In Southeastern Conference, Nothing’s Bigger Than Texas A&M’s Field

Abstract: COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Above Kyle Field’s Hall of Champions, a football-shaped, 100-yard atrium that honors past Texas A&M athletes, and through the Heritage Lounge, where black-and-white photographs and dark-wood décor conjure the city’s past as a railroad stop with a college nearby, there is a sign that cautions, “All-access credentials do not provide access.” Past the sign is the exclusive inner domain of Kyle Field known as the Founders Club, with two bars, a baby grand piano and a chandelier that drips down three stories. Outside some of the 12 Founders Club suites, which are clustered on two levels on either side of the 50-yard line, are oil paintings of the couples to whom the suites will belong for at least the next 20 years. The rights to the suites were secured with donations of $5 million to $12.5 million, and the suites were then personalized with furnishings and color palettes of their owners’ choosing. On Saturday afternoon, when the No. 9 Aggies host No. 10 Alabama, the suites will be in use for only the fourth time. They were built in the past year as part of the record-setting $485 million renovation of Kyle Field, Texas A&M’s home stadium — in increasingly elaborate forms — since 1927. Any project that size is a story about money. But at Texas A&M, a member of the powerful Southeastern Conference since 2012, the story of the renovation of Kyle Field is one of a university that found itself with more money than it knew what to do with. That is not to say the renovation was merely an exercise in gold-plating. Before construction to expand the stadium’s capacity to more than 100,000 began two years ago — the work was done in two off-seasons, so the Aggies never had to sacrifice a home game — there were far too few concession stands and restrooms at Kyle Field. Visitors could not circumnavigate the stadium, and some seat-holders in the northern end zone’s upper deck could not see the entire field. Not enough money was set aside for future repairs. Image The Hall of Champions at Kyle Field is a 100-yard atrium shaped like a football. Credit Thomas B. Shea/Getty Images Still, a college football stadium that absorbs nearly half a billion dollars cannot help but symbolize a lot of things, and among them are Texas A&M’s outsize ambitions — the Aggies would desperately like to add to their one Associated Press football national championship, which came in 1939. But perhaps above all, Kyle Field is a manifestation of the arms race that college athletics has become at its highest levels. And in that atmosphere, the price tag was not unusual. According to SportsBusiness Journal, the costs for planned renovations of Notre Dame Stadium (which includes other facilities, including academic spaces), Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and Arizona State’s Sun Devil Stadium are all projected to reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars . “In this business, in the SEC, if you sit on your hands — this is a very aggressive league, and they’re going to go past you,” Texas A&M Athletic Director Eric Hyman said. Asked how long it took for the premium options to sell out — not just the dozen Founders Suites, but Prime Suites and Legacy Suites and an All American Club and several loge boxes — Hyman snapped his fingers. In fact, the stadium is filled this season, even though over the past two years, its capacity increased from 82,600 to 102,733, making it the fourth-largest stadium in college football behind Ohio State’s Ohio Stadium, Penn State’s Beaver Stadium and Michigan Stadium. Texas A&M had set a goal of raising $125 million in dedicated gifts for the renovation. Yet nearly that amount was raised just by promising 20-year rights to the 12 Founders Club suites. As befits a university in eastern Texas that emphasizes engineering, suite-holders’ fortunes typically derive from natural resources. Those funds, said Kevin Hurley, the university’s senior associate athletic director for facilities and construction, constituted “the down payment on the building.” Image The Aggies before a game against Ball State on Sept. 12. Saturday’s game will be the fourth at Kyle Field since the renovation. Credit Scott Halleran/Getty Images Skip Wagner, the chief executive of the 12th Man Foundation, the nonprofit organization that raises money for the Texas A&M athletic department, said about $220 million was eventually raised through private donations. The rest of the cost was borne through bonds, $20 million in city and local contributions and $74 million in student fees. This year, a student pass that grants access to seven Aggies football games and various other sports cost $290. They are sold out. “We love our school, so we were willing to donate the money to the stadium, and with that came the perk of a suite or a seat or whatever,” said Frosty Gilliam Jr., a suite-holder and the chairman-elect of the 12th Man Foundation. “We exceeded our goals,” Gilliam added, “and that helped us do our upgrades.” Those included the Hall of Champions as well as 12th Man Studios, which, at a cost of $12 million, consists of ESPN-quality broadcast facilities inside the stadium. The studios allowed Texas A&M to create more content for the SEC Network than any other member of the conference last year. The new Kyle Field has codified Texas A&M’s status as something akin to the China of college football: a once-dormant giant that is only now discovering and exploiting its full potential. But as the Alabama game approaches, it is worth recalling how starkly the team — and the university — were put on the map three years ago when quarterback Johnny Manziel led an upset of Alabama, then the defending champion. The arrival of Manziel and Coach Kevin Sumlin, and the victories they compiled just as the university entered the SEC, created a perfect storm for Aggies athletics. “You had Johnny Manziel, you had oil, you had Kevin Sumlin, and you had success in the SEC,” Hyman said. “We all know in life, you work hard to put yourself in a position where luck is a factor. We were very lucky to have oil where it was — $100 a barrel — Johnny Manziel being here and the excitement he created, from a national standpoint.” Even without Manziel — whose nickname, Johnny Football, quickly became known across the country — the move to the SEC allowed the 12th Man Foundation to credibly approach its donors several years ago with a new, higher bar for annual gifts. At a university that bills itself as the Home of the 12th Man — the Seattle Seahawks license the phrase from Texas A&M — fans, and their ability to affect the game, are taken seriously. Aggies supporters like to say that they do not cheer, but yell. Texas A&M has no homecoming game; fans are always expected to attend. So as part of the renovation, the field was dropped 16 feet, and 11 feet was trimmed from each sideline, bringing more fans inside and the closest ones to the field even closer. Canopies were installed above the east and west upper decks, in part to block the sun but also to redirect sound toward the field. “It is louder — it’s considerably louder,” Sumlin said. In discussions with architects, Texas A&M’s two main demands were that the revamped stadium be the largest of its kind in Texas and also the largest in the SEC. The only work that remains is on the field. At 5-0 (and 2-0 in the SEC), the Aggies are hoping to beat Alabama (5-1, 2-1) on Saturday and win at No. 13 Mississippi (5-1, 2-1) next weekend to be in position for a berth in the conference championship game — and potentially in the playoff for a national title. “The crescendo of the SEC experience — that drove the idea of going big,” said Earl Santee, the architect at the stadium firm Populous, who was the lead designer of the project. “It was the most expensive project in college history to date,” he added, “but I think they got a great deal.”

College football
Stadiums Arenas
College
Philanthropy
College Station TX


Europe Reviews Takeover Bids for Disk-Drive Makers

Abstract: European Union regulators opened in-depth investigations into takeover bids for two Asian companies by two American peers in the computer hardware sector. Seagate Technology has said it wants to buy the hard-disk drive unit of Samsung Electronics for $1.4 billion, a deal that would give Seagate access to Samsung’s NAND-type flash chips for its solid-state drive products. Western Digital plans to buy Hitachi ’s hard-disk drive business for $4.3 billion to give it an edge in developing next-generation storage technology. The European competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, left, said the Samsung deal would consolidate Seagate’s position in the hard-disk drive market, leaving only two rivals, Western Digital and Hitachi. The Western Digital and Hitachi transaction would result in only one company competing in desktop hard-disk drives and just two rivals in mobile hard-disk drives, the commission said. The commission will decide by Oct. 10 whether to clear or block the deals.

European Union
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Seagate Technology PLC
Western Digital Corp
Samsung Electronics Co
Hitachi Ltd
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures


High-End Hermès Handbags at Center of Suit Against Christie’s

Abstract: Locked behind glass, illuminated like a jewel, lies an Hermès Birkin — totem of wealth, bestower of status, and one seriously expensive handbag. This particular specimen is a coveted Hermès White Himalayan Birkin, dyed in brown and beige crocodile. Gently, if ever, used, it is offered at $115,000. Wait — used? That word is never spoken, not here inside the hushed Midtown Manhattan showroom of Heritage Auctions. The preferred term is “rare” or “vintage” — in this case, applied to a handbag made all the way back in 2013. No one, it is said, knows more about the buying and selling of pre-owned Hermès bags than Matthew Rubinger, Heritage’s Birkin whisperer. But now Mr. Rubinger, 26, has left for another more famous auction house — Christie’s International — and the battle of the Birkins has begun. Heritage on Friday filed a lawsuit against Christie’s, claiming Mr. Rubinger breached his contract and stole trade secrets. Christie’s, whose auctions tend to run more to Picasso than purses, is expanding its push into high-end accessories, Heritage’s sweet spot. Heritage is seeking a Birkinesque $60 million in damages and lost profits from Christie’s, Mr. Rubinger and two other former employees. A spokeswoman for Christie’s said, “We have reviewed the complaint and find it to be wholly without merit. We are prepared to vigorously defend these claims and Christie’s decision to expand our existing handbag department.” Mr. Rubinger did not respond to an email. The brouhaha partly reflects how the world’s wealthy are spending their money. But it also underscores how Christie’s and its traditional rival, Sotheby’s, are coming under pressure. While art prices keep rising, competition among auction houses has squeezed commissions. Daniel S. Loeb, a hedge fund manager who owns 9.6 percent of Sotheby’s, got a seat on the company’s board after attacking Sotheby’s executives for, among other things, giving up profit. For Heritage, the flourishing designer handbag market has produced record sales and big profits. At a Heritage auction in late 2011, a brilliant red crocodile Hermès Birkin, with 18-karat white-gold and diamond-encrusted hardware, sold for a record $203,000. Last December, a one-of-a-kind Hermès Kelly bag, in porosus crocodile and black Togo leather, with geranium-colored feet, went for $125,000. Hermès International has ensured demand by limiting production at its atelier in the Pantin suburb northeast of Paris. There, workers take fine cuts of leather and exotic skins and transform them with meticulous detail, buffing the hides with an agate stone. The whispered wait lists — Who gets on? Is it really three years? — add to the mystique. Heritage executives say that while Hermès frowns on reselling its handbags, Hermès has directed buyers to Heritage’s door. “Our buyers tend to seek immediate gratification,” said Kathleen Guzman, a managing director of Heritage’s offices in New York. The high-end handbags are sought by collectors and even investors, say Heritage executives, who estimate the average buyer has a net worth of $12 million. “If you buy one Hermès bag for $20,000, depending on the popularity, the skin, the color, the size, you can resell it down the road for an average of 60 percent to 150 percent of what you paid for it,” Gregory Rohan, the president of Heritage, said in a phone interview Thursday from Paris. Image This Hermès 10-inch White Nile Crocodile Himalayan Birkin handbag is selling for $115,000 at Heritage Auctions in Manhattan. Credit Nancy Borowick for The New York Times Four years ago, the luxury accessories category did not even exist. Then Mr. Rohan met Mr. Rubinger, a recent graduate of Vanderbilt University. In high school, Mr. Rubinger started buying and reselling inexpensive purses. Later, he moved into designer bags for sale on eBay, with his bedroom as operations center. “To make more, to scale what I was doing, I had to move up in price point,” Mr. Rubinger recalled in an interview this spring at Heritage’s offices in New York. At the end of his first year at Vanderbilt, Mr. Rubinger became a summer intern at the online resale hub DropShop, the precursor to the retail website Portero, which was then based in Armonk, N.Y, a suburb north of Manhattan, and near Mr. Rubinger’s childhood home in Chappaqua. He stayed more than a year and began its luxury category, which grew to be the company’s second-strongest seller, after timepieces. In 2010, a mutual friend introduced Mr. Rubinger to Mr. Rohan. They met at the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side. “He started to tell me what he was doing and I thought, ‘Gosh, this is a perfect complement to what we already have,’ ” Mr. Rohan said. Put in charge of Heritage’s luxury accessories business, Mr. Rubinger was given the star treatment. In its lawsuit, Heritage says it invested in his identity, seeking to brand him as a “star”; provided him with training and introduction to sources in Hong Kong and Japan; and shared all of Heritage’s corporate plans for expansion and branding, even beyond luxury accessories. With an annual growth rate of more than 50 percent, the luxury accessories category was seen within Heritage as especially promising. So much so that Mr. Rohan made the area his primary focus and had his New York office divided so that he and Mr. Rubinger could be closer to collaborate, the lawsuit states. When asked if he was grooming Mr. Rubinger to take a bigger role, or if he viewed him as a protégé, Mr. Rohan, grew quiet. “I thought he was a close, personal friend. We socialized. We had lunch and dinners together frequently. We collaborated on everything,” said Mr. Rohan, 52. “Honestly, my wife and I don’t have children, and I thought of him as a son.” At 8:45 a.m. on Monday, May 19, Mr. Rohan answered his phone at his home in Dallas. On the other end was Mr. Rubinger, saying he had left to take a job at Christie’s. Within the next hour, two other high-level associates announced that they, too, were leaving. Without warning, Heritage’s entire luxury accessories team had walked out the door. But in its suit, Heritage claims Mr. Rubinger, in the week before he left, sought and received permission for one of the associates who departed with him to attend an executive meeting and gain access to confidential strategic plans. “While certainly other auction companies, including Christie’s, have held estate sales that might have a Kelly bag in it or had an online auction that sold a modest amount of handbags, we elevated the collection of handbags to a place nobody had done it before,” Mr. Rohan said. “We created a dynamic worldwide market that everyone would like to own.”

Christie's
Hermes International
Heritage Auctions
Lawsuits
Luxury Goods
Matthew Rubinger
Handbag
Auction


In Pennsylvania, Unbound Delegates Remain Wary of Donald Trump

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — Mary Ann Meloy, one of the 54 Republican delegates elected in Pennsylvania on Tuesday as free agents to the Republican National Convention, said she would find it very hard to vote for Donald J. Trump. Ms. Meloy had a sister with cerebral palsy. And Mr. Trump’s disparaging treatment of people with disabilities , she said, “made me want to jump through the television screen.” Because of the unusual latitude the Pennsylvania Republican Party gives to the delegates like Ms. Meloy who are not required to support any candidate, Mr. Trump’s crushing victory in the state on Tuesday is more complicated than it may appear. “The bottom line is that being an uncommitted delegate gives you the ability to take all the facts into consideration,” said Ms. Meloy, who lives in Harmar Township outside Pittsburgh and got her start in politics volunteering for Richard M. Nixon in 1968. “Certainly the will of the people in your district — there’s a lot to be said for that.” Image A polling station in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Donald J. Trump won Pennsylvania’s Republican primary with nearly 57 percent of the vote. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times But, she continued: “We have a representative form of government. Not a democracy. A representative democracy.” Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania with nearly 57 percent of the vote . He carried every county, including Ms. Meloy’s, and even won large urban ones with diverse and highly educated populations like Philadelphia, the kind of territory that he has often found inhospitable to his rancorous brand of politics. Yet in the trench warfare fight for the Republican presidential nomination — the smaller, less understood delegate races that could prove far more pivotal to Mr. Trump’s campaign — the situation remains fluid. He appeared to have won about 40 of Pennsylvania’s 54 unbound delegates, along with another 17 awarded to him outright as the statewide winner. The remaining 14 delegates have either expressed no preference or said they would not vote for Mr. Trump. Image Lynne Ryan, of New Castle, Pa., is a newly elected Trump delegate. “How do you justify not voting for him at the convention?” she asked. “What rationale could people possibly have?” Credit Dustin Franz for The New York Times Should Mr. Trump fall short of receiving a majority of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination before the convention — an outcome that seems less likely after Tuesday but still looms as a possible spoiler — a small number of unbound delegates could make all the difference. From a former congressman turned lobbyist in Erie to a gastroenterologist in Philadelphia, the uncommitted, unbound delegates chosen in Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts to represent the state at the national convention in July were examples of just how unpredictable and counterintuitive the nominating process can be. Completely untethered from the public opinion, the delegates who are unbound under state party rules could find themselves grappling with a number of concerns in a contested convention, both political and personal, many of which have nothing to do with the preferences of the voters who elected them. Together, Pennsylvania’s 54 unbound delegates will form the largest group of free agents when Republicans meet in Cleveland in July. And if the vote is close, the nominee could rise or fall on the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s experiment with political free will. Why Trump Is Calling the G.O.P. Delegate System Rigged Mr. Trump has faced several setbacks during the delegate selection process, a complex system of rules that was put into place long before Mr. Trump became the front-runner. Many newly elected Trump delegates find this maddening. “How do you justify not voting for him at the convention? What rationale could people possibly have?” asked Lynne Ryan, who lives in New Castle, in the state’s northwest corner along the Ohio border. “But people will find a reason. Trust me.” Ms. Ryan, a topsoil farmer and flight attendant, campaigned as a committed Trump supporter. But at least one of the other delegates elected from her area, Phil English, a former congressman, has been wary of Mr. Trump. In few states are the quirks of the American party system as evident as in Pennsylvania, which delivered only 17 of its 71 delegates outright to the winner of its primary, Mr. Trump. The remaining 54 delegates were elected blindly by voters in each of the state’s 18 congressional districts. The only way voters knew if they were voting for a delegate who supported their favored presidential candidate was if they went to the trouble of educating themselves. That information was not printed on the ballot. And in some cases it was not knowable at all, because many delegate candidates ran saying they would not commit to any candidate now. How Votes For Trump Could Become Delegates for Someone Else The rules for how Republican delegates are selected could end up turning votes for one candidate into delegates who will support another candidate at the convention. “The campaign is fluid,” said Bob Bozzuto, executive director of the Pennsylvania Republican Party , recounting his conversations with delegate candidates recently who have said they wanted to leave themselves some flexibility. “We talk to some who have been recruited by a campaign and say ‘I’m going to vote for the candidate I’m signed up to vote for,’” he said. “You have some others,” he added, “who say, ‘the time between April 26 and July 18 might cause me to have some conversations, and I’ll see what happens.’” Determining how many Pennsylvania delegates are solidly for Mr. Trump, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas or Gov. John Kasich of Ohio is complicated, given that personal preferences can shift so quickly. The New York Times interviewed delegates, analyzed lists of the campaigns’ preferred delegate candidates and relied on media reports to arrive at its totals. But Mr. Trump hopes to prevail on the unbound delegates by sheer force. He has been making an impassioned case that he deserves the nomination because he has a wide leads in the popular vote, and should not be denied the nomination if he falls just short of a majority at the convention. His underperformance in some states to Mr. Cruz has left him short of that majority, and on Tuesday, the Texas senator appeared to pick up only a few delegates in Pennsylvania. The Times’s analysis counted only three. How the Rest of the Delegate Race Could Unfold An interactive delegate calculator that lets you simulate how the 2016 Republican nomination process could unfold. By framing his possible loss as a denial of popular will and a power grab by the establishment, Mr. Trump has frustrated efforts by Republicans who have tried to hold him back and push the convention into multiple rounds of balloting, an outcome that could very well result in the nomination of someone more palatable to party loyalists. But the overwhelming margin of Mr. Trump’s win in Pennsylvania shows that delegates buck the results at their own peril. Some were slowly coming to this realization. “I want to do the right thing,” said Mr. English, a former congressman who was elected as a delegate on Tuesday representing the northwestern corner of the state. He said he has reservations about Mr. Trump’s ability to unite the party and wants to spend more time thinking about his decision. But he said he ultimately could not foreclose voting for Mr. Trump given how well he did in his district. “ The expectation had been that Trump would be staying below 50 percent. That clearly is not the dynamic that’s out there,” he said, adding, “ That’s loomed very large in my thought process.” In Pennsylvania, long relegated to the role of political footnote in the nominating process because it holds its primary so late in the cycle, a victory has not been important to Republicans since 1980, when George Bush’s victory in the state revived his campaign against Ronald Reagan. But this year Pennsylvania Republicans could find themselves the center of a contested convention, much as they were in 1976 when Mr. Reagan made an 11th-hour bid to overcome President Gerald R. Ford by naming Richard Schweiker, a Pennsylvania senator, as his running mate. The move did not, however, impress Pennsylvania delegates, or many other delegates for that matter. Mr. Reagan lost on the first ballot. “These delegates are all trying to dance,” said Representative Charlie Dent , a Republican who represents the Lehigh Valley. “On the one hand they say they want to support the district. But they all have their own preferences. And they will come under tremendous pressure from all the candidates. And not just the candidates but party leaders and elected officials.” Seth Kaufer, a Philadelphia gastroenterologist elected as a delegate on Tuesday, said he has already met personally with Mr. Cruz and Carly Fiorina, who worked on the Texas senator’s delegate outreach team before becoming his running mate on Wednesday. He also met Mr. Kasich. The one candidate he has not met is Mr. Trump. For now, Dr. Kaufer said, he is waiting to decide which one to support at the convention in Cleveland. Hearing from Mr. Trump’s team — or their highly motivated supporters — now seems all but certain, whether Dr. Kaufer welcomes it or not. Mr. Trump carried Philadelphia County with almost 60 percent of the vote.

Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
Pennsylvania
Primaries
Republican National Convention,RNC


Lassa Fever Carries Little Risk to Public, Experts Say

Abstract: The report that a man who traveled from Liberia to New Jersey had died on Monday from the viral illness Lassa fever is another reminder that infectious diseases can hop continents and elude detection by health care workers who do not know a patient’s travel history. Following is information about the disease: WHAT IS LASSA? Lassa, like Ebola, is a viral hemorrhagic fever . But Lassa is from a different family, not as contagious and nowhere near as deadly as Ebola. IS IT CONTAGIOUS? Lassa does not spread easily from person to person, and health officials say there is little or no risk to the public. Several Lassa cases have occurred in the United States, all in travelers from other countries. There has never been person-to-person transmission in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HOW DO PEOPLE GET IT? In West Africa, where Lassa is common, people usually contract it from rat droppings or urine, or from catching and preparing rats to eat. Person-to-person spread does not occur through casual contact, experts say; transmission requires direct contact with a sick person’s blood, bodily fluids or mucous membranes, or sexual contact. Person-to-person transmission of Lassa is common in health care settings like some in West Africa, where proper personal protective equipment is lacking, the C.D.C says. The virus may be spread by contaminated medical equipment, such as reused needles. WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS? The incubation period — the time it takes to get sick after being exposed to the virus — is one to three weeks. Most people, about 80 percent, have only a mild, flulike illness with a slight fever , headache and fatigue. But some people become severely ill, with hemorrhaging (in the gums, the eyes, the nose and other places), breathing trouble, vomiting , facial swelling , pain in the chest, back and abdomen, and shock. Some develop neurological problems, including hearing loss , tremors and encephalitis . The antiviral drug ribavirin can reduce the severity of the disease, especially if given early. IS IT DEADLY? About 100,000 to 300,000 cases of Lassa fever, and 5,000 deaths related to the illness, occur in West Africa each year. Over all, about 1 percent of people with Lassa die from it. In pregnant women, the disease often kills the fetus. Women themselves are particularly vulnerable in the third trimester of pregnancy and have high death rates, according to the C.D.C.

Liberia
New Jersey
Epidemic
Fatalities,casualties


Georgia: Prosecutors Investigate Spending of Government Funds

Abstract: Prosecutors in Georgia are investigating allegations that President Mikheil Saakashvili misused government funds, including more than $11,000 for Botox injections during visits to the United States in 2009 and 2011, according to local news reports. Mr. Saakashvili, whose term expires in the fall, has accused Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili of pursuing politically motivated prosecutions. A spokeswoman for the general prosecutor’s office said an investigation into whether federal funds had been misused was under way, but she did not name any suspects.

Georgia country
Mikheil Saakashvili
Embezzlement
Bidzina Ivanishvili
Botox


Rangers Fatten Up With Home Runs, Inside and Out

Abstract: Ian Kinsler raced around the bases for a bizarre inside-the-park homer, and Adam Rosales had a conventional two-run shot, helping the Texas Rangers beat the White Sox, 11-5, in Chicago on Friday night. The Rangers, leading the American League West, had five homers in all while winning for the 19th time in 23 games and moving to a season-high 22 games over .500 (75-53). Jeff Baker and pinch-hitter Mitch Moreland each had two-run shots, and Adrian Beltre hit a solo drive. The White Sox were unable to overcome a shaky outing by the ace Chris Sale, ending a season-high six-game winning streak. Sale (9-12) allowed eight runs and eight hits in seven innings. In the third inning, Kinsler hit a line drive that rolled into a drainage track under the left-field wall. By the time Dayan Viciedo found the ball, Kinsler was on his way to the plate for a 5-3 Rangers lead. Manager Robin Ventura disputed the play and was ejected. ORIOLES 9, ATHLETICS 7 Brian Roberts hit a grand slam, and Adam Jones homered and drove in three runs for host Baltimore against Oakland. TWINS 5, INDIANS 1 Samuel Deduno (8-7) pitched six solid innings, and Josh Willingham broke out of a slump with a two-run double in the seventh for Minnesota in Cleveland. ASTROS 12, BLUE JAYS 4 The rookie Robbie Grossman homered and drove in four runs for host Houston. CARDINALS 3, BRAVES 1 Adam Wainwright (15-7) earned his National League-leading 15th win with his fifth complete game and had a key sacrifice fly for St. Louis at home against Atlanta. Matt Holliday’s 432-foot home run off Kris Medlen (10-12) broke a 1-1 tie in the sixth. BREWERS 6, REDS 4 Khris Davis hit two-run homers in consecutive at-bats, powering Milwaukee in Cincinnati. PHILLIES 4, D’BACKS 3 Chase Utley walked with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning, lifting host Philadelphia over Arizona. ROCKIES 3, MARLINS 2 Ryan Wheeler’s run-scoring double broke a 2-2 in the eighth inning, lifting Colorado in Miami. A’S REACQUIRE SUZUKI The Oakland Athletics obtained their former catcher Kurt Suzuki from the Washington Nationals, addressing a depletion at the position. John Jaso has a concussion, and Derek Norris is on the 15-day disabled list with a broken left big toe. Suzuki played six seasons in Oakland, then was traded to Washington last August. He was batting .222 with 3 homers and 25 runs batted in through 79 games. DODGERS’ SCULLY TO STAY Vin Scully, one of the game’s beloved broadcasters, will return to the Los Angeles Dodgers for a record 65th season in 2014. Scully, 85, began his professional baseball broadcasting career in 1950 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. SUPPORT FOR BRAUN Milwaukee Brewers players said they were glad that their teammate Ryan Braun had acknowledged taking the performance-enhancing substances that resulted in his 65-game suspension by Major League Baseball. Catcher Jonathan Lucroy called Braun’s admission “a good first step on the road to redemption.” WEDGE RETURNS TO MARINERS Manager Eric Wedge rejoined the Seattle Mariners after a mild stroke before a game on July 22. Wedge said he intended to manage the rest of the season. BRAVES ADD GARCIA The Atlanta Braves, seeking pitching depth as they cruise toward an N.L. East title, acquired the 36-year-old right-hander Freddy Garcia from the Baltimore Orioles and assigned him to Class AAA Gwinnett. The Braves also put starter Brandon Beachy on the 15-day disabled list with right elbow inflammation. AROUND THE MAJORS The St. Louis Cardinals placed starter Jake Westbrook on the 15-day disabled list with a lower back strain. ... The San Francisco Giants put Matt Cain on the disabled list a day after he was hit in the pitching arm by a line drive, though X-rays were negative. ... Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer, on the seven-day concussion disabled list, was given permission by a concussion specialist to begin a light exercise program.

Oakland Athletics
Kurt Suzuki
Baseball
Vin Scully
Dodgers
Brewers
Ryan Braun
Texas Rangers
White Sox


Good May Come on Heels of Bad and Ugly for Knicks and Nets

Abstract: The N.B.A. season is still in its infancy, but it feels like ages ago when the Nets were celebrated for adding two potential Hall of Famers and the Knicks received at least a few pats on the back for acquiring a sweet-shooting 7-footer who was once a No. 1 overall pick. During the course of 13 games, the conversation has shifted from which team is better to which team is worse. With the Knicks 3-10 and Nets 4-10, the preseason optimism seems to have been foolish. Kevin Garnett, one of the Nets’ acquisitions, looks old and limited. Andrea Bargnani, the most significant addition to the Knicks, is still incapable of playing defense or rebounding despite his size and pedigree. Both teams have had to deal with injuries to key players, and it is unclear when either team will be at full strength. For the Nets, especially, this has to come as a shock. The team was perceived to be a potential threat to the Miami Heat after a trade for Garnett and Paul Pierce and other upgrades to the roster. Image Carmelo Anthony during the Knicks' loss on Monday night. Credit Don Ryan/Associated Press In town while his team was playing the Nets earlier this season, Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said the Nets would need time to learn to play together, as his team did after acquiring LeBron James and Chris Bosh in 2010. “We all thought it would be easier and more seamless than it was,” Spoelstra said. To put things in perspective, the Heat struggled to an 8-5 record through 13 games, which hardly puts them in the same category as the current Nets. Regardless of the struggles, anyone writing off the Knicks or the Nets has not been paying attention to the Eastern Conference. In the past 10 seasons, nine teams have qualified for the playoffs despite having losing records. This season, with the conference more top-heavy than ever, five teams with losing records are in position for a chance at postseason participation. As bad as it might seem for the Knicks, they are only two games behind Philadelphia for the No. 8 seed and only three games out of the No. 4 spot. The Nets are a half-game closer to each position. Image A soaring Michael Jordan and the Bulls made the playoffs in 1985-86 with a 30-52 record. Credit Elise Amendola/Associated Press In fact, all the Nets have to do is look to Pierce, a member of the 2003-4 Boston Celtics team, which made the playoffs despite going 36-46. The team’s .439 winning percentage was the lowest among the playoff teams of the past 10 seasons, but the playoff checks still cleared. The recent history of the East makes it easy to poke fun at a league in which a little more than half the teams make the playoffs, but for professional basketball, that is actually an improvement on the early days. The lowest winning percentage for a playoff team came in 1952-53, when the Baltimore Bullets (no relation to the later Bullets franchise that became the Washington Wizards) were 16-54 (. 229). In that season, only one team from each division was eliminated from the playoffs, and the Bullets beat out the Philadelphia Warriors, who were 12-57. The 1947-48 Celtics benefited from a similar setup: six of eight teams in the Basketball Association of America (one of the two leagues that combined to form the N.B.A. in 1949) made the playoffs. Three seasons before Red Auerbach took over the franchise and made it a juggernaut, the 1948 Celtics made the playoffs with a 20-28 record. Image Paul Pierce, right, and the 2003-4 Celtics landed in the postseason despite a 36-46 mark. Credit Darron Cummings/Associated Press Those teams are ancient history, but the 1967-68 Chicago Bulls aren’t, and they started the season 1-15, yet made it to the playoffs with a 29-53 record. Nearly two decades later, in 1985-86, the Bulls struggled in Michael Jordan’s long absence because of an injury and were 17-34 at the All-Star break. But they made the playoffs with a 30-52 record. The team lost in the first round, but Jordan scored 63 points in Game 2, an early sign of what was to come. The Knicks, in their nearly 70-year existence, have made the postseason a half-dozen times with losing records. The worst mark was 36-45 in 1966-67. That team, which included Willis Reed, even took one game from the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs. The Nets? They, too, have sneaked into the postseason a half-dozen times with a losing record, including three occasions when they were in the American Basketball Association. In one instance, in 1972-73, they made the A.B.A. playoffs with an utterly embarrassing 30-54 record. The Nets should do better than that this season. It is a long campaign, after all, and the Knicks and the Nets are within striking distance of respectability despite their bad starts. “The only way to improve was to experience all the ups and all the downs,” Spoelstra said of how his Miami team became a force. The Nets and the Knicks have the downs covered. Now they just have to find the ups.

Basketball
Knicks
Brooklyn Nets
Erik Spoelstra
Andrea Bargnani
Kevin Garnett
Paul Pierce


Alfredo Di Stéfano, Soccer Great for Real Madrid, Dies at 88

Abstract: Alfredo Di Stéfano, an Argentine soccer star who built a legendary career when he moved to Europe in the 1950s and led Real Madrid to five straight Continental club championships, died on Monday in Madrid. He was 88. Real Madrid confirmed his death. He was widely reported to have had a heart attack on Friday, his birthday. Di Stéfano, an agile, tireless and versatile player nicknamed the Blond Arrow, personified total soccer — a style of play that encourages players with assigned positions to redefine them as the game demands — having embraced it years before the great Dutch teams of the early 1970s made it popular. Playing with Paco Gento, and later with the Hungarian star Ferenc Puskas, Di Stéfano and Real Madrid won the European Cup the first five years of the competition’s existence, from 1956 to 1960. (It is now called the European Champions League.) He was voted European footballer of the year in 1957 and 1959. In 1960, Di Stéfano scored three goals in a 7-3 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt of Germany in the European Cup final at Hampden Park in Glasgow, a game still considered among the greatest in soccer history. Di Stéfano scored a record 49 goals in 59 European Cup games. He finished his career at Real Madrid with 216 goals in 282 league games from 1953 to 1964 and remains one of Real’s leading career scorers. He helped the club to eight league titles. Di Stéfano won the scoring title five times and is the No. 5 career goal scorer in the history of the Spanish league. He retired at 40 in 1966 after a 22-year career in South America and Europe. Speaking to the BBC, the English star Bobby Charlton, who played against Di Stéfano with Manchester United, called him “one of the best players I ever came across.” Charlton once wrote about the first time he saw Di Stéfano play, in 1957. “Who is this man?” Charlton wrote, as quoted by The Guardian in its obituary on Monday. “He takes the ball from the goalkeeper, he tells the full backs what to do; wherever he is on the field he is in position to take the ball, you can see his influence on everything that is happening.” He went on: “I had never seen such a complete footballer,” adding: “It was as though he had set up his own command center at the heart of the game. He was as strong as he was subtle. You just could not keep your eyes off him.” Di Stéfano was born on July 4, 1926, in Barracas, a poor neighborhood of Buenos Aires, and learned to play soccer on its streets. A grandfather had immigrated to Argentina from Capri, off the coast of Italy. His father played for a time for Barracas’s leading soccer club, River Plate. Alfredo began his own career with River Plate in August 1944 and made his international debut for Argentina in 1947 at the South American championship. After Argentina’s professional players went on strike and were locked out by the clubs’ owners in 1949, Di Stéfano joined a group of top players in leaving the country to play in an unsanctioned league in Colombia. There he scored 267 goals in 292 games while leading Millonarios of Bogotá to four league titles. He was playing for Millonarios at a tournament in Spain celebrating Real Madrid’s 50th anniversary in 1953 when he caught the attention of Real officials. The team agreed to pay a transfer fee to Millonarios to acquire Di Stéfano, but because the Colombian league was not recognized by FIFA, Barcelona, Real’s bitter rival, was able to make a deal with River Plate, which technically owned the rights to him. FIFA approved Di Stéfano’s transfer to Barcelona, but the Spanish soccer authorities rejected the deal. A Spanish court ruled that Di Stéfano would have to stay in Spain for four years, playing two years for Real and two for Barcelona. Perhaps realizing the folly of the situation, Barcelona renounced its claim. At the urging of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who was a Real Madrid fan, Di Stéfano acquired Spanish citizenship and played internationally for his adopted country, although he never played in the World Cup finals. He played 31 times for Spain and scored 23 goals. (He also played seven times for Argentina and four for Colombia.) In August 1963, while playing with Real Madrid in Caracas, Venezuela, Di Stéfano was kidnapped from his hotel room by Communist revolutionaries, who said they wanted to dramatize their opposition to President Rómulo Betancourt’s government. He was released two days later. The next day, appearing on the soccer field, he was greeted with a sustained ovation. Di Stéfano had several children with his wife, Sara Frietes Varela, who died in 2005. Complete information about his survivors was not immediately available. After he retired as a player, Di Stéfano coached in Argentina (Boca Juniors and River Plate) and in Spain (Valencia) before returning to Real Madrid as coach in 1982. He was named Real’s honorary president in 2000 when Fiorentino Pérez took over as the club’s top executive. In an interview with The International Herald Tribune, Pérez recalled that while he was restocking Real with some of the best players in the world, including the French star Zinedine Zidane, his father told him that Zidane “is good, maybe very good, but Di Stéfano? He was amor.”

Alfredo Di Stefano
Soccer
Real Madrid
Obituary


Oil Spill Count Was Right, Study Finds

Abstract: After several missteps, the federal government got it right, accurately estimating how much oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, an independent scientific study found. Nearly 185 million gallons of oil spilled from the broken BP well into the Gulf of Mexico this summer, according to a study by two Columbia University researchers who made their estimates based on video. The government’s estimate was about 172 million gallons, but the estimates essentially overlap once the margins of error are figured in, the researchers said. Their study was published online Thursday in the journal Science.

Offshore Drilling and Exploration
Accidents and Safety
BP Plc
Gulf of Mexico


A Georgia Main Street Paved in Red Carpet

Abstract: SENOIA, Ga. — Unlike so many recession-weary towns, Senoia has a bustling Main Street . Dozens of new stores have opened, including a sushi bar, an antiques vendor and an Irish pub. City Hall has been repainted with money from the soaring tax revenues. The reason? Filmmaking. This is the quaint, small town that plays a quaint, small town on television and in the movies. Hollywood filmmakers come here when they need a Mayberry backdrop or a row of mom-and-pop storefronts. The community of 3,300 people, 25 miles south of Atlanta, has been the site of 24 shows and movies, from current hits like “The Walking Dead” and “Drop Dead Diva” to Southern classics like “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “Driving Miss Daisy.” With film crews bringing in money and publicity, Senoia (pronounced sen-OY) has avoided the empty downtowns and shrinking tax bases that plague many rural towns. The population has nearly doubled since 2000. Property tax revenues have risen even though the city has lowered its tax rate and the fact that Georgia, over all, has among the nation’s highest foreclosure rate. “It has been like turning on a fire hose of cash,” said Scott Tigchelaar , the president of Raleigh Studios Atlanta, a division of an international production company. Senoia did not lure Hollywood on its own. Georgia lawmakers helped, passing lucrative tax credits for filmmakers and promoting the state’s cheap labor costs, few unions and access to the world’s busiest airport, in Atlanta. The money brought into the state through filming — including music videos and television commercials and other projects — has soared to $879 million from $260 million in 2008. No city took advantage of the Georgia filmmaking bonanza as much as Senoia. The first movie made here was “Driving Miss Daisy,” which was released in 1989, and a movie or television show has been filmed nearly each year since, including “Sweet Home Alabama” in 2002, “Meet the Browns” in 2008 and “Footloose” in 2011. By far the biggest project has been “The Walking Dead,” the hit zombie show on AMC that is the highest-rated drama of all time on basic cable channels. In the current season, Senoia plays the fictional town of Woodbury, Ga., a heavily armed haven for zombie survivors. Last season, most of the filming was done at a farm outside town. Much of life in the real town revolves around the zombie show. Main Street was closed to traffic for 30 days this summer and fall for filming. The city stopped mowing its grass to appear post-apocalyptic. Fake buildings for a bank, travel agency, law firm and bookstore were so realistic that some customers tried to walk in. Senoia does not charge filmmakers who come to town, but it makes money in other ways. Cast and crew members dine, shop and sometimes live here. Raleigh Studios employs as many as 250 people. And store owners say profits rise by up to 30 percent during filming. Tourists have come from around the world. Self-proclaimed Walker Stalkers hover off the set for cast members. Keith Boldt, a truck driver from nearby Newnan, Ga., has stayed up until 4 a.m. to watch key scenes being filmed. “You get the spoilers before they air,” he said. “I’ve met almost every cast member who hasn’t been killed off yet.” To foster tourism, the city built a replica of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, with gold plaques honoring locally made films. Soon there will be a trolley-car tour of the filming sites. Senoia’s slogan (“The perfect setting. For life.”) clarifies that it is a small town doubling as a movie and television set, and not vice versa. But the attention can be overwhelming. “It feels like living on a film set,” said Todd Baggarly , owner of Founders Restaurant, whose great-great-grandfather founded the town in 1860. “One of the biggest cable shows in history films on one block of a small town in Georgia, and it happens to be our town.” Not long ago, Senoia looked like most hard-hit rural towns. There were only seven stores on Main Street in 2006, compared with 49 today. The largest landowner is Senoia Enterprises, a development company run by Mr. Tigchelaar of Raleigh Studios. Since 2006, his company has bought and restored more than half of the stores downtown. Using an architecture firm that specializes in historical renovations, the company has rebuilt bars, restaurants and shops as they might have looked in the late 19th century. The result is a Norman Rockwell setting for the newly rich. Zac Brown, the country music star , owns a restaurant and concert space. There are 4,000-square-foot brownstones with elevators and five bedrooms that sell for $500,000. Developers are also planning a hotel. The goal is to attract empty-nesters from Atlanta and its wealthy suburbs who are drawn by the simplicity of small-town living, with a Hollywood twist. “We like to say we’re 25 miles and 100 years from Atlanta,” Mr. Tigchelaar said. Not everyone in town shares that vision. “It’s a double-edged sword,” said Wayne Peavy, the owner of an antiques store. “It’s good for business. But it’s not the small town I moved to.” Others are embracing the changes. Mr. Baggarly has installed Hollywood props at his restaurant: a white reindeer from “The Chronicles of Narnia” film series overlooks the bar, and a bazooka fired by Patrick Swayze is mounted on the wall. “We’re buying velvet ropes,” he said. “And of course, there will be a red carpet.”

Senoia (Ga)
Georgia
Movies
Tax Credits Deductions and Exemptions
Labor and Jobs
Television
The Walking Dead (TV Program)
Walking Dead The (TV Program)


Tourist Is Held After Climb on Brooklyn Bridge Cable

Abstract: A month after two American flags flying atop the Brooklyn Bridge were stolen and replaced with white ones, security on the world-famous crossing was back in the spotlight — this time, according to the authorities, because of an overly adventurous Russian tourist. The tourist, Yaroslav Kolchin, 24, was spotted by a police officer just after noon on Sunday as he ascended a suspension cable toward the top of one of the towers, officials said. There, the police said, he snapped some pictures and was quickly arrested when he came back down. According to a criminal complaint, Mr. Kolchin told the arresting officer he climbed the bridge “for fun.” The police described Mr. Kolchin as a “thrill-seeker” who had posted pictures of himself in vertigo-producing situations on Facebook. In one, for instance, he is balancing on a precipice at the Grand Canyon. The stunt on Sunday in New York City came just weeks after Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered a review of security measures there. “It raises a concern, for sure,” the mayor told reporters on Monday. “But it’s also clear that a lot of eyes are on the situation, the response was very, very quick, and now he’s under arrest.” Image Mr. Kolchin was in court on Monday. Credit Pool photo by Alec Tabak Mr. Kolchin, who recently graduated from a Russian university and works in advertising, arrived in the country on Aug. 9 with a tour group. He was arraigned on Monday in Brooklyn Criminal Court on misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment and criminal trespass. A judge ordered him to be held with bail set at $5,000 and directed him to give his passport to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. His lawyer’s office did not immediately respond to messages. He would face up to a year in jail on the top charge if convicted. Mayor de Blasio said Mr. Kolchin had entered the bridge on the public walkway that runs down its center, but then made his way past a security gate and onto a cable, which is off limits to the public but has guide wires for bridge workers. The police sergeant who spotted him called in helicopters, police boats and emergency service officers. Mr. Kolchin made it to the tower’s platform, walked back and forth and took several photos with his iPhone, as a crowd gathered below, the police said. Then, with a helicopter next to him, he walked back down the cable toward Brooklyn and was arrested. On July 22, the American flags on the bridge’s towers were replaced overnight with all-white flags bearing hand-stitched stars and stripes. Two German artists later took credit for the act, saying it was meant to honor the bridge’s German-born engineer, John Roebling. That case is under investigation; no charges have been placed. Mr. de Blasio said the city’s review of security at the bridge was still unfinished, though the police say that patrols were stepped up after the flag incident. “As soon as that review is complete and the changes are ready to be announced, we’ll announce them,” the mayor said.


No More Artificial Colors for Trix or Reese’s Puffs

Abstract: General Mills is dropping artificial colors and flavors from its cereals, the latest company to respond to a growing desire for food made with ingredients people see as natural. The company said on Monday that Trix and Reese’s Puffs will be among the first cereals to undergo the changes. As a result, the reformulated Trix cereal later this year will be made with four colors instead of six, said Kate Gallager, cereal developer for General Mills. While the company was able to come up with alternatives for red, orange, yellow and purple Trix pieces, Ms. Gallager said it was too difficult to find natural alternatives for blue and green that achieved the right taste and color. “We haven’t been able to get that same vibrant color,” she said. The Minneapolis company says cereals like Lucky Charms that have marshmallows may take longer to reformulate. The company said 90 percent of its cereals will have no artificial ingredients by the end of 2016. A range of food companies including Subway, Pizza Hut, Panera, Hershey and Nestlé have said in recent months that they are removing artificial ingredients from some or all products. General Mills, which also makes Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, says more than 60 percent of its cereals are already made without artificial colors and flavors.


A Small Global Huddle Convenes in Canton

Abstract: CANTON, Ohio — Tim Walsh fancies himself as something of a football connoisseur. He regularly attends Giants home games, follows players with the eye of a scout and hopes to one day work in the sport. So when he heard that the International Federation of American Football was holding its world championship in the city where the N.F.L. was created nearly a century ago, and not in Sweden, as originally planned, he got in his car and drove to Ohio from his home in New Jersey. “It’s just the novelty of it,” he said, wearing a Giants T-shirt and sitting alone in the stadium that sits next to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “I’m a little sick of hearing about women’s soccer. I wanted to see the world cup of a better sport.” Walsh was in select company. While hundreds of thousands of fans attended the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada and millions more watched on television, dozens of fans showed up to see Australia and South Korea in the opening game of the IFAF tournament, and most of them were family and friends of the players. A few hundred people attended the United States-Mexico game later that day, but vast stretches of the 23,375-seat stadium remained empty. Image Brazil, left, and Japan waiting to march into the stadium as part of the opening ceremony. Players from both teams paid their own way to the tournament. Credit Andrew Spear for The New York Times The N.F.L. and the N.C.A.A. may generate billions of dollars a year, but this seven-team, 12-game tournament, which ends Saturday, when the United States will play Japan for the gold medal, is a shoestring affair. With little corporate support and small national football federations, players from Brazil and South Korea paid their own way to Canton. Japan, France, Mexico and Australia also sent teams. The games are streamed over the Internet. Tickets cost $5 or $10. After the original host, Sweden, backed out, the tournament was hastily moved to Canton, and mainstays like Germany and Canada did not attend. The organizers will be hard pressed to draw a sizable fraction of the fans who went to the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Cincinnati, a four-hour drive away. The meager backing was a reminder that while football is by far the most popular and lucrative sport in the United States, it has a long way to go before it gains that status overseas. Participation in countries like Australia and Brazil is rising, but the game still lags far behind soccer, rugby, baseball and other sports outside the United States. The N.F.L. has no direct role in the world championship other than supporting USA Football, the nonprofit group that is helping to host the tournament. But the league has tried to push into markets like Britain and Brazil, and grooming fans who play the game is one key to gaining a firmer foothold in those countries. While the number of people playing the game overseas is still modest, the players’ enthusiasm is strong. Most are amateurs or semiprofessionals who compete on university teams or in leagues that have sprouted up. While some players are students, many others hold day jobs. Most of them play in front of meager crowds. “Soccer is in our blood, but sometimes you need something more,” said Danilo Muller Ribeiro, the coach of the Brazilian team, which is competing in the tournament for the first time. “We’re doing this for the younger generation.” Despite the anonymity and lack of money, a few players play well into their 40s. “This is something I really like doing, so I keep training year by year,” said Yasuo Wakisaka, a 46-year-old defensive lineman who plays for the Panasonic Impulse, a company team in Japan’s X League. “I want to figure out the offense’s schemes and how to defend them. It keeps me going.” Wakisaka, who is called Uncle Waki by some of his teammates, has a unique perspective on international football because he is the only player to take part in all five of the quadrennial world championships, starting with the inaugural event in 1999 in Palermo, Italy. Although the tournament is being contested in the birthplace of the N.F.L. this year, it had an international flair. The seven teams marched behind flag-bearers in the opening ceremony. At the coin toss before the first game, the Australian captains gave their South Korean counterparts an inflatable yellow kangaroo with boxing gloves. The teams stay and practice at Walsh University, about five miles from the stadium. For nearly two weeks, the leafy campus is turned into something approximating an Olympic village. The players and coaches rub shoulders each morning at breakfast, where some dine on kimchi and noodles brought from home. Many others eagerly fill their trays with college cafeteria mainstays like scrambled eggs, waffles and Froot Loops. Image The teams stay and practice at Walsh University, about five miles from the stadium. Credit Andrew Spear for The New York Times One recent game day, most players sat with their teammates and talked in their native tongue. But a few players mingled with players from other teams, especially those who have experience in leagues outside their own countries or on college teams in the United States. A few of the non-American players have even tried out with N.F.L. teams, which suggests the budding success of football programs overseas. “The level of enthusiasm for football has picked up in Australia,” said Jason Aslimoski, a 39-year-old offensive lineman on the Australian team who played in the tournament in 1999. “Now we’re trying to get people committed to it as their first sport.” IFAF ’s ultimate goal is for football to become an Olympic sport. In 2013, the International Olympic Committee preliminarily recognized IFAF, which includes 71 member countries. A vote on whether IFAF can become a permanent member may come as soon as 2016, a first step toward having the sport added to the Summer Games. “Once football is an Olympic sport, it will be an instantaneous hit,” said Eric Jung, the general manager of the national team from South Korea, where the K.N.F.L. is the predominant league. “Right now, we get no help from the government, and unfortunately, the big companies have zero interest in us right now.” Some semblance of parity would bolster IFAF’s case, but the United States team, which is filled with college players, dominates the tournament. The level of play of other teams is mixed. The Japanese and French teams were stacked with players who play in well-organized leagues. Other teams played more like amateurs than semipros. Image Dozens of fans showed up to see the opening game of the International Federation of American Football tournament between Australia and South Korea. Credit Andrew Spear for The New York Times In the opening game, the South Korean quarterback was sacked for a 25-yard loss on the team’s first offensive play. The Australians fumbled and recovered the ensuing punt. The South Koreans then intercepted a pass by Jared Stegman, who also plays for the Uppsala 86ers in Sweden, and returned it for a touchdown but missed the extra point. Those ended up being the only points the South Koreans scored. The Australians won, 47-6. As in the World Baseball Classic, Japan won the first two tournaments, in 1999 in Italy and in 2003 in Germany. Japan beat Mexico, 6-0, in overtime to take the first gold medal and defeated Mexico again four years later to retain the title. But in contrast to the World Baseball Classic, the United States did not participate in the first two IFAF tournaments. When the Americans made their debut in 2007, in Japan, they beat the hosts in a double-overtime thriller, 23-20. The gloves came off in 2011 in Austria, where the Americans, stocked with many standouts from Division III football teams, won the gold medal by beating Canada, 50-7. The Americans appear well on their way to winning their third consecutive gold medal. Led by quarterback Kevin Burke, a Division III all-American from Mount Union, about 20 miles away, the Americans toyed with the Mexican and Japanese teams before pulling away in the second half of their early-round games, and they defeated France, 82-0, on Wednesday. Regardless of the result, the point of the tournament is to popularize football beyond the United States. “We’re trying to grow the sport,” said Dan Hawkins, the coach of the American team, who has coached at the college level at Colorado and Boise State and for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. “A lot of people don’t know this exists, but it will help fuel their passion for the game.”


A Shrine to Modi? No Thanks, India’s Premier Says

Abstract: NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India publicly distanced himself on Thursday from a gesture of idolatry from his followers, a group of whom recently attempted to inaugurate a temple in his honor in the western state of Gujarat. He told his more than 10 million Twitter followers on Thursday morning that he was “appalled” by the gesture, calling it “shocking,” and “against India’s great traditions.” “Building such temples is not what our culture teaches us,” he continued. “Personally, it made me very sad. Would urge those doing it not to do it.” The temple in question was constructed eight years ago in a village in the district of Rajkot, according to Shankar Bhai Manu Bhai Patel, a 40-year-old laborer who also works as the temple priest. Originally, it had been dedicated to Bharat Mata, or Mother India. Years later, Modi supporters decided to erect a bust of Mr. Modi in the temple, the first step in making it a shrine to him. It took four years to collect the 165,000 rupees, or over $2,600, to construct the bust of Mr. Modi, said one of the temple donors, Ramesh Undhad, in an interview with ANI, an Indian news channel, on Wednesday. The formal inauguration of the “Modi temple” was to take place on Sunday, but after news of Mr. Modi’s condemnation spread, Mr. Patel said, those plans were called off. “We immediately stopped all the work to convert this into a temple for him,” Mr. Patel said in a phone interview, referring to Mr. Modi as bhai, or brother, a sign of respect. “Narendra bhai Modi is god for me and us here and if the god himself is angry, then what good is a temple?” A district magistrate in Rajkot, A.B. Gor, said in a telephone interview that the temple was unauthorized construction built on government land, and that the authorities had gone there Thursday morning to remove it. When they arrived, temple organizers had already removed the bust, he said. In the semiopen temple, the bust had sat on a square platform in the sanctum sanctorum, sheltered by a roof made of locally found bamboo sticks and metal. Hindus make offerings of flowers and sweets at such temples, accompanied by chants during morning and evening prayers. India has a history of constructing temples in honor of figures not strictly divine: Last year, local media reported that an Indian National Congress party loyalist began construction in southern India of a temple devoted to the party president, Sonia Gandhi, complete with a bronze statue. Temples have been dedicated to local film stars and cricket heroes. Another temple was converted to honor Mr. Modi last year in the Kaushambi district of Uttar Pradesh State, according to local media reports. Mr. Modi, who soared to power after parliamentary elections last May, has a widespread appeal that was especially evident during the election campaign. After his victory, on a visit to New York in September, he addressed a crowd of 19,000 , many chanting his name in unison, in Madison Square Garden. But Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was trounced in the New Delhi assembly elections on Tuesday, winning just three of 70 seats, a reflection, some analysts said, of the first signs of dissatisfaction with a party that has yet to deliver on the economic promises of the campaign. Mr. Patel said he first became a fan of Mr. Modi 12 years ago, when the prime minister became the chief minister of Gujarat. He said 50 or 60 people gathered in the temple every evening, chanting prayers to Mr. Modi, which he called “NaMo sutras.” Mr. Undhad, the temple donor, said people visited the temple morning and evening, traveling from neighboring villages. “The grief that I and all of us are feeling, is fathomless,” said Mr. Patel. “I am drowned in a sea of grief.”

Narendra Modi
India
Bharatiya Janata Party


Kobe Bryant’s Long Goodbye

Abstract: MINNEAPOLIS — Last week, about an hour before the Los Angeles Lakers were to face the Timberwolves here at Target Center, Gary Vitti leaned against a wall outside the visitors’ locker room and exhaled. Vitti has been the Lakers’ athletic trainer for 32 seasons, but he has other responsibilities, too. He fields ticket requests. He helps manage the schedule. “It’s like herding cats, man,” he said. “They’re all over the place.” Vitti knew his biggest challenge of the night was still ahead: marshaling the players out of the arena and to the airport in a timely fashion. It had everything to do with Kobe Bryant , who was about to make his final appearance in Minneapolis on his farewell tour of N.B.A. arenas. “The most disruptive thing is trying to get out of here after the game,” Vitti said. “He has to do his postgame therapy, and then he does his media, and then everybody wants a piece of him because they’re not going to see him again. I’m just trying to get these guys to the next city.” Vitti, 61, has seen a lot in his time with the team, and there are elements of Kobe-palooza — coming soon to a city near you — that feel vaguely familiar. In the 1988-89 season, Vitti witnessed the pageantry of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s season-long retirement from the Lakers. A 19-time N.B.A. All-Star and the league’s career scoring leader, Abdul-Jabbar helped the Lakers win five championships. Everywhere he went in his final season, opposing crowds and teams treated him with reverence. “We all got a lot of rings out of Kareem,” Vitti said. “He deserved it, and I think everyone was proud to be a part of it.” Today, the league has settled in for the slow buildup to the end of another era, as Bryant, 37, who announced on Nov. 29 that this season would be his last , travels from city to city. Abdul-Jabbar, 68, said he could see the parallels between his path and Bryant’s. Image Gary Vitti, right, the Lakers’ athletic trainer for 32 seasons, also helps the players leave after a game. With Bryant this season, that has been a challenge. “He has to do his postgame therapy, and then he does his media, and then everybody wants a piece of him because they’re not going to see him again.” Vitti said. Credit Danny Moloshok/Associated Press “Kobe should allow the fans to show him some appreciation as he goes out,” Abdul-Jabbar said, “because most of the time they were rooting against him, and it’s nice to feel that change.” Farewell tours are the province of deified sports figures. Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera were feted at baseball stadiums ahead of their retirements from the Yankees. Julius Erving drew massive crowds as he played his final games with the Philadelphia 76ers. But while Abdul-Jabbar was among the first athletes (and perhaps the first) to have such a grand, elongated send-off, it helped that he announced his impending retirement well ahead of his final season. Bryant waited until the season was underway, when it was finally clear to him that he was powerless to ward off the effects of age and injury. “He kept everyone guessing for a while,” said Mychal Thompson, an analyst for the Lakers’ radio broadcasts. Thompson, who played alongside Abdul-Jabbar, recalled the unceremonious ending to his own N.B.A. career. The Lakers bought out his contract, and he spent a final season in Italy. “I tried to do the same thing that Kareem did,” Thompson said, deadpan, “but I didn’t even get a pigpen.” Image Kareem Abdul-Jabbar received a piece of the Boston Garden floor from Red Auerbach in 1988 during his final season. Credit David M. Tenenbaum/Associated Press Bryant has chosen to forgo pregame ceremonies on the road, saying he does not want to be a distraction. No gifts, at least not in public. But the video tributes, the standing ovations, the fans who wait outside arenas after games hoping to catch a glimpse of the man — the atmosphere is still one that borders on hysteria. “The way he showed up to play hard every night, people appreciate that,” Thompson said. If the dynamics were similar for Abdul-Jabbar, there were key differences: Crowds were more respectful than hysterical, and his team was good. The embers of the Showtime-era Lakers were cooling, but the team was still bound for the N.B.A. finals that season. Byron Scott, one of Abdul-Jabbar’s longtime teammates, is now the Lakers’ coach. He has been in charge of a grease fire. The Lakers were 4-21 ahead of their home game Thursday against the Houston Rockets. Scott has decided to cede the spotlight to Bryant, for better or for worse. “We have so many young guys on this team, and I don’t know how they’re handling it,” Scott said last week. “But for myself and our coaching staff, you’ve been through this and you expect this, and it’s kind of the routine right now because this is how it’s going to be for 82 games.” For Abdul-Jabbar, the logistics were fairly straightforward. Whenever he made his final appearance at an opposing arena, players from both teams would begin to warm up, and then everything would pause for a five-minute ceremony as officials gathered to honor him at midcourt. His teammates and the team’s staff would take it all in. Vitti recalled how he always stood next to Magic Johnson. It became a part of their ritual, Vitti and Johnson watching as Abdul-Jabbar collected gift after gift: a Winchester rifle from the Utah Jazz, a wet suit from the Los Angeles Clippers, VCRs from the Nets and the Chicago Bulls (yes, two VCRs). Johnson would lean toward Vitti and smile. Image Get the latest tweets from @NYTSports , including breaking news, analysis and live updates. “Can you imagine what they’re going to do for me when I retire?” Vitti recalled Johnson saying more than once. Johnson never got the chance. In November 1991, he revealed that he was H.I.V. positive, hastening his retirement. He made a brief comeback in 1996, but it lacked pizazz. “He was robbed of that,” Vitti said. The ceremonies for Abdul-Jabbar had a cumulative effect on the team, Vitti said. Today, player introductions feel like Hollywood movie trailers. The lights dim, flames fly from scoreboards and music blasts from enormous speakers. Nothing seems to faze players anymore. But back then, the atmosphere was muted. “You did the anthem, they announced the players and then you played,” Vitti said. “They didn’t turn the lights out. There was no fire. They didn’t do any of this stuff.” So whenever an opponent honored Abdul-Jabbar, it was a break from routine. He was 42 when he retired, and he acknowledged that the process became emotionally taxing. “But it was a real honor to be singled out like that,” Abdul-Jabbar said. Abdul-Jabbar, who responded via email to questions submitted through his publicist, recognized that the quality of his play was declining. In his final season, he averaged 10.1 points and 4.5 rebounds a game. Hindered by injuries in the finals, the Lakers fell to the Detroit Pistons in a four-game sweep. Image Over his last five games, Bryant has averaged 18.2 points while shooting 47.2 percent from the field. Credit Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images “I knew my stats were going down, and I had other things that I was struggling with,” he said. “So I was pretty happy that it was my last season because I didn’t want people remembering me not playing up to the standards I had set my whole career.” Before their final home game of the regular season, the Lakers celebrated Abdul-Jabbar at the Forum, which was packed with celebrities: Quincy Jones, Gilda Radner, Jack Nicholson, and Cheech and Chong, among others. Abdul-Jabbar’s son Amir sang the national anthem. Chick Hearn, the team’s play-by-play broadcaster, served as master of ceremonies. And there were, of course, more gifts, including a lighted tennis court for his home in Hawaii, courtesy of the team’s owner, Jerry Buss. Abdul-Jabbar’s teammates and coaches bought him a Rolls-Royce. Sadly, Thompson said, Abdul-Jabbar had trouble folding his 7-foot-2 frame inside the vehicle, and that was not the first incident of its kind. Earlier that season, the Golden State Warriors presented him with a sailboat. “But it was too small for me,” Abdul-Jabbar said, “so I gave it away.” Some gifts meant more to Abdul-Jabbar than others. He treasured an elephant sculpture that the Dallas Mavericks gave him, largely because his mother loved elephants. He also got great use out of a hand-carved rocking chair that was presented to him by the Charlotte Hornets. Whenever his mother visited, she would sit in the chair and wrap herself in a comforter she had crocheted. Abdul-Jabbar still has the chair, he said, and he keeps the comforter at the edge of his bed. It has not been the most graceful exit for Bryant, who spent weeks trying to shoot his way to his vintage self — shot after shot, most of them misses. His surgically repaired legs betrayed him as critics piled on, arguing that he should be more willing to accept a complementary role at this stage of his career. Even Bryant acknowledged that his lower body felt sort of numb when the Lakers, at the start of the team’s recent eight-game trip, lost to the 76ers on Dec. 1. Coming on the heels of his retirement announcement, the game was a homecoming for Bryant, who grew up outside Philadelphia. He was 7 of 26 from the field in 32 tortured minutes. Image “Kobe should allow the fans to show him some appreciation as he goes out,” Abdul-Jabbar said, “because most of the time they were rooting against him, and it’s nice to feel that change.” Credit Nick Wass/Associated Press Stu Lantz, the longtime analyst for the team’s television broadcasts, mentioned how gracious Bryant had been with fans and members of the news media “in the midst of trying to end his career somewhat respectably.” It might be Bryant’s greatest challenge to date. Lantz said he was under the impression that Bryant hoped to appear in every road game the rest of the way, mostly out of a sense of obligation to everyone who had paid to see him play. “I’m worried about the physicality of his playing every night,” Lantz said. “But he’s built that way. He never liked missing games anyhow.” In hopes of getting Bryant to the finish line with his limbs intact, Scott said he would try to do a better job of monitoring Bryant’s minutes. In Minneapolis last week, Bryant played just 25 minutes, scoring 11 points and spending most of the second half on the bench. “He just seems at peace,” Scott said. “I think he knows he’s done everything he can possibly do as a basketball player.” It was Bryant’s supreme confidence that had helped make him so great for so long, the unassailable belief that he could make every shot, no matter the circumstances. But more recently, his attitude has seemed to shift, his approach growing more mature. In Minneapolis, Bryant said he felt comfortable “coaching” and “teaching” from the bench. After D’Angelo Russell misfired on what would have been a go-ahead jumper, the Lakers lost in overtime. Russell expressed his disappointment to Bryant. “Listen, man,” Bryant recalled telling Russell. “I made plenty of them, and I missed plenty of them, too. It’s your first shot, but it won’t be your last, so on you go.” Bryant turned wistful, especially when he was asked about the Timberwolves’ Kevin Garnett, another elder statesman. Like Bryant, Garnett had cleared the stage late in the game, stationing himself on the bench. “It seems like yesterday we were the young, young ones,” Bryant said. “It’s just crazy to me, lining up with K. G. after all these years. It’s nuts. Where did the time go?” Over his last five games, Bryant has averaged 18.2 points while shooting 47.2 percent from the field. He is still clearly capable of having his moments. At Staples Center on Tuesday night, he collected 22 points and 6 assists in a convincing win over the Milwaukee Bucks. It was reminiscent of a time gone by. “Letting go of his obsession of the game is going to be hard,” Abdul-Jabbar said, “because it served him so well his entire life. But at this point, he should take it from me that it’s time to find something else. Somebody as intelligent and worldly as Kobe should not have a hard time finding that space.” On Abdul-Jabbar’s farewell tour, Vitti, the team trainer, was a younger man — younger, in fact, than many of the players. Now, they regard him as a sage voice. At least one of the team’s first-year players calls him Dad. Vitti has two years left on his contract, but this is his final season as a trainer, he said. He feels ready to do something else. The road is a grind. “This is it, brother,” Vitti said. “I just keep telling myself: ‘Listen, man. You can do anything one more time.’ So whenever I start getting annoyed at stuff, I just decompress.” Vitti has delegated many of his duties to members of his staff. He supervises and manages. Like Bryant and Abdul-Jabbar before him, Vitti knows enough to look ahead. “It’s time,” he said.

Basketball
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Kobe Bryant
Lakers


Scheduled to Play Twins, Mets Face Snow Instead

Abstract: MINNEAPOLIS — Don’t get the Minnesota Twins’ president, Dave St. Peter, started on the decision to build an open-air stadium in a city known for its brutal winters and fickle springs. The Twins benefited from favorable April weather in their first three seasons at Target Field, but St. Peter figured they were due for a problem. This is the year. A spring snowstorm dumped five inches of heavy, wet snow on the Twin Cities from Wednesday into Thursday, jeopardizing Friday night’s game with the Mets, the first of a three-game series. Another inch or two may fall Thursday night, according to the National Weather Service. Crews began clearing snow Thursday morning, St. Peter said, and he remains hopeful the game will go on. “Right now, we fully expect to play,” St. Peter said. “The reality is, the New York Mets make one trip to Minnesota. There is tremendous pressure on all of us to try and get the game in.” The Mets flew in from Philadelphia after Wednesday night’s game and are in town, according to a club spokesman. The decision to play will be made Friday morning, St. Peter said. The Friday night forecast is not promising, with a 50 percent chance of snow and a low of 23 degrees after a daytime high of 36. While St. Peter said the Twins are considering “Plan B’s, C’s and D’s” in case the field is unplayable, those options do not include shifting the series to the Metrodome or to Miller Park in Milwaukee, which has a retractable roof. (The Brewers are in St. Louis this weekend.) The Twins have vowed never to play again at the Metrodome, where they were considered secondary tenants to the Minnesota Vikings. “Our employees, our fans, our sponsors, nobody wants to go there,” St. Peter said. The Twins have not had a game snowed out at Target Field, which opened in 2010. There were four snow postponements at Metropolitan Stadium, where the Twins played from 1961-81, according to the Minnesota baseball historian Stew Thornley. In 1962, a six-inch snowfall delayed the home opener by one day. Heavy snow also forced postponement of one game in the Metrodome, in 1983, about 12 hours before the inflatable roof collapsed. The Twins opened the 2008 season against the Angels inside the dome while nearly six inches of snow fell on the city. Nothing in Minneapolis matched what happened in Cleveland in 2007. Snow postponed a four-game series between the Indians and the Seattle Mariners at what was then called Jacobs Field and forced Cleveland to shift a three-game series with the Angels to Miller Park. St. Peter said that Target Field’s underground heating system, which Jacobs Field lacked, gave the Twins a better shot at playing Friday. The teams could play a doubleheader on Saturday. St. Peter said he is more worried about Sunday, when rain is expected to start around game time, at 2:10 p.m. Eastern. “Mother Nature has been kind to us the last three years,” he said. “She will be kind to us again.” From here, the Mets go to Colorado, where three weeks ago the United States and Costa Rica played a World Cup soccer qualifier in a snowstorm in a northern Denver suburb. The Denver forecast for the Mets series is not as stark as the one in Minneapolis, but it isn’t exactly balmy. The National Weather Service predicts highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s for Denver on Monday and Tuesday, with a chance of rain or snow showers each day.

Baseball
Weather
Minnesota Twins
Mets
Snow Snowstorms


Study Scours New York Subway, Finding Rats Remain Wily

Abstract: The Bloomberg administration prides itself on finding high-tech solutions to New York’s oldest, thorniest issues: gridlock, unemployment, homelessness. So it may be no surprise that City Hall is now aiming its technocratic lance at a problem so ancient as to predate the city itself: rats. In the first study of its kind, officials scoured the city’s subway system to discover what accounts for the perennial presence of rodents, a scourge since the system opened more than a century ago. The findings, disclosed at a Board of Health meeting on Tuesday, appear to belie many of the truisms familiar to any New Yorker who has screamed at the sight of a hairy critter slinking along the tracks. Rodents, it turns out, reside inside station walls, emerging occasionally from cracks in the tile to rummage for food. The legend of teeming rat cities tucked deep into subway tunnels is, in fact, a myth. The electrified tracks, scientists said, are far too dangerous. Not every station has rats, although plenty do. Of 18 stations examined in Lower Manhattan, about half of the subway lines got a fair or poor rating for infestation, meaning they exhibited the telltale culprits — overflowing trash cans, too much track litter — that can lead to a rodent jamboree. But befitting a creature that has evaded annihilation for centuries, officials found no obvious solutions: poison packets and traps have proved no match for an agile mammal known to be diabolically clever. “They jump two feet from a running start; they can fall 40 feet onto a concrete slab and keep running,” said Solomon Peeples, 86, a former director of the city’s Bureau of Pest Control Services. “We’re no match for them, as far as I’m concerned. Man does not stand no chance.” The two-year subway study was a collaboration between the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority , which has fought rats for decades, futilely. Poison on the track is often scattered by a passing train. Subway riders persist in eating, drinking and littering while in stations, leaving behind the crumbs and detritus that, in a rat’s eyes, are an invitation to make oneself at home. “Sometimes, it’s only a matter of a particular track cleaner not doing their job,” said Robert M. Corrigan, a rodentologist who led the study. Still, the city did offer some practical advice. Nothing quite excites a rat like a station’s “refuse room,” a storage space for bags of garbage waiting to be hauled away. For rodents, the room is “a restaurant,” as Dr. Corrigan called it, and he recommended that the transportation authority install poison bait in the rooms for a more surgical strike. (Currently, the authority places poison only on the tracks.) Entrances to the rooms should be guarded, Dr. Corrigan said, so rats cannot reach the food. He also suggested that transit officials invest in more high-tech trapping systems, although he said budget concerns would probably stymie such plans. Indeed, a spokesman for the transportation authority said Tuesday that the agency would “need to evaluate the costs associated with implementation moving forward.” Dr. Corrigan said he remained optimistic that a better system of prevention could be in place within the next two years. It seems that rats like to hang out in stations, but not on trains. Perhaps for good reason: In 1976, an academic study concluded that “rats with high blood pressure should not ride the subways too often or too long: the stress of noise, vibration, and crowding may kill some of them before their time.” Officials would not proffer an estimate for the city’s rat population. “Eight for one human, 20 for one, none of that stuff is true,” said Rick Simeone, the health department’s director of pest control. “It’s all sensationalism.” On Tuesday, Dr. Corrigan told health officials that while rats were a problem in the subways, the rodents inhabited many other public spaces, particularly parks. “Virtually all of New York,” he said, “is vulnerable to this uncanny mammal.” Mr. Peeples, the former pest control chief, concurred. “There’s not enough traps around,” he said, “to trap all the rats in New York City.”

Health and Mental Hygiene Department (NYC)


Connecticut Sees Surge of Voters for Primary

Abstract: NEW HAVEN — Seth Poole, a guidance counselor who lives in this Democratic-leaning city, never thought much about his voter-registration status: unaffiliated. But this year, Mr. Poole could not stand missing a chance to make his voice heard. So he rushed downtown to the Hall of Records on Monday morning to switch his registration to Democrat, since Connecticut allows only voters who are enrolled with a party to participate in primaries. “This one is a very, very important election, and I feel like I have to vote in the primary and be counted,” said Mr. Poole, 31, who said he would vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. “We’re in such bad shape as a country. Somebody has to step up and make a difference and bring real change, and he’s the best option.” Mr. Poole was not alone: In this state renowned for its independent voters — “unaffiliated” has more adherents than the Democrats or Republicans — about 17,000 people changed their registration to join a party over the past three months, the secretary of the state said Friday. Most of the formerly unaffiliated, about 13,300, signed up as Democrats, while 3,600 became Republicans. Besides the movement among existing voters, more than 34,000 new Connecticut voters have joined the rolls since Nov. 1, including 17,500 Democrats and 6,300 Republicans. Of the new voters, nearly 8,300 are ages 18 to 29; more than half of those were Democrats. In a state where unaffiliated voters have typically been a dominant bloc within the electorate, the scramble to enroll in a party before Tuesday’s primary and the propensity for young voters to register as Democrats could influence politics beyond this election, said Scott L. McLean, the chairman of the political science department at Quinnipiac University. “It could really establish party loyalty among a whole generation of Connecticut residents,” Professor McLean said in a telephone interview Monday. “This really does strengthen the hand of the Democrats when they’re gauging their strength and connecting with voters as party members.” The secretary of the state, Susan Bysiewicz, predicted that overall turnout could reach 50 percent on Tuesday, which would be a record for a statewide primary, attributing the intensity to Connecticut having moved up its contest on the calendar. She attributed the increase in party enrollment to excitement among voters. “There’s a sense that the country is at a crossroads,” she said. Lines snaked outside voter offices around the state in the hours before Monday’s noon deadline for registration. In Stamford, people showed up outside the Registrar of Voters at 8 a.m., a half-hour before it opened. By 10:30 a.m., about 30 people had registered. “It’s historic: a woman and an African-American,” said Sharmaine Haas, a counselor for troubled children, as she signed up as a Democrat. Ms. Haas said she decided to vote for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York after she saw on television that a heckler in New Hampshire told the candidate to iron his shirt. “I thought that was the most sexist thing.” Ms. Haas said. In Westport, Dr. Thomas Badenhop came to switch his wife from unaffiliated to Republican. They both will be voting for Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, over his rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona. “McCain is 71,” Dr. Badenhop said. “What happens if something happens to him?” As the line in the hallway outside the New Haven Registrar of Voters backed up, workers set up a second, makeshift voter registration office in a hearing room. Carolyn Carolina, 58, took an hour off from work to change her registration so she could vote Tuesday — for Mr. Obama. Before, she said, “I just wasn’t interested in the primaries. But this time I feel that I need to.” Colleen Caruso, 40, remained undecided Monday between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, but was sure of one thing: she would cast a primary ballot. “I said, ‘I have to get here,’ ” she explained after she rushed downtown to register that morning. “It’s that important to me.”

Connecticut
Voter Registration and Requirements
Elections
Primaries
Democratic Party
Republican Party
Obama Barack


Ryan the Soothsayer Sees Great Things for the Cubs

Abstract: ATLANTA — Ryan Dempster cradled the card deck as deftly and lovingly as he does baseballs. He took the ace of spades from the top, shuffled it into seeming oblivion and removed a two of clubs off the top as proof. “But I can make it come back,” Dempster said coyly. He tapped the deck and flipped over the top card. Bingo. “See?” he said. “There’s your ace.” A fine amateur magician, Dempster’s best trick this season has been turning himself into an ace — of the Chicago Cubs . His next stunt? Trying to make 100 years disappear. The Cubs want to celebrate the 100th anniversary of their last World Series win by flying another flag — and not the white one to which their fans are accustomed. The party plans are continuing apace. Entering Saturday’s games, the Northsiders had the best record in the National League, 75-47, and werefive and a half games ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers in the N.L. Central. Dempster’s conversion from capable closer, his temporary role the past three years, to dominant starter is one of the principal reasons for Waveland Avenue’s awakening hope. Dempster was among the league’s top 10 with 13 wins, a 2.92 earned-run average and 139 strikeouts, making him a leading Cy Young Award candidate. Known as one of the most genial and fun-loving teammates, Dempster is renowned for his magic tricks, unprintable pranks and roll-on-the-floor impersonations of Will Ferrell and Harry Caray. (“He’s like a Renaissance man,” the rookie Jeff Samardzija, said.) Dempster’s élan is unmistakable: Last Sunday, after pitching the Cubs to a win at Wrigley Field, Dempster arrived with the Cubs in Atlanta at 3:30 a.m. — but still woke up to run at 7 and was back and showered for a golf game at 9. “And he’d picked up Starbucks for all of us,” second baseman Mark DeRosa said. “He just operates on a different plane.” Dempster has kept his pitches on whatever plane he has wanted this season, which he entered with a renewed sense of purpose after saving 85 games the past three years. He has developed masterly control not just of a low-90s fastball and one of the league’s best sliders, but also two speeds of his split-finger fastball. Those changeups are not merely out pitches; because Dempster can throw them for well-placed strikes, he uses them to get ahead of hitters, too. The split-finger, a relatively new addition to Dempster’s repertory, could have been his downfall. In spring training, a Cubs minor league hitter told Dempster he could detect when a split-finger was coming by how Dempster fiddled with the ball before winding up. Dempster the reliever had thrown only from the stretch, so this was a major problem. On the advice of a former teammate, Kevin Millar, Dempster added a little hocus-pocus. He started fluttering his glove left and right as he began his windup, blocking the grip of his pitching hand — and distracting the batter. “When I went to the All-Star Game, every hitter came up to me and said, ‘The only question I want to ask is, what’s with the glove thing?’ ” Dempster said. “I tell people I do it to fan myself, because I’m a sweater and I get hot out there.” Dempster has been particularly hot since the All-Star Game — he has won 3 of 5 starts and yielded a total of just six runs. This is reassuring for a skeptical Cubs fan base that is almost waiting for the former reliever in Dempster to collapse under the new strain of starting. They forget that the 31-year-old Dempster had been a durable starter with the Florida Marlins early this decade before arm surgery; moreover, Dempster prepared for this season better than any of his career. Knowing he was moving back to the rotation — the organization asked him to switch places with Kerry Wood — Dempster spent his off-season outside Denver training with virtual masochism. At 7,200 feet altitude, he would run up mountains with a resistant harness. He outfitted his garage with new equipment. And he would wake up at 7 a.m. to run one, two and then three steps at a time up the rows of the nearby Red Rocks Amphitheater. “I told my trainer, ‘Beat me down, break me down, and when I’m tired and I can’t do anymore, make me do more,’ ” Dempster said. “That’s what I wanted, because it’s easy to go out there and throw your first 80 pitches and feel good. But what can I do at 110? And not just that — what can I do in August and September that I can do in April?” Dempster played catch outside at the University of Denver in snowstorms — because he is used to the cold, having grown up in British Columbia, and also because Chicago is not exactly warm in late October. Dempster has never doubted he would be pitching that late; after the team’s first workout in February, he declared that they would win the World Series. Teammates nicknamed him Madame Cleo, after the late-night psychic. But Dempster made the remark not just as a prediction, but also to wrest the Cubs from the undertow of their legendary past. “A hundred years of losing, of not winning a World Series, you eventually, whether you like it or not, develop a sense of, What’s going to happen next? What’s going to go wrong?” Dempster said. “Some guy brings a goat to the field, and they won’t let him in. Some cat runs across the field. Some guy with headphones sticks his hand out on a ball that’s in the stands. Those aren’t the reasons you don’t win. You want to find answers, but that’s not why. “Just us believing we can do it, I think that means a lot. I believe we have a special team, a good team. I like our chances.” The Cubs appear to have by far the best roster in the N.L. Dempster, his fellow veterans Carlos Zambrano and Ted Lilly and the midseason pickup Rich Harden form a deep rotation, and strong middle relief capably delivers leads to Wood (when he is healthy, which remains a persistent concern). And the Cubs’ hitters lead the N.L. in runs, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. A playoff spot is almost certain; the Cubs main goal is to keep the league’s best record so they can open the division series and, if they win that, the league championship series at Wrigley, where they are 45-17. Less certain, however, is the team’s future after this year, when the reluctant owner Sam Zell plans to unload the club. According to DeRosa, the new owner had better put Dempster’s impending free agency on the top of his to-do list. “I hope he stays, because his decision will impact other people’s decisions on whether they want to play here — because they enjoy being around him so much,” DeRosa said. “He’s one of the driving forces behind our chemistry. To take him out of the clubhouse would cause a huge rift.” Dempster insisted he is not worrying about anything past October, when he hopes to prove more reliable than, say, Madame Cleo. Cubs nation may not yet believe in magic, but their ace still has some splits up his sleeve.