fight — from 1995. Slice made his reputation in the early 2000s, appearing in unsanctioned brawls that were recorded and uploaded to the Internet. His colorful appearance and fearlessness made him an early Internet sensation, and he parlayed the fame into a brief and undistinguished M.M.A. career. He also tried his hand at movies, notably an appearance in “ The Scorpion King 3 .” He returned to the ring last June for a fight against the 51-year-old former champion Ken Shamrock . Shamrock got an early takedown and seemed to have Slice in trouble with a rear naked choke. But Slice eluded the hold and leveled Shamrock with his punching strength, winning by knockout in 2 minutes 22 seconds. Despite the gimmicky nature of the fight, or perhaps because of it, the television ratings broke records for Spike TV , which regularly broadcasts Bellator’s fights. That means Slice is back, this time to fight Dhafir Harris, who is known as Dada 5000. Harris starred in a documentary, “ Dawg Fight ,” about backyard fights in Florida. He is also a former high school classmate of Slice’s, and the two have verbally sparred, although it is hard to tell how much of it is for the cameras and how much is legitimate bad blood. A news conference with the two men this week quickly broke down into a profane shouting match. The night’s main event brings back Shamrock, now 52, to face his old rival Royce Gracie, 49. The two men met in the first ever U.F.C. event, in 1993, when Gracie won by submission. They met again in 1995 at U.F.C. 5, with the championship on the line. The two men fought for 35 grueling minutes before the fight was declared a draw because no judges were on hand. Shamrock and Gracie entered the U.F.C. Hall of Fame together in 2003 but have not met in the ring again until now, 21 years after their classic bout. Needless to say, both are well past their prime. Shamrock is 2-6 over the last 10 years. Gracie is a legend from the earliest days of M.M.A. but has not fought since 2007. Both fighters have tested positive for steroids in the last decade. The U.F.C. has a more traditional card on Saturday. Billed as Cowboy vs. Cowboy, it pits the fan favorite Donald Cerrone against a Brazilian, Alex Oliveira, who has the same nickname. It is the first U.F.C. event in Pittsburgh since 2011, when Cheick Kongo beat Pat Barry in a famous fight in which Kongo seemed to be out on his feet several times before improbably rallying for a knockout win. Though few would dispute that Cerrone and the other combatants on the U.F.C. card are far more capable at this point than Bellator’s headliners, many M.M.A. fans will not be able to resist seeing how Slice and the veterans do on Friday night.

Mixed martial arts
Bellator MMA
Ken Shamrock
Royce Gracie
Kimbo Slice


Japan Nuclear Plant Leaks Radioactive Water

Abstract: TOKYO — Tens of thousands of gallons of radioactive water leaked from a large underground storage pool at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant, and thousands more gallons could seep out before the faulty pool can be emptied, the plant’s operator said Saturday. About 120 tons, or almost 32,000 gallons, of highly contaminated water appeared to have breached the inner protective lining of the pool at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company. It was unclear how much of the water had made it through two additional layers of lining to reach soil, but radiation levels outside the pool have risen, a sign that some water is getting out, said the company, known as Tepco. The leak highlights the daunting challenge of what to do with the huge amounts of contaminated water created by makeshift cooling systems at the plant, after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out its regular cooling systems two years ago in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Since then, Tepco has essentially been pouring water onto the damaged reactor cores and storage ponds to keep them from overheating. As it is used for cooling, the water becomes so contaminated that it must be safely stored at the plant. Tepco said it was already storing more than a quarter-million tons of radioactive water in hundreds of large silver or blue tanks that seem to fill every available space at the plant, or in underground pools like the leaking one. With the decommissioning of the Fukushima plant likely to take decades, Tepco has said it expects the amount of radioactive water to keep growing, and possibly more than double within three years. The company has said it is building more storage space and new filtering facilities to clean the water. The company said the leak appeared to be the biggest since the early months after the March 2011 disaster, when leaks allowed contaminated water to flow into the nearby Pacific Ocean. Tepco said that this time, it did not expect any of the toxic water to reach the sea, since the pool is half a mile from the coast. Still, Tepco said it had begun pumping the remaining 13,000 tons of water out of the faulty pool and into a similar pool. The pools are like large ponds dug into the ground, protected by multiple layers of plastic sheets and covered with dirt. Emptying the damaged pool could take five more days, the company said, during which time an additional 47 tons, or about 12,000 gallons, could leak.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
HazMat
Nuclear energy
Water pollution
Electric power
Tokyo Electric Power
Japan
Japan Earthquake Tsunami


Cisco’s Profit Surges 23% on Better-Than-Expected Sales

Abstract: John T. Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems , prides himself on forecasting technology and economic shifts ahead of his company’s peers and competitors. On Wednesday, Mr. Chambers declared that spending on technology had moved to a higher gear, reflecting a much healthier global economy. In response, Cisco plans to hire up to 3,000 people over the next several quarters. His optimism about the economy, expressed as the company released strong second-quarter financial results, stood out even among the generally upbeat talk from executives at other technology companies in recent weeks. Customers have demonstrated more consistent and widespread demand for Cisco’s networking equipment, Mr. Chambers said in an interview. “There was major momentum. It was quite remarkably balanced across the board, and you would say we are on our way to a reasonably good recovery.” Cisco plans to adjust to the improved conditions by increasing its internal spending on nascent businesses and adding to its current work force of about 66,000. Last month, other technology heavyweights, including Intel, Microsoft and I.B.M., beat Wall Street expectations as sales of their flagship products and services improved at higher-than-expected rates. The quarterly results of those companies painted a picture of technology spending through the end of last year. On Wednesday, Cisco, whose products are used by a wide range of businesses and some consumers, provided a peek at technology spending in the new year when it reported results for the quarter that ended Jan. 24. Cisco’s net income increased 23.2 percent, to $1.85 billion, or 32 cents a share, from $1.5 billion, or 26 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Excluding charges for stock-option compensation and one-time items, Cisco earned 40 cents a share. The company reported healthier sales as well, with revenue increasing 8 percent, to $9.82 billion. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted that Cisco would earn 35 cents a share, excluding charges, on sales of $9.41 billion. Mr. Chambers said that his recent talks with government leaders and customers had convinced him of a shared optimism around the globe. “We are already in the second phase of a capital spending increase,” he said. For the current quarter, Cisco said it expected revenue to increase 23 to 26 percent from the $8.2 billion it reported in the period a year ago. In previous quarters, Cisco had reported pockets of stronger sales around the globe and strength with certain product lines. Mr. Chambers said the big difference this time around was that customers throughout the world increased their orders at the same time. Cisco reported higher sales in 8 of the top 15 countries it sells to, up from 2 out of 15 in the previous quarter. Erik Suppiger, an analyst with Signal Hill, noted that Cisco had in fact struggled to meet the rising orders of customers. “They had product shortages across a number of lines,” he said. Cisco, which has $39.6 billion in cash and investments on hand, has been one of the most aggressive acquirers in the technology industry. In the last year alone, the company spent more than $7 billion as it sought to advance its Internet video and wireless data product lines. Mr. Chambers has declared a rise in video on personal computers and cellphones part of the next phase of the Internet. Such cheerleading comes naturally to him, because Cisco looks to sell more routers and switches to deal with the large files produced by video systems. In addition, Cisco makes video-conferencing systems for businesses and Flip video cameras for the consumer market. Cisco has used the lull created by the economic downturn to increase its investment in areas that are still nascent, like business and Web software, where it trails Microsoft and I.B.M. by a wide margin in both market share and reputation. With sales of its core products once again on the rise, Cisco’s move into these smaller businesses is likely to come under more scrutiny from investors looking for growth, analysts said. “The proof will be showing traction on some of these new products and initiatives,” said Jeffrey Evenson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “This is the year where their ability to execute will become more apparent.”


Cocaine Trade Helps Rebels Reignite War in Peru

Abstract: CANAYRE, Peru — First the soldiers came to Río Seco, a coca-growing village in the lush mountain jungles of southern Peru. “They called us subversives and they opened fire,” said Benedicto Cóndor, 55, a coca farmer. They shot dead four people at close range, including a woman who was five months pregnant, witnesses said. Two children, ages 6 and 1, disappeared and are believed dead. Four months later, the guerrillas arrived, accusing the villagers of helping the military. They abducted the village leader, who has not been seen since. The harrowing tales of violence trickling out of the jungle as dozens of families have fled their villages in recent months raise an ominous specter: a brutal war that terrorized the country for two decades may be sparking back to life. The war against the Shining Path rebels, which took nearly 70,000 lives, supposedly ended in 2000. But here in one of the most remote corners of the Andes, the military, in a renewed campaign, is battling a resurgent rebel faction. And the Shining Path, taking a page from Colombia’s rebels, has reinvented itself as an illicit drug enterprise, rebuilding on the profits of Peru’s thriving cocaine trade. The front lines lie in the drizzle-shrouded jungle of Vizcatán, a 250-square-mile region in the Apurímac and Ene River Valley. The region is Peru’s largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. As the military and the rebels skirmish for control of isolated coca-producing hamlets, the reports of rising body counts and civilians killed in the cross-fire, still far lower than the carnage at the height of the Shining Path war in the 1980s and early 90s, are rousing ghosts most Peruvians thought were long dead. “The soldiers think we are all terrorists, and with that idea they believe they can destroy anything that moves,” said Alfredo Pacheco, 45, a coca farmer who fled his village, Nueva Esperanza, in September, after soldiers burned the mud huts there in pursuit of the rebels. Military officials contended that the huts were coca-leaf maceration pits and cocaine labs. Such conflicting views are practically built into the system. Coca, the mildly stimulating leaf chewed raw here since before the Spanish conquest, is largely legal; cocaine is not. Coca, a hallowed symbol of indigenous pride, is ubiquitous here. Qatun Tarpuy, a pro-coca political party, paints images of it on mud huts. Women harvest coca in clearings along the winding dirt road, and children dry the leaves in the sun. It is also nearly impossible to find a coca farmer here who admits that his crops are sold for anything other than traditional use, but somehow, studies have found, as much as 90 percent of the coca goes to produce cocaine. In 2007, the latest year for which data is available, coca cultivation in Peru increased by 4 percent, reaching the highest level in a decade, according to the United Nations. At the same time, Peru’s estimated cocaine production rose to a 10-year high of about 290 tons, second only to that of Colombia. Since the Shining Path retreated here after the capture of its messianic leader, Abimael Guzmán, in 1992 , it has followed the much larger Colombian rebel group, the FARC , in melding a leftist insurgency with drug running and production. While the Shining Path was involved in coca before, now it is a major focus. According to military and anti-drug analysts, the faction here, while still professing to be a Maoist insurgency at heart, is now in the business of protecting drug smugglers, extorting taxes from farmers and operating its own cocaine laboratories. “The guerrillas now operate with the efficiency and deadliness of an elite drug trafficking organization,” said Jaime Antezana, a security analyst in Lima, Peru’s capital, who estimates that the Shining Path employs about 500 laborers in the cocaine trade, in addition to about 350 armed combatants. Concerned about the resurrected rebels and mounting cocaine, the government intensified the counterinsurgency campaign last August, and the killings spiked. The guerrillas killed at least 26 people in 2008, including 22 soldiers and police officers, the bloodiest year in almost a decade, according to security analysts. Human rights groups, meanwhile, are demanding inquiries into claims that Peruvian soldiers killed at least five civilians, as well as into the disappearance of the two children in Río Seco and the displacement of dozens of families from far-flung villages. Military officials chafe at the reports of abuses. “Human rights people say, ‘Some civilians have been killed, how horrible,’ ” Defense Minister Ántero Flores Aráoz said in an interview in Lima. As for Rosa Chávez Sihuincha, the pregnant woman killed in Río Seco, he suggested that she got what she deserved. “What the hell was she doing in Vizcatán?” he said. “Was she praying the rosary? No way. Either she was transporting coca leaves for processing or she was taking chemical products or she was part of the logistics of this Shining Path group.” While the United States is not directly involved with the counterinsurgency campaign here, it provided about $60 million in anti-drug aid last year, about 11 percent of what it spends annually on anti-drug and counterinsurgency efforts in Colombia. Officials here admit that they were slow to recognize what they were up against when Mr. Guzmán, a former philosophy professor, unleashed his peasant revolt in the 1980s, an experience they bring to bear as they try to decipher today’s rebels. “There are those who say, ‘Why worry about a few hundred fighters in the jungle?’ ” said Alberto Bolívar, a counterinsurgency expert. “But they easily forget the Shining Path began their armed struggle in 1980 with just a few hundred guys. Two decades later, 70,000 people were dead.” But the Shining Path appears to have learned lessons, too. Coca farmers here describe today’s Maoists as a disciplined, well-armed force, entering villages in groups of 20 in crisp black uniforms. Little is known about their leaders, aside from the belief that two brothers, Victor Quispe Palomino, known as José, and Jorge Quispe Palomino, alias Raúl, are at the helm. Soldiers speak respectfully of the rebels’ command of the jungle terrain and of their ability to harass with gunfire more than a dozen forward operating bases that have been established in recent months. “Their columns seem to melt into the jungle,” said Maj. Julio Delgado, an officer at a base in Pichari, one of the largest towns in the valley. A resupply mission from that base on a Russian-built MI-17 helicopter offered a glimpse into the counterinsurgency’s challenges. For half an hour, the helicopter flew over what Peruvians call the “ceja de selva,” the eyebrow of the jungle, where green canopy on jutting peaks provides impenetrable camouflage. The helicopter landed at a tiny special forces base in Sanabamba, where commandos pointed rifles at the surrounding terrain, waiting to hear from their hidden quarry. Once the helicopter took off again, green jungle quickly swallowed the mountaintop outpost. Coca harvesters below did not even bother to glance up. The rebels contend that they no longer assassinate local officials or sow terror with tactics like planting bombs on donkeys in crowded markets, atrocities the group was infamous for in the 1980s. This metamorphosis was confirmed by testimony from villagers who had come in contact with them, interviews with imprisoned rebels and a 45-page analysis written by the rebels , tracing the group’s evolution from its origins under Mr. Guzmán, that was captured by military intelligence here in December. According to the document, they consider Mr. Guzmán a “revisionist” traitor and condemn another Shining Path faction, in the Upper Huallaga Valley in the north, for its openness to negotiations. Perhaps the most notable difference between the new Shining Path and the old is the new group’s relationship with the villagers, which ostensibly favors paternalism over terrorism. The villagers refer to the guerrillas as “los tíos,” the uncles, although any familial affection is enforced by the threat of violence. It is a volatile arrangement well understood from the highest generals to a fruit peddler like María Auccatoma, 48, who sells mangoes near the village of Machente at a spot marked with crosses for the three civilians and five policemen killed by the guerrillas in an ambush. “We can live in peace,” Ms. Auccatoma said quietly, “as long as we obey the uncles.”

Peru
Shining Path
Cocaine and Crack Cocaine
Drug Abuse and Traffic
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
Guzman Abimael
Delgado Julio
Andes Mountains
Coca (Plant)


Ecuadorean Bank Finds a Niche With Emigrants in Spain

Abstract: MADRID — Rosalia Efigenia Guamán, one of 540,000 Ecuadorean emigrants living in Spain, jumped on the news that the biggest privately owned bank in Ecuador, Banco Pichincha, had also moved here. Rekindling her relationship with the bank she had used back home allowed Ms. Guamán, a housekeeper and waitress, to lower the cost of her remittances, she said, as well as to buy a life insurance policy. “I feel very reassured to know that it will be much easier for my mother in Ecuador to get back everything possible if anything goes really wrong for me here,” she said. Pichincha received its Spanish commercial banking license in spring 2010, just as Greece became the first euro zone member to seek a bailout, setting off a sovereign debt crisis that has also left Spain and its banking sector reeling. Since then, the bank’s Spanish unit has grown beyond the expectations of its own management by pulling off a trick that companies the world over seek to perform: selling familiarity to a loyal, nearly captive clientele far from home. Its timing also proved fortunate, as Spanish banks that had previously sought to attract Latin American migrants started to pull back from this line of business as the euro zone’s financial crisis put pressure on them to cut noncore activities. “The crisis has meant that our competition simply vacated the space that was our obvious target, in terms of clients,” said Jorge Ignacio Marchán Riera, who is the head of Pichincha’s operations in Spain. Mr. Marchán said his bank would make a profit this year on its Spanish business, two years ahead of schedule. Assets under management in Spain are expected to double, after having reached 63 million euros ($84 million) at the end of 2011, up from 27 million euros a year earlier. And while most Spanish banks are downsizing their consumer networks, Mr. Marchán wants “at least” 20 branches across Spain by the end of the year, up from 12 at present. Still, it may be too early to call Pichincha more than a small and timely success story in an otherwise bleak banking landscape. “Pichincha is doing well partly because it comes from zero and so doesn’t carry the heavy load of bad loans that banks here have accumulated,” said Javier Santomá, professor of financial management at IESE, a Spanish business school. “The real test for any bank, however, always comes, not when it lends, but when it eventually tries to get its money back.” Banking to migrants, however, looks promising. Migration worldwide is expected to continue rising, which in turn should benefit Pichincha and other institutions from developing countries that have expanded overseas to cater to migrants who send part of their earnings home. Last year, remittance flows to developing countries rose 8 percent, to $351 billion. They are likely to reach $441 billion by 2014, according to a report published in December by the World Bank. The World Bank noted that remittance outflows from Spain had remained “fairly resilient” and grew 15 percent in the first half of last year as “migrants have cut into savings and even consumption in order to send remittances, and perhaps to prepare for an eventual return.” Yet so far, and despite Spain’s struggling with a jobless rate of almost 23 percent, only a few thousand Ecuadoreans have packed their bags to go back home. Senami, Ecuador’s national migration secretariat, said that in the second half of last year, 2,794 registered Ecuadoreans had sought information on how to benefit from a state-sponsored assistance program to return home from Spain. According to Spain’s immigration statistics, the number of registered Ecuadoreans fell by about 35,000 in the last two years, but that figure includes those who, like Ms. Guamán, acquired Spanish citizenship. While the United States dwarfs other countries as a destination for Latin American emigrants, Spain comes second, receiving about one in 10 Latin American migrants each year, according to the World Bank. Over all, Spain registered about five million migrants in a decade, now equivalent to 12 percent of its population. Ecuadoreans form the largest Latin American community in Spain, spearheading migration to the country after a devastating economic crisis in 1999 that led to a 70 percent depreciation of Ecuador’s currency, the sucre, and a default on its external debt. The crisis occurred just as Spain’s construction-led boom was getting under way. The newcomers from Latin America did not go unnoticed among Spanish banks that then had the liquidity to extend credit. Before applying for its own banking license, Pichincha discussed forming an alliance with Banco Popular, one of the biggest Spanish institutions. In 2006, Popular started MundoCredit, a subsidiary with 60 branches, aimed at migrants and their soaring remittances. Money outflows from Spain rose almost fivefold from 2001 to 2007, reaching $15.2 billion in that year, according to the World Bank. But the negotiations between Popular and Pichincha stalled, and last year Popular shut MundoCredit as a stand-alone entity, following in the footsteps of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, or BBVA, which also closed down a similar business called Dinero Express. Behind such closures, “the logical thinking is that you are dealing with clients whose track record is hard to establish and who are in the front line in terms of job vulnerability,” said Emilio Ontiveros, chairman of Analistas Financieros Internacionales, a research consulting firm in Madrid. In the meantime, however, Santander and BBVA, the two biggest commercial banks in Spain, expanded aggressively into Latin America to offset weakening domestic revenue. Net earnings at both banks fell 35 percent last year. While a booming Brazilian business helped cushion the fall for Santander, Mexico overtook Spain as the market contributing most to BBVA’s earnings. Pichincha has managed to pick up clients by not charging for remittances to Ecuador or to other countries, like Peru and Colombia, where Pichincha operates. In addition, the bank has been expanding its microcredit business in Spain, as well as setting lower thresholds for clients to earn interest on their deposits — currently 3.5 percent a year on an account as small as 600 euros ($802). The cultural affinity, meanwhile, is strengthened by Latin Americans’ accounting for four-fifths of the bank’s employees in Spain. On the other hand, shifting money from Ecuador to Spain remains complicated and costly because the bank “is simply not as integrated on an operational level as might seem,” said Manuel Romera, director of the financial sector of the IE business school, who helped a small Ecuadorean company with such a transfer. Pichincha’s other — and arguably riskier — expansion strategy has involved buying assets from Spanish institutions that need to lift their capital ratios to comply with new banking rules. Last year, for instance, Pichincha paid 5.5 million euros for a Latin American consumer credit portfolio from Bankia, one of Spain’s biggest savings banks. Such purchased assets have contained on average 9 percent of bad or doubtful loans, thereby raising the overall level held by Pichincha in Spain to 7 percent. That percentage, however, remains below the 7.7 percent average for the Spanish banking sector. Mr. Marchán, Pichincha’s chief in Spain, recognizes the risk but says he thinks his bank is equipped to handle it. “I come from a country that has itself been in crisis for as long as I’ve lived,” he said, “so what is happening now in Spain certainly doesn’t feel like something that we wouldn’t know how to cope with.”

Banking and Financial Institutions
Banco del Pichincha
Spain
Ecuador
Immigration and Emigration
Remittances


Supreme Court Rules on AT&T Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In a lively decision that relied as much on dictionaries, grammar and usage as it did on legal analysis, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that corporations have no personal privacy rights for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act. AT&T , the plaintiff in the case, had sought to block the release of documents it had provided to the government. It argued that the documents should be withheld under an exemption to the law that applied to records that “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” The company’s strongest argument was that the statutory definition of the noun “person” specifically included corporations and other entities. It followed, the company said, that the adjective “personal” must also apply to corporations. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. , writing for the court, was having none of that. “Adjectives typically reflect the meaning of corresponding nouns,” he wrote, “but not always.” He gave examples. “The noun ‘crab’ refers variously to a crustacean and a type of apple, while the related adjective ‘crabbed’ can refer to handwriting that is ‘difficult to read,’ ” he wrote, quoting a dictionary. “ ‘Corny,’” he went on, “has little to do with ‘corn.’ ” Chief Justice Roberts had used similar examples at the argument of the case in January. “You have ‘craft’ and ‘crafty’,” he said. “Totally different. ‘Crafty’ doesn’t have much to do with ‘craft.’ ‘Squirrel,’ ‘squirrelly.’ Right?” “ ‘Pastor’ and ‘pastoral’,” he continued. “Same root, totally different.” Common usage cut against AT&T’s argument as well, the chief justice wrote in Tuesday’s decision. “We do not usually speak of personal characteristics, personal effects, personal correspondence, personal influence or personal tragedy as referring to corporations and other artificial entities,” he wrote. “Responding to a request for information, an individual might say, ‘that’s personal’,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “A company spokeswoman, when asked for information about the company, would not. “In fact, we often use the word ‘personal’ to mean precisely the opposite of business-related: We speak of personal expenses and business expenses, personal life and work life, personal opinion and a company’s view.” In addition to considering dictionary definitions for and the common usage of the word “personal” standing alone, Chief Justice Roberts said the word should also be considered in the context of the phrase “personal privacy.” Here, too, he said, “AT&T’s effort to attribute a special legal meaning to the word ‘personal’ in this particular context is wholly unpersuasive.” “Two words together may assume a more particular meaning than those words in isolation,” he wrote, adding that “personal privacy” suggests “a kind of privacy evocative of human concerns.” The chief justice had examples here, too. “We understand a golden cup to be a cup made of or resembling gold,” he wrote. “A golden boy, on the other hand, is one who is charming, lucky and talented. A golden opportunity is one not to be missed.” In January 2010, the court ruled in the Citizens United decision that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend money in candidate elections. But that decision involved a question of constitutional law, while Tuesday’s decision in AT&T v. Federal Communications Commission , No. 09-1279, considered only the meaning of a statute. AT&T had provided documents to the F.C.C. in connection with its investigation into claims of overcharges by the company in a program to provide equipment and services to schools. The documents were then sought by a trade association representing some of the company’s competitors. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, had ruled for the company, saying that “corporations, like human beings, face public embarrassment, harassment and stigma” because of their involvement in law enforcement investigations. Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision, having worked on it as United States solicitor general. The decision was otherwise comprehensively dismissive of AT&T’s arguments, and Chief Justice Roberts could not resist a parting shot in ruling against the company “We trust that AT&T will not take it personally,” he wrote.

AT&T Inc
Privacy
Freedom of Information Act
Supreme Court
Decisions and Verdicts
Federal Communications Commission
Roberts John G Jr


Ku Klux Klan and New Black Panther Party Protest at South Carolina Capitol

Abstract: COLUMBIA, S.C. — With police officers watching from nearby rooftops and a din of racial slurs heard on the pavement below, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the New Black Panther Party appeared at dueling rallies outside the South Carolina State House on Saturday, eight days after officials here removed the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol grounds. Despite sporadic scuffles and hours of inflammatory rhetoric from white and black demonstrators alike, the authorities largely maintained order and prevented any significant violence. The police made five arrests, and the South Carolina Department of Public Safety estimated that the State House crowd, including onlookers, had at one point swelled to about 2,000 people. They chanted — or at least heard — volleys of incendiary speech and shouts of “white power!” and “black power!” Bystanders watched people wave flags celebrating Pan-Africanism, the Confederacy and the Nazi Party. And they watched as black demonstrators raised clenched fists, and white demonstrators performed Nazi salutes. Much of the day’s drama was on the south side of the State House, near a statue of former Senator Strom Thurmond, where a few dozen people associated with the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a demonstration. A Columbia newspaper, The State, reported that it was the first Klan rally outside the State House since the late 1980s. Saturday’s protesters, who were predominantly men, did not don the Klan’s traditional white hoods and robes. Even as they denied being members of a hate group, their message was a relentless one of white supremacy. “This is my country,” one shouted at a group of black onlookers. “My ancestors founded this country!” “Peace is over with,” said William Bader, who said he was a Kentucky resident and the imperial wizard of the Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “There is no peace.” Mr. Bader, who said he planned to wear his Klan regalia for a cross burning on Saturday night, added, “What do I want to see happen? White revolution is the only solution.” But on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Bader and the other demonstrators who championed a vision of white supremacy were vastly outnumbered as they protested for an hour in a barricaded area of the State House grounds and sometimes became involved in angry shouting matches with black people in the crowd. There were physical altercations beyond the barricades, but police officers resolved them quickly. When the protest ended and the white demonstrators began to march away around 4 p.m., state troopers with long guns, as well as a Sheriff’s Department tactical team, helped to clear a path. It barely worked. Hundreds of Klan critics followed the white demonstrators to a nearby parking garage, and the authorities had to block roads so the protesters could leave. One driver, besieged by a crowd of protesters that ran toward the departing vehicles, crashed into a lamppost. Some of the white people who circulated in the crowd before the Klan rally said they were drawn to the protests by a blend of curiosity and support for preserving Southern history. “We’re not allowed to have this as a heritage,” Jerry Anderson, a 49-year-old white man who drove here from northwest Georgia, said as he gestured toward another man’s Confederate battle flag. “But they can fly theirs, and they can say what they want to, and it’s O.K.” Mr. Anderson said he had never attended a Klan event, adding: “I’ve never had a reason to go to one. But they take that away and holler that we’re the racists, so, yeah, I’m here.” By attending, people like Mr. Anderson defied Gov. Nikki R. Haley, a Republican, who on Thursday asked South Carolinians to keep “away from the disruptive, hateful spectacle members of the Ku Klux Klan hope to create over the weekend.” Earlier on Saturday, a rally organized by Black Educators for Justice, a Florida-based group with ties to the former director of the New Black Panther Party, attracted a smaller crowd and a far less conspicuous police presence. Among the speakers was the chairman of the New Black Panther Party, Hashim Nzinga, who made little mention of the June 17 massacre of nine black people at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Instead, he argued that blacks must offer renewed and vigorous resistance to what he regards as generations of oppression. “Do what you need to do now before your coffin,” Mr. Nzinga said as a sign nearby urged “death to the K.K.K.” Mr. Nzinga found a receptive crowd, including Charles Goins, a 36-year-old truck driver who held the red, black and green flag of Pan-Africanism. Mr. Goins flatly and frequently said he did not expect the day’s rallies to aid in race relations, but he said they could inspire blacks in South Carolina to demand greater equality. “If anything, this will unify black people because we’re tired of being stepped on. We’re tired of being pushed around,” he said. “This is not the ’50s or the ’60s.” But the crowds, which brought downtown Columbia traffic to a halt on a sweltering day, eventually dissipated, especially once the Klan supporters had been escorted from the area.

New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense


Where Money Collected for Texas Fire Departments Does Not Go

Abstract: Ross Ramsey, the executive editor of The Texas Tribune, writes a column for The Tribune. This isn’t about the town of West, but the devastating fire and explosion there underscore something you might not have known: the vast majority of fire departments in Texas are staffed by volunteers. Texas has 1,435 registered fire departments, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and 85.6 percent of them are staffed either mostly or entirely by volunteer firefighters. West is one of those. So let’s use the volunteer fire departments for a little thought experiment. Lawmakers decided more than a decade ago — and this is a tax- and fee-averse group of people — to assess property insurance companies $15 million a year to finance these departments. If they hadn’t been convinced of the need, they would never have created that fee. Those same lawmakers, for a while, sent the money they collected to the fire departments that needed it. With no needs, they could have cut spending and lowered or repealed the assessment that brings in that revenue. In 2007, lawmakers were convinced it would be a good idea to double the fire prevention assessment, raising the amount collected for support of volunteer fire departments to $30 million from $15 million. The money came in, but most of it never got near a fire truck, hose or helmet. The state’s collections increased, but in the budget rubble that followed an economic downturn, lawmakers in 2011 lowered the amount made available for grants without lowering the assessment. In fact, after having doubled the collections, lawmakers halved the allotments, cutting the grants to volunteer fire departments to $7 million per year. The grant money is for anything from fire and rescue trucks to training supplies and courses to fire coats, hats and boots. The departments apply to the Texas A&M Forest Service , which considers the requests and pays for what it can afford to finance. At the beginning of April, the list of legitimate requests totaled $77.5 million. The comptroller estimates the balance in the account financed by those insurance assessments will be $80.9 million at the end of August, when the budget period comes to an end. The 10 lawmakers reconciling the differences between the House and Senate budgets have dozens and dozens of deals to cut over the next few days. A little item like the fire departments is “budget dust” — an amount so small in the overall scheme of things that lawmakers don’t devote much attention to it. That said, they don’t have enough money to wean themselves immediately off the $5 billion collected in taxes and fees that are diverted from their original purposes. Lawmakers would like to get rid of the practice, but slowly. They have proposed higher financing for the fire programs, spending $18.5 million of the $30 million that comes in from insurance companies. It’s an improvement from the 2011 cuts, if still short of the program’s promise. And this week, the House approved legislation to limit those diversions to $4 billion, with the implicit promise to tighten the limit in future sessions. That doesn’t mean they will spend more money on the programs and services that are supposed to get the dedicated funds; one solution is to stop collecting the money that isn’t being spent on those programs. The volunteer fire departments could use the money, and theirs is a generally sympathetic cause. It’s easy to pick any budget apart with a series of questions about spending money on this but not that, or raising money from this but not that. It is an endless argument about priorities that is the centerpiece of how a government operates. The money for firefighting is a little bitty piece of that. But it is part of a bigger conversation about the $5 billion collected by the state for dedicated purposes that is diverted or held back in order to free funds for other things and to keep the budget in balance while doing so. Account No. 5064 — the one for rural fire prevention — is one of 200 State of Texas accounts with pools of promised but unspent money. It isn’t the biggest. This diversion might not be the most egregious. It is, however, a reminder that the debates over money are not really about the money. Sometimes, they are really about life and death.


Tokyo Advances at Series

Abstract: Tokyo gained a berth in the international final at the Little League World Series after a 4-1 win over Panama in South Williamsport, Pa. Kotaro Kiyomiya homered in the first, sending a shot about 310 feet to right, and starter Ryuji Osada struck out seven. Texas and Tennessee played the nightcap in the United States bracket.

Little League World Series
Baseball
Tokyo (Japan)


Subway Deaths Haunt Those at Trains’ Controls

Abstract: Late one December morning in 2005, Tracy Moore was pulling her R train into the Steinway Street station in Queens. It is a sloping stretch of track, undulating “like a roller coaster,” Ms. Moore said. She was traveling about 30 miles per hour. There was a man, maybe 5-foot-3, well coifed in a white shirt and suit jacket. She noticed him immediately, but not in time. He jumped. The next moment, the man’s contact with the electrified rail was all she would be able to imagine when she went to bed over the next six months. She said she was unable to sleep for more than two hours at a time. “I was always seeing it, you know?” Ms. Moore, 45, from Staten Island, said. “I see him alive and....” In the last month, the cases of two men who were pushed to their deaths on the tracks have focused attention on the subway system’s most harrowing outcome. But for the men and women who operate New York City’s trains, these episodes represent an occasion to induct two new people to a grim fraternity with hundreds of members. With dozens of people jumping and falling to their deaths on the tracks every year, any of the five million passengers who ride the city’s subway every day can reasonably expect to be driven by someone who has seen, heard or even felt someone perish right in front of them. Decades later, the operators say, the images are vivid. The slender fellow in the jacket and tie, bending his knees at the platform’s edge. The reveler stumbling on the tracks at dawn, wobbly in her evening best, unable to stagger away in time. An arm reaching up, hopefully, then disappearing in a flash. “As cruel as it makes it sound, for the individual it’s over,” said Curtis Tate, a former operator whose train struck and killed a man in 1992. “It’s just beginning for the train operator.” In 2012, 55 people died after being hit by subway trains in New York, an increase of eight deaths compared with 2011. This year has already begun on a grisly note. Around 5:20 a.m. on New Year’s Day, the police said, a woman believed to be in her 20s lay down on the tracks at West 34th Street and was killed by a northbound No. 2 train. Train operators have come to learn certain rules of thumb. Expect about a death across the system per week, perhaps less in a good year. Prepare for more around the holidays. ( Statistics do not support the idea that suicides go up at those times, but workers say they believe it to be true.) Operators who go five years without a “12-9” — transit code for a passenger under a train — should count themselves lucky. One operator, Kevin Harrington, 61, said he had recorded “10 or 11” since 1984, one fatal. If their train kills a passenger, operators are now given three days off. If a passenger is struck but not killed, “it’s case by case,” said Jim Gannon, a spokesman for the Transport Workers Union. For near misses or crashes with only minor injuries, workers are expected back the next day. Image In 2012, 55 people died after being hit by New York City subway trains, an increase of eight deaths compared with 2011. Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times Many workers involved in fatal hits can take months to return if they go on compensated leave while recovering from trauma or other psychological conditions. Some never return to their old jobs at all, seeking transfers to jobs as station agents or other off-track posts, or even retiring if they have already worked many years. The Transport Workers Union said the operator at the helm of the train during the first shoving case last month — when Ki-Suck Han, 58, died beneath a Q train at 49th Street on Dec. 3 — had not yet returned to work. The operator on Dec. 27, when Sunando Sen, 46, was shoved in the path of a No. 7 train at the 40th Street-Lowery Street station, was back at work on Thursday, the union said. Howard Rombom, a psychologist based on Long Island who specializes in fatal subway cases, said an initial hurdle for operators was recognizing they were not at fault. “The train operators understand that there is a possibility in their career that this is going to happen,” Dr. Rombom said. “It’s not an unusual occurrence that makes them special.” Some, including Ms. Moore, have attended support groups for operators involved in deaths. Many patients are also treated using desensitization therapy, Dr. Rombom said, particularly if they are unable to return to work quickly. He might first ask patients to enter the subway system, but not necessarily ride a train. Next, he might suggest that they try riding. Then, if the patients are comfortable, they can ride in the front of a train. Often, some operators said, the trauma does not set in until after the initial procedural steps have been completed. An operator knows to place the train in an emergency stop. If the train is fully or partially in the station, passengers are allowed to get off. The operator reports the crash to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority command center, which removes power to the rail. Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the authority, said operators were often asked to “observe the results of the impact” — the macabre scene on the track — so they could communicate with first responders about the passenger’s condition and begin helping investigators gather information after a death. They are also expected to submit urine tests for drugs or alcohol within two hours. But at times, this timeline is upended by the operator’s psychological state. Mike Casella, 59, from Queens, said that after his G train struck and killed a man at Flushing Avenue 25 years ago, the shock of the accident caused him to lose all feeling beneath his waist. Mr. Casella was able to swing himself out of his cab and into a passenger seat, he said, before his conductor traveled from his perch four cars away to help. Mr. Casella was hospitalized for one day. Others have endured more subtle effects: a slightly missed mark at the station where their crash occurred, where concentration can be elusive; a heightened aversion to teenage passengers who jokingly threaten to push friends from the platform; a keen eye for “platform matadors,” as they are known among operators — riders whose heads or limbs lurch above the tracks as the train approaches, only to be pulled away at the last second. Ms. Moore said her sleeping condition compelled her to turn to sedatives like Ambien, despite a longstanding dislike of prescription drugs. She did not return to work for nearly a year. Less than two weeks after she did, she said, she was operating another R train, zipping through a tunnel in Queens at over 30 m.p.h. She asked a supervisor if she could slow down. “He said, ‘Ms. Moore, slow down if you want to slow down,’ ” she recalled. Moments later, as she pulled the train around a curve, a track worker was looking up at her. He darted to safety just in time. “If I wouldn’t have slowed down, he would have definitely been dead,” she said. “Maybe it was my inner sense. God knew I couldn’t stand another one of those things. I would have been in the loony bin.”

Subway
NYC
Train wreck
Fatalities,casualties
Psychology
Suicide
MTA


Back to Being Just a Senator, Clinton Inspects Crop Damage

Abstract: ARCADIA, N.Y. — The big black Ford Explorer rumbled down the gravel road on Wednesday and came to a stop. Out climbed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton , who started walking toward an orchard, alongside local farmers. The group paused in front of a Ginger Gold apple tree, its branches bent and twisted, its apples bruised. “It’s so sad,” said Mrs. Clinton, turning to the farmers. The event at Gary and Barb Wells’s farm on Fairville Maple Ridge Road was about as homespun as they come for United States senators. After a storm last month brought hail the size of silver dollars, which shredded trees for miles, a fruit grower who heads the local farm bureau sent an e-mail message to Mrs. Clinton asking for help. Days ago, her office sent word that she was coming. The visit captured another challenging transition for a woman who has been through many of them. A month ago, she was a presidential candidate, discussing her plans for ending the war in Iraq and establishing universal health care. On Wednesday she was promising the apple, strawberry and peach growers that she would fight for federal aid to cover the losses from the damaged crops. Phil Wagner, a cherry and apple grower — and a Republican — who sent the message to Mrs. Clinton said that the moment was bittersweet. “I told her, ‘I’m sorry you lost your presidential campaign, but I missed my senator,’ ” Mr. Wagner said. “It’s saddening, because I was looking forward to our first female president. Us guys have mucked it up for a pretty long time. But I’m glad we have her back.” It seemed fitting that Mrs. Clinton’s first swing through her home state after she ended her campaign on June 7 would be upstate, in a region that unexpectedly connected with her in 1999 when she was a first lady who was considering asking New Yorkers to send her to the Senate. Her visit stirred much interest throughout the village of Newark, in southern Arcadia, a town 36 miles southeast of Rochester. Mr. Wagner spent much of the morning shooing away residents from the meeting. They came in their cars with their cameras, hoping for a glimpse. Most politely drove off, though one woman became so angry that she shouted, “Good! I’m glad I didn’t vote for her!” from her car. “I feel bad. People really want to see her,” Mr. Wagner said. If the visit was a letdown after months in the limelight. Mrs. Clinton didn’t let on. She and the growers sat on folding chairs under a newly pitched tent, and she offered them her trademark nod again and again. “This is probably the biggest hailstorm that hit New York,” Ted Furber told the senator about the mid-June turbulence that ravaged the area. Mr. Furber, one of the owners of Cherry Lawn Farms nearby, had planned to take the day off to go boating but changed his plans when he heard Mrs. Clinton was coming to town. Mrs. Clinton leaned forward to hear more. “Can you harvest with that kind of challenge?” she asked at one point. Mrs. Clinton avoided talk of her presidential campaign at that stop, apart from mentioning that she had been a booster of the state’s apple industry while on the road. “I’ve gone all over this country for 17 months talking about New York agriculture,” she said, adding that she keeps a bowl of New York apples on her desk. Mrs. Clinton’s day included six stops, beginning at City Hall Commons in Syracuse, where she and the mayor were given a briefing by local business executives about alternative energy. It ended in Buffalo, with a ribbon-cutting to mark the restoration of the Erie Canal Harbor, and a tour of artists’ space. She spent about 30 minutes at a farm and market in Newark, a heavily Republican village of 10,000 people, and then she was off to another orchard in nearby Geneva, a rural community of about 13,000. There, about 400 people burst into sustained applause and chants of “Hillary! Hillary!”’ when she arrived at Red Jacket Orchards, a fruit farm that the same family has run for three generations. Mrs. Clinton told the crowd about the devastation that the Newark farmers had described. “Some suffered complete losses, some less than that,” she said, adding that she remembered being there three years ago “and seeing the trees heavy with fruit.” While many in the crowd said that Mrs. Clinton’s presence was reassuring, given the region’s urgent need for aid, others wondered whether the visit might also help her begin to get over her own loss. Stu Einstein, the mayor of Geneva, described it as a homecoming for Mrs. Clinton, who carried Geneva in her re-election bid in 2006. He said the community felt a special connection to her. “This is probably very therapeutic for her, to throw herself back into her Senate work,” he said. Mr. Einstein said that he, too, was surprised by her visit, having learned of it only on Tuesday, when her Rochester office said she was on her way. Several people, including Tom Ferraro, who heads a regional food bank that runs a farm in the area, said that they were especially struck by what they described as Mrs. Clinton’s resilience. Mr. Ferraro is a Republican, but he traveled to Iowa earlier this year to campaign in rural communities on behalf of Mrs. Clinton. After watching her greet the crowd in Geneva, he said she seemed to be taking the loss better than many of her supporters. He showed up with a basket of cucumbers and other vegetables to present to Mrs. Clinton. “I think she is amazing,” he said. “I don’t know how many people have the chutzpah to get back in the saddle so quickly. You’ve got to get back in the saddle after you fall. But this was quick.”

Clinton Hillary Rodham
Presidential Election of 2008
Agriculture
Senate


Hydraulic Fracturing Bill Could Force Disclosure

Abstract: Hydraulic fracturing, an increasingly common method of extracting natural gas that involves shooting a concoction of water, sand and chemicals deep underground, has sparked controversy around the country — in part because drillers mostly keep their chemical formulas secret. But Texas, the leading gas-producing state, could help change industry practices by requiring public disclosure of the chemicals used. A bill filed this month by State Representative Jim Keffer, Republican of Eastland, who heads the House Committee on Energy Resources, would create a Web site containing information about the chemicals used in each well. The bill has won praise from both industry and major environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, the Texas League of Conservation Voters and the Environmental Defense Fund. “E.D.F. believes that passage of this bill would create the nation’s strongest disclosure system,” said Scott Anderson, an Austin-based senior policy adviser to the group’s energy program. By embracing mandatory disclosure, Mr. Anderson added, gas companies “have the opportunity to demonstrate to the public that the industry is no longer trying to hide the ball.” David Blackmon, the Texas state committee chairman for America’s Natural Gas Alliance, said that while some details needed adjusting, most companies in his group had reacted positively to the bill as a way to address the widespread concerns — misplaced, the industry asserts — about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. “You have to maintain the faith of the public to stay in business,” Mr. Blackmon said. Some homeowners living above shale-gas formations like the Barnett Shale in North Texas say drillers engaged in hydraulic fracturing have contaminated their water supplies. The gas industry counters that fracking takes place too far below aquifers for contamination to take place, and that chemicals compose, by volume, less than 1 percent of fracking fluids, which are mostly water and sand. But environmentalists say that fracking can pose risks depending on the depth and type of rock, and that poor construction of the gas wells can also result in leakage of the chemicals, some of which may be toxic. Mr. Keffer said that his bill was modeled on a similar rule in Arkansas, which took effect in January. Several other states are instituting fracking disclosure requirements. Since September, Wyoming has required drillers to provide well-by-well information that is then listed on a regulatory Web site. Colorado mandated chemical disclosures in 2009, though environmentalists say the requirements are relatively weak. In February, Pennsylvania changed its rules to require disclosure of well-specific chemical information, which the public can request. Mr. Blackmon said Texas legislation could provide a blueprint for other states. Federal legislation introduced in Congress would require disclosure of fracking chemicals. But Mr. Anderson, of the Environmental Defense Fund, said the Texas legislation is stronger than those proposals. Both sides want changes in the legislation. Mr. Blackmon said drillers wanted clearer liability protection — in case, for example, a company that manufactures fracking fluid makes an error in the information it provides to the driller. Environmentalists want to make sure that a special provision in the bill allowing some deference to “trade secrets” is not abused. Cyrus Reed, the conservation director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star chapter, also said disclosure would not resolve other drilling-related concerns like air pollution. Sharon Wilson, a prominent drilling critic in the Barnett Shale area, has come out against the bill, saying that the required disclosures are inadequate and that landowners should be told that the information is available. Mr. Keffer hopes for a hearing for his bill in early April.

Texas
Hydraulic Fracturing
Environment
Law and Legislation
Natural Gas
Texas Tribune


In Michigan, the Disappearing State Fair

Abstract: DETROIT — Since 1849, Michigan residents have attended the annual state fair, where urban, suburban and farm dwellers can pet Clydesdales, attend rock concerts and watch heifers being born. Barring last-minute support, however, Michigan’s State Fair, the nation’s oldest, held its last event when it ended its 11-day run Monday. Facing an approximate $1.8 billion state budget deficit, Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm proposed in February ending fair financing after this year, saying the state could no longer absorb its operating losses. Attendance has dropped in recent years, and corporate support has dwindled. Pummeled by the auto industry’s economic woes, Michigan had a 15.2 percent unemployment rate, the nation’s highest, as of July 17. “We’re facing very, very difficult decisions here in Michigan, and at a time of declining revenues, we cannot be all things to all people,” Ms. Granholm’s spokeswoman, Liz Boyd, said on Monday. Under a bill before the House, the state would continue to cover any fair deficit up to an unspecified amount. Ms. Boyd would not say what the governor would do if the bill passed the Legislature. Last year’s fair losses came to $362,000, the former fair manager, Steve Jenkins, told The Detroit Free Press. Mr. Jenkins, who resigned his post after Ms. Granholm’s announcement, led a weekend rally to keep the fair open. Other efforts are afoot to keep the fair running. Members of the Michigan State Fair Authority, the fair’s governing body, have asked state officials to consider transferring operations to a nonprofit organization. The authority’s chairman, Mark Gaffney, said he was optimistic that some private entity would create a redevelopment plan for the fairgrounds that would include keeping the fair open. “We just need more time,” he said. Ms. Boyd said that while Ms. Granholm was open to private efforts to continue the fair, she also recognized the value of the property on which it is located — a 164-acre site along Woodward Avenue near Detroit’s northern border, where the fair has been held since 1905. “It’s property that could be developed to create jobs in southeast Michigan,” Ms. Boyd said. Jaynemarie Hubanks, the finance director for suburban Ferndale, said she had gone to 50 consecutive fairs and particularly enjoyed the crafts and agricultural products. This year’s visit was especially poignant. “I think it’s tragic,” said Ms. Hubanks, 51. “It’s just a huge loss.” Mr. Gaffney put it another way. “Kids here grow up in the city and never see a cow,” he said. “Here, they not only can see a cow, they can milk it.”

Budgets and Budgeting
Michigan
State and County Fairs
Granholm Jennifer M


Jeter Scores on Passed Ball, Helping Yankees Overcome Rocky Start by Nova

Abstract: The temperature at Yankee Stadium was a baseball-unfriendly 47 degrees at game time Friday, with a chilly breeze starching the pennants. It was so frosty that even Justin Verlander, the Detroit Tigers right-handed ace, was not as precise and diabolical as usual. Verlander punctuated many of his 102 pitches by blowing into his pitching hand or, after giving up a fourth-inning home run to Alex Rodriguez, flinging both arms in disgust. Verlander left after six innings, giving the Yankees plenty of time to scramble to a 7-6 victory . Derek Jeter , who had walked with one out in the ninth inning, went to second on a walk to Curtis Granderson and then raced to third on a wild pitch by Detroit reliever Brayan Villareal. Jeter scored when a passed ball squirted away from Tigers catcher Alex Avila. “As much as I’d like to say it was great base running, basically, all I had to do was run,” said Jeter, who went 0 for 4 to end his 15-game hitting streak. Rodriguez was facing a 2-0 count against Villareal when the ball rolled to the backstop. Rodriguez waved once at Jeter, then waved again and yelled. Jeter made it, and the Yankees ended a two-game losing streak in a most un-Yankee-like way. Verlander, the reigning American League Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award winner, gave up seven hits and five runs, four earned, in six innings. He left with a 6-5 lead, but the Yankees tied the score on Mark Teixeira’s eighth-inning sacrifice fly. “It takes a lot for me to wear long sleeves,” Verlander said. “This is one of the colder ones I remember. I took a couple more pitches between innings and put a little more effort into my warm-ups. That seemed to help a little bit, but not much.” Yankees starter Ivan Nova, who won his first three starts of the season, did not even make it through the sixth inning. He gave up 11 hits and 6 runs, all earned, in five and a third innings, his shortest appearance of the season. He scuffled to make it as far as he did, throwing 101 pitches. The Tigers overcame a 4-3 deficit by scoring three runs off Nova in the top of the sixth inning. Jhonny Peralta hit a one-out double to left field, and Ryan Raburn followed with a single. Nova then threw a wild pitch that allowed Raburn to advance to second. “Today I made a lot of mistakes with my pitches,” Nova said. “I left them up, and they got hit.” Center fielder Austin Jackson, the Tigers’ leadoff batter, proceeded to drive in two runs with his third hit of the game, a double into the gap in right-center field. Nova got Brennan Boesch to fly out, then intentionally walked Miguel Cabrera to set up a potential double play. That tactic backfired when Boone Logan relieved Nova and allowed a single to Prince Fielder that scored Jackson. Cabrera was hung up between second and third and was tagged out. Cory Wade relieved Logan, and the next batter, Brad Eldred, slapped a dribbler that Wade misplayed, giving the Tigers a 6-4 lead. The Yankees got a run back in the bottom of the inning when Detroit left fielder Don Kelly lost the ball in the lights and let a two-out line drive by Raul Ibanez sail over his head, allowing Nick Swisher, who had just doubled off Verlander, to score. Verlander clasped his glove and his right hand over the top of his head as Kelly scrambled to retrieve the ball and throw it in. But Verlander did get out of the last inning he pitched with a 6-5 lead. The Yankees were pleased with how they did against him. “Any time you get a chance to score a run, you’d better score it,” said Yankees Manager Joe Girardi, who was ejected from the game in the seventh inning after arguing a called third strike against Russell Martin. Girardi said he was not thrilled with the strike zone of Joe West, the home-plate umpire, and when he protested the call he clambered over the railing like someone vaulting over a subway turnstile. Verlander had a 3-1 lead after retiring the Yankees in order in the third, but in the fourth Rodriguez laced a full-count pitch into the right-field stands for his fourth home run of the season and the 633rd of his career. An inning later, Martin drove Verlander’s first pitch into the second row of seats for his second home run of the season. Eric Chavez had driven Verlander’s previous pitch into left field for a single, so Martin’s shot counted for two runs. “I feel like if he throws a good pitch, on the first pitch I’m going to be swinging,” Martin said. The long balls were an unusual lapse by the usually dominant Verlander. “We were fortunate we hit a couple of home runs against him, which doesn’t happen too often,” Jeter said. Then Jeter smiled and added, “We kept battling, and we caught a break at the end.”

Detroit Tigers
New York Yankees
Jeter Derek
Nova Ivan
Verlander Justin
Martin Russell
Baseball


Will Couric as Anchor Revive News at Night?

Abstract: As Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, watched his network install Meredith Vieira as the successor to the departing Katie Couric last week, completing a transition at the "Today" show with the smooth elegance of Fred Astaire changing partners in midstep, he acknowledged one likely outcome of a tumultuous week. "I think with Katie going to CBS, people are going to be talking about the evening news again," Mr. Capus said. However Ms. Couric ultimately fares as the new anchor of the "CBS Evening News," her decision has thrown a new spotlight on network news, which in the past decade or so has been all but written off as a passé, perhaps obsolete part of the news business. Once Ms. Couric arrives at the CBS anchor desk in September, with a contract several reports estimated to be worth $15 million a year, the generational shift in the network evening newscasts will be complete -- assuming that Diane Sawyer or Charles Gibson does not ultimately move into that position at ABC. That network has been unsettled about the anchor job since the frightening injury suffered in Iraq by Bob Woodruff, half of its new, young anchor team along with Elizabeth Vargas. But it is more than a shift in the age of the anchors that is behind a network strategy to try to revivify the evening news as a franchise. Knowing that somehow they must find a way to bring down the median age of the programs' audience -- which now hovers at about 60 -- the networks are looking to ways to reinvent their anchors as more than newsreaders behind a desk. As Ms. Couric put it in a previous interview: "The era of the robo-anchor is over." Brian Williams realized that as soon as he took over for Tom Brokaw at the "NBC Nightly News" in December 2004. NBC made only "changes around the edges," as Mr. Capus put it, to the format of the newscast, trying to assure that, as the leader among the newscasts, it retained its authoritative tone. But Mr. Williams immediately created his own Web log, a daily commentary on the news and the mechanics of the newscast, as well as an outlet for his frequently praised sense of humor. The blog was clearly not aimed at the newscast viewers who are 60-plus in age. It was intended to "create a new community" for Mr. Williams, Mr. Capus said. ABC, meanwhile, made much of a new daily Webcast of the news at 3 p.m. each day, which it began to offer when it installed its young anchor team last December. In November, Mr. Williams and NBC added a version of their newscast fed over the Internet at the conclusion of their last over-the-air broadcast of the "Nightly News" at 10 p.m. Eastern time. Ms. Couric is likely to try ideas like these and more once she arrives at CBS. One friend of hers said she had expressed great enthusiasm about making this change in her career because she had come to believe that CBS News was, as her friend put it, "a very dynamic place right now." That had not been the image of CBS News previously. But the CBS chief executive, Leslie Moonves, in wooing Ms. Couric, promised a commitment to significant change in the news division, including a bigger budget and an upgrading of the roster of correspondents. Ms. Couric is likely to bring with her from NBC a small corps of producers she holds in high regard. CBS has also begun taking steps to open some Internet avenues for its news product, having made a deal with Yahoo to carry segments of "60 Minutes." CBS has also started up a 24-hour broadband news channel on the Internet and a service to provide cellphones with video news clips. Mr. Moonves said last week that he believed the age of the newscast audience could be brought down and that Ms. Couric, who always had a strong following in the morning, especially of women between the ages of 25 and 54, was a crucial piece in that strategy. Advertisers pay networks a premium to reach viewers between 25 and 54. The networks often argue that the newscasts still attract 25 million or so viewers a night, dwarfing anything that any cable news program pulls in. But networks realize that if they cannot find a way to get the median age of their viewers down, they face an increasingly grim future. In November, Mr. Moonves told a Reuters reporter, "We've got to move forward or else the people watching our evening news are going to be dead, and there's going to be nobody there to replace them." While the biggest headline coming out of Ms. Couric's appointment at CBS has been her status as the first woman assigned the position as the solo voice, CBS has emphasized that Ms. Couric brings a new degree of versatility to the newscast. According to one colleague of Ms. Couric, CBS wants to take advantage of that skill by finding its own special Internet component for her, as well as some presence on CBS Radio. Her colleague said that Ms. Couric had already made a number of her own suggestions about how CBS could fine-tune the newscast, which the network has already been doing with some success with the interim anchor, Bob Schieffer. But the most significant change Ms. Couric may bring to the newscast could be the sirens and klieg lights that will accompany her arrival at CBS. Her departure from "Today" was among the most-covered and talked-about events on the national scene last week, discussed from front pages to gossip pages. Her introduction to the evening newscast competition in September is likely to draw a similar spasm of white-hot attention, and not just among the chattering classes who follow the television business. All of CBS's rivals are preparing to react aggressively to her arrival in the evening. Mr. Capus said, "Everyone is going to ratchet up the competition by investing more in the evening broadcasts." It will clearly be a high priority of the wider NBC Universal media empire not only to protect the leading position Mr. Williams has established, but also to insure that one of NBC's own, Ms. Couric, does not damage the company's dominant position in news. Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of the NBC Universal Television Group and a long-time close friend of Ms. Couric, has been heavily involved in the negotiations that resulted in her departure and Ms. Vieira's quick appointment as her successor. That is only to be expected from an executive with the news background of Mr. Zucker, who was Ms. Couric's boss when he ran the "Today" show as executive producer. Mr. Capus made clear how intensely competitive the new three-way race in the evening news was likely to be. "We're not ready to give up any ground," he said. "All the buzz around Katie getting the anchor job is great. Bring it on."

CBS NEWS
NBC NEWS
ABC INC
COURIC KATIE
TELEVISION
NEWS AND NEWS MEDIA


Sexual Abuse Case Against Ex-Syracuse Coach Bernie Fine Is Dropped

Abstract: SYRACUSE (AP) — Federal authorities have dropped their investigation into one of the sexual abuse claims that cost a Syracuse University assistant basketball coach his job, threw a top-ranked team into turmoil and threatened the career of the Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim. After a probe spanning nearly a year, Richard S. Hartunian, the United States attorney for the Northern District of New York, said Friday there was not enough evidence to support a claim that the coach, Bernie Fine, had molested a boy in a Pittsburgh hotel room in 2002. “The nature and seriousness of these allegations, which involved conduct typically committed in private with individuals who are reluctant to come forward, warranted a thorough federal investigation,” said Hartunian, who added that closing the investigation did not mean something did or did not happen. It was unclear whether Fine, 66, could get his job back. Fine’s lawyers, Karl Sleight, Donald Martin and David Botsford, said in a statement that they were not surprised by the decision. “The damage inflicted upon Bernie and his family is simply immeasurable,” the lawyers said. “Bernie hopes and prays that the lesson learned and remembered is that a rush to judgment has irreversible consequences.” The investigation erupted in the glare of a spotlight on child abuse shone by the Penn State scandal, which broke shortly beforehand.

Fine Bernie
Coaches and Managers
Sex Crimes
Basketball
Syracuse University
Child Abuse and Neglect
Basketball (College)


Canada’s Lonely Standard-Bearers in the N.H.L. Playoffs

Abstract: MONTREAL — Perhaps it is just a random quirk of probability, but the numbers are eye-opening nonetheless. For the first time since 1973, only one Canadian team — the Montreal Canadiens, fittingly — qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs, which begin Wednesday. Six of the seven Canadian teams will not play in the postseason, while 15 of the 23 teams based in the United States will. “Everybody in Canada will be following the Montreal Canadiens, whether they like it or not,” said Michel Vigneault, a sport historian who teaches at McGill University and the University of Quebec at Montreal. It has been a long time since this hockey-loving nation has had so barren a spring. But then again, it has been a long time since a Canadian team lifted the Stanley Cup — 1993, when Montreal won it. “It’s a hard pill to swallow, because the truth is, hockey is encoded in our DNA, right?” the Canadian comedian Ron James said. “We can’t not enjoy it. It’s like sex: Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.” Only two months ago, Canada rejoiced as its men’s and women’s Olympic hockey teams rolled to gold medals at the Sochi Games. While there is nothing wrong with Canadian hockey per se — after all, many of the biggest stars on American teams are Canadian — something does seem very wrong with the country’s N.H.L. teams. Analysts offer several theories for the problem: Canadian teams lose too great a portion of their profits to struggling American clubs because of revenue sharing; owners like Ottawa’s Eugene Melnyk and Vancouver’s Francesco Aquilini meddle too much; Canadians pay too much attention to hockey, creating too much pressure. The Toronto Maple Leafs, the most valuable team in hockey, are a smoking ruin. They were in playoff position until an eight-game losing streak in March wrecked their chances . Last week, they hired as their president Brendan Shanahan, a Hall of Famer from the Toronto area who never played for the Maple Leafs and has never run an N.H.L. team. They hope the infusion of fresh blood will lead them to their first Stanley Cup since 1967. “I’d love to see the Leafs hoist the Stanley Cup on TV,” James said. “In color, instead of black and white.” The Ottawa Senators have reached the playoffs 14 times since entering the league in 1992, even making the Cup finals in 2007. But last summer, Daniel Alfredsson, their captain of 14 years, left to sign with the Detroit Red Wings. His reason: Having entered his 40s, he wanted a better chance to win a Cup before he retired. Image Fans showed their feelings about the Maple Leafs, who squandered a chance at the playoffs. Credit Lynne Sladky/Associated Press So he will be playing with the Red Wings against the top-seeded Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs this week, while his former Senators teammates are at home. The Edmonton Oilers, once the team of Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier that won five Stanley Cups, have in recent years lost consistently enough to have the No. 1 draft picks from 2010, 2011 and 2012 in their lineup. The Oilers finished last in the Western Conference again this year and missed the playoffs for an eighth consecutive season. Just above the Oilers in the Western standings this year were their Alberta neighbors, the Calgary Flames, who have missed the playoffs five years in a row. In fact, the bottom four teams in the West are Canadian. A Jets team returned to Winnipeg three seasons ago, and it has fallen short of the playoffs in all three. The team can take solace that the original Winnipeg Jets, now the Phoenix Coyotes, did not make the playoffs either. The Vancouver Canucks had been the most consistent Canadian team of the past 15 years, finishing with the league’s best record in 2011 and 2012 and reaching the Cup finals in 2011. But they may be the biggest mess of all this season. In chaos under their first-year coach, John Tortorella, they fired General Manager Mike Gillis, hired the former Canucks star Trevor Linden to run hockey operations and seem a long way from returning to contention. “We’ll just have to take the high road and bask in the glow of the hockey golds we won in Sochi,” said Rick Mercer, a Canadian satirist and television host. The teams’ failures have real consequences, including lost revenue for businesses near arenas and lower television ratings. The decline in ratings is a particular problem for the cash-strapped national broadcaster, CBC, which on Thursday announced the layoffs of 657 employees . The Canadiens will go forward as the country’s lone standard-bearer. In the first round, Montreal, one of the original six N.H.L. teams, is facing a team from the hockey hotbed of Florida. And that team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, who have been in the N.H.L. since 1992, have won a Cup more recently than any Canadian team, in 2004. Helping carry Canada’s burden is Montreal goalie Carey Price, who has a little practice at such things. He was Canada’s gold medal goalie in Sochi. It was a natural question to ask of Price: Will people across Canada unite behind the Canadiens in the playoffs? “I think we’re probably going to see a lot of Canadians cheering against us,” Price said Saturday night. “A lot of sour fans are probably going to root against us.”

Ice hockey
Playoffs
Stanley Cup
Montreal Canadiens
Canada