Surging Sabres Edge Canadiens in Shootout

Abstract: UNIONDALE, N.Y. — The Islanders have dominated their Metropolitan Division rivals this season, a key reason they are off to the best start in franchise history. On Saturday, they took advantage of another division opponent with a 3-1 victory against the Devils at Nassau Coliseum in the teams’ first meeting this season. Jaroslav Halak, the Islanders’ new starting goalie this season, made 34 saves, including 16 in the third period. The Islanders survived a two-man disadvantage for 55 seconds in the closing minutes as Brock Nelson and Calvin de Haan were sent off for separate infractions. Halak stopped Jaromir Jagr and Marek Zidlicky on point-blank shots before Casey Cizikas sealed the hard-fought victory with an empty-net goal. “You’re only as good as your goaltender,” Islander Coach Jack Capuano said. “And tonight, I thought our goaltender was excellent.” The Islanders improved to 9-2-0 at home in their final season on Long Island, and are 8-2-0 against division rivals. Both teams entered Saturday’s game coming off losses from the day before — the Devils squandered a 4-1 lead at home before losing in a shootout to Detroit, while the Islanders fell at Washington, 5-2. Each team was also missing key players to injury — defensemen Johnny Boychuk and Lubomir Visnovsky were out for the Islanders, and centers Travis Zajac and Adam Henrique sat for the Devils. Even though the Islanders failed to convert on four power plays, their excellent defense won another game as they continued their stellar start. They are 17-7-0, tied with Pittsburgh atop the division though the Penguins have a game in hand. Halak, who signed with the Islanders last summer after playing last season for St. Louis and Washington, sought to defer credit to his teammates. “I had great defense in front of me,” said the 29-year-old Halak, who won his ninth straight start. “For me, I just take it game by game because you are only as good as your last one.” Early on the contest had to the look of teams playing on consecutive days until Nikolay Kulemin broke through to put the Islanders ahead at 12 minutes 40 seconds of the first period when he tapped a rebound of a Kyle Okposo slap shot past Devils goaltender Cory Schneider for his fifth goal of the season. Damien Brunner answered for the Devils with a tip-in at 14:27. Cal Clutterbuck put the Islanders back on top at 3:32 of the second with his third goal of the season. The Islanders carried the play most of the first two periods, heading into the third with a 26-19 advantage in shots on goal and a 2-1 lead. In an energetic third, the Devils raised their level of play but could not solve Halak, who has allowed only 11 goals during his nine-game winning streak. Only Billy Smith — with 10 wins in a row in 1982 — has a longer winning streak as an Islander goaltender. Halak improved to 12-4-0. “Our penalty killing came up huge and we held on,” Halak said in an on-ice interview. Thus, the Islanders concluded November with an 11-3-0 record. The Devils (9-11-4) are heading in the opposite direction. They were 6-3-2 on Nov. 1, but have gone 3-8-2 since. SABRES 4, CANADIENS 3 Bryan Flynn scored in regulation and added the shootout winner in Buffalo’s road victory. (AP) LIGHTNING 4, SENATORS 1 Alex Killorn and Ryan Callahan each had a goal and an assist as host Tampa Bay beat Ottawa. David Legwand scored for the Senators. (AP) MAPLE LEAFS 6, CAPITALS 2 Tyler Bozak scored twice and Jonathan Bernier made 35 saves for host Toronto. Troy Brouwer and Tom Wilson scored for Washington. (AP) PENGUINS 3, HURRICANES 2 Christian Ehrhoff scored his first goal of the season with 4:33 remaining to help visiting Pittsburgh defeat Carolina. Robert Bortuzzo’s first-period goal gave Pittsburgh a 2-1 lead, and the Penguins held on. (AP) PREDATORS 2, BLUE JACKETS 1 Colin Wilson scored the tiebreaking goal with 2:12 to play to lift host Nashville, winners of four straight and six of seven. Columbus lost its sixth in a row. (AP)

Ice hockey
Buffalo Sabres
Montreal Canadiens
Brian Gionta
Michel Therrien
Islanders
Devils


Zika Deal in Congress Likely to Be Delayed Until After Recess

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Emergency financing to fight the mosquito-borne Zika virus appeared likely to be delayed until after Congress returns from its Fourth of July recess, as Democrats on Wednesday sharply criticized a new Republican proposal to provide $1.1 billion, but with $750 million redirected from other federal programs. Republican House and Senate negotiators have been working to resolve differences between a Senate plan to provide $1.1 billion in emergency financing for Zika and a House plan that would provide $622 million but would take the money from other programs. Both proposals offered far less money to fight Zika than the $1.9 billion requested by the Obama administration . Still, Senate Democrats and the White House had indicated some willingness to go along with the Senate plan. But as the Republican negotiators announced Wednesday evening that they had reached a tentative agreement — which the House approved early Thursday in a 239-171 vote — Democrats lashed out. They said the proposal was layered with numerous unrelated provisions that they would never accept, including an effort to restrict government financing of Planned Parenthood, the women’s health organization. While Democrats did not have any sway over the House-Senate negotiations, Republicans do not have sufficient votes in the Senate to overcome procedural obstacles and approve the agreement on their own. The White House also said the legislation appeared unacceptable and would further delay the effort to combat the Zika virus, which can cause serious neurological disorders and other deformities in infants born to infected mothers. “While we are still awaiting more details on the legislation, it is clear that once again, Republicans have put political games ahead of the health and safety of the American people, particularly pregnant women and their babies,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “This plan from congressional Republicans is four months late and nearly a billion dollars short of what our public health experts have said is necessary to do everything possible to fight the Zika virus and steals funding from other health priorities,” Mr. Earnest added. “The fact that the Republican plan limits needed birth control services for women in the United States and Puerto Rico as we seek to stop the spread of a sexually transmitted disease is a clear indication they don’t take seriously the threat from the Zika virus or their responsibility to protect Americans.” In an announcement late Wednesday, Republicans said their proposal included important restrictions on how the emergency money would be used. “Unlike the administration’s request that allowed overly broad authority for federal agencies to use Zika dollars with little accountability, this legislation places tight controls and oversight on spending to ensure that every dollar is being used appropriately,” the statement from the House Appropriations Committee said. In a statement, Representative Hal Rogers, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, praised the legislation. “This is a solid agreement that will adequately and effectively fund resources for our troops and their families, our veterans, and to fight and prevent the spread of the Zika virus,” Mr. Rogers said. “It is the product of careful and thorough deliberations between the House and the Senate, and reflects a responsible compromise that can and should be signed into law.” Mr. Rogers urged Democrats to approve the legislation given the expected arrival of disease-carrying mosquitoes in the United States. “Mosquito season is upon us; these dollars must get out the door now to help control the spread of the Zika virus and continue longer-term efforts to stop this disease, such as vaccine and treatment development and deployment,” he said. But Democrats, including the party’s Senate leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, had nothing but sharp criticism. “A narrowly partisan proposal that cuts off women’s access to birth control, shortchanges veterans and rescinds Obamacare funds to cover the cost is not a serious response to the threat from the Zika virus,” Mr. Reid said in a statement. “In short, Republicans are trying to turn an attempt to protect women’s health into an attack on women’s health. We waited four months for Republicans to do anything to combat Zika. Their proposal would be comical except this a public health emergency and it deserves urgency.” The money to fight the Zika virus was included in an $82.5 billion annual appropriations measure covering military construction and veterans’ affairs programs for 2017. Republicans stressed that the legislation would provide $2.6 billion more for those programs than in 2016, but Democrats said it still did not provide sufficient funding for veterans. It was not immediately clear how congressional leaders might resolve the impasse, or when the federal money for Zika would ultimately be approved.

Zika Virus
Legislation
US Politics
House Committee on Appropriations


Jake LaMotta, at 90, Wraps Up ‘The Lady and the Champ’ Off Broadway

Abstract: Jake LaMotta was standing in his kitchen on the East Side of Manhattan the other day, wedged in front of his refrigerator, puffing on a Marlboro in the dark. He was blowing smoke out the window and tapping ash into a small bowl of water. LaMotta, 90, is the onetime middleweight champion of the world, a boxing Hall of Famer who retired with 30 knockouts; but his soon-to-be seventh wife, who is nearly 40 years his junior, will not let him smoke in his own apartment. It was an hour before his curtain call, and LaMotta — known as the Raging Bull — was killing time, having come to the end of his day’s routine. He got up, as usual, at 8 a.m. and read The New York Post. He ate a banana and some yogurt. He rested and then rehearsed his lines for his star turn in an Off Broadway show about himself that closed Sunday night after a brief engagement at the Richmond Shepard Theater on East 26th Street. And what does he do the rest of the day? “I play solitaire,” he said in a throaty Bronx rumble, “and wait for something to happen.” At least for the length of its two-week run, that something was “The Lady and the Champ,” a 50-minute, cabaret-style revue, recounting LaMotta’s life in the ring through video clips, old jazz standards, boxing stories and campy jokes (“I fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times it’s a wonder I don’t have diabetes”). The sweet science offers any number of metaphors for the savage beating LaMotta took for all of this from his reviewers. But let’s speak plainly: the show got panned. “Sheer mortification,” winced The Post in a review headlined, “Aging Bull.” “Appallingly conceived,” wrote The New York Times . Not that this gave any pause to LaMotta, a ’50s-era brawler known in his prime for a cinder-block chin and a serpentine talent for rolling with the punches. Could the unmanly jabs of a critic really compare with a Marcel Cerdan uppercut or a thundering Robinson right? Of course not, LaMotta said. The theater is that place to which the aging fighter turns in his retirement — no more, no less. “I’m not so steady on my feet these days,” he confessed. “It gives me something to do.” His physical condition is perhaps to be expected. His hair has thinned; he has age spots and a wattle; a slight palsy affects his right hand. His old pug’s face has the shrunken look of a jack-o’-lantern left out in the weather after Halloween. His attention sometimes wanders. “I fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times it’s a wonder I don’t have diabetes,” he said again. The show, in which he co-starred with Denise Baker, his seventh fiancée (“Lucky seven,” he insisted), gave him something to look forward to. Baker, an actress, is best known for her unclothed appearance in the 1974 production of “Let My People Come” (a musical about “sexual freedom,” she said) and had been thinking of a play about her beau for several years. Last year, she wrote a script with Bonnie Lee Sanders , a songwriter, and prevailed upon the management at Feinstein’s, a nightclub at the Regency Hotel, to put it on for a night. By chance, the performance was attended by Tina Louise , who played the role of Ginger on “Gilligan’s Island.” Louise, a LaMotta fan, also knew people at the Richmond Shepard. Thus, the two-week run. It was 6:30 on Saturday night when Baker and LaMotta arrived by cab for the show’s penultimate performance. “Hey, the champ’s here!” said Mark Alhonte, LaMotta’s agent. Alhonte was standing in the humid air outside the theater’s locked door — the box-office girl, who had the keys, was running late. LaMotta shuffled up in costume: a cream-colored Stetson, a black velvet blazer, a paisley pocket square. He looked a little lost; his fly had come undone. Audience members were starting to arrive, among them Linda Baylis Mallia. Finding the champ outside with hoi polloi, Mallia walked straight up to him and said that her father, Max Baylis, a tailor from the Bronx, had talked about him all the time, in his heyday, in the ’50s. LaMotta said, “There’s a lot of people all over the world that talked about me.” Mallia said, “But my father said nice things.” Finally the door was unlocked and LaMotta went inside to his dressing room. It was a small room that seemed to double as a storage space for stage lights. He was joined there by one of his fellow actors, Carl Shimkin , who is also working on a LaMotta documentary called “Moving Forward.” Shimkin started taking footage of the champ with an iPhone . “So what’s your favorite part of the show?” he asked. LaMotta, looking up, said, “What show?” Moments later, a stocky man in an Adidas T-shirt and a Golden Gloves necklace stepped into the room. This was Vito Antuofermo , middleweight champion, 1979. “Hey champ,” Antuofermo said. “You remember me?” LaMotta said, “Arturo?” “Arturo?” Antuofermo said, sounding puzzled, vaguely offended. “Jake, come on, what’s Arturo? I’m Vito.” When LaMotta’s sister, Annie Ramaglia, who is 88, arrived, they sat together in front of the lighted mirrors, discussing old times. Ramaglia reminisced about the nightclubs of the Bronx, the songs they used to sing, how the local kids would call LaMotta “Primo,” after Primo Carnera , the Italian heavyweight. “You remember a lot,” LaMotta said, gazing at her softly. “I forget stuff. Guess I took a few too many punches.” Then, with the curtain due in 20 minutes, the champ sat up and suddenly said: “Are people coming? Is it crowded out there?” In fact, it was: standing room only. At the five-minute call, Baker and LaMotta assumed their positions in the hall outside his dressing room, pressed to the wall, arms at their sides, like suspects posing for a mug shot. The house lights dimmed at 7:45 p.m. “You ready, champ?” Shimkin said. He led LaMotta by the elbow, down a corridor and into the house, in darkness. Music cue. Applause. The lights went up and, at least for the night, Jake LaMotta had returned to center stage, to where he belonged.

Theater
Boxing
LaMotta Jake
The Lady and the Champ (Play)
Lady and the Champ The (Play)


A Dispute Runs Through It

Abstract: PITTSBURGH - Pristine trout streams are the pride of central Pennsylvania, but a legal battle over public access to one of its finest -- the Little Juniata, known to many as the Little J -- has created concerns among landowners and anglers nationwide. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the state's department of environmental protection, the state's department of conservation and natural resources, and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission are suing a landowner and a private fishing club for prohibiting the public from angling on a 1.3-mile stretch of the Little Juniata in Huntingdon County. Defendants in the suit include the Spring Ridge Club and its operator, Donny Beaver, and Connie L. Espy, the property owner who leases the stream to the club. The plaintiffs assert that the waterway is navigable, and therefore public property. They filed suit, scheduled for a nonjury trial in Huntingdon County common pleas court on June 12, after more than a decade of confrontations over access to the river, which club members have paid tens of thousands of dollars to fish. "If you go back and read our founding fathers, they didn't say life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; they said life, liberty and the right to own and control property," Beaver said. "Our goal is to save these trout streams from being sprawled into another shopping mall, like the one that got built near the headwaters of the Little J. They're better off in our hands." But Stan Stein, a lawyer representing a tackle shop owner, Allan Bright, in a separate suit against Beaver and his club, said landowner motives were seldom altruistic, and he expressed alarm over the privatization trend. "If you fish out West, as I do," said Stein, who is also working with the Commonwealth on its case, "you've got the wealthy Hollywood crowd building these 20,000-square-foot ranch houses and trying to limit access to what Beaver would call 'the free-lunch bunch.' We need to send them a message." How such messages are heard varies widely from state to state, as do laws about water and submerged-land rights. Waterways are considered public property if they are federally designated as navigable, or large enough to carry commercial traffic. But when it comes to smaller rivers, even those that states consider navigable, there is no uniformity in how they are allowed to be used, and decisions are often made on a case-by-case basis. About the only things states share, according to Leon Szeptycki, general counsel of the coldwater conservation group Trout Unlimited, "is a steady diet of disputes between landowners and folks who want to fish." In Montana, for example, ranchers have been trying for decades to fence off parts of the Ruby River despite the state's insistence on the public's right to fish it, while in Virginia, landowners on the Jackson River have succeeded in blocking angler access by dredging up centuries-old crown grants from the King of England. Navigability and streambed ownership, as in the Little Juniata case, are not the only issues. Suburban sprawl and changing land-use practices have made getting to the water more difficult, since it "obviously requires either public land or access over private land," said Eric Schwab, policy director for the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, which represents states on concerns relating to sportsmen. "In the battle for more space, it's already a challenge that is only going to get more intense. "The bottom line is, landowners have the legitimate right to exclude people from trespassing their property." And they are increasingly posting "keep out" signs, especially in the densely populated eastern United States, where most property is privately owned, according to Terry Riley, vice president for policy for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a coalition of sportsmen's groups. "The No. 1 complaint is, where can you find good water for a quality fishing experience," he said. "It used to be you'd knock on a farmer's door and ask permission to fish or hunt and he'd usually say, 'O.K.' But there's been this cultural change toward intolerance." Some of it has to do with anglers who litter and otherwise make themselves unwelcome, but an increasing number of landowners want their own private paradise, Riley said, while others see an opportunity to make money off natural resources. Census data from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which began tracking private ownership of fishing lands a decade ago, shows that the number of anglers declined by 4 percent from 1991 to 2001, but property purchases for fishing more than tripled, with people paying $500 million for land -- an increase of 17 percent. The number of people paying to gain access to private water also increased, and they spent 27 percent more for the privilege. It is a trend that landowner-rights advocates applaud. "Everybody should have access to hunting and fishing, but where does it say it has to be for free?" said Charles Cushman of Battle Ground, Wash., the founder and executive director of the American Land Rights Association, a network of organizations that includes the Pennsylvania Landowners Association, on whose board Beaver serves. Tom Milesnick, who rents access to spring creeks on his ranch on the East Gallitin River in Montana, said: "If we didn't charge, we'd shut down access completely." States and the private sector are making an effort, sometimes together, to improve access through direct acquisition of wilderness for recreation and conservation easements that give landowners tax breaks to forgo development. Only recently have some been tailored specifically to sportsmen, Schwab said. The Trust for Public Land, a private group that buys wilderness and turns it over to state and municipal authorities, recently paid $2.4 million for a one-mile stretch of the Vermillion River in Minnesota and is working to buy the historic Holbrook Wharf in Cundys Harbor, Me. "You can fight for access in courts or you can create it on the ground," said Tom Sadler, the program development director for the group. "If you protect a wharf for lobstermen, you're also helping the striper angler who'd prefer not fighting his way through condos. There's nothing wrong with condos, but I'm a fisherman. I'd rather have a public dock."

PENNSYLVANIA
LITTLE JUNIATA RIVER (PA)
TROUT
FISHING SPORT
FISH AND OTHER MARINE LIFE


100th Week at No. 1 for Djokovic

Abstract: Novak Djokovic is No. 1 in the rankings for the 100th week. Djokovic, 26, is the ninth player to reach the milestone, joining Andre Agassi (101 weeks), Rafael Nadal (102), Bjorn Borg (109), John McEnroe (170), Jimmy Connors (268), Ivan Lendl (270), Pete Sampras (286) and Roger Federer (302). Djokovic reached No. 1 in July 2011. .


City Agents Shut Down 32 Vendors of Fake Items

Abstract: It is a vibrant fixture of Lower Manhattan commerce. Tourists jostle for space at Canal Street’s stores and sidewalk kiosks, bargaining with vendors over sparkly watches, handbags and perfumes with fake designer labels that are sold at a fraction of the cost of the genuine item. But over the past five weeks, like the goods that are not what they appear to be, undercover police officers and city agents fanned out and pretended to be real shoppers in an area the mayor called the “Counterfeit Triangle” — which roughly includes Canal, Walker, Baxter and Centre Streets. They picked up items that included a Prada handbag for $40; a Patek Philippe watch and a Rolex for $80, and two pairs of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses for $18. On Tuesday, 32 shops were closed down, a civil lawsuit was filed against the property owner — the estate of Vincent Terranova — and more than $1 million worth of counterfeit goods were confiscated as a result of the more than 40 undercover shopping sprees. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called the operation one of his administration’s “biggest takedowns ever” against the “easy and sleazy” money derived from counterfeit merchandise. “Whoever you are, wherever you are, we are going to shut you down,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference in the lobby of a Canal Street mall that housed some of the shops. Behind him were dozens of clear plastic bags stuffed with hundreds of seized counterfeit products. Mr. Bloomberg said that the sales of counterfeit goods cheated the city of $1 billion in sales tax a year and led to money laundering and bloody turf wars. “It is organized crime,” he said. In a statement, Terranova Properties, the owner’s managing agent, said: “We have been working together with New York City and will continue to cooperate to the utmost degree with the New York City Police Department and the mayor’s office to remedy this situation on Canal Street.” The assistant who read the statement, Leah Terranova, declined to comment further. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said that in 2007, counterfeit goods worth $25 million were seized throughout the city, about three times more than in the previous year. There were no arrests on Tuesday, but as the investigation proceeds, there could be criminal charges. Through the civil suit, a temporary restraining order was imposed to keep the buildings shuttered until the owner can prove there is no more illegal activity. The owner must also pay a fine of $1,000 a day from the first official notice of illegal activity — in this case, in early January. The city will also ask the State Supreme Court to impose other fines, said Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor. The three buildings that were closed have multiple addresses for the shops within them: 224-230 Canal Street; 232 Canal Street, 234-238 Canal Street; 106 Baxter Street; 112-116 Walker Street; 118 Walker Street; 120-124 Walker Street and 152-156 Centre Street. Some of the shops share an address. The undercover operation started nearly two months ago as a joint effort between the New York Police Department and the mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement. They gained entry using saws and bolt cutters and seized hundreds of items. The city filed the civil lawsuit using the nuisance abatement law against four trustees of the Terranova estate: Robert Becht, Edward T. Borg, George Terranova and Carl Terranova, said Mr. Post, the mayor’s spokesman. Shari C. Hyman, director of the Office of Special Enforcement, said that the city had filed civil lawsuits against the Terranova owners of 234-238 Canal Street in 1999 and against 232 Canal Street in 2003, but that despite the family’s agreement to try to curb the counterfeit sales, they resumed. In late 2006, eight makers of luxury goods, including Burberry, Givenchy and Marc Jacobs, sued a trust created by the Terranova estate in Federal District Court in Manhattan in connection with six properties in Chinatown, asking, among other things, that the tenants of those buildings be evicted. A lawyer for the estate, Paul Kurland, said a short time later that the parties had settled, and said they were doing their best to rid the buildings of vendors of counterfeit items. Mr. Kurland could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. “It was the owners’ unwillingness to comply with repeated attempts to get counterfeiting activity out of the buildings that made us decide to go against them in this aggressive action,” Ms. Hyman said, speaking about the Tuesday events.

Chinatown (NYC)
Counterfeit Merchandise
Crime and Criminals
Bloomberg Michael R


Injured Lindsey Vonn May Wish She Had a Little More Time

Abstract: WHISTLER, British Columbia — For the last several months, when Lindsey Vonn talked about the 2010 Winter Olympics, she was happy that her strongest events were bunched in the early part of the schedule. The super combined, which plays to her strengths, was scheduled two days after the opening ceremony. The downhill, her best event, was three days after that, and the super-G, another strong suit, was scheduled for three days after the downhill. That gave her three bona-fide chances at a gold medal in the first half of the competition, and Vonn considered herself lucky. She would not have to wait long to chase a dream that has been a lifetime in waiting. With the Olympic competition now days away, Vonn would like a little more time after all. On Wednesday, Vonn offered a brave if dire view of an injury to her right shin that she sustained last week in training. She said it was possible her leg would be so painful she would not compete at all. A little more recovery time — say another week — would surely help. These Olympic pre-competition periods have not been kind to Vonn, the most dominant female skier in the world the last two years. Four years ago, she seemed star-crossed when she crashed spectacularly in training two days before the downhill at the Turin Games. Just two weeks ago, Vonn was widely quoted after the final pre-Olympic World Cup race saying that she felt fortunate to have escaped the Olympic buildup relatively healthy. No one at the time mentioned that bad things happened in training as well. It is impossible to tell how Vonn will feel when she tests her badly bruised shin in her ultrastiff boots and skis during Thursday morning’s training for the super combined. It’s impossible to tell how much better she may be by Sunday, the day the event is scheduled to take place. But there was something in the messages filtering out of the United States ski team camp late Wednesday that sounded almost optimistic about her chances for recovery. How close she can return to her former dominating self is again the great unknown, but there seemed to be an eagerness to believe that the next few days could favorably alter Vonn’s condition. Dr. William Sterett, the United States ski team doctor, examined Vonn in Vancouver on Tuesday and is helping with her treatment. He said in a conference call that Vonn was “well on her way to looking very good at these Olympics.” He added that she was getting better daily. He also reminded reporters that he did not count her out at the Turin Games when others did. “She’s a tough kid,” he said. On the mountain earlier Wednesday, as word of her injury spread among the men’s downhillers at their training, many racers shook their heads dejectedly as they discussed an injury “where the boot cuff meets the shin,” as the Swiss racer Didier Cuche said, repeating what he heard. “Bad spot,” Cuche said. “Maybe the worst.” And that is what Vonn said in her news conference as well. Her doctors, however, said later that the bruise was an inch above where the boot meets the shin. Sterett said it might be hard to understand because ski racers “are an interesting breed” who have injuries that almost defy normal physiology. But Sterett explained that the injury was above the boot line because of the way the leg bends when a racer falls over the fronts of the skis, which is what Vonn said she did. Several of the male racers at the Whistler Creekside racecourse, speaking of Vonn, remarked that if the injury was above the boot cuff, it might not be as painful to race with, at least in time. This is, of course, assuming that the swelling enveloping the injury does not extend toward her foot, which would continue to make the boot/shin contact painful. And it’s important to remember that Vonn is a racer who charges downhill at 70 miles an hour, not a recreational skier who may mildly engage the ski boots in a forward flex. Still, Vonn’s doctors were talking about padding and a variety of high-powered painkillers they had not yet tried on her. It is a given that Vonn will make her best attempt to race through pain or discomfort; she proved that in Turin. But it is also true that while Vonn returned to ski in the 2006 Olympics, she did not ski like herself. She did not come close to winning a medal. Vonn refused X-rays when the injury occurred in Austria last week. That decision was more like a figurative act, she said, like putting her fingers to her ears to avoid hearing bad news. On Wednesday, she said she delivered the bad news publicly and willingly, but added, “I’m not making excuses for myself.” Knowing her history, Vonn will probably be in a start house soon after the Games officially begin Friday night. The schedule is not the lucky break she once considered it to be, but it has been on her calendar for four years. Vonn is the punctual type.

Vonn Lindsey
Olympic Games (2010)
Skiing


Face of Giants Now a Cog in the Wheel

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Nov. 9 — Behind the chuckle, the smirk and the wink is the old Jeremy Shockey . No matter which disguise he uses, he cannot fully hide some measure of discontent over his role with the Giants . The old Shockey was the flamboyant, headline-stirring tight end who let words flow unfiltered. He spoke the way he played, creating a ruckus and leaving his targets bruised. It is that Shockey who interrupted a postgame interview after a loss at Seattle last season to utter the memorable and biting analysis that the Giants were “outplayed and outcoached.” But this Jeremy Shockey does not do that. He admitted last month that he would prefer to catch passes and not serve as a blocker at all. But he only hints that he feels underutilized in the Giants’ passing game. His words, uttered with care, dish out none of the punishment that his body doles out on Sundays. Shockey, 27 and in his sixth year, is having a quiet season, and that is not counting his on-field performances. N.F.L. rules require players to be available to reporters during the week between games, and Shockey performs the minimum — a subdued and unannounced few minutes in front of his locker, often on Fridays, when the news media contingent is the thinnest. This week he was asked, as he usually is, about his role with the Giants. His statistics have been remarkably consistent from one year to the next. With 31 catches and 358 yards, he is on pace to have between 61 and 66 catches for the fourth season in a row. But heading into Sunday’s game against the Cowboys, Shockey has only two touchdowns, and seems to have increasingly become more of a cog in the system than a face of the franchise. “Just like every year, it’s not about me — it’s about the whole team,” Shockey said. He chuckled, as if acknowledging how incongruous such coach-speak sounded in his voice. “I’m going to say all the right things in this interview here,” he continued. Sometimes he will wink to send the same message. More team-first clichés followed. And, like that, a potentially combustive episode was extinguished. “His fire is still there,” the tight ends coach Mike Pope said last week. “I just think he has gotten a little bit more aware that impulsive things do get attention if they aren’t necessarily in the best interest of him or the team.” He added that Shockey had “maybe taken a few patience pills along the way.” Shockey can no longer be counted on to be an engaging interview, which is bad for reporters and, perhaps, his own stature as a player. But he can be trusted, it seems, to stay free of controversy, which is how the Giants prefer it. “He is more cognizant of the things that he says just don’t stay right in this environment,” Pope said. “If they are bawdy enough, they get passed out pretty far in the sports world. So I am proud that he has made that progress. And some of the things that in the past were just impulsive things — I think he is thinking a little bit more before he acts now.” Coach Tom Coughlin fumed last season after Shockey’s “outcoached” comment. Shockey has been subdued, and largely silent, since. But he feels he could do far more on the field. Statistically, at least, he has not kept up with tight ends like Kansas City’s Tony Gonzalez and San Diego’s Antonio Gates. Instead, his career averages are close to those of his Cowboys counterpart, Jason Witten. Last season, Witten made the Pro Bowl — his third in four years — as an injury replacement for Shockey. Witten has 45 receptions and 5 touchdowns this season. When his helmet popped off after a catch against the Eagles on Sunday and he ran downfield bare-headed, it was the type of tough-guy highlight Shockey has been known to create. Shockey was asked if he was jealous of Witten’s expanded role with the Cowboys this season. “Not at all,” Shockey said, adding that he was used that way “at one time in my career.” He chuckled — his signal for holding his tongue — and continued. “And I’m sure other people were jealous,” he said. “That’s just the way the league goes. There’s only a couple of people that can do it year in and year out, like Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates. I’m not jealous at all. There’s no reason to be jealous.” During training camp, Giants players were given T-shirts that read: “Talk is cheap. Play the game.” Shockey, of all people, has taken those words to heart. It is not the same old Shockey — just an older one, wishing that his play could create the amount of buzz that his words used to. EXTRA POINTS The Giants extended the contract of the blocking fullback Madison Hedgecock through 2012. He was signed after he was waived by the Rams in September. ... Running back Derrick Ward (ankle/groin) and receiver Steve Smith (hamstring) will not play for the Giants. Receiver Terry Glenn (knee) will not play for the Cowboys.

Football
New York Giants
Shockey Jeremy
National Football League


In Rory Staunton’s Fight for His Life, Signs That Went Unheeded

Abstract: For a moment, an emergency room doctor stepped away from the scrum of people working on Rory Staunton, 12, and spoke to his parents. “Your son is seriously ill,” the doctor said. “How seriously?” Rory’s mother, Orlaith Staunton , asked. The doctor paused. “Gravely ill,” he said. How could that be? Two days earlier, diving for a basketball at his school gym, Rory had cut his arm. He arrived at his pediatrician’s office the next day, Thursday, March 29, vomiting , feverish and with pain in his leg. He was sent to the emergency room at NYU Langone Medical Center. The doctors agreed: He was suffering from an upset stomach and dehydration . He was given fluids, told to take Tylenol, and sent home. Partially camouflaged by ordinary childhood woes, Rory’s condition was, in fact, already dire. Bacteria had gotten into his blood, probably through the cut on his arm. He was sliding into a septic crisis, an avalanche of immune responses to infection from which he would not escape. On April 1, three nights after he was sent home from the emergency room, he died in the intensive care unit. The cause was severe septic shock brought on by the infection, hospital records say. Because sepsis , a leading cause of death in hospitals, can at first look like less serious ailments, a campaign to aggressively identify it for early treatment has been undertaken by a consortium of 55 hospitals in the New York region, including NYU Langone. Yet nowhere along Rory’s journey, from boy with a bellyache on Thursday to gravely ill boy on Friday night, did anyone act on strong indications that he might be fighting for his life. Critical information gathered by his family doctor and during his first visit to NYU Langone was not used, was not at hand or was not viewed as important when decisions were made about his care, records show. Moments after an emergency room doctor ordered Rory’s discharge believing fluids had made him better, his vital signs, recorded while still at the hospital, suggested that he could be seriously ill. Even more pointed signals emerged three hours later, when the Stauntons were at home: the hospital’s laboratory reported that Rory was producing vast quantities of cells that combat bacterial infection, a warning that sepsis could be on the horizon. The Stauntons knew nothing of his weak vital signs or abnormal lab results. “Nobody said anything that night,” Ms. Staunton said. “None of you followed up the next day on that kid, and he’s at home, dying on the couch?” NYU Langone declined to discuss any aspects of Rory’s care or hospital procedures. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the family at this difficult time,” said Lisa Greiner, a hospital spokeswoman. The Stauntons shared Rory’s medical records with a reporter for The New York Times who had met the boy last summer in a social setting. A full airing of the case, along with a commitment to reforms, his parents said, could save lives. They have hired a lawyer, Thomas A. Moore, but have not decided how they will proceed.  Rory Staunton, 5 feet 9 inches tall and 169 pounds, was big for his age and a student of the world. “The most profound 12-year-old I had ever met,” his debate coach, Kevin Burgoyne, said. For his birthday, his parents gave him flying lessons after Rory, who spent hours on a flight simulator, tracked down an aviation school that accepted students at 12. He devoured the memoir of Chesley B. Sullenberger III , the pilot who safely brought down an airliner on the Hudson River. “I told him, ‘Sully did some fast math landing that plane,’ and for a short while, he was paying attention to math,” said Ciaran Staunton, Rory’s father. “Then he came back with, ‘Yeah, but by the time I’m a pilot they’ll have a faster way of doing it.’ ” Rory and his sister, Kathleen, 10, grew up in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens , which their parents, Irish immigrants, regarded as a global village of sublime pleasures: shared courtyards, a rich brew of cultures and merry mobs of children rolling from house to house. Ms. Staunton, the former director of an international student exchange, said neighborhood kids formed their own country, Kidadelphia, designed a flag, and adapted the United States motto for their slogan: “In God and Fun We Trust.” Rory was president. When he was 8, he raided his piggy bank to treat his parents to a Chinese dinner for their wedding anniversary. At the private Garden School in Jackson Heights, he was elected to the student council in seventh grade and led a campaign, Spread the Word to End the Word, to curtail the casual, derogatory use of the term “retarded.” Last summer, his uncle, a friend of mine, brought Rory, Kathleen and their mother to stay in my family’s vacation home for two nights. Rory would go from barreling down a water slide backward to sizing up President Obama ’s prospects for re-election. Fascinated by North Korea , he tried to fathom how a country so afflicted by famine could afford a large army. (His parents recently found a note in his computer to the Swedish ambassador to North Korea.) At home, said Mr. Staunton, a civic activist and bar owner, they would have nightly shouting matches over homework Rory had not done or dirty clothes he had not picked up, in between scoping out corners of global history. During gym class on Wednesday, March 28, he dived for a ball and opened a cut on his arm. That night, Ms. Staunton said, Rory mentioned it: “How he presented it to me was, ‘I fell in the gym. Mr. D, the athletic director, put the Band-Aids on. And, I got the ball.’ ” Then he finished his homework and went to bed.  The bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes is part of the human ecosystem, normally dwelling in the throat or on the skin, areas where the body is well defended. Also known as Group A streptococcus, the strain typically causes strep throat or impetigo . But if it is able to penetrate soft tissue or blood, “it moves very quickly,” said Dr. Michael B. Edmond, the chairman of the division of infectious diseases at Virginia Commonwealth University . “The mortality rate is high. The clinical findings early in the infection can be relatively subtle.” The challenge for physicians is recognizing an invasive infection, whether from Group A strep or other pathogens, before the cascading damage of sepsis has picked up too much speed. The consortium of New York hospitals has a goal of starting antibiotics within an hour of spotting sepsis in the emergency room, according to officials with the Greater New York Hospital Association’s Stop Sepsis program. For every hour’s delay in giving antibiotics after very low blood pressure had set in, a study found, the survival rate decreased by 7.6 percent.  Shortly after midnight on March 29, Ms. Staunton heard Rory retching in the bathroom. “There wasn’t a huge amount of vomit, but he kept saying, ‘My leg, my leg, Mom,’ ” she recalled. Back in bed, he moaned. His mother rubbed his thigh. In the morning, he was weak, his leg still hurt, and his temperature was 104 degrees, his highest ever. The parents began calling Dr. Susan Levitzky , who had been the family pediatrician for about five years. She saw Rory that evening. “He was leaning on me as we were walking up to the office, because he could hardly stand from the weakness or pain in his leg,” Ms Staunton said. In the waiting room, Rory vomited. When the doctor swabbed his throat, he vomited on her. The swab test, a rapid but not definitive detector of strep, was negative. “We showed her the cut on his elbow, and I saw her follow up his arm from the cut,” Ms. Staunton said. “She said, ‘The cut’s not an issue.’ She focused on his stomach. We said, ‘Although you see him throwing up, that’s not what he’s really complaining about.’ Rory and I both said to her that it’s the pain in his leg that’s really bothering him.” The doctor told them that the leg pain might be from falling in the gym. “Rory said, ‘It wasn’t a fall, it was a skid,’ ” Ms. Staunton recalled. The parents also remarked that Rory’s skin became blotchy when they pressed a finger on it. Those concerns were well-founded, said Dr. Edmond, the infectious disease specialist, who was not involved in Rory’s care: The mottling , which Dr. Levitzky made note of, could mean that vessels in his skin were constricting from low blood pressure; the leg pain could mean an invasive infection. Rory’s temperature was 102 and his pulse was 140; he was taking 36 breaths a minute. These, too, were “worrisome” observations, Dr. Edmond said. Nevertheless, Ms. Staunton said, she did not recall being told that any of his vital signs were off: “She said, ‘Make your way over to NYU, and get him rehydrated. He’s vomiting now. He’s going to feel better, and tomorrow, he’ll have diarrhea .’ ” In a brief phone conversation, Dr. Levitzky said she could not discuss the case. “I sent him to a major medical center,” she said.  Rory arrived at NYU Langone, on First Avenue near 34th Street, at 7:14 that evening and was discharged about two hours later. Hospital records do not reflect any communication with Dr. Levitzky or her findings about the mottled skin. Like Dr. Levitzky, the NYU physicians believed that Rory’s discomfort was caused by a sick stomach and dehydration. His chart states that “labs, IVF, Zofran” were ordered. Zofran is an antinausea drug; two bags of intravenous fluids, or IVF, were administered; three vials of blood were drawn and sent to the hospital laboratory. “They did the various checks, up, down, back and forth,” Mr. Staunton said. A screening tool in the Stop Sepsis program, used when a patient first arrives in the emergency room, calls special attention to a person with three symptoms of a possible eight. At the hospital, Rory showed two: he was breathing 20 times per minute and his pulse was 143. Two hours later, though, he had three: his temperature had risen to 102, his pulse was 131 and his respiration rate was 22. But by the time those vital signs were recorded, at 9:26 p.m., they had no bearing on his treatment. In fact, the doctor had already decided that Rory was going home. Rory’s “ExitCare” instructions, signed by his father, were printed 12 minutes before those readings. To the pediatrician who examined and discharged Rory, it seemed that the fluids had done the trick. “Pt improved,” the doctor, Camille Scribner , wrote, prescribing “home supportive care.” There is no sign in the records that Dr. Scribner, described by a senior colleague as “hyper-conscientious,” considered alternative explanations. “They stated that it was a common flu that was going around,” Mr. Staunton said. “It would start off as high temperature and throwing up, and would end up as diarrhea.” Dr. Scribner could not be reached for comment through the hospital. As the Stauntons walked Rory onto First Avenue, the air temperature was in the mid-40s. “He was freezing,” Ms. Staunton said. “He took my coat leaving the hospital. It has a little frilly thing around the collar.” “Not a thing that a boy of 12 would put on,” Mr. Staunton said.  About three hours later, Rory’s lab results were printed. He was producing neutrophils and bands, white blood cells, at rates that were “very abnormal and would suggest a serious bacterial infection,” Dr. Edmond said. The Stauntons said they heard nothing about it. In bed, Rory “was groaning in his sleep,” Ms. Staunton said. “I felt the heat of the fever .” At 10 a.m. on Friday, the Stauntons began calling their pediatrician, Dr. Levitzky. “She told us to do a combination of Tylenol and Motrin,” Ms. Staunton said. Asked last month about the lab findings, Dr. Levitzky, who is associated with NYU Langone, said, “I never knew that testing was done.” Rory did have the predicted bout of diarrhea on Friday, which momentarily elated his family. Still, he could barely get to the bathroom. The doctor suggested fluids and crackers. “‘I told her, ‘I’m not sure you’re getting the picture, Dr. Levitzky,’ ” Mr. Staunton said. “‘I can’t even get him to sit up. I don’t know how you expect me to get food into him.’ ” Later, a slight touch would make him scream. “Around his nose was gone blue,” Mr. Staunton said. “Down his body side was gone blue.” At that point, Dr. Levitzky told them to return to the emergency room. They supported him as he walked to the car. “All he said was, ‘Can I please have a wheelchair when I get there?’ ” Ms. Staunton recalled. In the intensive care unit, his parents tried to mask their worry, Mr. Staunton chatting lightly. But Ms. Staunton noticed her son’s eyes following her. “He said, ‘Mom, my toes are really, really cold,’ ” she said. After extending an arm for blood to be drawn, “he thanked them when they were finished,” Ms. Staunton said. He had to be put on a ventilator. Just before he was sedated, Ms. Staunton said, “They told him, ‘We need to figure some stuff out. There are some marks on your body, and you need a little bit of help breathing, so we’re just going to intubate you and it’ll be fine.’ ” First, though, they checked his mental status. “Do you know what date it is?” “I know it’s March,” Rory answered. “Who’s the president of the United States?” He answered: “ Barack Obama .” His mother smiled. “Ah,” she said, “but Rory, who is going to be the next one?” “Barack Obama,” he said. As the next two days passed, doctors tried anything that might halt the shutdown of Rory’s organs. “I can’t say enough about the I.C.U.,” Ms. Staunton said. Relatives and a priest gathered bedside, talking of Irish football and tomfoolery and politics. Perhaps, one doctor whispered in a fleeting, hopeful aside, Rory might get away with losing his toes and nose. His skin blackened. He passed no urine. His blood would not clot. His heart had to be restarted twice. Three specialists who chronicled Rory’s decline on his intensive care chart each noted that on Thursday night, when he was sent home from the emergency room, he had a fever and significant signs of infection in his blood. On Sunday night, Dr. Mayer Sagy, who had not seen Rory on his first visit to the hospital but spent the weekend struggling to keep him alive, told the Stauntons that the team had been unable to resuscitate him a third time. “I said to him, ‘I brought him here to you the other night and you sent him home,’ ” Ms. Staunton said. “He said, ‘You have every right to be angry.’ ” More than anything, the Stauntons said, NYU Langone owes an honest accounting of what happened. Racked with loss, they and others remembered Rory as an unflinching champion of schoolyard underdogs. “Above all,” Ms. Staunton said, “we know that Rory would want no other child to go through what he went through.”

New York University Langone Medical Center


Cuba to Close Private Venues for Movies and Video Games

Abstract: HAVANA — The Cuban authorities are clamping down on the privately run cinemas and video game parlors that have mushroomed on the island recently, saying Saturday that the businesses are unauthorized and must be shuttered immediately. The movie and video businesses have been operating in a legal gray area, often under licenses for independent restaurants, offering food and refreshments even though the entertainment is the main draw. They are not mentioned on a list of nearly 200 types of independent enterprise authorized under limited economic changes begun by President Raúl Castro, but until now they were not explicitly prohibited, either. An announcement published on Saturday in Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, said the show was over. “Cinematic exhibition (including 3D rooms) and computer games will cease immediately in whatever kind of private business activity,” said the announcement by the executive committee of the Council of Ministers, Cuba’s highest-ranking government body. Many private cinema operators spent thousands of dollars to start their businesses, which range from modest to flashy and offer the latest Hollywood blockbusters and fast-paced video games. “Economically, this really hurts us,” said Orlando Suárez, who owns the San Rafael 3D cinema in central Havana, which he described as “a relief” for his family. “We don’t understand why they didn’t give us a window of time instead of taking this stance of ‘close down now.’ ” Private theaters have become increasingly popular as an alternative to poorly maintained state-run cinemas, which tend to show more staid, highbrow fare. Moviegoers were also dismayed by the news. “It’s a lack of respect,” said Lionny González, 15, a high school student. “Now, the only thing left for us is to go to a disco. There’s nothing else.” Rafael González, 53, a father of five, agreed. “Young people need these salons,” he said. “They spend time there instead of being on the streets.” The Communist Party youth newspaper, Juventud Rebelde, recently published an article quoting Fernando Rojas, vice minister of culture, as saying the video parlors promote “frivolity, mediocrity, pseudoculture and banality,” raising fears of a crackdown.

Cuba
Movies
Computer and Video Games
Economy
Theaters


F.D.A. Begins Inquiry After Death and Illnesses From Saline Bags Meant for Training

Abstract: WASHINGTON — How could hundreds of bags of intravenous saline solution meant for training health care workers have been given to real patients? That is the question health authorities were scrambling to answer this week after Wallcur, a San Diego-based company, recalled different-size bags of its saline solution and distilled water on Jan. 7. As of Thursday, 17 patients had fallen ill and one person — a hospice patient — had died after being given the solution, health officials said, though they could not say conclusively whether the saline solution was the cause. Patients in seven states reported symptoms, including chills, fever, tremors and headaches. The company said it began shipping the saline, in bags labeled “for clinical simulation,” on May 22, 2014. It said the products were not intended for people or animals because they were not sterile. The Food and Drug Administration, which is investigating the case , said the bags had been shipped to medical clinics, surgical centers and urgent care facilities, some of which administered them to patients. Dr. Alexander J. Kallen, a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said its investigators had traced the saline in question to a distributor, a company that officials have not yet named. About 50 clinics received the products, he said. He said it was still unclear whether the bags, which he estimated to be in the hundreds, were shipped in error, or whether clinic workers ordered them without understanding that they were for training. “It seems like it’s not just one single mistake,” Dr. Kallen said. “There could have been instances where ordering was done by office staff who didn’t know the difference, as well as instances where the right product was ordered but they received the wrong stuff.” Paul Delmore, a lawyer for Wallcur, said the company makes only training products and sells to clients such as nursing schools, not to hospitals or clinics. But it also sells through separate distribution companies. Mr. Delmore said Wallcur does not know who buys from those distributors. He said all of the symptoms were linked to shipments ordered through a distributor, not directly from Wallcur. “There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the product,” he said. “It was apparently sent to a facility it should not have been sent to.” The medical industry uses products made to look like real IV bags and syringes, for example, to train health workers. They are used in demonstrations or on dummies, and are sometimes cheaper than the real thing.

FDA
Wallcur
Recalls and Bans
HazMat
Medicine and Health


Debate Close Wasn’t a Farewell, Clinton Says

Abstract: COLUMBUS, Ohio — With the mood of her campaign shadowed by the death of a police officer escorting her motorcade Friday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed to carry on despite remarks in a debate Thursday night that some people took as a valedictory to her long effort to win the Democratic presidential nomination. In television interviews and at a morning rally in Dallas, Mrs. Clinton returned to the theme of her closing remarks at the debate with Senator Barack Obama, when she said that “whatever happens” in the race, she and Mr. Obama would prosper. “I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that’s what this election should be about,” she said. Aides insisted the remark was not an admission that she believed she would lose but was rather an effort to refocus the campaign from the drama of the two compelling and historic candidates battling for the nomination to the struggles of ordinary voters. They also said the remark had been heartfelt and spontaneous, and not a rehearsed effort to project the sense of vulnerability and humanity that helped Mrs. Clinton win in New Hampshire when her campaign was at a low point after her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. “You know, I made it very clear that this election is about all of you,” Mrs. Clinton, of New York, said at a rally on a chilly street corner in Dallas. “It’s about your futures, your families, your jobs.” Her opponent, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, spent Friday campaigning in South and Central Texas, concentrating on areas that are home to many Hispanics, who are seen as potentially decisive in the Texas primary on March 4. His first appearance was at the University of Texas-Pan American, his first in the strongly Democratic Rio Grande Valley, where Mrs. Clinton has a long history of support. He later began an afternoon rally before thousands at the American Bank Center Arena in Corpus Christi, on the Gulf Coast, by explaining the rules of the vote and the caucus to follow. “It’s called the Texas two-step,” he said to cheers. “I expect everyone here to be dancing over the next week and a half.” He tried out a Spanish phrase or two in the morning appearance at the University of Texas-Pan American — “Sí se puede!” (“Yes, it can be done!”) — in a passable accent. And he was called to the stage and introduced as “Barack-A Obam-A!” A measure, perhaps, of shifting political sands could be seen there; State Representative Aaron Peña of Edinburg, a prominent Clinton supporter, could be seen bobbing on the platform behind Mr. Obama. A local newspaper, The Rio Grande Guardian, reached Mr. Peña later, and his explanation of his presence could not be comforting to Mrs. Clinton. “I will maintain my commitment,” Mr. Peña said. “But it appears to be increasingly evident who is going to win.” Mrs. Clinton, in an interview on CBS’s “Early Show,” was asked directly if her closing debate remarks meant she thought she was going to lose. Mr. Obama has won 11 straight contests since Feb. 5, all by double-digit margins. “No, of course not,” she replied. “It is the recognition that both of us are on the brink of historic change.” She was also asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to respond to the statement by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, that she had to win in Ohio and Texas for her White House hopes to remain alive. She said she never made predictions about political contests. But she added that the two states were “critical” in a race this close. “I’ve won some, he’s won some, each of us has to get to 2,025 — so of course every single race is important,” she said. “And I feel good about my campaigns in both Texas and Ohio.” Reinforcing her message that she would continue to fight for the nomination, Mrs. Clinton told Texas Monthly on Friday morning that she planned to push for the delegates from Florida and Michigan to be seated at the Democratic National Convention, over the objections of Mr. Obama. The Democratic National Committee has excluded those states’ delegates because the states violated party rules in moving up their primaries. Asked if it was her intention to press the issue, Mrs. Clinton said: “Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It’s in large measure because both the voters and elected officials in Michigan and Florida feel so strongly about this” “We do not want to be disenfranchising Michigan and Florida,” she said. “We have to try to carry both those states.” Mrs. Clinton won in Florida and in Michigan, where hers was the only name on the ballot. Mrs. Clinton’s appearance in Dallas was overshadowed by the death of Cpl. Victor Lozada-Tirado, a 20-year veteran of the Police Department, who was killed in an accident while escorting her motorcade to a rally. The officer, on motorcycle, was at the head of the line of vehicles. A Dallas television station, WFAA, reported that the motorcycle may have struck a concrete abutment. In the wake of the accident, Mrs. Clinton canceled a rally in Fort Worth, speaking only briefly to the assembling crowd. Mrs. Clinton stopped by the Dallas hospital where the officer had been taken to meet with his wife. She referred to the family later at her appearance in Columbus, saying: “The police officer leaves behind four children, two in college, one in high school and a 9-year-old. It was really a reminder of the work that our law enforcement officers do every single day.”

Presidential Election of 2008
Clinton Hillary Rodham


‘High-Tech House Arrest’ Fails to Deter WikiLeaks Founder

Abstract: BUNGAY, England —When Julian Assange wakes these days, he looks out from a three-story Georgian mansion house overlooking a man-made lake paddled by ducks. Under a blanket of snow, the 650-acre Ellingham Hall estate, a mile back from the closest public road, is as tranquil a spot as can be found in eastern England. But Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who is fighting extradition to Sweden on accusations of sexual misconduct with two women there, is accompanied on this bucolic idyll with an electronic tag on his ankle and a mandatory daily 20-minute drive to the part-time police station in the neighboring town of Beccles. There he signs a register and chats “pleasantly” with the officers, according to their account, before returning to his curfew at the hall. It is what Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has laconically referred to as “my high-tech house arrest” in interviews since arriving last week from the High Court in London, where he was granted bail of $370,000, much of it provided by wealthy celebrities and friends, including Vaughan Smith, the former Guards officer who owns the Ellingham Hall estate on the Suffolk County border, about 100 miles northeast of London. Mr. Assange is due back in court in London Jan. 11 to continue his extradition fight. But for now, he has gone on a media offensive, continuing to charge that the sex allegations are part of a smear campaign led by the United States, which is separately weighing criminal prosecution for Wikileaks’ publication of nearly 750,000 classified Pentagon and State Department documents. The Swedish extradition cites allegations of “rape, sexual molestation and forced coercion” against Mr. Assange. But in an interview with The Times of London published Tuesday, he compared himself to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying that when he was jailed at Wandsworth Prison in London, a black guard handed him a card saying, “I only have two heroes in the world, Dr. King and you.” Mr. Assange added, “That is representative of 50 percent of people.” In the interview, he also compared the obloquy directed at WikiLeaks by the Obama administration and other critics with the “persecution” endured by American Jews in the 1950s. He added, “I’m not the Jewish people,” but suggested that the common thread was that supporters of WikiLeaks and American Jews were “people who believe in freedom of speech and accountability.” Where the private road leading to Ellingham Hall begins, Wikileaks supporters who have gathered to support Mr. Assange have taped a hand-lettered placard to an electricity junction box saying “Free Bradley Manning” next to one posted by Mr. Smith, the estate’s owner, advertising “fresh eggs.” But Mr. Assange has used his most recent interviews to deny prior contact with Mr. Manning, the Army private jailed on charges that he leaked thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks. “I never heard of the name Bradley Manning before it appeared in the media,” he said in an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday. While there have been a number of prosecutions of government employees under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information, there has never been a successful prosecution of a journalist for receiving and publishing such information. But prosecutors have been studying online chats in which Private Manning reportedly talked about contacts with Mr. Assange to see if they suggest that the WikiLeaks leader solicited or encouraged the leaks. Mr. Assange noted that it was standard journalistic practice to call government officials and ask for information. Criminalizing such conduct would threaten the freedom of the press, he said. “If they want to push the line that when a newspaperman talks to someone in the government about looking for things relating to potential abuses, that that is a conspiracy to commit espionage, that is going to take out all the good government journalism that takes place in the United States,” Mr. Assange said. In the interview with The Times of London, Mr. Assange also spoke of his “feeling of betrayal” toward the two women in Sweden, who have said he forced sex on them without using a condom, and in one case while the woman, according to her account, was asleep. Over the weekend, The Guardian and The New York Times obtained copies of a 68-page police document detailing the accusations against Mr. Assange, leaks he said were “clearly designed to undermine” his bail arrangements. “Somebody in authority clearly intended to keep Julian in prison,” he said of himself. Mr. Assange said the accusations had put at risk what WikiLeaks had achieved. “We have changed governance, we have certainly changed many political figures within governments, we have caused new law reform efforts, we have caused police investigations into the abuses we expose, U.N. investigations, investigations here in the U.K., especially in relation to our revelation of the circumstances of the deaths of 109,000 people in Iraq,” he said. He added, “We are also changing the perception of the West.” Attempts by The New York Times to interview Mr. Assange in recent days were unsuccessful. For months, he has regularly changed cellphones, and had members of his close-knit entourage answer them for him. Recently, even those have been switched off, and Ellingham Hall padlocked its gates against intruders. Its telephones go unanswered, and its Web site, advertising the estate as a venue for weddings and the shooting parties where the public is charged $40 for every pheasant bagged, has gone offline. Mr. Assange has given accounts of the handling of his case in Sweden that conflict sharply with those given by Swedish officials. Immediately after an initial warrant was issued for his arrest in August, he said he had “no idea” who his accusers were; he has since acknowledged that he slept with both of the women over a four-day period before the warrant was issued. He has said he waited weeks to be interviewed by the police in Sweden; they have said that it was Mr. Assange who delayed meeting with them. He said in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday that he saw no reason to return to Sweden to answer the allegations. Asked why he would not comply with the legal processes of a country with a respected system of jurisprudence, he described Sweden as “a bit more of a banana republic” than its reputation suggested, and said his WikiLeaks work was too important to answer to “random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat.” “They can come here, or we can have a video linkup, or they can accept a statement of mine,” he said. In the BBC interview, Mr. Assange acknowledged obliquely that he had high ambitions for himself, saying, “Everybody would like to be a messianic figure without dying.” In the recent interviews, he seemed torn about the impact of the Swedish allegations. Speaking to the BBC, he said he thought they could be “quite helpful to our organization” because “it will expose a tremendous abuse of power.” But he also rued the impact on his own reputation, saying that his name was now linked widely on the Internet with the rape allegation. Using Google, he said, and “searching for my name and the word ‘rape,’ there are some 30 million Web pages. So this has been a very successful smear.”

Classified Information and State Secrets


Silverstein Blames Port Authority for Trade Center Delays

Abstract: It appears that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ’s attempt to usher in an era of reconciliation and compromise at ground zero is over. The developer Larry A. Silverstein , who is to build three towers at the World Trade Center site, opened up a new front Monday in his dispute with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey , saying the authority has violated the development agreement at ground zero and is hopelessly behind schedule. Mr. Silverstein said the authority’s delays and failures over the past seven years prevented him from obtaining financing for the three office towers at the trade center site “in a much more positive economic climate” than exists today. Mr. Silverstein’s latest move seems designed to pressure the authority to acquiesce to his demand that it guarantee as much as $3.2 billion in financing of two of the three office towers he is to build at the site. It also highlights the failure of Mayor Bloomberg’s highly publicized effort to resolve the impasse between the two sides. After more than two months of high-level meetings among Mr. Silverstein and city, state and Port Authority officials, Mr. Bloomberg released a statement Monday afternoon acknowledging that the two sides were farther apart than ever, although he blamed it on the Port Authority’s intransigence. “Unfortunately, not everyone worked as hard as necessary to find a solution,” Mayor Bloomberg said in the statement. “We are one step closer to stalemate today, but a solution does exist — and we will not stop working until we get there.” But Christopher O. Ward, executive director of the Port Authority, laid the blame on Mr. Silverstein for “walking away from the negotiating table simply because the public has been unwilling to sacrifice critical transportation projects to subsidize private speculative office space.” Mayor Bloomberg held a meeting at Gracie Mansion in May in an attempt to prevent a logjam after the authority and Mr. Silverstein stopped talking. Recriminations, rather than resolution, followed when various proposals failed to satisfy one side or another. In a letter to the Port Authority Monday, Mr. Silverstein formally started an arbitration process, claiming that the authority had violated a 2006 agreement governing development at the 16-acre site. Mr. Silverstein is demanding that within the next two weeks, the authority detail how it will fix the problems at ground zero, where, he contends, the authority is years behind in completing the transit hub, a vehicle screening center for buses and trucks, and the underpinning of the subway line that bisects the site. The developer says that he has paid more than $800 million in rent and has started building his first tower, but no longer knows when or if related elements of the project will be completed. If the two sides fail to come to terms, the matter would then go to a panel of three arbitrators and Mr. Silverstein would seek damages. The authority is already paying Mr. Silverstein $300,000 a day in penalties — more than $100 million since July 2008 — for failing to complete the predevelopment work on two of Mr. Silverstein’s three sites. Executives at the authority say they expect to finish by this fall. “We are certain that Silverstein Properties understands that an arbitration decision under the development agreement will not resolve when there will be a market for two private office towers on the site, and how this speculative private office space should be financed,” Mr. Ward said. The authority has insisted that it would have to slash its capital budget and postpone or eliminate projects in New York and New Jersey if it were to guarantee the financing. Mr. Silverstein was to build the towers with a combination of insurance proceeds, tax-free bonds and private equity and financing. But lenders are reluctant to finance real estate projects today, and few, if any, tenants are willing to lease expensive new towers when rents are falling sharply at existing buildings. Some real estate executives, civic groups and Port Authority officials say that the towers should be built over time, while Mr. Silverstein and Mayor Bloomberg want it done now. After years of delay, Mr. Ward emphasized that work continues at the site, where the authority is building the Sept. 11 memorial, the transit hub and its own office tower. At the same time, Mr. Silverstein is erecting the first of his three towers along Church Street. But many officials fear that the momentum at the trade center site will collapse if the dispute lingers.


Hans Ephraimson-Abt, Air-Crash Victims’ Crusader, Dies at 91

Abstract: Hans Ephraimson-Abt, who became an internationally known advocate for families of air-crash victims after the death of his daughter on Korean Air Lines Flight 007, shot down by Soviet fighter planes in 1983, died on Oct. 18 in Short Hills, N.J. He was 91. The cause was heart failure, his son, Hans, said. A commercial 747 bound from New York to Seoul, South Korea, KAL 007 was shot down near Sakhalin Island, off the coast of Siberia, on Sept. 1, 1983, after straying accidentally into Soviet air space. All 269 people aboard were killed. The Soviet Union long maintained that the flight was a spy plane sent by the United States, and the attack endures in public memory as one of the last, bitterest engagements of the cold war. Afterward, Mr. Ephraimson-Abt was in the vanguard of establishing a unified movement to aid air-crash victims’ families. In work that occupied him to the end of his life, he traveled the world, testifying, lobbying and meeting with government officials, airline executives and bereaved families. “Hans fought for people who didn’t have a voice and didn’t know that they needed a voice,” Deborah A. P. Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said in a telephone interview. “He turned his own tragedy into advocating for all air travelers, to make sure that their families were taken care of and treated with respect after an accident.” Mr. Ephraimson-Abt, who was fluent in a string of European languages, assisted not only the families of KAL 007 passengers, but also those of victims of many later crashes, including Pan Am Flight 103, which was destroyed by a bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he advised relatives of passengers aboard the hijacked planes, in particular the families of passengers from Germany, where he was born and brought up. Mr. Ephraimson-Abt was the longtime chairman of what was known early on as the American Association for Families of KAL 007 Victims; reflecting its expanded purview, the association more recently became the Air Crash Victims Families Group, of which he was the spokesman. In 1983, when KAL 007 families chose to band together after the crash, there were few avenues for obtaining support. Responding to air crashes — from notifying relatives and keeping them abreast of recovery efforts to providing emotional assistance — was then the duty of the airlines, a state of affairs that in the view of Mr. Ephraimson-Abt and his colleagues needed to be remedied. In the 30 years since, as a result of their work, significant advances on behalf of victims’ families have been made. In 1996, Congress passed the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act, which empowered the National Transportation Safety Board to notify the families and the Red Cross to help care for them. The next year, a new international aviation agreement raised the amount for which an air carrier was liable when an international flight crashed. The previous limit, set in 1966, capped carriers’ liability at $75,000 per passenger, except in rare cases where families could prove the airline guilty of willful misconduct. The 1997 agreement, which Mr. Ephraimson-Abt helped broker, raised the cap to $139,000. For families seeking greater damages, the new agreement also relieved them of the burden of proving willful misconduct. Near midnight on Aug. 30, 1983, a 23-year-old Alice Ephraimson-Abt boarded KAL Flight 007 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. A recent graduate of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, where she had majored in East Asian studies, she was headed, via Seoul and then Hong Kong, to Beijing. In China, she planned to teach English and study Mandarin. After a refueling stop in Alaska on Aug. 31, Flight 007 took off for Seoul. By the time it was spotted by the Soviets on Sept. 1, it had deviated hundreds of miles off course. After the plane was shot down, many victims’ families were not notified directly. Mr. Ephraimson-Abt heard about the crash from a hotel manager in Hong Kong, whom he had enlisted to look after his daughter on her arrival there. Mr. Ephraimson-Abt immediately phoned Korean Air Lines. The airline, he said afterward, hung up on him. “To this day,” he said in 1996, testifying before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, “Korean Air Lines has not informed me of the death of my daughter.” On Wednesday, Mr. Ephraimson-Abt’s son said that to his knowledge, the airline had still not communicated with the family. In an e-mail on Friday, a spokeswoman for the airline, now known as Korean Air, wrote, “Unfortunately, people who were at the airline in 1983-84 have retired, and no one in the present administration has any recollection of events then.” Hans Eduard Ephraimson-Abt was born in Berlin on March 7, 1922, to a Jewish family. When World War II broke out, he was studying hotel management in Switzerland; he remained there, in a series of refugee camps, until the end of the war. After moving to the United States in 1950, he was reunited with his parents, who had managed to evade the Nazis. In New York, Mr. Ephraimson-Abt spent several years directing the press department of the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany. He later worked as an international business consultant. After his marriage to Christine Anger ended in divorce in the early 1970s, Mr. Ephraimson-Abt reared Alice and her two younger siblings in Saddle River, N.J. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, many Soviet documents became public for the first time. Among them was the transcript of Flight 007’s cockpit recorder, which had been retrieved by Soviet divers in October 1983. The Soviet Union had long denied the recorder’s existence. In 1992, Mr. Ephraimson-Abt led a delegation of victims’ families to Moscow, where the Russian president, Boris N. Yeltsin, gave them the transcript. The transcript, which captured KAL 007’s last moments, made it clear that the plane did not explode immediately after it was hit by two Soviet air-to-air missiles, as had been generally supposed. Instead, it remained aloft for some minutes before plunging into the sea. “We have been struggling for years to know what happened to our loved ones,” Mr. Ephraimson-Abt told The New York Times after receiving the transcript. “Now we face the agonizing recognition that their death was neither painless nor instant.” In 1997, a federal jury awarded Alice Ephraimson-Abt’s survivors $2.1 million in compensation for her death. Out-of-court settlements by families of other KAL 007 passengers had ranged from $75,000 to $10 million, The Associated Press reported that year. For his work on behalf of crash victims’ families, Mr. Ephraimson-Abt received the Order of Merit from Germany last June. Besides his son, Hans, Mr. Ephraimson-Abt, who lived most recently in Ridgewood, N.J., is survived by a daughter, Viviane Ephraimson-Abt, and three grandchildren. Mr. Ephraimson-Abt was sometimes asked why he chose to become involved in air disasters beyond the one that took his daughter’s life. His response was simple. “No one looked after our families,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2000. “We decided it would be a good idea if we looked after families in other crashes.”

Hans Ephraimson-Abt
Korean Air Lines
Obituary
Soviet Union
Cold War
Alice Ephraimson-Abt
Terrorism
Plane Crashes and Missing Planes


Getting the Most Out of Sleep

Abstract: Q. To get the health benefits of a good night’s sleep, is it just the number of hours that counts? What if sleep is induced by a sleeping pill or is stressful because of a nightmare? A. While duration is important, “the quality and timing of sleep are also critical to a good night’s rest,” said Dr. Ana C. Krieger, medical director of the Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Image Credit Victoria Roberts Optimal sleep duration varies widely, depending on a person’s genetic makeup, underlying health conditions and daytime activities, among other factors, Dr. Krieger said. An individual’s natural sleep rhythm and actual schedule may be poorly aligned, leading to inadequate sleep. Sleep specialists often suggest that a born early riser or night owl adjust schedules accordingly. As for quality, Dr. Krieger said, sleep disorders can fragment sleep in ways that may not be obvious — except that the sufferer may not feel well rested. “Nightmares or other sleep disturbances that interfere with sleep consolidation or the sleep/wake cycle may lead to unrefreshing sleep,” Dr. Krieger said. “Medications may also interfere with sleep.” Because of chemical processes, medication-induced sleep may not be as refreshing as natural sleep, so sleeping pills should be used only under medical supervision. question@nytimes.com


For Rhode Island Star, Resilience Behind a Mask

Abstract: Jarvis Garrett sprinted onto the court for warm-ups before Rhode Island’s final regular-season game Saturday, and almost immediately, a few bewildered Fordham fans began chuckling. On social media, Fordham followers wrote that Bane, the villain from “The Dark Knight Rises,” had entered the building. Garrett, a sophomore guard for Rhode Island, is used to it. During a game against St. Joseph’s on Jan. 30, Garrett butted heads with an opponent in a violent collision that left him with a fracture of his upper jaw and a rearranged smile. Clutching a dislodged tooth as he rode to the hospital, Garrett feared his season might be over. But a week later, he returned to the court looking more like a comic-book character than a fleet-footed guard. Only his eyes were visible; the rest of his face was — and has been for every game for the past month — shrouded underneath a plastic mask that brought to mind the one worn by Anthony Hopkins’s character in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Image The Rhode Island sophomore guard Jarvis Garrett wearing his protective mask during a game against Fordham on Saturday. On Jan. 30, Garrett butted heads with an opponent during a game against St. Joseph’s and fractured his upper jaw. Credit Ryan C. Jones for The New York Times “The reaction when I first saw it and I got it, I just thought it was like the movies, like Hannibal Lecter,” Garrett said. “My teammates and my family all make jokes about it.” One teammate, Garrett told a reporter upon his return to the court, joked that the mask “makes me look like I bite people.” But as strange as it looked, the mask saved Garrett’s season, and maybe the Rams’ season as well. In the month since the injury, Garrett has stabilized Rhode Island’s backcourt, and he has the Rams (17-14) aiming for a dark-horse run through the Atlantic 10 tournament, which opens Wednesday at Barclays Center. Seventh-seeded Rhode Island opens play Thursday against 10th-seeded Massachusetts. Rams Coach Dan Hurley has not restricted Garrett since the injury; he has played 31 minutes or more in each of the Rams’ nine games since he returned. In his first game back from injury on Feb. 6, Garrett scored a career-high 26 points in a 79-62 win over La Salle. “He can’t really talk with it on, and in terms of his peripheral vision, he can’t really see a whole lot of things,” Hurley said. “It’s amazing what that kid has been able to accomplish as a player, leading us through some great wins while being nowhere near himself.” Image Garrett’s mask was made of Surlyn plastic, making it more flexible than those used by other athletes. The device absorbs force near Garrett’s mouth and transfers it to other parts of his face. Credit Ryan C. Jones for The New York Times In a 3-point loss at Fordham on Saturday, Garrett showed a willingness to penetrate and fearlessly initiate contact with defenders. In fact, since he put on the protective mask, Garrett has averaged 13 points and close to 6 assists a game — both higher than his overall season averages. “It gave me a lot more confidence,” Garrett said. “I knew once I get back on the court, I was going to be a lot more aggressive.” Hurley said: “I got a lot of text messages after that La Salle game, a lot of Darth Vaders — obviously the easy one is Hannibal Lecter on steroids. I got all those from my buddies in the business. I got some jokes, but more, ‘How is this guy playing at a level he’s playing at with that catcher’s mask face-guard on?’ ” Mike Nunnery, a certified prosthetist and orthotist in North Kingstown, R.I., near Rhode Island’s campus, constructed the mask, which absorbs and transfers force occurring near the mouth throughout the rest of Garrett’s face. Image Garrett’s water bottle had a straw so he could drink through his mask. Thanks to his quick return, Rhode Island (17-14) is a dark-horse candidate to win the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament, which opens Wednesday at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Credit Ryan C. Jones for The New York Times “With the mask, I feel like I don’t have to play as protected as I would without the mask,” Garrett said. “If I get hit in the face, it goes through the mask into like my cheeks. It helps me just play my normal game.” Nunnery and his staff made the mask in about 36 hours, using a three-dimensional scanner to record the contours of Garrett’s head to help create a mold. Using the mold and a number of fittings, Nunnery and his staff created the mask mostly by using Surlyn plastic, a substance more flexible than the rigid material normally used for athletic masks. There was only one problem: The attached mouth guard on the first version had space around the nose and lips, causing game officials to worry that an opponent’s fingers might get caught in those gaps. After the La Salle game, Nunnery created a second model that Garrett now wears. “I think there’s a strange psychological factor that goes with these athletes when they wear the mask,” Nunnery said, “whether it psyches the other team out or there’s extra adrenaline because of the extra protection.” Image Garrett, left, with his teammate Four McGlynn after the Fordham game. Even though Rhode Island lost, 64-61, Rams Coach Dan Hurley said of Garrett, “It’s amazing what that kid has been able to accomplish as a player, leading us through some great wins while being nowhere near himself.” Credit Ryan C. Jones for The New York Times Protective masks have become a common accessory throughout sports in recent years. The former Detroit Pistons guard Richard Hamilton became synonymous with the mask that he wore after breaking his nose for a third time during the 2003-4 season. Even after his nose healed, Hamilton retained the mask for much of the remainder of his career. LeBron James , Kobe Bryant and dozens of other basketball players have worn masks after injuries, as have about a dozen members of the English soccer team Chelsea — including four this season alone. But a majority of masks worn during athletic competition do not cover the entire face — Hamilton’s was cut off underneath his nose, similar to the well-known mask from “The Phantom of the Opera.” The curiosity surrounding Garrett’s mask extends beyond the basketball court. Garrett said teammates, friends and classmates regularly asked if they could try it on. During the Rams’ Feb. 12 home game against Dayton, to Garrett’s delight, Rhode Island’s student section wore hockey masks in his honor. Still, Garrett said he hoped his true mark on this season would be left this week. “I’m not the type of person that looks at the attention, feeds off the attention,” he said, adding: “I feel like, right now, we have a lot of confidence going into the A-10 tournament. We feel like we can make a run, and we’re just going to keep fighting until it’s over.”

College basketball
Jarvis Garrett
Sports injury
University of Rhode Island


Ukraine President Dismisses Billionaire Ally From Governor’s Role

Abstract: MOSCOW — In the latest move in a dispute that has threatened to fracture Ukraine’s government, President Petro O. Poroshenko early Wednesday dismissed the billionaire governor of Dnipropetrovsk, an important industrial region that has been a bulwark against the advances of pro-Russian separatists. The ousted governor, Igor V. Kolomoisky, had been one of the government’s staunchest allies, and his privately financed militias had helped stop pro-Russian fighters from moving beyond the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where they have been waging war for nearly a year. But recently, Mr. Kolomoisky had clashed with the government over the future of two state-owned energy companies in which Mr. Kolomoisky owned a minority stake. Masked, armed men, apparently loyal to Mr. Kolomoisky, occupied the offices of one company, Ukrnafta, in Kiev, the capital, late last week. The seizure of the building unsettled Kiev, which has remained peaceful since February 2014, when about 100 people were killed during mass protests that ultimately ousted the president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. Critics of Mr. Kolomoisky, including some prominent Ukrainian lawmakers, accused him of blocking reforms and had called for his dismissal. Image President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine, left, met with Igor V. Kolomoisky, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk, in Kiev on Wednesday, before dismissing him from his post. Credit Mikhail Palinchak/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service His removal was announced in a middle-of-the-night statement by Mr. Poroshenko’s office, apparently after a meeting between the men. The statement said that Mr. Poroshenko had received the governor’s resignation and had signed a decree removing him from the governor’s post. “We have to ensure peace, stability and tranquillity,” Mr. Poroshenko said in the statement. “Dnipropetrovsk region should remain a bastion of Ukraine in the east, to protect peace.” The statement said that Valentyn Reznichenko, who last month was named governor of the neighboring region of Zaporizhia, would be the acting governor in Dnipropetrovsk. Mr. Reznichenko had ran a government agency overseeing Ukraine’s radio frequencies and has business ties to the president’s chief of staff. Dnipropetrovsk, which also borders Donetsk, is widely viewed as the country’s most important industrial region. Just days ago, in an interview on the 1+1 television channel, which he owns, Mr. Kolomoisky suggested that a compromise had been reached with Mr. Poroshenko. But on Monday, the director of the Ukrainian state security service said that Mr. Poroshenko had ordered the arrest of any armed men remaining in Ukrnafta’s offices. The breach between Mr. Poroshenko and Mr. Kolomoisky could have far-reaching ramifications. On Tuesday, there were reports that private militia forces had disappeared from the streets of Odessa, in southeastern Ukraine, where they had been helping to maintain order. Russia’s Endgame in Ukraine How Russia aims to achieve its goal of keeping Ukraine isolated from the West. Critics of the militias have long warned that they could easily turn against the government in Kiev. And Mr. Poroshenko had said that he would take steps to incorporate private militias like those controlled by Mr. Kolomoisky into Ukraine’s military. The governor in Odessa is Ihor Palytsia, an ally of Mr. Kolomoisky, who had served as an executive of Ukrnafta. In a separate statement, the presidential administration announced that Mr. Poroshenko had signed into law a bill adopted last week by Parliament that set off the dispute with Mr. Kolomoisky. The law effectively reduced the power of Mr. Kolomoisky’s minority stake in the state-controlled energy companies, depriving him of the ability to block management changes. Supporters of the law said that it was needed to prevent murky arrangements between the government and the country’s richest business leaders that have hobbled the country’s economy for years. In a statement, Mr. Poroshenko’s office said the bill signed by the president “brings the legislation of Ukraine to international standards.”

Ukraine
Petro Poroshenko
Ukrnafta
Companies
Igor V. Kolomoisky


Storm Kills 7 Overnight in Alabama

Abstract: A punishing storm system that began Thursday evening continued to pummel parts of the Deep South into the early hours of Saturday morning. Tornadoes and vicious winds left 17 people dead across four states, officials said. The storm killed seven people in Alabama overnight Friday, according to the governor’s office. All were in their homes at the time. The Alabama Emergency Management Agency said that more than a dozen counties throughout the state were reporting damage. In southwest Alabama, a mother and her two adolescent children were killed when their double-wide mobile home was lifted off its foundation and thrown about 100 yards, landing upside down. The structure was crushed. “Nothing on the mobile home was over knee high,” said Terry Beasley, the chief deputy sheriff of Washington County. “It was just flattened.” Three people died in Autauga County, in the central part of the state. “It looks like you took a rag and twisted it — that’s what the trees look like,” said Joe Sedinger, the chief deputy sheriff of Autauga County. “The wind got it and twisted it around and around.” In Mississippi, officials at the Department of Emergency Management confirmed one death in Greene County because of the storm, though details were not immediately available. Officials at the National Weather Service said the storm system began Thursday evening and hit Oklahoma and Arkansas, then moved to Alabama and Mississippi. In Oklahoma, the storm killed two people and ripped the top off a school building on Thursday. Later that evening, it moved into Arkansas, leaving seven people dead, three of them young children. Most of them died when trees and heavy branches crashed into their houses and mobile homes. One victim, Devon Adams, 6, was asleep on a couch in his family’s home in Bald Knob, Ark., when an enormous tree tore through the ceiling and crushed him. Officials at the Bald Knob Police Department said that the tree was nearly 8 feet wide. So far, the only confirmed tornadoes have been in eastern Oklahoma, where the weather service reported that 12 touched down, said Michelle Schuldt, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. But officials are investigating storms in the other states, she said, and were “likely” to report tornadoes there as well. While this is the season for storms, Ms. Schuldt said, this storm system has been a “particularly bad one.” On Saturday, the storm had moved into South Carolina, North Carolina and West Virginia, as well as parts of Florida and Georgia, Ms. Schuldt said. “There’s still a threat of tornadoes,” she added.

Tornadoes
Deaths (Fatalities)
Alabama
Weather
Mississippi
Oklahoma
Arkansas


Kentucky Slams Its Way Into Second Round

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — Before halftime, top-seeded Kentucky had turned the game into a dunkathon. During a 54-second span against overmatched No. 16-seed East Tennessee State, the Wildcats had alley-oops on three consecutive possessions that caused their rabid fans to roar. The sequence left Coach John Calipari beaming like a proud father as the Wildcats cruised to a 100-71 victory Thursday in the first round of the East Region at New Orleans Arena. A year after missing the N.C.A.A. tournament for the first time since 1991, the Wildcats showed why anything less than an eighth national championship would be a disappointment for Big Blue Nation. The freshman guard Eric Bledsoe scored a game-high 29 points and the junior foward Patrick Patterson had 22 points. The freshman point guard sensation John Wall added 17 points for Kentucky (33-2). In their record 50th N.C.A.A. tournament appearance, the Wildcats raced to a 54-26 halftime lead. They extended the lead to 40 points in the second half before losing interest against the Pirates (21-14), the Atlantic Sun Conference champion. Still, Calipari did not take out his starters until 2 minutes 19 seconds remained in the game. It was such a yawner that less than three minutes in to the second half, the television broadcast of the game showed shots of fans in attendance asleep. Yet Kentucky fans did get riled up later in the second half with incensed boos when a clip of the former Duke player Christian Laettner’s legendary game - winning buzzer beater shot to beat the Wildcats in overtime of the 1992 N.C.A.A. tournament was shown on the arena’s big screen. But they had all but forgotten that when Kentucky guard John Hood made two free throws with seven seconds left to reach 100 points, a fitting end to a dominant exhibition that had Calipari waving at East Tennessee State fans.

NCAA Basketball Tournament (Men)
University of Kentucky
East Tennessee State University
College Athletics
Basketball
Calipari John
Wall John