James R. Grover Jr., Ex-Congressman From Long Island, Dies at 93

Abstract: When former Representative James R. Grover Jr. , a Republican from Suffolk County on Long Island, was in his ninth year in Congress in 1971, he deferred moving out of his rather cramped, modest quarters in the Longworth House Office Building near the Capitol, even though he certainly had enough seniority to take over newer, more resplendent rooms in the Rayburn building. “I left it up to the staff to make the decision,” Mr. Grover said. “They live in the office more than I do.” As Newsday wrote in 1969: “Let a Republican colleague relate that Grover, a backer of antipollution legislation, influenced him to vote for the Clean Water Act, and Grover himself will shake his head. ‘For me to say I was in the same class as the sponsors of the bill would be presumptuous,’ Grover will say.” For six terms, from 1963 to 1975, Mr. Grover, who died at 93 on Sunday at his home in Babylon, N.Y., brought a soft-spoken lack of pretension to the inner workings of an institution far more attuned to partisan bombast. “I don’t like legislators to demagogue it,” he once said. “You can get a headline sometimes, but if you can’t deliver, it is not fair.” He was, said Lawrence Levy, the executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, “a throwback to the day when many public officials cared more for the image of their institutions and civility between members than scoring headlines and political points. His kind is rare now, if you can find them at all.” Mr. Grover, tall and bespectacled, represented the Second Congressional District, a middle-class area on the Nassau-Suffolk border, and he worked with colleagues on both sides of the aisle. In 1972, unemployment in Suffolk peaked at 9 percent after years of retrenchment in the aerospace industry, the mainstay of the local economy. With the county’s other congressman at the time, Otis G. Pike, a Democrat, Mr. Grover successfully lobbied the Labor Department to designate Suffolk an employment disaster area. That made the county eligible, under the Public Works and Economic Development Act, for hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for roads, sewers, tourism facilities and research laboratories. With little fanfare, Mr. Grover worked his way up to a position of influence on the House Committees on Public Works and Transportation and on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. “They’re not glamour committees,” he said, “but they’re good working committees. I find them interesting.” During his tenure, Mr. Grover received endorsements from both the Conservative Party and the Long Island Federation of Labor. “He doesn’t get involved in too much controversy. He’s always there. He’s always steady,” the Suffolk County Republican chairman at the time, Edwin M. Schwenk, said of him in 1969. “He’s just good old steady Jimmy, doing a job.” James Russell Grover Jr. was born in the Village of Babylon on March 5, 1919, to James and Christine Grover. His father was the village police chief. After graduating from Hofstra University in 1941, he served in the Army in World War II . He married his high school sweetheart, Mary Fullerton, in 1943. Soon after receiving his law degree from Columbia in 1949, Mr. Grover opened a law office in Babylon. He served on the local school board and, in 1957, was elected to the State Assembly, serving six years. Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, James; three daughters, Jill Hoyler, Nancy Grover de Chatrette and Jean Hand; 8 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren. Ms. Hand said Mr. Grover died of congestive heart failure. After 12 years in Congress, Mr. Grover was defeated by Thomas J. Downey, a 25-year-old Democratic member of the Suffolk County Legislature who, amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, sought to link him to the Nixon administration. “I have never been a slave to any administration,” Mr. Grover said.

Grover James R.
Long Island (NY)
Deaths (Obituaries)
Grover James R Jr


North Korea Allows Access to Reactor

Abstract: YONGBYON, North Korea (AP) — The broadcaster APTN, the international television division of The Associated Press, was permitted on Friday to visit the North Korean nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, the heart of the North’s nuclear program. At the site, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital, Yongbyon’s chief engineer reiterated the government’s position that it was disabling the reactor as promised in the disarmament-for-aid deal, but that it had slowed down its compliance because the other countries were not meeting their commitments. APTN showed North Korean workers in protective suits removing spent nuclear fuel from the facility’s reactor. The visit came as talks have stalled over differences on whether the North has fully declared its nuclear programs under an October deal reached with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. “It has been slowed down,” said the chief engineer, Yu Sun-chol. “Especially the discharge of fuel rods from the core has been slowed down.”

North Korea
Atomic Weapons
International Relations
Foreign Aid
Yongbyong (Nuclear Reactor)


In Iowa, Euphoria Gives Way to Second-Thoughts on Obama

Abstract: WILLIAMSBURG, Iowa — Pauline McAreavy voted for President Obama . From the moment she first saw him two years ago, she was smitten by his speeches and sold on his promise of change. She switched parties to support him in the Iowa caucuses, donated money and opened her home to a pair of young campaign workers. But by the time she received a fund-raising letter last month from the Democratic National Committee, a sense of disappointment had set in. She returned the solicitation with a handwritten note, saying, “Until I see some progress and he lives up to his promises in Iowa, we will not give one penny.” “I’m afraid I wasn’t realistic,” Ms. McAreavy, 76, a retired school nurse, said on a recent morning on the deck of her home here in east-central Iowa. “I really thought there would be immediate change,” she said. “Sometimes the Republicans are just as bad as Democrats. But it’s politics as usual, and that’s what I voted against.” One year after winning the election, Mr. Obama has seen his pledge to transcend partisanship in Washington give way to the hardened realities of office. A campaign for the history books, filled with a sky-high sense of possibility for Mr. Obama not just among legions of loyal Democrats but also among converts from outside the party, has descended to an unfamiliar plateau for a president whose political rise was as rapid as it was charmed. Interviews with voters across Iowa offer a window into how the president’s standing has leveled off, especially among the independents and Republicans who contributed not just to his margin of victory in the caucuses here but also to the optimism among his supporters that his election would be a break from standard-issue politics. For Democrats, the immediate peril of failing to hang on to some of these swing voters could play out Tuesday in the governor’s race in Virginia, a state Mr. Obama wrested away from Republicans last year but where the Democratic candidate for governor has struggled to recreate Mr. Obama’s enthusiastic coalition. In Iowa, Ms. McAreavy fears that the president’s health care plan will shortchange her Medicare benefits and mean infrequent mammogram examinations. She worries that his decision on Afghanistan will mean that her son, a member of the Iowa National Guard, will return to the battlefield. And she believes that too many of Mr. Obama’s actions are rooted in Democratic politics. “All my Republican friends — and independents — are sitting back saying, ‘Oh, what did we do?” Ms. McAreavy said. “I’m not to that point yet, but a lot of people are.” Mr. Obama still has generally strong approval ratings and the opportunities that come with a Democratic majority in Congress. Public opinion about him remains in flux, particularly as he heads into the endgame of a push to overhaul the health insurance system and nears a decision about whether to expand the war in Afghanistan. But an erosion of support from independents and disapproval from Republicans suggests that the coalition Mr. Obama built to win the White House is frayed. In few places did people get a longer and closer look at Mr. Obama than in Iowa , a swing state home to deep strains of both conservatism and liberalism. Mr. Obama was a constant presence here during the formative months of his candidacy. Many voters have pictures of him on their mantels, looking him in the eye as they took a measure of the man and the politician before giving him a crucial victory in the caucuses. A social studies teacher who saw Mr. Obama on his maiden visit here wonders whether momentum from the election is gone forever. A retired electrical engineer who became a Democrat to support Mr. Obama believes that the president too often blames others for his troubles. And a teacher who voted for Mr. Obama because she was fed up with President George W. Bush does not trust this administration any more than the previous one. Yet a laid-off factory worker who returned to school for a degree said Mr. Obama’s support for a new economy had changed his thinking. A public relations executive who changed parties to support Mr. Obama says he saved the nation from fiscal collapse. And a nurse who believes Mr. Obama could be a transformative president, because of health care and other issues, worries that the vitriol could endanger his life. The Iowa Poll, published in September by The Des Moines Register, showed that Mr. Obama’s approval rating had fallen to 53 percent, from 64 percent in April. In interviews around the state, the economy emerged as one of the most worrisome undercurrents. “I’m scared,” said Chris Bollhoefer, 49, who lost his job two years ago at Maytag in Newton. “The competition right now, with all the people who have lost jobs that are highly qualified, really puts you up against the wall trying to compete.” Mr. Bollhoefer said he approved of the job Mr. Obama was doing. “It’s inspirational to me that he’s trying to do something different,” he said. As a candidate, Mr. Obama soared, several people said in interviews, but as a president, he often has come across as cautious, tentative and prone to blame his troubles on others. “I think he was more presidential when he was running for office than he is now,” said Paul Johnson, 58, a student legal services lawyer at Iowa State University. “He seems more subdued, which is probably a result of having to actually deal with the issues on his plate as opposed to just rallying the troops to vote for him.” Mr. Johnson and his wife, Kathy, are loyal Democrats, but Mr. Obama was not their first, second or third choice during the Iowa caucuses that opened the party’s primary on Jan. 3, 2008. At the time, the Johnsons favored, in order, John Edwards, Joseph R. Biden Jr. or Hillary Rodham Clinton. When Mr. Obama won the nomination, however, they eagerly supported him, and now they say they believe he is doing well, but they often wonder if he is assertive enough. “It’s overdue for him to actually take charge here,” said Ms. Johnson, 57, a social worker in the town of Nevada. One thing that would sour them on Mr. Obama, they said, would be a steep escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Even with the complaints, many Democrats said the president had single-handedly improved the United States’ image in the world. They said he had already accomplished a great deal, considering the raft of crises that greeted him, and they said they believed in his ability to deliver on remaking the nation’s health care system and on other priorities. Candi Schmieder, 40, said she trusted the president. The election in Iowa County, where she lives, ended in a tie in November. Mr. Obama won by 14 votes after absentee ballots were tabulated. If a re-election were held today, she said, she feared that the outcome might be different. “Given all the situations that he’s dealing with — the economy and the war — I think it’s going to take some work,” said Ms. Schmieder, who had never been involved in politics but said she had been drawn to Mr. Obama by his books. As Mr. Obama approaches the anniversary of his election, the sense of possibility and the dash of romance that moved many voters are no longer apparent. The challenges of governing have eaten away at the optimism. The pace of government intervention has also jarred many voters. John Sager, a retired electrical engineer, said he was so impressed by Mr. Obama last year at the United Auto Workers hall in Marshalltown that he allowed his name to be promoted on a list of Republicans supporting Mr. Obama before the Iowa caucuses. “He gave a fairly decent presentation, but that’s what it turned out to be — a presentation,” said Mr. Sager, 77. “I don’t think he should keep hiding behind the fact that he inherited all these problems.” Kathy Shaffer, 60, a retired school teacher, did not tell her husband, Larry, a staunch Republican, that she had she voted for Mr. Obama until recently. She said she had been frustrated by the Iraq war, fed up with the Bush administration and eager for a change. Now, Ms. Shaffer said she regretted her vote, largely because she disapproved of how the government had intervened to help failing financial institutions and car companies. She also fears that Mr. Obama will send more troops to Afghanistan. “I want to be a Republican domestically and probably a Democrat on foreign policy — I’m in a lose-lose situation,” Ms. Shaffer said. Asked if her disappointment would keep her from supporting Mr. Obama again, she paused for a moment. “I hate to vote against someone,” she said. “I want to vote for someone.”

Iowa
Obama Barack
Polls and Public Opinion


A Carousel Attendant Ponders the Circle of Life

Abstract: If you’re a New York toddler, Sal Napolitano has probably met you. He probably met your parents and grandparents. As attendant and vendor at the Friedsam Memorial Carousel in Central Park for 39 years, Mr. Napolitano, 54, has seen generations come and go, circling on wooden steeds prancing to the barrel organ’s “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “Georgy Girl,” “Downtown” and other bouncy favorites. Biggest question going around: People still ask, “Do I have to pay for my kid?” They asked when it was 15 cents a ride, two rides for a quarter, and now when it’s $2. The answer is still the same: You have to pay to ride the carousel. You know who once asked me, “Do I have to pay if I’m standing up watching my grandchildren?” Jacqueline Onassis. Best carousel story: There was a gentleman who owned a Japanese restaurant. He had a huge Akita. One day he decided to put the dog on the carousel. After that, every day he came by, the dog would pull. He wanted to go on the carousel. He would go on one ride, in the chariot. This went on for a good five, six years. How did the dog know to go on one ride and then leave? What dogs pay: Dogs and dolls are free. Saddest carousel story: One guy was crying. On the second ride, same thing. He was all by himself. I said, “Usually people are happy here.” He said his mother used to take him on the carousel. Growing up, he became a big headache to her. That day his mother passed away. He was reliving happy moments with his mother. Happiest story: A friend of mine got married on the carousel. They went for a ride and had their reception at the boathouse. Wedding rate: The same two bucks. The making of a carousel man: In 1970 I was a sophomore at Cardinal Spellman High School. I was looking for a summer job. Two buddies from World War II, Charles Conterno and Joseph Lomberg, had the concession, from Joseph’s uncle, Max, a World War I veteran. They hired me to collect tickets and help children on and off. In 1976 I was graduating John Jay on my way to law school. I was engaged at the time. The concession was changing from the original owners. They recommended Richard Giberson be the operator. He asked me if I would help manage it for a year. We hit it off together. We became partners in 1980. Why he’s no longer the boss: The carousel needed a mechanical restoration in 1995. The Central Park Conservancy raised the funds. There was a plan for the conservancy to run it. I would be partners with the conservancy. Everything was all set. Then somebody put in an extraordinary bid: M & T Pretzel. After they got the concession, I was approached by M & T. They’re family-owned, one of the biggest concessionaires, now called New York One L.L.P. They hired my company, Central Park Carousel. I take care of the carousel. My son Michael takes care of the carousel in Flushing Meadows Park. What a concession costs: I don’t want it in The New York Times. Parental advice: I tell my children, if you find something you like and someone pays you — that’s the trick. Then you’re working and you’re happy. The carousel life cycle: First you go in the chariot or on a horse that doesn’t go up and down. There are 53 that move, and four are stationary. Then you go up and down with your parents. Then your parents watch from outside. When they’re teenagers I don’t see them because they’re too big for the carousel. Then they come back with their boyfriends and girlfriends. And then with their children. It’s like a circle.


Man Held in Maryland Threats Had 25 Guns, Police Say

Abstract: WASHINGTON — State and federal authorities have detained a man in the Maryland suburbs of Washington who had declared himself “a joker” and had threatened to kill people after what appeared to be a workplace dispute, the police said on Friday. A hoard of weapons and ammunition was found at the man’s home, the authorities said. Mark A. Magaw, the police chief in Prince George’s County, said that when the threats were reported, the echoes of the mass killing last week in Aurora, Colo., led the police to get an order from a judge allowing them to take the suspect into custody for psychiatric evaluation. “He said, ‘I’m a joker, and I am going to load my guns and blow everybody up,’ ” Chief Magaw said, describing one of the threatening telephone conversations that the suspect, who was being fired, had with a co-worker this week. The threat was reported on Wednesday, and the suspect was taken into custody the next night. An affidavit named the suspect as Neil E. Prescott. He was under observation at a hospital after he surrendered quietly, the police said. When the police went to his residence in nearby Anne Arundel County, they found him wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Guns don’t kill people, I do,” police officials said at a news conference and in the affidavit. He was described as groggy but compliant. A search at the residence found about 25 guns, including semiautomatic weapons, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, the police said. “In light of what happened in Aurora, Colorado, it is important for the community to know that we take all threats seriously, and if you are going to make a threat, we will take action,” Chief Magaw said. The Prince George’s County Police Department posted a photograph of the weapons that were seized on its Twitter account . Julie Parker, a spokeswoman for the county police, described the events as a “thwarted terror threat.” The investigation has been joined by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The affidavit said that the suspect made the threats on Monday in telephone conversations with a co-worker, and that both were employed by Pitney Bowes, a federal contractor. “The suspect arrested was an employee of a subcontractor to Pitney Bowes,” the company said in a statement. “He has not been on any Pitney Bowes property in more than four months.”

Prescott Neil E
Threats and Threatening Messages
Aurora Colo Shooting (2012)
Holmes James Eagan
Murders and Attempted Murders
Maryland
Washington (DC)
Firearms


Alice K. Turner Dies at 75; Playboy Editor Kept Fiction Alive

Abstract: Alice K. Turner, who, as Playboy’s longtime fiction editor, nurtured fledgling authors and championed science fiction by publishing short stories that she said injected “some class” into the racy men’s magazine, died on Jan. 17 in Manhattan. She was 75. The cause was pneumonia, her brother, Daniel Turner, said. Ms. Turner had no illusions about why Playboy’s founder, Hugh Hefner, interspersed the magazine’s nude photos with serious fiction. She once recalled ruefully that in congratulating his centerfold models, Mr. Hefner said, “Without you, I would have had nothing but a literary magazine.” Moreover, she said, the “ad sales guys” never appreciated fiction and would have “cut it out if they could, except for the fact that it adds certain respectability.” But by sustaining that respectability for two decades, from 1980 to 2000, Ms. Turner helped keep literary short fiction on life support in the late 20th century, when few other publishers would or could. And writers like Terry Bisson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joyce Carol Oates, Bob Shacochis, Robert Silverberg, Dan Simmons, John Updike and David Foster Wallace were not shy about having their words abut illustrations of naked women. “Think about what Playboy pays as compared to, say, Harper’s, and you tell me what working writer who is actually supporting himself is going to quibble over a few nudes?” Ms. Turner said in a 1984 interview with The Missouri Review. Ms. Turner edited several anthologies while at Playboy, including “Playboy Stories: The Best of Forty Years of Short Fiction” and “The Playboy Book of Science Fiction.” She also wrote “The History of Hell,” which Andrew Greeley, the priest and sociologist, described in The New York Times in 1993 as “an insightful and balanced popular history of the growth and, one might almost say, the flowering of imagination about that place at the entrance of which all hope is abandoned.” Ms. Turner cultivated her authors, novices or not. Defending Mr. Shacochis against a negative review, she wrote in 1985 that he “is a beginner and a serious writer and vulnerable on both counts.” “He is also a very talented writer,” she added, “as I have reason to know, having published several of these stories in Playboy. But even an untalented writer deserves more respect than this.” Mr. Shacochis became a prizewinning novelist. Alice Kennedy Turner was born on May 29, 1939, in China, where her father was a diplomat. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1960 and earned an advanced degree in English literature from New York University. She abandoned acting (she appeared with Charles Boyer in “Man and Boy” in London in 1963) for a job as an editorial assistant at The New York Post, then moved to magazines, including Publishers Weekly, from which she was hired by Playboy in 1976. “She had an unusual talent because of a physical problem with her eyes when she was very young,” said her brother, who is her sole survivor. Instead of moving her eyes left to right across a line, she would read speedily by moving down the page, which is how she absorbed the scores of submissions the magazine received every day. Ms. Turner defined a good story as one that begins with a good plot. “All things considered, we would go for an upbeat touch,” she said. “Humor is always welcome. I myself have a certain weakness for fireworks, I guess. Magic shows. Rabbits out of hats. I like surprises.” Good writers could break rules, she explained, “but, as with painters, good writers know anatomy.” “If you’re good enough, like Picasso, you can put noses and breasts wherever you like,” she continued. “But first you have to know where they belong.” Ms. Turner said she most enjoyed “the spider web aspect” of being an editor. “If you’re lucky,” she said, “you sit in the middle of a web with lines of interest and appreciation and often real affection reaching out all over the country, often to writers you’ve never published, and possibly never will. Pen pals. Word processor pals, I guess now.”

Obituary
Playboy Magazine
Books
Alice K Turner


Chinese Flee Flood Threat From Quake

Abstract: CHENGDU, China — Thousands of earthquake survivors fled tent camps and villages across the ravaged landscape of southwestern China on Saturday after the government warned that several lakes and rivers were getting dangerously close to overflowing because landslides have blocked water flow. The new threats came as government officials said that more than three million homes had been destroyed by Monday’s earthquake, and more than 12 million had been damaged. The government again raised the death toll, to nearly 29,000. The resulting humanitarian crisis is the largest in China in decades, and in the process of covering the developments, Chinese news organizations have been testing strict government censorship in new ways — and even winning some concessions. With the scale of the disaster becoming ever more apparent, the United Nations announced that it would provide a grant of $7 million from an emergency response fund “to help meet the most urgent humanitarian requirements.” The danger of flooding on Saturday was so severe that some rescue workers had to abandon their efforts, at least temporarily, to find people buried beneath rubble in Beichuan, one of the hardest-hit counties. Such interruptions could doom the relatively few who could be expected to be alive under debris. The greatest threat of flooding came from a lake in the far north of Sichuan Province that had already begun to overflow because of a blockage in the Qingzhu River, according to Xinhua, the official news agency, which cited experts at the province’s land management department. Heavy rains began pounding large parts of Sichuan on Saturday night, adding to the threat. A rise of only 6 to 10 feet will cause the lake to “threaten more than 2,000 people who are staying in shelters after the earthquake downstream,” one expert said, adding that it was inevitable that debris would continue to flow down, adding to the blockage. Early on Sunday, a tremor with a magnitude of 6.0 struck northern Sichuan, one of the largest quakes since last Monday. Other tremors over the past several days have caused new landslides. Relief officials in the county where the flood threat is highest, Qingchuan, have begun evacuating people and are considering blasting the embankment to divert water from the overflowing lake. “We were informed that the Qingchuan government is requesting urgent evacuation because the water level of the dammed lake has reached 70 meters,” or 230 feet, said a worker at the control center of the Guangyuan Petrol Company who gave his name as Mr. Wang. He said workers were being evacuated. Farther south, closer to the epicenter, people around Beichuan, a town that was flattened by the 7.9-magnitude earthquake, also began fleeing because of flood warnings related to a choked river. Thousands of people are buried under rubble in the town, the county seat of Beichuan, and it is the scene of one of the most intense rescue efforts in the disaster zone. But on Saturday soldiers, rescue workers and medics had to stop their work and seek higher ground or leave the area. People who were fleeing described soldiers from the army heeding the flood warning, packing up and driving down from the mountains. There were unconfirmed reports that the immediate danger had passed by evening and that rescue operations may have resumed. Landslides continue to pose one of the greatest threats across the mountainous terrain of Sichuan. Daily aftershocks and tremors — at least 168 significant ones since Monday — set off new slides. At least 13 rivers and lakes have been dammed up by the quake, the state-run China National Radio reported Saturday, citing an official at the Land and Resource Ministry. People in the disaster zone have had to grapple with the rising threat of flooding. On Wednesday, the top economic planning body in China issued a report saying that the quake had damaged 391 reservoirs. The same day, 2,000 soldiers were sent to inspect cracks in the Zipingpu Dam, upriver from the hard-hit town of Dujiangyan, and drain water from the reservoir. Experts outside China say many of the threatened dams and reservoirs were built along the well-recognized Longmenshan fault, and that the dams might have sustained damage that could make them fail weeks later. Officials said Saturday that the death toll had risen to 28,881. Earlier in the week, they said it could reach 50,000. Officials said Saturday that 12.5 million homes had been damaged, and 3.1 million had collapsed. President Hu Jintao has urged rescuers to continue searching for survivors. Some were pulled out on Saturday, but medical experts say the chances of people living in rubble decrease significantly after the first 72 hours. The Ministry of Health said Saturday that it had found no epidemics in the disaster areas, Xinhua reported. Hospitals in Sichuan had received more than 116,000 patients, 14 percent of whom were severely injured, the ministry added. More than 34,000 medical workers and disease control staff members are in Sichuan, and they are being given pamphlets that tell them how to disinfect food and drinking water and how to handle bodies.

China
Earthquakes
Dams and Dikes
Floods
Immigration and Refugees


On Web Video, Captions Are Coming Slowly

Abstract: The actress Marlee Matlin shimmied her way onto “Dancing With the Stars” two years ago, memorably using sign language to tell viewers to “read my hips.” But when Ms. Matlin, who is deaf, went to ABC.com to watch a replay of the show, she was impeded because the network’s videos were missing captions. Closed-captioning is mandatory on television, but not for TV programs on the Internet. And that has turned Web sites like ABC.com into battlegrounds for advocates like Ms. Matlin, who have spoken up on the lack of captions on sites like CNN.com and services like Netflix. Media companies say they are working hard to make online video more accessible. YouTube, the world’s biggest video Web site by far, now supplies mostly accurate captions using voice-recognition software. ESPN is offering captions for its live streams of World Cup matches. And ABC now applies the TV captions for “Dancing With the Stars” to ABC.com. But big gaps remain much to the dismay of deaf Web users. Television episodes on CBS.com , news videos on CNN.com and entertainment clips on MSN.com all lack captions, to name a few. Other Web sites, like NBC.com , are inconsistent about captioning, so “America’s Got Talent” has captions but “The Marriage Ref” does not. As online video becomes ever more popular, deaf viewers face the prospect of a partly inaccessible Internet. “We do not want to be left behind as television moves to the Internet,” said Rosaline Crawford, the director of the law and advocacy center for the National Association of the Deaf. The Hearing Loss Association of America says that 36 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss. Other groups, like English-language learners, also benefit from captions. Groups like Ms. Crawford’s say they are merely fighting to maintain the access to television that they won a generation ago, in 1990, when Congress mandated closed captioning technology in virtually all TV sets, and in 1996, when Congress required most shows to have captions. “Every generation of technology that comes out seems to be a bit late on accessibility,” said Larry Goldberg, director of media access for WGBH, the PBS member station in Boston. Advocates are pushing Congress to pass an update to the bill that would mandate captions on any online video that has also appeared on TV, like prime-time comedies and dramas, and would take other steps to make consumer electronics more accessible, by requiring closed-caption buttons on remote controls, for instance. A Senate subcommittee held a hearing on the bill last month. In written testimony, Ms. Matlin imagined trying to watch Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon on the Web, but finding that his “giant leap for mankind” words had been “erased.” “That’s how taking closed captions out of broadcast content now being shown on the Internet feels to millions of people like myself,” she said. The prospect of legislation is motivating some major Web site operators to add captions more quickly. A collection of industry groups is close to finishing a universal standard for online captions, which would make it easier to adapt TV captions to other formats. “I think there’s a bit of foot-dragging based on waiting for that standard to be finished,” Mr. Goldberg said. Advocates have been exceptionally vocal about the problem. Take Hulu, the biggest Web site for TV episode viewing, which offers captions in multiple languages for some shows (including many of its most popular ones), but not all. It is pressing its content suppliers — networks and studios — for more captions. “Users send us feedback about closed captions more often than almost any other feature, so what started as a small side project has turned into a very important part of our user experience,” Eric Feng, the chief technical officer for Hulu, said in an e-mail message. It is also a priority at YouTube, a unit of Google, where captions can be viewed for any video uploaded since April, as long as it is in English and has a clear audio track. The voice-recognition technology makes mistakes, but it has been lauded as a major improvement for deaf and hard of hearing Web users. There is also a business reason for Google to be captioning, Mr. Goldberg said: “When you start adding text to all of your videos, search is aided tremendously.” Industry groups say captioning can be expensive in some cases, and they argue that poorly conceived rules could stifle innovation. But they acknowledge the value of captions. Ken Harrenstien, a software engineer at YouTube and Google, who is deaf and who is heading the captions project, said the auto-captioning can be translated into more than 50 languages. But so far the technology recognizes only English-language audio, something that he said “we need to broaden.” On other Web sites, captions are being added gradually — far more slowly than advocates would like. Netflix came under fire last year for not having captions on its TV and movie streams. It said that reformatting its files to include the text would take software advancements and a huge amount of time. In April it announced that four seasons of “Lost” had been captioned, and that it would “be working to fill in the library over time.” Among the big TV networks that stream full episodes online, most are captioned, with the biggest exception being CBS, which says it is now developing a video player program that will support captions. Anthony Soohoo, the senior vice president of CBS Interactive’s entertainment unit, said the site planned to release it in the fourth quarter. Adding captions to the countless video clips on the Web is an even bigger hurdle, one that the bill largely leaves untouched. Software like YouTube’s, though, may help. Said Mr. Harrenstien, “Only a tiny percentage of the world’s videos are captioned, so we have a lot of work to do.”

Closed-Captioning
Computers and the Internet
Deafness
Recordings and Downloads (Video)
Matlin Marlee
Law and Legislation
Television


Massachusetts: Bomb Suspect’s Classmate Charged

Abstract: A classmate of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, was indicted Thursday on two counts of making false statements during the investigation. The man, Robel Phillipos, 19, is accused of concealing from investigators the fact that he accompanied two of Mr. Tsarnaev’s other friends, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, to Mr. Tsarnaev’s dormitory at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth days after the bombing. Investigators say that the men removed items including a laptop and a backpack, and that Mr. Kadyrbayev disposed of the backpack. Mr. Phillipos could face up to eight years in prison on each count and a $250,000 fine. Mr. Kadyrbayev and Mr. Tazhayakov have been charged with obstruction of justice.

Boston Marathon Bombings
Robel Phillipos
Dzhokhar A Tsarnaev
Massachusetts


Death Stalks Muslims as Myanmar Cuts Off Aid

Abstract: SITTWE, Myanmar — By the time the baby girl was brought to the makeshift pharmacy, her chest was heaving, her temperature soaring. The supply of oxygen that might have helped was now off limits, in a Doctors Without Borders clinic shut down by the government in February. A hospital visit was out of the question; admission for Rohingya Muslims, a long-persecuted minority, always requires a lengthy approval process — time that the baby, named Parmin, did not have. In desperation, the pharmacy owner sent the family to the rarely staffed Dapaing clinic, the only government emergency health center for the tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims herded into displaced people’s camps. Although it was just 4 p.m., the doors were shuttered. “We became like crazy people, running everywhere,” the child’s grandmother, Daw Mu Mu Lwin, said. With no good choices left, the family returned to the pharmacy, where Parmin died, untreated, three and a half hours later, cradled in her grandmother’s arms. The baby’s death was part of a rapidly expanding death toll and humanitarian crisis among the Rohingya, a Muslim minority that Myanmar’s Buddhist-led government has increasingly deprived of the most basic liberties and aid even as it trumpets its latest democratic reforms. The crisis began with the government’s expulsion of Doctors Without Borders, one of the world’s premier humanitarian aid groups and the lifeline to health care for more than a million Rohingya increasingly denied those services by their own government. But the situation has grown more dire in recent weeks, as local Buddhist officials began severely restricting other humanitarian aid to the camps and the rest of Rakhine State, where tuberculosis, waterborne illnesses and malnutrition are endemic. Some aid workers fear they are being kept away so there are fewer witnesses to rampant mistreatment and occasional bloodletting; the doctor’s group was expelled from Rakhine State after caring for victims of a violent assault on a Rohingya village that the government denies ever happened. The scope of the government crackdown is serious enough that it has inspired at least some rebukes from world leaders after near silence even as Myanmar’s government ignored violence by local Buddhists in 2012 that left hundreds of Muslims dead and drove many others into the displaced people’s camps. Loath to criticize the government as it moves the country away from a military dictatorship, international leaders also fear losing out in an international scramble for Myanmar’s business, and allegiance. The Obama administration — which has been eager to keep strategically positioned Myanmar away from China — weighed in when the president admonished Myanmar’s leaders during his recent Asian tour, saying: “Myanmar won’t succeed if the Muslim population is oppressed.” And Tomas Ojea Quintana, who was the United Nations representative responsible for human rights in Myanmar until March, says the government’s obstruction of humanitarian aid “could amount to crimes against humanity.” Even those foreign aid workers who have been able to return to work in recent days, do so amid heightened security fears. State government officials recently allowed a radical Buddhist monk to preach for 10 days in the region, stirring up passions among Buddhists. After the visit by the monk, Ashin Wirahtu , radical Buddhists ransacked the facilities of more than a dozen aid and U.N. agencies, including the Red Cross, forcing more than 300 foreign aid workers to evacuate. Two battalions of riot police officers, and a Myanmar Army division remained in their barracks. With most foreign aid workers gone, it is impossible to accurately assess the number of deaths caused by the absence of lifesaving medical services; the government fails to keep or share health records. Aid workers, however, say they see the evidence of a building crisis. “For sure the deaths are accelerating,” said Dr. Liviu Vedrasco, the head of the health care cluster for the World Health Organization in Myanmar. One indicator of the seriousness of the situation: Doctors Without Borders had sent about 400 emergency cases every month to local hospitals. In March, fewer than 20 people got referrals required by the government, according to W.H.O. Some of the only aid currently being provided is food rations from the World Food Program, which has been allowed to deliver rice and oil to the camps, a move some aid agencies say they believe is aimed at averting the bad publicity that could come with mass starvation. Even before the slashing of other aid, though, the World Health Organization reported that the food program was not sufficient to prevent malnutrition in the camps in Rakhine State or to stop the chronic acute malnutrition in northern areas of Rakhine State where many other Rohingya live. At a temporary clinic set up by wealthy out-of-state Muslims after Doctors Without Borders was banned, U Maung Maung Hla, a volunteer medical assistant, surveyed the women clustered on the floor in front of him, holding emaciated babies. The children, he said, needed more than the one-time ration of vitamins he was offering. “These children are only being fed rice,” he said. “If these conditions continue, all the babies will die.” The Rohingya, denied citizenship, have long been outcasts in Myanmar, formerly called Burma. Many in the Buddhist-majority country believe the Rohingya should go to Bangladesh, even though many are not from there, or come from families that have been in Myanmar for generations. The camps outside Sittwe, where more than 100,000 of the 1.3 million Rohingya in Myanmar live, were set up after the 2012 burning of the Rohingya neighborhoods in the town, a dilapidated trading center on the Bay of Bengal. Aid workers say the camps, where tight security prevents people from leaving, even to work, have become little more than sprawling prisons. Until Doctors Without Borders was chased out of the region, some of the few people who got to leave the camps were the desperately ill, bound for the town’s hospital. Now, even few of the sick leave. In response to the recent international criticism, the Myanmar government spokesman, Ye Htut, this week told a radio network that “there is no state-sanctioned discrimination against Muslims.” He also said there was no “outbreak of disease” in the camps because Myanmar’s Ministry of Health had stepped in to provide health care, sanitation and water. But Dr. Vedrasco of the World Health Organization noted that Myanmar was ranked second to last — just above Sierra Leone — in the organization’s list of medical services, and could not fulfill its promises. Five government mobile medical teams were sent to Sittwe at the end of March, but they were barely seen. In the camps, the deaths often occur behind closed doors, in the cramped rooms of the bamboo rowhouses built by the United Nations. Other people die in the small mom-and-pop pharmacies where desperate families like Parmin’s go as a last resort. Some of the most desperate cases are women with complicated pregnancies. Prenatal care is scarce, resulting in high numbers of precarious births. These days, most pregnant women are reluctant to go to Sittwe General Hospital until it is too late, put off by the elaborate series of permissions needed, and by fear. As violence has increased, many Rohingya believe they will never emerge from the 14-bed ward set aside for them that used to be the prison ward. Zhara Katu, 20, was one of many too frightened to go to the hospital. In pain and pregnant with twins, she instead chose the government-run Dapaing clinic. A Burmese doctor determined the babies had died and recommended she go to the Sittwe hospital for an urgent operation. She went home instead. Two days later, she returned to the clinic but was so ill, she was transferred to the hospital. Her father, Abdullah Mi, a scrawny, weather-beaten man, was terrified. “I worry that the Rakhine will kill her there,” he said. His daughter survived the procedure to remove the babies, but died in the hospital a week later of maternal sepsis, a very serious condition that Dr. Vedrasco said could have been alleviated with earlier care. By the last week of April, some aid workers for international agencies were trickling back to the camps, but reported facing conditions far less than the “return to normalcy” declared by the national Ministry of Home Affairs. A new emergency coordinating committee established to oversee foreign assistance was dominated by two Rakhine Buddhist community leaders who demanded approval rights over their aid operations, a memo from the aid workers to the United Nations said. The memo said the committee “is failing absolutely in its role to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Rakhine.” It also urged the United Nations to take a more aggressive stance with the government, saying “there is a sense among nongovernmental organizations that at times the U.N. advocacy could have been more robust.” Sometimes, wondrously, camp medicine works. One of the busiest men in the camps is Chit San Win, who once worked as a medical assistant in Sittwe, and is now a popular amateur doctor racing from call to call on his motorcycle. He arrived at one call recently to find 4-year-old Roshan Bebe, lying unconscious, her head gushing blood after a motorcycle knocked her over. He came equipped with a medical kit he totes in a shopping bag — bandages, a few ointments, needle and thread. As he cleaned and stitched the gaping wound, Mr. Chit San Win said he was concerned about internal bleeding that could prove fatal, but the child’s mother refused to try the government hospital. A few days later the girl was sitting up, eating and talking, and Mr. Chit San Win declared “a miracle.” There was no such happy ending for Nur Husain, 27. On a recent day, he traveled to the same pharmacy where Parmin died. He slumped in a chair in the withering heat, gasping for air and running a temperature of 104 degrees. U Maung Maung Tin, one of the pharmacy owners, called a doctor 400 miles away, and on that advice injected Mr. Husain with four drugs. Two hours later, the muscular young man was dead. It was unclear precisely what killed him, according to a Western doctor who reviewed the four medicines, which are commonly prescribed for asthma. But almost certainly, proper monitoring and the oxygen ordinarily administered by Doctors Without Borders could have saved him, said the doctor, who declined to be named because he did not oversee the case. Mr. Husain’s boss at a rudimentary bakery called him a “dynamic” man, who held one of the few steady jobs in the camp, earning two dollars a day as manager. His wife, Roshida Begum, says she has no idea how she will now feed her two small children, and a third who is on the way. The family buried Mr. Husain in a sandy plot on the shore of the Bay of Bengal within sight of tall, slender coconut trees etched against the blue sky. His shallow grave site, fenced with fresh bamboo, was surrounded by rows and rows of other graves dug in recent months.

Myanmar,Burma
Rohingya
Minorities
Doctors Without Borders
UN
Humanitarian aid


France Télécom and TDC to Combine Swiss Operations

Abstract: France Télécom said Wednesday that it would pay 1.5 billion euros ($2.27 billion) to merge its Swiss subsidiary with Sunrise, Switzerland’s No. 2 operator, in an effort to challenge the state-owned market leader, Swisscom. France Télécom said that it planned to combine Sunrise, which is owned by TDC of Copenhagen, and its Orange Switzerland in a new entity with 3.4 million customers and a 38 percent market share. France Télécom will own 75 percent of the new company, while TDC will retain 25 percent. “This will really provide us with the critical mass we need in the Swiss market,” said Olaf Swantee, the Orange executive vice president in charge of France Télécom’s mobile businesses. The merger is the second deal in three months for France Télécom, which in September announced plans to combine its unprofitable British operator, Orange U.K., with another struggling operator, T-Mobile U.K., in a 50-50 joint venture. In Switzerland, Orange and Sunrise were fighting an uphill battle against Swisscom, which is 57 percent owned by the Swiss government and has 62 percent of the mobile market, according to IE Market Research in Vancouver, Canada. “This is a relatively small market, and Swisscom is very dominant, so you can’t have a proliferation of small players in that kind of environment,” said Emma Mohr-McClune, an analyst at Current Analysis in Freiburg, Germany. Europe’s mobile markets are largely saturated, and some smaller operators have been struggling amid intense competition and as European regulators have capped roaming and termination rates. In Switzerland, the average monthly revenue per cellphone customer is expected to fall 23 percent over the next four years, from 57.2 Swiss francs ($57), this year to 44.20 francs, according to IE Market Research. Philip Kendall, an analyst at Strategy Analytics in London, said: “We are clearly in a saturated market environment in Europe. When you add into the mix the regulatory pressure on roaming and mobile termination rates and sluggish expenditure during the recession, all operators are looking at ways of cutting costs.” The fusion of Sunrise and Orange Switzerland, the No. 3 operator in the country, would reduce the number of mobile network operators in Switzerland to just two — Orange and Swisscom. Even so, Gervais Pellissier, France Télécom’s chief financial officer, said he was confident of obtaining Swiss regulatory approval for the purchase because Switzerland also had eight virtual mobile operators, which are service resellers, besides the three existing network operators. “The proposal we have today will create a stronger telecom operator on the Swiss market,” Mr. Pellissier said. “In the end, this will benefit Swiss consumers.” TDC is majority-owned by five private equity firms: Apax Partners, Blackstone, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Permira and Providence Equity Partners.

Switzerland
Cellular Telephones
Swisscom AG
France Telecom SA


Legislators Reap Benefits of Part-Time Jobs at Law Firms, Filings Show

Abstract: Some of the most influential members of the State Legislature earn large paychecks from part-time jobs with law firms, according to financial disclosure filings released on Wednesday under a new state ethics law that requires legislators to reveal their outside income. In one of the most notable revelations, the disclosure filing of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, showed that he earned $350,000 to $450,000 last year in his part-time job at a Manhattan personal injury law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg . The outside income of legislators had previously been redacted from their filings before they were made available for public inspection. But the new ethics law required them to reveal their income within a limited range without redactions, and the filings were posted online by the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics , on Wednesday. Part-time jobs held by sitting legislators have long been a source of concern to government watchdog groups, who have worried about lawmakers profiting from their elected office, through law firms or other jobs whose duties are often nebulous. The disclosure requirement was passed in 2011 as part of a broader ethics overhaul, but it did not immediately take effect, giving lawmakers time to prepare their finances for public view. Still, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who championed the ethics law, described the new filings on Wednesday as offering New York voters “unprecedented disclosure” about their elected officials. “I believe it’s going to go a long way toward making people feel more comfortable about their government, because they’re going to have more information,” Mr. Cuomo said. (Filings for the governor and other statewide elected officials were released in May, but were less illuminating because those officials typically allow reporters to examine their tax returns.) Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat who has been speaker since 1994, has long been known to work at Weitz & Luxenberg, though his actual job and pay have long been shrouded in mystery. His filing said that his job consisted of “general practice of law with emphasis on representation of individual clients and personal injury actions,” and his title is of counsel. He reported an ample fortune on his new filing, including 2012 income for him and his wife of at least $763,000 and potentially more than $1.1 million, including his legislative salary of $121,000. Mr. Silver also has an investment portfolio that was worth $778,000 to $2 million at the end of last year, according to his filing, and included blue chips like Oracle and Disney. Mr. Silver also reported deferred compensation plans and trusts that hold about $1.8 million to $2.3 million. A portion of his income last year came from securities sales, including a sale of Ford stock, which brought income of at least $150,000. He also had an outstanding loan of at least $500,000 that he extended to Counsel Financial, a company to which he has lent money before , which helps finance small law firms that specialize in personal injury lawsuits. Mr. Silver and his wife also earned interest income of at least $100,000 last year from Counsel. Mr. Silver was one of a number of lawmakers who earned outside income practicing law. The Republican leader in the Senate, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, reported law firm earnings of $150,000 to $250,000. He works for the Long Island law firm Ruskin Moscou Faltischek , and described his work as general law practice that included civil litigation and work related to real estate, health care and corporate matters. Mr. Skelos and his wife also reported a portfolio of more than two dozen stocks and mutual funds. Also reporting law firm income was Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, a Bronx Democrat who leads a breakaway faction of Democrats that formed a ruling coalition with Senate Republicans. Mr. Klein is a partner at the law firm Klein Calderoni & Santucci in the Bronx. He reported income of $57,000 to $106,000 associated with his legal work and a teaching position at Mercy College. The filings also showed limitations of the legislation. It created a new question that asks public officials to reveal the identities of some of their law or consulting clients who have business before the state. But it was written narrowly, and only one member of the Legislature disclosed a client in response to that question in the filings.

Lawyers
New York
Sheldon Silver
Conflict of interest
State legislature


Design Spotlights Collision of Engineering and Politics

Abstract: There are oddities of the Pulaski Skyway that speak to issues as serious as its structural soundness and its place in engineering history. But others have more to do with the bare-knuckled politics of 1930s New Jersey . Consider the Skyway’s rapid and steep liftoffs in Jersey City and Newark. It climbs high above two rivers, which have seen few large ships over the years. Drivers are then sent down its narrow lanes to a steep dip in the middle. Those undulations are the result of a political tug of war during its design, said Steven Hart, author of a book on the building of the Pulaski Skyway. Frederick Lavis, the engineer originally in charge of picking the best route, wanted to build the skyway with drawbridges just high enough that only the tallest ships in the rivers would require temporarily halting vehicular traffic, Mr. Hart said. Mr. Lavis reasoned that most river traffic consisted of tugboats and low-slung barges, according to Mr. Hart’s book. But the businesses along the river enlisted the War Department to demand that the bridge rise to 135 feet to accommodate vessels of any size. Another power play pulled the bridge’s midsection back to earth. Frank Hague, the mayor of Jersey City and one of the great political operators of his time, insisted that the bridge have an off-ramp in South Kearny to help the city’s economic development, Mr. Hart said. “The skyway design is a classic example of engineering principles undone by politics,” he added. Mr. Lavis left the project before its completion, and noted his disappointment in an unpublished memoir, according to Mr. Hart’s book. “As soon as our backs were turned, the vultures swooped,” Mr. Lavis wrote. “The result was the ‘Pulaski Skyway,’ an ungainly and unlovely structure of steel.”

New Jersey
Politics and Government
Bridges and Tunnels


For the No. 1 Pick, the Avalanche May Set Aside Sentiment

Abstract: Sunday’s N.H.L. draft at Prudential Center in Newark will begin either like a fairy tale, or like a fairy tale overturned. It all depends on whether the Colorado Avalanche take defenseman Seth Jones with the first overall pick or choose the talented center Nathan MacKinnon instead. Certainly Jones, 18, is the sentimental choice for Colorado. He sat along the glass with his mother and brothers as the Avalanche won Game 7 of the 2001 Stanley Cup finals in Denver. They received those choice tickets because Seth’s father, Popeye Jones, was playing for the N.B.A.’s Denver Nuggets and had asked the Avalanche captain Joe Sakic for advice on nurturing Seth’s hockey obsession. So there young Seth was, looking on as Sakic lifted the Stanley Cup, a sight Jones recalled a dozen years later as “unbelievable.” Jones went on to become a 6-foot-4, puck-moving defenseman who starred for the gold-medal-winning United States world junior team, a player called “already the complete package” by B. J. MacDonald of N.H.L. Central Scouting. He could also be the first player of African-American heritage to be taken No. 1 over all. Sakic is now the Avalanche’s new head of hockey operations, and the club’s new coach is Patrick Roy, the starting goaltender from that 2001 team. Yet despite Jones’s Avalanche connections and the club’s need for a defenseman of his caliber, Sakic and Roy have repeatedly said they are leaning toward taking a forward with their No. 1 pick. As recently as Thursday, Sakic indicated that MacKinnon, who turns 18 on Sept. 1, would be their man. MacKinnon’s stock has risen over that of Jones since the Memorial Cup final last May, when MacKinnon’s hat trick powered the Halifax Mooseheads past Jones’s Portland Winterhawks for the Canadian Hockey League championship. MacKinnon’s story has a fairy tale quality as well. He comes from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia , Sidney Crosby’s hometown. When MacKinnon was 7 or 8 and Crosby was 15, their paths crossed in an airport. Young Nathan posed for a photo with Crosby. Now MacKinnon, who scored 75 points in 44 regular-season games and 13 points in four Memorial Cup games, poses for photos with children, and he will be posing for more at the draft. After Colorado chooses, Florida has the No. 2 pick, unless trades change the draft order. Tampa Bay is No. 3, then Nashville, Carolina, Calgary, Edmonton, Buffalo, the Devils and Dallas complete the first 10. Whoever is chosen by Phoenix with the No. 12 pick might play in Seattle or Quebec when training camp opens in September. N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman said that the City Council of Glendale, Ariz., must decide by Tuesday whether to approve an arena lease deal with a prospective buyer for the club. If there is no deal, Bettman said Thursday, “I don’t think the Coyotes will be playing there anymore.” Other players expected to go high on Sunday include MacKinnon’s high-scoring Halifax linemate Jonathan Drouin (105 points in 49 games); Sault Ste. Marie defenseman Darnell Nurse, the son of the former Canadian Football League wide receiver Richard Nurse, who encouraged him to play hockey because he said it was safer than football; and the Finnish-Russian center Aleksander Barkov, whose 48 points in 53 games last season for Tappara Tampere made him the ninth-leading scorer in Finland’s top league. Also expected to go in the first round are the 5-9 London forward Max Domi, who resembles his father, the N.H.L. brawler Tie Domi, but is a skill player with 87 points in 64 games, and Windsor forward Kerby Rychel, son of the former N.H.L. player Warren Rychel, whose 40 goals, 94 penalty minutes and 8 fights last season mark him as a skill player and an enforcer. A player to watch in the later rounds is goalie Anthony Brodeur, son of Devils goalie Martin Brodeur. Anthony, who will play next season for Gatineau of the Quebec junior league, was born 16 days before his father won his first Stanley Cup in 1995. The Islanders pick 15th in the one-day draft, shortened from the usual two days because of the lockout that delayed many late-season events. Because of previous trades, the Rangers do not have a pick until the third round.

Seth Jones
Nathan MacKinnon
Ice hockey
Sports Drafts and Recruits
Colorado Avalanche
NHL


The Golden Years: Travels, Hobbies and a New Job, Too

Abstract: BARBARA RICE, a former high school teacher in Pittsburgh, never gave retirement much thought -- except when she dreamed of how nice it would be not to have to wake up at 5:30 a.m. every day. Then, after 30 years at the same school, she accepted an early-retirement package and suddenly found herself able to do whatever she wanted. That was five years ago. Today, at 57, Mrs. Rice is back at work, not as a teacher but as a bookseller on the floor of a local Borders store. "I don't need the income," she said, "I call it a hobby job." And she has no plans to stop working. "The concept of sitting in a rocking chair and retiring just doesn't exist anymore," she said. While many retirees are still focused on leisure activities, a growing number are returning to the work force. A recent study by Putnam Investments estimated that seven million previously retired people, or about 10 percent of the work force over the age of 40, are now back at work or looking for jobs. And among those, the number of older retirees returning to work is growing quickly. Today, nearly one-fourth of all people in the 65-to-74 age group hold jobs, compared with just one in six just two decades earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Putnam's study found that the number of workers in the 65-to-74 group grew three times as fast as the overall work force last year. Mrs. Rice is one of the fortunate ones: she went back to work because she wanted to. But many Americans find that they have to work in their retirement years to pay the bills. In the Putnam survey, about one-third of those returning to work said they needed the additional income to survive financially. According to Alicia H. Munnell, an economist at Boston College, recent economic research generally indicates that about half of baby boomers are not saving enough to maintain their current living standards in retirement -- unless, of course, they supplement their income by taking jobs. Americans are living longer, but every extra year of life, as well as every medical advance, comes at a cost. At the same time, many companies have shifted from direct-benefit pension plans, in which they provide reliable pensions to long-term employees, to 401(k) plans that generally give the employees the responsibility for saving and investing for retirement. Over all, according to Sarah E. Rix, a senior policy adviser at AARP, only 46 percent of working Americans aged 25 to 64, including part-time and full-time employees, participated in some kind of retirement plan in 2004. Even 401(k) participants may not be putting away enough for their old age. The average 401(k) holds only $39,600, according to Brightwork Partners, a financial services research group in Stamford, Conn. Adrianna Ward, a former pension analyst at AON, the insurance group in Baltimore, knew that she would have to keep working when she retired from the company seven years ago. Ms. Ward, 74, works more than 20 hours a week at Douglas Memorial Federal Credit Union. "I'm a heart patient, and I take all kinds of medicine that I have to pay for," she said. "I'm still able to function well so I work to pay for the medication." Ms. Ward had done volunteer work at the credit union even before she retired. "I'm not sure what I would have done if I couldn't have worked here," she said. "The people in my age bracket, the ones who were teachers or state employees, have good benefits and don't have to work. I worked in the private sector." Like many older Americans, she depends primarily on Social Security. Her Social Security payment is $914 a month. She also receives $288 a month from her pension. (The average Social Security payment for last November was $879.30; the maximum benefit was $2,053, or less than $25,000 a year.) Currently, 9.8 percent of Americans who are 65 or over live in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, which has set the poverty threshold at just over $9,000 a year for a single person over 65. That is about 3.6 million people. An additional 6.7 percent, or 2.3 million, live in financial stress, defined by the Census Bureau as having income up to 25 percent above the poverty line. "A major reason for financial stress is that many of the people over 65 are living only on Social Security benefits and living well over 80 years," said Ms. Rix at AARP. Yet the future of those Social Security benefits may also be uncertain. According to government estimates, over the next 75 years the Social Security trust fund faces a shortfall of about $4 trillion in today's dollars. Worse, the shortfall associated with Medicare over the same period is estimated at around $30 trillion. With all the uncertainty surrounding financial resources for retirement, few people can be sure which camp they will fall into: those who need to work, or those who don't. Investment losses and cuts in pension benefits have hurt retirees in the past and are likely to do so in the future. Many big companies, such as Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Sears and Motorola, have frozen pension plans for many employees recently, saying they cannot afford them. When a company freezes a pension plan, employees stop accruing further benefits under it and many are left to shoulder the additional burden themselves. William J. Szykula of Clarkston, Mich., a former lawyer for the Kmart Corporation who left last year after 27 years of service, is facing this problem. In January 1996, Kmart froze its pension plan and offered an alternative 401(k) retirement savings vehicle. As a result, Mr. Szykula's pension did not realize the old plan's potential. "I imagined I'd be more comfortable," he said. Mr. Szykula, who is married and has two grown sons, left Kmart in July when his position moved to Illinois because of the merger of Kmart and Sears. It was a point at which Mr. Szykula, at 63, might have retired. Instead, he started doing project work for Kelly Services, the global staffing company. "Right now I'm not looking ahead to retirement," he said. "I plan to be around for a while. I consider myself in excellent health, and I want to have enough money over the long haul to sustain myself." While his decision to work is motivated partly by a desire to stay active, he said, it also matters to his finances. "As long as I have a stream of income I can forestall tapping into other resources," he said. While he says he enjoys working at Kelly Services and receives assignments to do legal work for many Fortune 500 companies, he would much rather be in a permanent job. But at 63, he said, he has found it almost impossible to land one. If a shortage of younger workers emerges, as many demographers expect, the job market may readily absorb more older people. But for now, finding a full-time job later in life can be difficult. The experience of people now working in retirement can offer valuable clues for those who come next. One important lesson is that the often-heard advice -- to save for retirement -- may not be enough. Making sure you still have marketable skills as you age may be just as crucial.

PUTNAM INVESTMENTS
OLDER WORKERS
LABOR
FINANCES
SOCIAL SECURITY (US)
RETIREMENT


French Socialists Face Division and Derision After Vote for Leader

Abstract: PARIS — France ’s Socialist Party found itself deeply divided on Sunday and, even worse, harshly mocked. A summer of embarrassing rivalries has culminated in an excruciatingly narrow and disputed vote for a new party leader that is likely to please chiefly the country’s center-right president, Nicolas Sarkozy . The Socialists are known for their intellectual disputes; part of the leadership race involved a vote on political platforms written or supported by the various candidates. But much worse for the party, it is now being ridiculed for its personal enmities and rivalries, making it seem less a serious political alternative than an afternoon soap opera. Jean-Michel Normand, writing for Monday’s Le Monde, a newspaper sympathetic to the party, said bluntly: “You have to believe with the Socialist Party that the worst is always to come.” After a summer marked by open feuding by several candidates for party leader, he wrote, the party “could not imagine a more execrable ending — an unfinished election, followed by accusations of fraud.” The weekly newspaper Journal du Dimanche wondered whether the “s” in the party’s acronym stood for “suicidal” rather than “Socialist,” and the front-page headline shouted: “So Much Hatred!” The paper suggested the party could split, while the front page of Le Parisien showed the party’s rose symbol cut in two, with the headline: “The Rift.” The outcome may prove crucial for a party that has lost the past three presidential elections and came close to splitting in 2005. The Socialists, who last held the presidency under François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1995, had a majority in Parliament as recently as 2002 and remain powerful locally in parts of the countryside and some cities. But its presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal , lost to Mr. Sarkozy last year, as her early image of glamorous modernity gave way to widespread disappointment in her lackluster campaign. Ms. Royal, 55, did not go away. She split with her longtime partner, François Hollande, the party leader, found a new male companion and surprised the party and the pundits when the platform she supported won the most votes. In the party members’ vote for a successor to Mr. Hollande, Ms. Royal won the most votes in the first round. But she narrowly lost the runoff to Martine Aubry , 58, the mayor of Lille and a more doctrinaire party figure, who was responsible, as labor minister a decade ago, for pushing through the 35-hour workweek. In results made public early Saturday, Ms. Aubry won by 42 votes of 134,784 cast; more than 40 percent of the party’s 233,000 members appeared to show their displeasure by declining to vote at all. As recounts in some party chapters were taking place on Sunday, Ms. Royal called for another ballot, claiming fraud and irregularities and stating, “I’m not going to take this.” She threatened legal action, and on Monday her lawyer, Jean-Pierre Mignard, was to ask Mr. Hollande, the father of Ms. Royal’s four children, to annul the vote. He must rule on the request by midweek, when the party’s executive committee is scheduled to meet to certify the results. Ms. Royal’s victory in the policy platform vote two weeks ago gives her greater say on the executive committee, which could herald more infighting. Ms. Aubry, the daughter of a former leader of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, campaigned for the party to be “anchored on the left” and stop trying to move to the center in alliance with the Democratic Movement party of François Bayrou. Ms. Aubry, who is supported by powerful party old-timers known as “the elephants,” ruled out a new ballot, saying there was “no reason” to vote again, and her supporters said they suspected fraud in chapters favoring Ms. Royal. In her victory statement Saturday night, Ms. Aubry said, “Everyone knows our party is not in good health.” Meanwhile, Mr. Sarkozy is improving his popularity through proposals to deal with the financial crisis, using some of the anticapitalist language of the left. And the Socialists are being attacked on the left by a telegenic Trotskyite, Olivier Besancenot , 34, who is forming what is called the New Anticapitalist Party and has higher favorability ratings than Ms. Aubry or Ms. Royal. “If we are not able to get our act together,” Ms. Aubry said this month, “it is perhaps the end of the Socialist Party.” On Sunday, she appealed to Ms. Royal and her supporters to “act responsibly or else our party’s situation will only get worse.” Dominique Paillé, spokesman for Mr. Sarkozy’s party, said simply, “I salute the Socialists’ talent for self-destruction.”

France
Royal Segolene
Aubry Martine
Sarkozy Nicolas
Politics and Government


Georgia: Huge Increase Projected In Diabetes Cases

Abstract: As many as 1 in 3 American adults could have diabetes by 2050, federal officials said Friday in a new projection that represents a threefold increase. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 10 have diabetes now, but the number could grow to 1 in 5 or even 1 in 3 by midcentury if current trends continue. The last estimate put the number at 39 million in 2050. The new estimate takes it to the range of 76 million to 100 million.


Hong Kong Moves Ahead on Reforms

Abstract: HONG KONG — After many years of negotiations and a series of false starts, Hong Kong ’s chief executive and some of the city’s pro-democracy politicians have reached a compromise on a plan to make the legislature at least a little more democratic. To take effect, the plan would need the approval of at least two-thirds of the 60-member legislature in a vote scheduled for Wednesday evening. Pro-Beijing parties, with 36 members of the legislature, endorsed the plan on Monday morning. The Democratic Party, with nine lawmakers, appeared to give the plan the winning margin, barring last-minute defections, when it voted on Monday night to support the compromise, which was drafted by the party’s chairman, Albert Ho. Beijing’s willingness to endorse the compromise, which goes beyond what it has been willing to accept in previous discussions of electoral changes here, represents a rare sign of political flexibility toward Hong Kong, even as political controls on most of mainland China remain tight. In a surprising sign of the mainland’s tolerance for political discussion in Hong Kong, cable television stations across the border from Hong Kong in neighboring Guangdong Province were allowed to transmit without censorship an election law debate last week in Hong Kong. The debate was between Donald Tsang, the chief executive of Hong Kong, and Audrey Eu, the leader of the other big pro-democracy party, the Civic Party. The Civic Party also met on Monday evening, and its members voted to continue to oppose the compromise, because it did not go further in introducing democratic changes. Mr. Tsang said Monday afternoon that the compromise would put Hong Kong on a path toward allowing the public to vote for the chief executive in 2017 and the entire legislature in 2020. “After two decades of protracted argument over constitutional reform, some rapid and encouraging changes have taken place over the last few months,” Mr. Tsang said. But the democracy movement has split so deeply on the plan that there were scuffles among democracy advocates at a rally on Sunday. Some say that the proposal does not move fast enough or go far enough in bringing democracy to Hong Kong. “I cannot be sure that this package is getting us any closer to true universal suffrage,” said Alan Leong, who ran as the pro-democracy candidate for chief executive against Mr. Tsang in 2007. The compromise bill calls for adding 10 seats to the legislature. Five seats would be elected directly by the public. Only the elected members of the city’s 18 district councils, who oversee neighborhood issues like parking and traffic complaints, would be allowed to run for the other five seats, but the public would vote to determine which of these district councilors was elected to the legislature. Permitting the public to vote for all of the 10 additional seats could break a stalemate over the unusual composition of the Hong Kong legislature. Currently, half of the members are elected from geographical constituencies by the public, while half represent professional constituencies like bankers, business owners, lawyers and other categories. Most of the lawmakers from the designated constituencies tend to support Beijing, possibly because many of them have business interests in mainland China. The public tends to vote for pro-democracy candidates. The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing ruled in 2007 that any expansion of the legislature would have to create equal numbers of functional and geographic constituencies. A central goal of the democracy movement has been to eliminate the professional constituencies.

Hong Kong
Law and Legislation
Politics and Government


It’s Official: Simone Biles Is the World’s Best Gymnast

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — Simone Biles, already considered the world’s greatest female gymnast before even competing in the Olympics, emphatically confirmed her standing on Thursday by winning the women’s individual all-around gold medal at the Rio Games. Wearing a stars-and-stripes leotard, Biles, 19, joined Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin and Gabby Douglas as American all-around winners. The American Aly Raisman, 22, won the silver, and Aliya Mustafina, 21, of Russia won bronze. Image Simone Biles, left, and Aly Raisman. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Victory in this event brings lucrative endorsements and widespread adoration, a popularity bonanza fueled by a prime-time showcase of athletic artistry. At 4 feet 9 inches, with size 5 feet, Biles is someone that young viewers can relate to. Then she performs, and her abilities are unimaginable. Her ascent has been sudden to those who follow gymnastics only every four years. At the last Summer Games, in London in 2012, Douglas was the show-stopper. Biles arrived here from Texas and gave the Rio Games a performance for the ages. Whether you know an Amanar from an aardvark, you watch her not because the result is in doubt but rather to witness something without equal. Image Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Image Biles on the balance beam. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times The first rotation on Thursday for the top gymnasts was the vault, and both Biles and Raisman broke out their Amanars. In that challenging vault, the gymnast performs a round-off onto the board and then a back handspring onto the table. She then completes two-and-a-half twists before a blind landing. Biles, as usual, flew higher and farther than anyone else, though she took a big step on her landing. It was enough for the top score of the day. Raisman also pulled off her Amanar, and the two Americans were one-two after one rotation. But after the uneven bars, Biles was in an unfamiliar place: second place. A strong performance by Mustafina, the 2012 champion in the bars, and a pedestrian one by Biles put the Russian ahead by a small margin. Raisman slipped to fourth. Image Aly Raisman on the floor exercise. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times The score for Biles was lower than she has been used to getting. The bars is her weakest event, but the disappointment would shake some competitors and cause them to lose focus. But Biles isn’t just any competitor. She’s a three-time world champion. Biles looked a little nervous on the balance beam, wobbling at one point. But she made a great landing. After Mustafina over-rotated her full turn, had a few balance checks and left out a front aerial. Biles was back in front, and Raisman moved into third. Image Aliya Mustafina of Russia on the balance beam. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times The competition culminated with the floor exercise. Biles’s first pass is a full-twisting double layout, and she followed that with her “Biles,” a double layout with a half twist, then a stag leap. Her third and fourth passes were just as phenomenal. Her coach Aimee Boorman cried as Biles came off the floor. Her score: 15.933, the highest of the day on any apparatus. Raisman nailed her own difficult tumbling passes to grab the silver.

2016 Summer Olympics
Simone Biles
Aly Raisman
Aliya Mustafina
Gymnastics


For Jets’ Todd Bowles, a Lifetime of Calmly Facing Challenges

Abstract: The day Todd Bowles was almost attacked while coming home from football practice, he was 8, maybe 9. The boys were older and bigger, he said, and they had chains. When they jumped in front of Bowles in Elizabeth, N.J., his friends scattered, but he could not. Left to fend for himself, Bowles escaped when someone yelled at the boys to stop, and the police escorted him home. No one in his family wanted him to go play again the next day, but he did anyway. He left the apartment carrying a baseball bat, just in case, and took the same route to the field and the same route back. More than a decade later, when Bowles was a student at Temple, he was accosted again. Walking with his girlfriend in West Philadelphia, he said, Bowles was approached by a man eager to pick a fight. So Bowles obliged. Upon returning to his dormitory that night, Bowles told his friends what had happened. At the end of the story, he laughed. “He’s like, ‘Come on, man, my neighborhood is tougher than this. I can’t believe this guy tried me,’ ” said the former N.F.L. running back Paul Palmer, who played with Bowles at Temple. “Todd may be quiet, but he sure as hell ain’t passive.” This reserved but steely side of Bowles has pervaded his first eight months coaching the Jets . Faced with the hurly-burly of their tabloid existence, Bowles has projected a calm but firm demeanor throughout a turbulent summer, reshaping their identity by leaving no doubt about who was running the team. Image Bowles, top right, played college football for Temple, choosing its scholarship offer over one from Rutgers. Credit Temple University His emotions churned when he was told of two drug suspensions, the resisting-arrest charge that surfaced hours after the team’s first training-camp practice and the altercation that left the presumptive starting quarterback with a broken jaw. But Bowles quelled his frustration and assessed each situation, just as he learned to do by growing up in a housing project rife with crime and drug abuse, or by decoding offensive formations in a nanosecond as an N.F.L. free safety, or by devising such hellacious defensive game plans that mentors wondered how a modest man could unleash such fury on the field. Billy Nagy, one of Bowles’s former football coaches at Elizabeth High, said that when he watched Bowles’s news conferences, he was reminded of the mature guy who played for him 35 years ago — same confidence, same composure. Rodney Carter, one of Bowles’s lifelong friends, said: “In all my time knowing him, nothing’s ever really gotten to Todd. He was always in control. You know that commercial, ‘Never let them see you sweat’? That’s him.” Instead of submitting to the temptations that suffused the Pioneer Homes project, Bowles, 51, inherited his resolve from his mother, who, after divorcing his father, raised four children while juggling jobs as a librarian and pharmaceutical lab assistant. He did not smoke or drink or do drugs. His lone vice, friends say, is Chips Ahoy cookies, which he would take to restaurants and eat, complemented by two glasses of milk. Bowles abides by the adage “He who hesitates will be left,” spoken by Flip Wilson’s character in the 1974 comedy “Uptown Saturday Night.” The portrait of him that emerges from interviews with nearly 30 people who know him well is of a man who has been preparing most of his life for this moment: his first game as a noninterim N.F.L. head coach, Sunday against the Cleveland Browns. He has the can’t-surprise-me mettle of someone who not only witnessed a murder outside a pizza parlor but also had to adapt after being elevated twice during seasons to replace fired coaches. He has the humility of an eight-year N.F.L. veteran who arrived at his first training camp scrapping for a roster spot and wound up retiring a Super Bowl champion. He has the credibility to relate to the emotions and insecurities that can undulate through a locker room. “He’s like the quiet storm,” said Kenny Bowles, one of Todd’s two older brothers. “If you don’t watch out for him, he’s coming. Trust me, he’s coming.” Image Bowles, in a photograph provided by Elizabeth Public Schools, pitching for Elizabeth High School in 1980. Taking After His Mother The day Todd Bowles’s best friend died, he was 45. His mother, Joan, succumbed to cancer in 2009. Among the four children, Kenny said, it is Todd, the youngest, who most takes after her. Just as his mother expected fastidiousness from her children, who were tasked with laying out their clothes every night before bed, Bowles is so neat that in college he would fold his laundry before placing it in the hamper. And just as she would hum along to the doo-wop or Motown hits that wafted through the apartment, Bowles mastered the Temptations’ dance moves and fell asleep to a rhythm-and-blues radio station. Joan Bowles had a rule: homework before sports. And Bowles loved sports, especially baseball (the Yankees, in particular) and football, which he and his friends would play at Jackson Park or Brophy Field or in one of the courtyards at the projects. If he was playing quarterback, Bowles pretended he was Bert Jones. Running back? Chuck Foreman. His neighborhood teemed with great athletes, so Bowles had to prove himself daily. “You got better,” Bowles said, “or you got beat down.” By the 10th grade, he pitched for the varsity team, fooling base runners with a lethal pickoff move. At 6 feet 2 inches and 195 pounds, he played running back and tight end, cornerback and safety, thriving in the aggressive defense and nurturing environment of a new coach, Don Somma. The day Somma accepted the job, he heard “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead on his car radio. That song became the team’s anthem, commemorated by T-shirts. He preached unity and respect and accountability. Players vacationed with coaches at the Jersey Shore and dressed up to eat with them at fancy restaurants. A chart near the entrance of the weight room listed players’ grades and attendance, and their performance in each affected their standing on the depth chart. Not once, Somma said, did he have to worry about Bowles. When scholarship offers arrived, with Bowles choosing Temple over Rutgers, the community rejoiced. “He was the first guy that I could actually touch who was going to go to college,” said Anthony Rose, who grew up with Bowles in Pioneer Homes. “I said, Whoa, if Todd can do this, then I can, too.” Overcoming a Wrist Injury The day Todd Bowles was told he would never play football again, he was 21. Summer practice at Temple had just ended, or so thought Bowles, a fifth-year senior. His coach, Bruce Arians, demanded one final goal-line session. Leaping to knock down the ball, Bowles did not hit anybody, or anything. Extending his left hand — his dominant hand — to break his fall, Bowles landed on his wrist, rolling on top of it. He dislocated six bones. Three pins were inserted. Doctors told him he would develop arthritis later in life. They also said his career was over. Bowles, who taught himself to write with his right hand, thought otherwise. He missed the first half of the season and returned wearing a cast that looked like a club. When he attended the N.F.L. scouting combine, Bowles could not do a bench press or a push-up. “Who’s going to want a one-arm safety?” he said. Washington did, though not enough to spend one of its 11 draft picks on him. Bowles opted to sign with Washington because, at the time, the team had few safeties. From the outset, Bowles impressed the coaching staff with his toughness and intelligence. Washington used multiple defensive schemes, and Bowles had to learn all of them, as well as the responsibilities for all 11 players. In the defensive coordinator Richie Petitbon’s system, the free safety was tasked with relaying the defensive call in the huddle and then making any changes at the line of scrimmage. His teammates could afford flashes of mental paralysis, but Bowles could not. Image Growing up, Bowles loved sports, especially baseball and football, which he and his friends played at Jackson Park or Brophy Field in Elizabeth, N.J. Credit Ben Solomon for The New York Times “One thing about football players, you really can’t fool them,” Petitbon said. “They know who’s good and who’s bad, and Todd was flawless.” Brad Edwards, who played two seasons with him in Washington, said Bowles would regularly question the team’s defensive strategy in position meetings, telling the position coach Emmitt Thomas how a particular call left the defense vulnerable. “There was always pushing in his mind,” said Thomas, who now coaches the Kansas City Chiefs’ secondary. “He was always a step ahead of defensive signals we were calling, wondering, ‘If we were doing this, what’s the counterpunch?’ He could almost feel it coming.” Even as Bowles revealed an early penchant for dropping interceptions — doctors later discovered weakness in his left eye that affected his depth perception — coaches valued his acumen. At one point he started 65 consecutive games over five seasons with the Redskins, winning a Super Bowl in the 1987 season. He spent a year with San Francisco before finishing his career in Washington. Bowles maximized his physical ability but recognized his football mortality. All that hitting — at practice daily, on special teams, on defense — produced nagging injuries. He was beaten up. He started slowing down. He was 30. “Usually, when a coach tells you to run through a brick wall, you run through a brick wall,” Bowles said. “When you start counting the bricks, it’s time to retire. I started counting the bricks.” Answering a Plea The day Todd Bowles did what he never thought he would do and became a coach, he was 33. Thomas, his former position coach, advised him to take two years off from football, to see if he missed it. Bowles spent those first two years of retirement owning a gym and a construction company, relishing how time away from football had helped his body heal. He then worked another two years as a scout for the Green Bay Packers. Image Todd Bowles, breaking up a pass during Super Bowl XXII, played seven seasons for Washington. Credit Focus on Sport/Getty Images Then came a plea from his former Washington teammate Doug Williams, who had been hired at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Williams knew he wanted Bowles to run his defense. The team practiced in a park, about five miles from campus, and the coaches lined the field with chalk themselves. “Like a penny with a hole in it,” Bowles said. “But we had fun. That taught me how to coach because there was nothing there. You got to learn how to coach. You got to learn people.” Williams said: “You’re dealing with a lot of young African-American kids coming from single-parent homes that were looking for direction. We got the best out of those kids because of Todd Bowles. He understood who he was dealing with because he knew how.” Bowles accompanied Williams to Grambling a year later, then after two seasons bolted to the N.F.L. in 2000 to coach the Jets’ secondary. When Coach Al Groh took the job at Virginia, Bowles headed to Cleveland, where, in charge of the Browns’ nickel packages, he engendered tremendous loyalty from the defensive backs. When Bowles diagramed schemes on the overhead projector, Earl Little, a safety on those teams, would tell himself, “This is definitely going to work.” As the players stretched during practice, Bowles would pepper them with sports or movie trivia. He developed relationships through deep conversations about family. He further earned their trust by analyzing opponents’ offensive tendencies so thoroughly that he could predict interceptions before they happened. Before Cleveland’s second game against Cincinnati in 2001, Bowles told the team’s nickel corner, Daylon McCutcheon, that if he ran to a certain spot on the field when the Bengals’ receivers ran a double dig, he would turn around and see the ball coming. “It happened just like he said,” said McCutcheon, now the Jets’ assistant secondary coach. During Bowles’s four seasons in Cleveland, the Browns intercepted 80 passes — including 33 in 2001, which remains the most in a single season since 1997. He would stalk the sideline looking for offensive tells, creeping onto the field in games against Pittsburgh, for instance, to remind players that the versatile receiver Antwaan Randle El was a threat to throw on a reverse. Image Bowles graduated from Elizabeth High School in 1981. “When we went into a game,” the former Cleveland safety Robert Griffith said, “it was us and Todd.” By then, Bowles ranked among the league’s sharpest young defensive minds, adapting his philosophy from Petitbon, who said he believed that the best way to beat the opposing quarterback is having him sit most of the time. As Bowles’s profile soared, he zipped to Dallas, where for three years he tutored the Cowboys’ secondary, and then to Miami, where he finished his fourth and final year by going 2-1 as interim coach after Tony Sparano was fired. “When he took over, there was no rah-rah speech or fancy PowerPoint presentation,” said Jets receiver Brandon Marshall, who played two seasons in Miami when Bowles was there. “He just treats guys like men and expects you to do your job. He holds you accountable.” The tumult in Miami prepared Bowles for his lone season in Philadelphia, in 2012, when Coach Andy Reid dealt with the specter of being fired while still grieving the death of a son from a drug overdose. Reid’s strength awed Bowles, who, in less dire circumstances two years later, projected the same unflappability last season to the Cardinals’ defense. After losing critical players to injury (Darnell Dockett and John Abraham) and suspension (Daryl Washington), Bowles demanded more from those who remained. On third downs, he sent out seven or eight defensive backs. Arizona, which finished 11-5, ranked fifth in scoring defense. “Todd understands that everything is not a crisis,” said the Cardinals’ secondary coach, Nick Rapone, who was Bowles’s position coach at Temple. “He will not panic, I’ll tell you. He has a plan for everything, believe me.” A Shared History The day Todd Bowles was hired to coach the Jets, he was 51. It was Jan. 13, and he was picked up at Newark Liberty International Airport by an intern and the team’s new general manager, Mike Maccagnan. Image Todd Bowles coaching the Jets during a preseason game against Atlanta last month. Credit Ben Solomon for The New York Times On the ride, they passed signs for Elizabeth, which is about 23 miles from the Jets’ site in Florham Park, and Maccagnan and Bowles chatted about their shared history. The two Garden State natives crossed paths 30 years back at Redskins camp, though they did not realize it until then. Maccagnan at one point asked Bowles his playing weight. About 205, Bowles said. How about now? Maccagnan asked. About 250, Bowles said. “I remember you were much smaller,” Maccagnan told him. The men laughed. “It was very comfortable,” Maccagnan said. Whenever Bowles interviewed for head-coaching positions in the past — in Detroit, Denver, Dallas and elsewhere — but did not get the job, he did not sulk, friends said. They picked someone else, he would tell them, so let’s get back to work. This time, though, he had a feeling. After a three-hour conversation with Maccagnan that focused on football, Bowles left the room. The owner, Woody Johnson, spoke briefly with Maccagnan, who gave his full endorsement. “He’s not trying to copy somebody else,” Maccagnan said. “He’s his own man.” Then Johnson extended Bowles the offer. When Anthony Young, his former teammate and roommate at Temple, visited Bowles at training camp recently, he thought of Joan, who didn’t like to travel. How close she would have been to MetLife Stadium, where Bowles will guide the Jets in the first stage of their quest to make the postseason again. Since taking over, Bowles has not visited Elizabeth much. His close friends and family are gone, and he barely recognizes his old neighborhood. Except, that is, for the White Castle, which he meant to patronize in June, when he spoke at the high school’s graduation. He intends to be here for a while, so next time, Bowles said. Next time.

Football
Todd Bowles
Coaches
Mike Maccagnan
Jets
Elizabeth NJ