Predators Gone, Small Fish Get Bolder — Observatory

Abstract: Little fish are cautious and timid around big, hungry fish, and rightly so. But when populations of predators like tuna and shark shrink because of human fishing, small prey are more adventurous, according to a coming study in The American Naturalist. “They took bigger excursions to feed, or to go to find mates,” said Elizabeth Madin, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Dr. Madin did the research in the remote Line Islands, in the central Pacific Ocean, while pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Using snorkels, scuba equipment and video cameras, she and her colleagues captured the behavior of more than 600 parrotfish, damselfish and surgeonfish. Two of the northern Line Islands are owned by the United States, which has designated them a protected no-fishing zone. Three other islands are part of the Republic of Kiribati and are home to active human settlements that fish. In waters untouched by humans, the researchers found that the little fish were spotty in their feeding habits. Some parts of the coral reefs, where fish feed on seaweed, were heavily grazed. In other areas, perhaps where predators lurked, there were large tufts of untouched seaweed. But where fishing was happening, their grazing formed a more even pattern across the reefs. Further study is needed, but this feeding pattern could affect coral growth, since coral grows where seaweed is not present, Dr. Madin said.

Fish and Other Marine Life
Seaweed
Reefs
Research
Science and Technology


Ethan Couch, ‘Affluenza’ Teenager, Granted Delay in Deportation

Abstract: Federal marshals said Wednesday that it was uncertain when Ethan Couch, the Texas teenager known for using an “affluenza” defense in a fatal drunken-driving case, would be returned to the United States from Mexico to face charges of violating his parole. Mr. Couch, 18, and his mother, Tonya, 48, were arrested Monday night in Puerto Vallarta after the United States Marshals Service tipped off the Mexican authorities to their location. Mrs. Couch was returned to the United States about midnight Wednesday, arriving at Los Angeles International Airport after being deported from Mexico. She was turned over to the Los Angeles Police Department and booked into the city jail, said Donna Sellers, a spokeswoman for the marshals service. It was unclear why she was returned to Los Angeles rather than Texas, but Ms. Sellers said the handling of her case was now up to the Texas authorities. Mr. Couch was made famous by the successful defense that he should not go to prison for killing four people in an accident because he suffered from too much privilege stemming from his family’s wealth. The mother and son fled the Fort Worth area, where they lived, earlier this month after a video was posted that appeared to show Mr. Couch drinking at a party, and prosecutors began looking into whether he had violated probation. The pair absconded to Mexico in early December, where they remained until the authorities were tipped off last week by American authorities that the mother and son were living in an apartment in a non-touristy part of the resort town. An official close to the case said that Mexican authorities pinpointed their location thanks to a tip from a neighbor, who called the police after a verbal altercation with Mrs. Couch. Mr. Couch and his mother had been scheduled to be flown back to the United States from Guadalajara on Wednesday or Thursday, before Mexican officials granted them a delay . Mr. Couch remained in Guadalajara on Wednesday after his mother was deported while officials processed the motion delaying his return to the United States, the Mexican police authority said. The Most Wanted Fugitives Still On the Run Though the case of Ethan Couch has captured widespread attention, many fugitives from decades ago have faded from the headlines, and remain a concern for law enforcement officials. Image The building where Ethan Couch, 18, and his mother, Tonya, 48, stayed in the beach resort town of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Credit Henry Romero/Reuters Richard Hunter, the chief deputy marshal in Houston, said it probably would take at least two weeks for the Mexican courts to sort it out, “and it’s much longer than that usually.” Mr. Hunter said he hoped the Mexican court “will make a quick and decisive decision,” adding that the Couches have enough money to prolong the process. But, “we do not have a time frame,” he said. “We do not know if the Mexicans have the highest priority on this case like we do in America.” Mrs. Couch faces a charge of hindering apprehension, punishable by two to 10 years in prison, and the Tarrant County sheriff, Dee Anderson, said on Wednesday that she would be served a warrant as “soon as her feet hit U.S. soil.” On June 15, 2013, Mr. Couch, then 16, and some friends stole beer from a store. They later went for a drive, with Mr. Couch behind the wheel. Speeding on a dark country road, the pickup truck he was driving plowed into four pedestrians, killing them, and hit two vehicles before flipping over. A teenager who was among Mr. Couch’s passengers was thrown from the vehicle and was left paralyzed with brain damage. Hours after the accident, Mr. Couch’s blood alcohol level was tested at 0.24 percent, triple the legal limit for an adult. He pleaded guilty to four counts of manslaughter. His case made headlines when a psychologist testified for the defense that Mr. Couch had “affluenza” and was too influenced by privilege and his parents’ permissiveness to know right from wrong. A judge appeared to accept the argument, handing down a sentence of 10 years’ probation , not prison. Sheriff Anderson told CNN that his department’s investigation was continuing to look into Mr. Couch’s plans to disappear. Reports that Mr. Couch had something of a farewell party before leaving leaves open the possibility that others may been involved, Mr. Anderson said. The party, he said, “shows the arrogance of the family; they don’t believe the law applies.” “Had justice been served two years ago, we would have never had to go through this,” Sheriff Anderson said, adding that he hopes they now “understand that they, too, are accountable to the laws of Texas.” But apparently not while in Mexico. The official, based in the state capital of Guadalajara, said that their investigation showed Mr. Couch was regularly driving while living in Mexico.

Ethan Couch
Tonya Couch
Mexico
Probation and Parole
Driving Under the Influence DUI
Fort Worth TX
Texas


The Rally, an Enduring Ritual of Politics Loud and Close

Abstract: WESTERVILLE, Ohio — By 7 a.m. on Wednesday, supporters hoping to catch a glimpse of Mitt Romney extended for two blocks outside Westerville South High School in this suburb of Columbus, the site of a “victory rally” hastily shifted from an outdoor amphitheater when the forecast called for rain. A dozen or so demonstrators, watched over by a lone police officer, taunted the Romney supporters, waving a giant check for $250,000 made out to “Millionaires” and signed by Mr. Romney. “We don’t want a Bain economy!” they shouted. “Outsource Romney!” But the millionaires were somewhere else. Plutocrats do not go to campaign rallies, not when the principal speaker takes the stage an hour after the workday has begun. The 2,000 Romney supporters on hand were not the 1 percent. Maybe the 50 percent. There was not a jacket, a tie or a pair of Italian shoes in a crowd that favored T-shirts, sweatshirts and sneakers. This was a slice of Middle America, with not a nonwhite face in sight: mothers pulling small children by the hand, retirees, high school students who had wangled a day away from school. A few hours later, more than 5,000 Democrats converged on the Stroh Center at Bowling Green State University, about 115 miles to the northwest, where President Obama held his own rally. It was the first stop in a two-stop tour that would take him to Kent State University in the late afternoon, while Mr. Romney, traveling by bus, made his way to Cleveland and then to Toledo, just 25 miles up Interstate 75 from Bowling Green. University students seemed to make up nearly half of the audience at the Stroh Center. Dozens of black supporters turned up, too, in a county that is 94 percent white. No one waved an American flag, a stark contrast to the Romney rally, where supporters began the event by singing the national anthem. Instead, they held out cellphones, clicking furiously from the moment that the president, jacket off but tie on, took the stage. Crisscrossing the state, barely managing not to trip over each other, the two candidates enacted a ritual nearly as old as the republic. Roaming hither and yon, they beat the bushes for votes, relying on the most primitive forms of political expression: the fist-pounding stump speech and the handshake. But why? Flying hundreds or thousands of miles to deliver a stemwinder to a few thousand voters would seem to make as much sense, in the era of the blog and the tweet and the 24-hour news cycle, as making your own suit. Yet the rally persists, essentially unchanged since the days of Andrew Jackson. “In the old days, candidates had to go to rallies,” said Melissa Miller, a political scientist at Bowling Green. “That was the only way for the people to hear them. Now, they’re all about rallying the base, igniting a spark that motivates supporters to tell their friends, to make calls, to donate. It’s much more effective than robocalls.” Traditionally, the political rally has been first cousin to the tent revival and the traveling circus. That tradition continues, although these days it serves other purposes: to gather e-mail addresses, sign up volunteers, raise money and produce images for television and newspaper coverage. Outside the Romney rally, souvenir peddlers worked the crowd, selling buttons, T-shirts and Mitt Romney oven mitts with the message “Don’t Get Burned.” “Friends don’t let friends vote Democrat,” chanted one salesman, pushing a display placard of campaign buttons. “Wake up and smell the socialism.” Nearby, another button seller shouted, “Vote for the Mormon, not the moron!” Phil Phinn, a souvenir seller from Sarasota, Fla., said that he and two fellow workers drove 10,000 to 15,000 miles a month following what he called “the hot campaigns.” He still waits for the second coming of Sarah Palin. “She was the goose that laid the golden egg,” he recalled wistfully. “She was magic. She just sold and sold and sold.” Inside the high school, Mr. Romney, sticking to a traditional format, invited state politicians to warm up the crowd. Anne Gonzales, a state representative and a Westerville native, spoke first, followed by Representative Pat Tiberi; Gov. John R. Kasich, another Westerville product; and — last but emphatically not least — the Golden Bear himself, Jack Nicklaus, Columbus’s hometown hero. All hit the high notes of the campaign, revving up the audience with a heartfelt medley of greatest hits: smaller government, lower taxes, a stronger military and more jobs. Any mention of thrift, fiscal responsibility or long marriages — Mr. Nicklaus has been married for 52 years, Mr. Romney for 43 — went over particularly well. Mr. Romney drew thunderous applause when he said, “You don’t spend more money than you take in, or you go out of business.” Hecklers appeared in the balcony. Mr. Romney’s supporters, initially caught off guard, regrouped and began chanting “U.S.A.” as the protesters were led away by security officers. Like his opponent, Mr. Obama delivered no new news, and no one minded. He whipped the crowd into a froth by calling for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, economic justice, social tolerance and robust government. Then, as Bruce Springsteen poured from the sound system, he moved straight for the front rows and began shaking hands. It was hot and up-close politics for both candidates. And it did go over better than a robocall. “I felt the history of the moment,” Vaneta Rogers, of Gahanna, Ohio, said after the Romney rally. “It made me think about Abraham Lincoln speaking from the stump. To think that a presidential candidate would come to a small town like ours — it sort of gives you goose bumps.”

Presidential Election of 2012
United States Politics and Government
Obama Barack
Romney Mitt
Ohio


Evidence of Hope and Loss During a Parade in Queens

Abstract: There were the usual caps dotted with shamrocks; bunting in the green, white and orange of the Irish flag; and the nasal hum of bagpipes. While some of the bands marching in the Rockaways on Saturday were from schools that had been flooded out by Hurricane Sandy and some of the spectators watching from the sidewalks were still living in temporary quarters because their homes were either badly damaged or destroyed, the Queens County St. Patrick’s Day Parade seemed to make a special effort to hew to its nearly four decades of tradition. Yet evidence of the storm’s devastation and the peninsula’s painful struggles to recover and rebuild just over four months on were inescapable. Green-clad marchers shouted for new jetties to be built, packs of relief workers marched between step dancers and fire trucks, and all along the parade route were the scarred husks of local landmarks consumed by flames on the night of the hurricane. “We go through problems, but human beings are able to cry and laugh at the same time,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said before the parade began. “We have to celebrate how far we’ve come and what the hope is for the future.” Mr. Bloomberg, wearing a sash that said “Thanks” in Gaelic, stood with many local politicians and community leaders in front of what was left of the Harbor Light Pub on Newport Avenue in Belle Harbor. The bar, which became a de facto memorial to the several dozen people from the Rockaways, including a son of the owner, who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, burned to the ground during the hurricane. Ellen Mendonca noted that just blocks away was the place where American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in November 2001, killing 260 people on board and five on the ground. “This community has gotten hit by everything,” said Ms. Mendonca, 60, who was marching with placards calling for barriers to be built along the water, “but we’re still walking.” Chugging along Newport Avenue was “Big Jack,” the chunky fire truck of the Point Breeze Volunteer Fire Department in Breezy Point. The truck, which had been submerged in seawater as wind-fueled fires incinerated more than 120 homes, had been redone anew. Following the truck were members of the volunteer group Occupy Sandy and a squadron of Mormon volunteers in yellow shirts, who earned shouts of approval from the crowd. “I feel like part of this community now; these are my families,” James Killoran, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Westchester, said. “To see what they’ve gone through, to be there with them, it’s an honor.” He added that he had been working on rebuilding efforts in the Rockaways for 111 days. Whoops went up as he marched. “It’s not easy to suffer with people,” he said. A block from the parade, away from the T-shirts with cheeky Irish slogans and shamrock-painted cheeks, was evidence of the rebuilding efforts. On nearly every block workers toiled away on storm-wrecked homes, the whine of buzz saws competing with the bagpipes keening in the distance. “When I came back, I cried. I cried,” said Grace McGovern, 79, who had fled before the storm and vividly recalled the devastation when she returned. “It hurts, but yet the people, they’re so good,” she added, watching the parade from a beach chair near a burned-out ruin. “It will come back, it will. And stronger.”

Hurricane Sandy
Parade
Saint Patrick's Day
Rockaway Peninsula Queens


Jeff Gordon Earns Pole at Talladega

Abstract: Jeff Gordon won the 80th pole of his career with a blistering lap (194.793 miles per hour) around Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Gordon will have all three of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates surrounding him at the start of Sunday’s 500-mile race.

Car Racing
Jeff Gordon
Kasey Kahne
Talladega Superspeedway


Shaped by Camp, Alumni Fight to Prevent Its Move

Abstract: RED HOOK, N.Y. — They were teenagers spending a summer or two at sleepaway camp, but the memories never left them. Decades later, with those campers in middle and old age, the memories are stoking a fight to keep Camp Rising Sun where it is for other generations of youngsters. Darren Aronofsky, 46, the Oscar-nominated director of “Black Swan,” remembers carrying logs down to Saw Mill Creek to build a sauna as a 16-year-old. It was the same creek where Pete Seeger spent time as a camper in the 1930s. He recalls spending a night alone by a campfire in a ritual known as Vigil, writing a letter to himself that would be opened when he was 21 so that he could take measure of how much he had grown. Eli Attie, who became a special assistant to President Bill Clinton and a leading writer of the television shows “The West Wing” and “House,” remembers gaining a more cosmopolitan view of life in the summers of 1982 and ’83 by meeting boys from around the world and “beginning to see myself as part of a community in relation to other people.” Image Darren Aronofsky, standing, at the camp in 1984. Credit Javier Carrasco “It was the first time in my life that I wanted to work hard on things that weren’t just for me,” Mr. Attie said. These formative memories help explain why a remarkable group of alumni — numbering over 600, according to J. C. Calderón, founder of the SaveCRS Group — has been battling to sustain the unconventional 85-year-old summer camp at its two locations. The group has set up a website , started a petition drive, and cajoled former campers to make big donations. Camp Rising Sun, known for its highly selective and global makeup, its free tuition and its emphasis on cultivating leaders, has been grappling with a $10 million gap in what board members regard as an endowment large enough to finance camp operations. This past summer, the camp season was cut back from seven weeks to four each for boys and girls . Facing an estimated $2 million in costs to refurbish aging buildings, broken toilets and an outmoded kitchen, the governing board a year ago announced a plan to sell the boys’ site here (on the border with Rhinebeck) and the girls’ site a dozen miles south in Clinton Corners, N.Y., and move to a single, more economical and modern location, possibly in Pennsylvania. After a feverish debate among alumni, the governing board announced on Friday that a flurry of last-minute donations helped the camp reach a goal of $550,000 that will allow it to reopen next year for a full seven-week session at its present sites. Image A sign pointing to a place where campers can pitch their tents. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Many of the nation’s 7,000 sleepaway camps found themselves reeling after the financial meltdown of 2007-8, and some boarded up their cabins. But few have a worldwide alumni network that refuses to let a beloved touchstone of childhood disappear or move elsewhere. The camp, which never hosts more than 120 teenagers, has produced such alumni as Neil Rudenstine, a former Harvard president; the film director Sidney Lumet; a former secretary of the Army, Clifford Alexander Jr.; and a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, Itamar Rabinovich. The thought of moving infuriated alumni like Mr. Aronofsky, who felt a single location would damage “the recipe.” Mr. Attie compared forsaking the site to losing another landmark of his youth. “Should Harvard Yard move to Connecticut and become Hartford Yard?” Mr. Attie, a Harvard alumnus, said. “Places have a history based on the place itself, on the physical grounds.” Dr. Patrick G. O’Malley, a Bethesda, Md., internist and 1980 camper who is board chairman of the Louis August Jonas Foundation, which owns Camp Rising Sun, remains agnostic on how essential the historical locations are. He praised the alumni for “rising to the occasion” but added that “the future remains uncertain” and could not assure that the camp could sustain both sites. Already, the board needs to raise an additional $1.3 million by next September. Image Pete Seeger, center, who camped at Rising Sun in 1935, in an alumni photo in July 2012. Credit LAJF archives “The magic is not in the property but in the program itself,” he said. The camp was started in 1930 by George E. Jonas, whose family made a fortune in felt hats. Mr. Jonas, known to generations of campers as Freddie, wanted to guide less privileged boys toward lives of service, and bought a 167-acre tract here for a camp. He set up a foundation named for his father with a rich endowment so that boys from a variety of backgrounds, many poor, could attend free for one or two seasons. He kept the camp small, though it grew to 60 boys in the next few decades, with over 70 countries represented. The girls camp was started in 1989. The camp offers typical summer activities, including swimming and table tennis. Campers sleep in tents set up on platforms, and they run things as much as possible, serving as sachems (an Algonquin Indian word for chief) for a day or a week and coming up with projects like construction of a sauna, totem pole or treehouse. There are sachems for more mundane matters, too, like peeling potatoes. There are personal projects as well. Mr. Aronofsky painted expressive faces on a dead tree — which is still there, along with the sauna. Dr. O’Malley remembers a venture into theater marketing: putting up posters for the camp’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance.” Image From left: Helene Mattera, the camp's program director; Stephen Bang, a camper in 1965 and '66 and a member of SaveCRS Group; and Damian Brennan, vice president and chief information officer at Artco Group, who was a camper in the summer of 1987. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Potential campers are interviewed and selected on merit and geographical diversity, with the board working with a group of high schools in this country and abroad. In New York, the schools include Hunter College High School, Horace Mann School and Stuyvesant High School. The purchase of the Clinton Corners site as a girls’ camp, while widely applauded, took $1 million out of the endowment, and made it harder to assure free tuition. The endowment stood at $16 million before the beginning of the recession in 2007 — and is now $12 million, according to Dr. O’Malley. Many alumni feel that the board’s plan for a single location would mean losing the virtue of letting boys and girls develop separately without the distractions and pressures of being around the opposite sex. Tonya Buckler, 44, who served on the girls’ staff for six years and directed the camp for one, joined the largely male alumni group in fighting to keep the camps where they are. “Just because something gets old, you shouldn’t throw it away,” she said. On Friday, two opponents in the debate toured the deserted camp here at the request of a reporter and often had clashing views on the buildings’ viability. Stephen Bang, summers of 1965 and ’66, argued that “memory is tied to place.” Damian Brennan, summer of 1987, said he believed in looking forward. A more modern, efficient site would assure that “50 years from now, poor smart kids would benefit.”

Camping
Darren Aronofsky
Endowments
Sidney Lumet
Pete Seeger
Rhinebeck NY


Contractors Back From Iraq Suffer Trauma From Battle

Abstract: WASHINGTON, July 4 — Contractors who have worked in Iraq are returning home with the same kinds of combat-related mental health problems that afflict United States military personnel, according to contractors, industry officials and mental health experts. But, they say, the private workers are largely left on their own to find care, and their problems often go ignored or are inadequately treated. A vast second army, one of contractors — up to 126,000 Americans, Iraqis and other foreigners — is working for the United States government in Iraq. Many work side-by-side with soldiers and are exposed to the same dangers, but they mostly must fend for themselves in navigating the civilian health care system when they come back to the United States. With no widespread screening, many workers are not identified as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other problems, mental health experts and contractors say. And, they add, the quality of treatment for others can vary widely because of limited civilian expertise in combat-related disorders. Only a few mental health professionals have focused on the issue, but they warn that the number of contractors leaving Iraq with mental health problems is large and growing. “I think the numbers are in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands,” said Paul Brand, a psychologist and chief executive of Mission Critical Psychological Services, a Chicago firm hired by Dyncorp International, a major contractor in Iraq, to assess and treat its workers. “Many are going undiagnosed. These guys are fighting demons, and they don’t know how to cope.” Jana Crowder, who runs a Web site for contractors seeking help, says she gets new evidence of that every day in phone calls from desperate workers. “In the first few years of the war, we were seeing a few trickle in,” said Ms. Crowder, of Knoxville, Tenn. “Now, as contractors start coming home, you are starting to see a lot more.” Workers tell haunting tales of their psychological torment. Tate Mallory, a police officer from South Dakota who worked as a Dyncorp police trainer, was grievously wounded by a rocket-powered grenade last fall. After returning home, he was so mentally scarred, he said, that he begged his brother to kill him. Kenneth Allen, a 70-year-old truck driver from Georgia whose convoy was ambushed in Iraq, says he endures mood swings and jittery nerves and is often awake all night. And Nathaniel Anderson, a Texan whose truck was hit by rockets while hauling jet fuel, lost a contractor friend to suicide. Though suffering from stress-related symptoms himself, he has yet to see a doctor. The toll of the war on contractors has largely been hidden from public view. About 1,000 have died since the conflict began, and nearly 13,000 have been injured. While some are well compensated for their work in Iraq, many more collect modest wages and provide support services vital to the military. The federal government, which has paid billions of dollars to corporations for services in Iraq since the war began, has not examined the issue of mental health problems among private workers, according to Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs officials. “To my knowledge, it has not been looked at systematically,” said Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, a V.A. official who directs the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Contract workers who are wounded or disabled in the war zone are treated in military hospitals in Iraq and Germany, but once home, they are not eligible for care in the military or V.A. system. And unlike troops, they are not routinely evaluated for mental or stress disorders after their tours. When soldiers and veterans complained in recent months of lapses in their care, top officials in Washington promised improvements, but the plight of troubled civilian workers has not captured such attention. Many companies conduct predeployment psychological screening and offer limited counseling, but provide few resources when their workers return home and often go off the payroll. Federal law requires employers to provide medical insurance for workers in a war zone. Workers have filed about 205 claims for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D., according to the Department of Labor, which monitors the data. Industry officials say that number significantly underrepresents the problem because many troubled people do not file claims. Of those who do, many have been denied coverage and have filed lawsuits. Gary Pitts, a Houston lawyer, says insurers have challenged almost every claim filed by about 50 clients, even though the insurance companies paid for medical care involving their physical injuries. “The contrast between the way the military and the civilian contractors are handled on P.T.S.D. is like night and day,” Mr. Pitts said. “The contractors have to figure it out on their own, and they often have to litigate it with the insurance company.” The insurance problems may be partly related to the dearth of civilian mental health professionals equipped to deal with combat-related stress, said Mr. Brand, the Dyncorp psychologist, and Dr. Spencer Eth, who helped write the treatment guidelines for post-traumatic stress syndrome for the American Psychiatric Association. “The availability of mental health care providers with specific expertise in this is scant around the country,” said Dr. Eth, a New York psychiatrist. “You have problems of access to care, financial obstacles to care, and so most of these people are not going to get the help they need.” AIG, the giant insurance company that provides coverage for several of the largest contractors in Iraq, has paid about half of claims involving P.T.S.D., said Chris Winans, an AIG spokesman. But many of the others are delayed or challenged because the insurers’ medical experts disagree with the diagnoses, Mr. Winans said. Mr. Pitts, the lawyer, said many contractors lived in small towns or rural areas without access to high-quality mental health workers. But even when he has sent clients to respected psychiatrists or psychologists to confirm the diagnoses, AIG still often contests the claim, he said. Dyncorp, a firm based in Texas that has a State Department contract to train the Iraqi police, is sponsoring its first conference Friday and Saturday on post-traumatic stress for former employees. The company is also treating workers in Iraq after bringing in Mr. Brand’s firm to determine the extent of problems. Twenty-four percent of the Dyncorp police trainers showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after their deployment, Mr. Brand said. He and others said they knew of no other studies that formally assessed the problem among private workers in Iraq. Those findings parallel an Army study earlier this year that about 17 percent of personnel in Army combat units in Iraq showed symptoms of P.T.S.D. one year after their deployment, said Dr. Charles W. Hoge, chief of psychiatry at the Army’s Walter Reed Institute for Research. If marital problems, alcohol abuse and other adjustment problems are counted, the number rises to 30 percent to 35 percent, said Col. Elspeth C. Ritchie, a psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general. Last October, Tate Mallory, the police officer from South Dakota, was riding in a Humvee in Anbar Province when a rocket-propelled grenade snaked into the vehicle, hit him in the lower back and went through his abdomen before exiting his inner thigh. Miraculously, the rocket did not explode, and quick-acting marines rushed Mr. Mallory to a combat hospital. After intensive medical care in Iraq, Germany and finally back in Sioux Falls, Mr. Mallory left the hospital in December, and went to live with his brother, Brad, in Belle Fourche, S.D. Though his physical injuries were healing, Mr. Mallory’s psychological wounds were left untreated. He isolated himself and turned against family members, including his sister. “I called her up and just screamed, ‘You are dead to me!’ ” he recalls, now deeply embarrassed. He hit bottom one day in January, he says, when he asked his brother to kill him. Brad Mallory, 45, recalls how frightening that was. “What I saw was how hollow his eyes were,” he said of his brother. “I’m a hunter, and to me, it was like when you come up on your deer, when you didn’t get a clean kill, and they just want it to be over.” He drove his brother to a local hospital emergency room, but the doctors were suspicious that Mr. Mallory was faking his symptoms to obtain painkillers. Eventually, Tate Mallory said, he was put on antidepressants and began to see a psychiatrist in Sioux Falls. Mr. Anderson, the Texas truck driver who worked for KBR, the largest private contractor in Iraq, has yet to find relief. He said combat-related stress was a constant among truck drivers in Iraq. “Just about all the drivers got it and don’t realize it when they fly off the handle,” he said. Now that he is home, near Houston, Mr. Anderson, 52, says he has difficulty eating and sleeping. He has not sought treatment for what he believes are stress-related problems, and instead sounds resigned. “It just goes through your mind over and over and over,” he said, “all the stuff you’ve been through. I dream about it half the night and during the day.”

Defense Contracts
Mental Health and Disorders
Iraq
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder


At Age 41, Torres Qualifies for Fifth Games

Abstract: OMAHA — Dara Torres ’s half-baked dream to make the 2008 Olympic team was rising like a soufflé in the kitchen of her older brother, Michael. It was Thursday night and he was trying to picture the image of Torres gliding across his television screen, headed, it seemed, for Beijing. Michael had not seen Torres swim in person since the Olympics in 1984, when she qualified for the United States swimming team as a wide-eyed 17-year-old. After watching her post the second-fastest time in the semifinals of the 100-meter freestyle, Michael packed his bags. On Friday, he caught a flight to Nebraska from Florida, arriving here four hours before the women’s 100 freestyle final at the Qwest Center. His journey was nothing compared with that of his sister’s. She resumed training while she was pregnant (her daughter, Tessa, is now 2). With her brother and thousands of backers looking on, Dara Torres locked up a fifth Olympic berth with a victory over the American-record holder, Natalie Coughlin. Torres was timed in 53.78 seconds, which was 0.02 off her best time. Coughlin, who had already set a world record in the 100 backstroke and made the team in the 200 individual medley, clocked a 53.83. Coughlin’s American record, which she swam at a meet in California in May, is 53.39. Libby Trickett of Australia set the world record, 52.88, in March. Michael Phelps, who lowered his world record in the 200 individual medley Friday, has a fan base supplemented by squealing girls. Torres is a big hit with their mothers. The support she received from the crowd of around 14,000, which rose to applaud her after she finished, made her teary. Torres, 41, climbed out of the pool, with the Lenny Kravitz version of “American Woman” blaring through the loudspeakers, and fell into the arms of Michael Lohberg, her coach in Coral Springs, Fla. “I was very surprised that I won,” Torres said. She added: “I’m ecstatic. I can’t believe it.” Torres’s time was 0.06 faster than her gold-medal effort in Sydney in 2000. It was 4.58 seconds better than her fourth-place time at the 1984 Olympic trials in Indianapolis, which earned her a berth in the 400 freestyle relay in the Los Angeles Games. Even before Torres swam, Friday night had been the setting for a comeback. In the 200 breaststroke, 26-year-old Amanda Beard qualified for her fourth Olympic team by finishing second to the New Jersey native Rebecca Soni, a 21-year-old senior at Southern California. Beard stopped swimming competitively after the 2004 Olympics, but last year she came out of retirement. In the mixed zone afterward, all Beard wanted to talk about was Torres. “I love her to death,” Beard said. “I love her sense of humor and her spirit.” She added: “She’s going to make the team. That’s a no-brainer.” Torres’s support came from near and far. There were the phone calls that Michael fielded Thursday night from friends who were in awe of what Torres was on the verge of doing. He knows how they feel. Inspired by her, Michael said he began going to a gym for the first time in his life six months ago. How can one family produce an exercise fiend like Torres and a sedentary man? He laughed. “I’ve never really liked the regimen,” Michael said. “She likes the regimen.” A few hours before Friday’s evening session, Matt Biondi, Melvin Stewart and Jenny Thompson appeared together at a news conference. United States Olympians covering the timeline from 1984 to 2000, they all at one time had been an Olympic teammate of Torres’s. Thompson, who tied with Torres for the bronze medal in the 100 freestyle at the 2000 Olympics — they were both clocked in 54.43 — said she was not surprised by Torres’s longevity. “She’s very compulsive about everything — training, nutrition, sleep,” said Thompson, who was on Stanford Aquatics with Torres during her last comeback. It takes a person of a certain age to remember the days when female swimmers rarely competed after high school because there were no college scholarships for women to entice them to stay in the sport. That was in the early 1970s. Torres, who competed at Florida, and Thompson, who went to Stanford, were in the second wave of women to benefit from the changes brought about by the passage of Title IX. Biondi, who was on the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympic teams with Torres, said, “When girls become women, when gentlemen graduated from college, it wasn’t explicitly stated, it was just an understanding there that you were to get on with your life.” Torres, he added, “has blown the roof off that line of thinking.” In the stands, where the fans were dressed in red, white and blue T-shirts, making the arena look as if it were decked from floor to ceiling in bunting, Michael Torres jumped up and down in his red T-shirt during his sister’s final lap. “I was about ready to cry,” he said. “It was amazing.”

Olympic Games (2008)
Swimming
Women
Torres Dara


Busy Bank Robber at Fulton Mall Was Too Predictable, Police Say

Abstract: For Orlando Taylor, a 26-year-old Brooklyn man who apparently had a strange attraction to a couple of bank branches at the bustling Fulton Mall, three times was a charm. So was the fourth time. But according to the police, when he returned on Tuesday to commit a fifth robbery in five days, his luck ran out. The police said Mr. Taylor first struck at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, robbing an HSBC branch at 342 Fulton Street of $450. On Saturday, the police said, he showed up two doors down at a Bank of America branch, and robbed that one too, making off with nearly $3,500. On Monday, growing more brazen, the police said, Mr. Taylor showed up twice more at the same Bank of America branch, at 350 Fulton Street — first at 10 a.m. and then at 2:20 p.m. Each time, they said, he demanded that tellers turn over cash. He fled with more than $3,800 from the two robberies into the teeming crowds of holiday shoppers. The police have rarely experienced a string of bank robberies in such quick succession and proximity. So when the two branches opened on Tuesday, dozens of officers in uniform and in plainclothes were on the lookout inside and positioned outside along the Fulton Mall’s sidewalks. They would have little trouble recognizing Mr. Taylor if he showed up again, investigators said, because his image had been captured by bank surveillance cameras. Despite the long odds against another successful holdup, the police said, Mr. Taylor was spotted shortly after 9 a.m. by plainclothes officers on the sidewalk outside his original target, the HSBC branch. Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said Mr. Taylor was seen looking from the sidewalk through the branch’s windows, where he apparently spotted uniformed officers, and turned to walk away. He was arrested, and the police said he was carrying a threatening note similar to those that were passed to tellers in each of the four previous robberies. The police declined to disclose the wording of the notes, but said they threatened violence if bank employees did not turn over cash. Mr. Taylor, who was apparently unarmed, was charged with four counts of robbery. The bold series of bank robberies, along a commercial strip that was crowded with holiday shoppers, came as a shock not only to the mall’s many customers, but also to law enforcement experts. “This is amazing,” said Peter K. Manning, the Brooks professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University. “Most property crime is compulsive crime, but this is a little extreme.” Still, police records provide many examples of serial robberies in which criminals display consistent methods and single out a small area. Over eight days in March, someone entered three bank branches on Montague and Court Streets in Brooklyn — all just a few blocks west of the Fulton Mall — and made off with cash after telling tellers that he was carrying an explosive device in a box. That robber left boxes behind but no bombs were found, and no arrests have been made. Mr. Taylor, whose previous criminal record was confined to charges of breaking a window and jumping a subway turnstile, lives 10 blocks south of the two bank branches in the Gowanus Houses complex. The police said Mr. Taylor’s methods were consistent. The first three robberies — on Friday, Saturday and Monday — took place between 10 and 10:40 a.m. He entered the banks unobtrusively, investigators said, stood in line briefly, and said little to anyone after he passed his threatening notes. Although Mr. Taylor did not wear a mask, the police said, his clothing partially concealed his face from several angles where bank security cameras were positioned. On Friday, he wore a full-length winter parka and fur-lined hood, worn up to cover part of his face, Mr. Browne said. His other outfits included headphones, sunglasses, a hooded sweat shirt and a baseball cap that partially obscured his eyes, he said. Customers at the Bank of America branch said yesterday that they were dismayed that anyone could rob it twice in a single day and shocked that anyone would even try. “It doesn’t make any sense,” said Sean Hossain, 18. “The first time I can understand. But the second time? How can he come back and no one recognize him?”

Robberies and Thefts
Crime and Criminals
Bank of America Corp
HSBC Holdings Plc
Manhattan (NYC)


Immigration Reform: Disparate Ideas, Disparate Futures

Abstract: If Donald Trump were to win the presidency and carry out his strident promise to build an impregnable wall along the border with Mexico, both advocates and foes agree, it would turn the United States into a nation quite different from the one they live in. They don’t know the half of it: Under Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant proposals, the American population would probably shrink to 323 million by 2024, about one million fewer people than today and 22 million fewer people than the Census Bureau’s projections for eight years from now. There is another side to the story, too: With Hillary Clinton as the next president, the population of the United States is more likely to increase to 360 million in 2024, from 324 million today. Of course, these disparate futures, estimated by Joseph Chamie, a demographer who once headed the United Nations Population Division, rely on a few assumptions. Mr. Trump would expel 11 million immigrants who are illegally in the country; Mrs. Clinton would legalize them. Future migration in a Trumpian America would fall to zero but would rise if Mrs. Clinton were president, as many newly legalized residents brought their families along. The gap — 37 million people, more than a tenth of the population — underscores how powerfully immigration policy will shape the future of the United States. And it highlights the shortcoming of a decades-old political debate over overhauling the nation’s immigration system that has failed to take into account the disconnect between policy makers and the American public. “One of the main demographic effects would likely be on overall population size,” said Michael S. Teitelbaum, who in the 1990s was vice chairman and acting chairman of the United States Commission on International Migration. “Another major effect would be on demographic composition in terms of national origin, language, education, religion, race/ethnicity, etc.” Nobody disputes that America’s immigration system is broken. The law governing immigration is pretty much irrelevant to the reality of immigration on the ground. But we can’t just patch the system. Attempts at reform have focused on cobbling together constituencies that would stand to gain from specific changes: businesses eager to acquire cheap workers; labor unions interested in organizing newly legalized foreigners; advocacy groups out to protect the rights of immigrants who are toiling with little recourse to law. One problem with this approach is that it has bypassed American voters. Most Americans would rather not allow more immigrants into the United States. Many would prefer fewer . In 2010, three out of four said they favored tighter restrictions on immigration. This doesn’t mean the United States should pull up the drawbridge, as Mr. Trump proposes. But it does suggest that any effort to change immigration laws and practices faces a big democratic challenge. Mr. Trump’s immigration strategy has little contact with reality. Even under the most favorable circumstances its costs would exceed its potential benefits . According to some immigration experts, his vaunted border wall could even increase the number of immigrants living and working illegally in the United States. Unless Mr. Trump were also prepared to impose a police state that would hunt down and deport every foreigner, immigrants facing a higher cost of entry — higher smugglers’ fees, greater odds of dying on the way — would be more likely to stay once they got in. “What the U.S. government is doing in terms of border enforcement, mass deportations and other restrictive policies just isn’t relevant to the decision to stay home,” noted the Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program of the University of California, San Diego, which has interviewed thousands of immigrants and potential immigrants in communities across Mexico. Wayne A. Cornelius, who heads the effort, concluded that “border enforcement, in whatever form and at whatever level, has never been a cost-effective deterrent.” If Mr. Trump were able to cut immigration to zero, it would have other consequences. The United States would have not just a smaller population in the future but also an older one. The work force, which powers economic growth, would be smaller. Each worker would have to maintain more retirees. But Mr. Trump is not the only politician misleading the public about immigration. For decades, the political debate over immigration has been mired in implausible possibilities. Notably, even reformers on the pro-immigration side still peddle the notion that illegal immigration could be stopped after the latest batch of unauthorized immigrants obtained legal residence. This proposition doesn’t mesh with an ineffectual enforcement policy and a border that, to most voters, looks like Swiss cheese. What it does is squander voters’ trust. “What trips this up is that politicians are continuously making claims which turn out not to be true,” Mr. Chamie, the demographer, told me. The runaway popularity of Mr. Trump’s extreme anti-immigrant stance among a large bloc of the electorate tells you just how mistrustful voters have become over the prevarications of the political class. In 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law an immigration bill that abolished national quotas favoring migrants from Western European countries, h e told Americans that it would “not affect the lives of millions,” nor “reshape the structure of our daily lives.” Two decades later, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which offered amnesty to several million unauthorized immigrants but promised to slam the door on future illegal immigrants by holding their employers accountable. Lots of things happened over the last few decades. What’s certain is that immigration did not follow the pattern envisaged by President Reagan. Nor did its impact on the makeup of the United States fit the modesty of President Johnson’s prognostication. Immigrants, their children and grandchildren have accounted for 55 percent of the country’s population growth since 1965, according to the Pew Research Center . Then, the country was 84 percent white, 4 percent Hispanic and less than 1 percent Asian. Today it is 62 percent white, 18 percent Hispanic and 6 percent Asian. Unauthorized immigrants, brought close to zero after the legalization wave of the 1980s, are back at an estimated 11 million. Immigration brings many positive things, including diversity of experience and talent, new ideas, customs and skills. The National Academy of Sciences this week will release a report that the immigration surge to the United States from 1990 to 2010 produced net benefits for the native-born, beyond those accruing to the immigrants themselves, of $50 billion a year, a small but nontrivial amount. It is bigger than the economic gains expected from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim nations now stalled in Congress. But admitting new immigrants carries costs, too, like pressure on land, housing and natural resources, and lower wages for workers with scant education who compete directly with immigrants in the labor market. It might be a bad idea to craft policy around Americans’ misgivings about ethnic and cultural change. Still, they should be brought into the conversation. Any effort at durable immigration reform must acknowledge that expelling 11 million people and having them wait in some nonexistent line to return legally would not just be inhumane but also impossible. The effort must come to terms with the fact that the United States economy benefits from workers of many different backgrounds. It must accept that stopping illegal immigration from the poorer regions of the world will require offering a legal avenue for entry. Reform cannot simply deal with things like border controls and requiring employers to verify legal status. Education — both of immigrants and the American-born — will be critical to nurture bonds of identity. Reformers must engage with Americans’ fears, while offering those who suffer economic losses the means to overcome their loss. Reform efforts will not succeed if they fail to bring Americans along.

Illegal Immigration
US Economy
Immigration
Foreign Workers
Population
2016 Presidential Election
Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump


Daily Report: Bigger Is Better. Or So They Say.

Abstract: Bigger is better. Except when it’s not. If there is one smart takeaway in the planned merger of AT&T and Time Warner, as Farhad Manjoo writes, it is that no one is quite sure how, exactly, this thing will work out. People in the executive suites of the two companies may take issue with that, of course. The plan appears to be that by bringing the two companies together, you’ll have one giant company that can do lots of things better: more money to develop content and more money to build the next generation of networks that can deliver that content. Image Synergy. Leverage. Scale. You pick the business cliché, and people who think this merger is a great idea are probably using it to explain why it will work. But big media mergers are risky. And they often represent one of two things: either a business cycle is entering its peak, or an old way of business is slowly dying and the only way to make money from it is by getting so big that you can squeeze out money here and there. As Brian Wieser, an analyst at the Pivotal Research Group, told Farhad: “This appears to be about empire sustenance rather than economic efficiency.”

AT&T
Time Warner
Mergers and Acquisitions


Braulio Cuenca, Last-Minute Photographer at Manhattan’s Marriage Bureau

Abstract: THE couples who marry at Manhattan’s Marriage Bureau, at 141 Worth Street, by City Hall, sometimes forget something — like a bouquet of roses, which they can buy at the store inside for $35, or a photographer, whom they can find outside on the sidewalk. Since 1994, Braulio Cuenca has offered his services as a speedy, last-minute photographer for those taking a step that might be quick, but that they hope will endure. Mr. Cuenca emigrated from Ecuador in 1982 and learned his trade on the Coney Island Boardwalk, where he dressed tourists in floppy sombreros for jokey portraits. He grew tired of that, and wound up at the Marriage Bureau. “It’s happier here,” he said, smiling at a bride and groom smoking on the steps. “People come for love. It’s a loving moment.” Over his nearly 20-year career in nuptial photography, Mr. Cuenca, 46, has shot thousands of “loving moments,” following as many as four couples a day as they sign marriage licenses, kiss in chapels, hug their mothers, flash their rings and pose before various shrubbery. Short and sturdily built, Mr. Cuenca jogs to get his shots, weaving between couples and the city workers who know him by name. On a recent Friday, Mr. Cuenca’s first bride was Eislynn Mendoza, 20, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. While Ms. Mendoza had never imagined getting married in this dress — it was chosen to hide a petite baby bump — she said she could never have imagined a wedding without photos. “You have to have a lot of pictures to prove how happy you are, and to remember the happiness and the joy,” she said. At 9:40 a.m., she married her high school sweetheart. They would remember it with a $175 wedding album: 35 prints and an 8-by-10-inch portrait. And they might remember something more. “Sometimes I walk in my neighborhood or on the train,” Mr. Cuenca said, “and many, many people say, ‘Oh, you’re the photographer who was at my wedding.’ ”

Marriages
Photography
Manhattan (NYC)
Cuenca Braulio
New York City
Weddings and Engagements


At Home at Riviera, Mickelson Leads by 4

Abstract: Phil Mickelson seems determined to add Los Angeles to his collection of West Coast trophies. A year after losing at Riviera in a playoff, Mickelson played golf as spectacular as the weather Friday in the Northern Trust Open, finishing with a 20-foot birdie putt on the final hole for a seven-under-par 64 and a four-shot lead. Even after starting with a 68, Mickelson felt he was close to putting his game together. It started with a 3-iron to 12 feet on the par-5 first for a simple birdie. It built momentum with a 60-foot birdie on the fifth and never slowed. When he finished his best score at Riviera, he was at 10-under-par 132 and in firm command going into the weekend. “This is a tournament that has eluded me,” Mickelson said of the only city in the West Coast swing where he has not won. “The West Coast means a lot to me.” Robert Allenby, who won at Riviera in 2001 in the cold and rain, shot a 66 that put him at 136 with Jeff Quinney, who made bogey on the final hole for a 67. Mickelson and the top dozen players atop the leader board got one big break with the draw by playing early Thursday and in the afternoon Friday, essentially avoiding the strongest of the wind. SORENSTAM IS CO-LEADER Annika Sorenstam, who has slipped to No. 4 in the world after years in the top spot, birdied five of the final seven holes for a five-under-par 67 and a share of the second-round lead in the L.P.G.A. Tour season-opening SBS Open in Kahuku, Hawaii. Sorenstam, coming off an injury-shortened season, made an 11-foot birdie putt on the par-5 18th to match 23-year-old Erica Blasberg (68) at seven-under 137. They were a stroke ahead of the Japanese rookie Momoko Ueda (67), Jane Park (68), Laura Diaz (68) and Cristie Kerr (69). FOUR TIED FOR CHAMPIONS LEAD Loren Roberts, Fuzzy Zoeller, Tom Kite and Bruce Fleisher each shot a seven-under-par 65 to share the first-round lead in the ACE Group Classic in Naples, Fla. In 2006, Roberts won in Naples to finish off three straight victories to open the Champions Tour season.

Golf
Mickelson Phil
Northern Trust Corporation
Los Angeles (Calif)


Groups Seeking Reforms Assail Paterson

Abstract: ALBANY — The government reform groups were already angry enough with Gov. David A. Paterson . At a news conference on Wednesday, they accused him of abandoning the reform platform on which he had campaigned alongside Eliot Spitzer , in 2006. They said he had walked away from new campaign contribution limits, lobbying reforms, redistricting measures and steps to make the notoriously reform-resistant state government more open. But not long before the event ended, a reporter held up his BlackBerry to reveal that Mr. Paterson had issued a fresh announcement about what he called a historic overhaul of state campaign finance laws. “Too often, decisions in Albany are shaped by wealthy donors and special interests,” said the governor, a Democrat. “We need to change that and restore New Yorkers’ confidence in how Albany does business.” But the proposal made the activist groups even angrier. They saw it as a makeshift reaction to their news conference and a measure that would likely be dead on arrival, considering that there are nine working days left in the legislative session. “These issues are not new to the governor; the role of governor may be, but he now needs to stand up and act like a governor,” said Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union, who lamented that the legislative session was coming to “an abysmal end” with “no real progress on reform.” Blair Horner, the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said of the governor, “It’s his job to get things done. “The people of New York don’t send elected officials to Albany to hang out. They send them here to solve problems.” He added, “If this were a report card, the report card would be an F.” The news conference comes as the governor continues to struggle to pull his administration together and form his own agenda, leaving the legislative session to wind down with what critics have said are precious few accomplishments. Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Paterson campaigned together promising to change the way business was done in Albany. Instead, the past year and a half has borne the scandal-scarred resignations of Mr. Spitzer and the former comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, the convictions of two Assembly members and some of the most secretive budget negotiations in memory. The governor and his staff have said that they are committed to reform, but are making their top priority reining in the state’s finances because of a looming $5 billion deficit. Risa Heller, the governor’s communications director, said on Wednesday, “Rather than attacking the governor, the advocacy groups would be far better served by getting their members and New Yorkers across the state to rally behind the governor’s bold package.” She added, “One thing is for certain: Constant naysaying will not lead to progress.” The governor’s new campaign finance proposal would close loopholes that allow corporations and wealthy real estate developers to contribute vast sums through subsidiaries and limited liability companies. The maximum individual donation to a statewide candidate would also fall to $10,000 from nearly $56,000, and limits on soft money — donations to a political party instead of a particular individual — would be put in place for the first time. The proposal would also add a fifth member to the Board of Elections to break deadlocks on investigative actions and would increase civil fines to a maximum of $10,000 from $500. The governor and his staff have argued that they needed more time to reorganize the administration and its agenda in the wake of Mr. Spitzer’s abrupt resignation after he was linked to a high-priced prostitution ring. But the groups, which also included the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, complained that their entreaties to the Paterson administration had not been heeded — which administration officials denied — and said that Mr. Paterson should not have to start from scratch. “These two men ran as a ticket — presumably they agreed with each other or they wouldn’t have been on the ticket,” said Mr. Horner, of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “They said they were going to come to Albany, they were going to be sheriff of State Street and they were going to clean the place up and change the way political business is conducted.” He added, “It hasn’t happened.” Barbara Bartoletti, the legislative director of the League of Women Voters of New York State, criticized the common Albany practice of lawmakers from different branches of government introducing bills on a reform topic, then making little effort to reach a deal. One house, she said, will say, “ ‘This is our wonderful reform bill,’ and the other house will say, ‘Look at us, this is our reform bill,’ and the governor will say, ‘Well, me too.’ ” Indeed, Assembly Democrats are poised to move a much different campaign finance bill based on the New York City model, which will include public financing. If the bill passes, the Assembly’s changes would not take effect until 2014.

Paterson David A
Politics and Government
Albany (NY)
Law and Legislation
Spitzer Eliot L


Palestinian’s Trial Shines Light on Justice System

Abstract: NABI SALEH, West Bank — A year ago, Islam Dar Ayyoub was a sociable ninth grader and a good student, according to his father, Saleh, a Palestinian laborer in this small village near Ramallah. Then, one night in January 2011, about 20 Israeli soldiers surrounded the dilapidated Dar Ayyoub home and pounded vigorously on the door. Islam, who was 14 at the time, said he thought they had come for his older brother. Instead, they had come for him. He was blindfolded, handcuffed and whisked away in a jeep. From that moment, Islam’s childhood was over. Catapulted into the Israeli military justice system, an arm of Israel ’s 44-year-old occupation of the West Bank, Islam became embroiled in a legal process as challenging and perplexing as the world in which he has grown up. The young man was interrogated and pressed to inform on his relatives, neighbors and friends. The military justice system that overwhelmed Islam has come under increasing scrutiny for its often harsh, unforgiving methods. One Palestinian prisoner has been hospitalized because of a hunger strike in protest against being detained for months without trial. Human rights organizations have recently focused their criticism on the treatment of Palestinian minors, like Islam. Now, as a grass-roots leader from Nabi Saleh stands trial, having been incriminated by Islam, troubling questions are being raised about these methods of the occupation. It is the intimate nature of Islam’s predicament that makes this trial especially wrenching for the young man, his family and his community. Most of Nabi Saleh’s 500 residents belong to the same extended family. The leader on trial, Bassem Tamimi, 44, was Islam’s next-door neighbor. Islam was close friends with Mr. Tamimi’s son, Waed, a classmate. And Mr. Tamimi’s wife is a cousin of Islam’s mother. “This case is legally flawed and morally tainted,” said Gaby Lasky, Islam’s Israeli lawyer. Islam is traumatized, she said, “not only because of what happened to him, but also what happened to others.” After he was pulled from his home at night, Islam was taken to a nearby army base where, his lawyer said, he was left out in the cold for hours. In the morning, he was taken to the Israeli police for interrogation. Accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers inside the village, he was encouraged to identify other youths and the adult organizers of weekly protests here. In a police videotape of Islam’s five-hour interrogation, the teenager is at times visibly exhausted. Alone and denied access to a lawyer for most of the period, he was partially cautioned three times about his rights but was never told directly that he had the right to remain silent. Instead, the chief interrogator instructed him, “We want only the truth. You must tell everything that happened.” The young man, who seemed eager to please his interrogators, described how village youths were organized into nine “brigades,” each assigned tasks like throwing stones, blocking roads and hurling unexploded tear-gas canisters back at the soldiers. Soon, the arrests followed. Mr. Tamimi was taken last March and is being held at the Ofer military prison. The charges against him include organizing unauthorized processions, solicitation to stone throwing and incitement to violence. Mr. Tamimi has proudly acknowledged that he organized what he called peaceful protests but denied ever having told anyone to throw stones. Mr. Tamimi’s wife, Nariman, attended a recent court hearing with Waed. Asked about Islam, her voice softened. “He is our neighbor,” she said. “The interrogation was very difficult. He was afraid. He is just a child.” Another organizer that Islam identified for the authorities, Naji Tamimi, 49, spent a year in jail and is about to be released. Islam also informed on Mu’tasim Khalil Tamimi, who was then 15, identifying him as a youth ringleader. Mu’tasim subsequently spent six months in jail; he, too, identified organizers of the protests. Bassem Tamimi’s lawyer, Labib Habib, said that the testimony of the two minors formed “the essence of the case” against his client. The defense lawyers contend that the terms of the minors’ arrests and interrogations violated their rights, and that their testimony should be dismissed. But an official in the office of Israel’s Military Advocate General, who was authorized to speak on the condition of anonymity, said the Nabi Saleh case was “a classic one of orchestrated riots that exploit children.” The official denied that the case against Mr. Tamimi rested largely on Islam’s testimony, saying there were other witnesses. Under the Israeli youth law, Islam’s treatment would be deemed illegal. Minors are generally allowed to have a parent or other relative present during interrogation, and there are strict rules about nighttime interrogations and other protections. Most of these protections do not exist in the military system, though military appellate court judges have stated that the spirit of the youth law should apply whenever possible to Palestinians. After Israel conquered the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war, it established military courts independent of the army command. They draw on Jordanian law, on the laws from the period of British rule and on a plethora of military orders issued over the past four decades. The Israeli official said that the military was striving to close gaps between the two systems, but that the Israeli youth law could not be put into full effect in the West Bank because of the difficult conditions. Israel recently raised the age of majority for Palestinians to 18 from 16, and it established the juvenile military court in 2009. But nighttime military operations were the only way to arrest Palestinian suspects, the official said, because summonses were routinely ignored and daytime arrests could set off confrontations. Islam’s arrest came as part of a crackdown in Nabi Saleh. A few nights earlier, soldiers had raided the Dar Ayyoub home and other houses, photographing and taking details of all the men and boys. Days after Islam was taken, his younger brother, Karim, then 11, was seized by soldiers and held for hours at a police station on suspicion of throwing stones. Last month, during pretrial proceedings in the case against Islam, a juvenile military court judge acknowledged serious flaws in the interrogation but ruled his testimony admissible. Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem , an Israeli human rights organization, said that the youth judge could have taken a stand but had “failed this particular minor, and all the others.” Islam spent two and a half months in prison before he was released to house arrest. Since September, he has been allowed out to go to school, which he now loathes. His father says he stays awake all night watching television, fearing that the soldiers will return. In an interview at his home this month, Islam said he knew his rights, having once attended a workshop on interrogations in the village. But he said that he was told by an officer beforehand that rights would not help him. “I thought that if I spoke, they would release me,” he said. Most of the villagers have shown understanding. Sometimes friends stop by for an hour or two. Waed is not among them.

Muslims and Islam
Prisons and Prisoners
Palestinians
West Bank
Israel


Japan Announces Long-Term Growth Strategy

Abstract: TOKYO — Still struggling after its worst recession in generations, Japan announced a long-term growth strategy on Wednesday that aimed to tap into the dynamism of its Asian neighbors, create millions of jobs in new industries and drive economic expansion of at least 2 percent a year over the next decade. The Japanese economy has eked out growth in the last two quarters as its mainstay exports have rebounded amid signs of recovery worldwide, particularly in China, the country’s biggest trading partner. But a swelling public debt and a persistent decline in prices and wages are raising fears that Japan’s economic recovery could soon run out of steam. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has been under pressure since he took office in September to come up with a practical plan to reinvigorate Japan’s economy. “Indeed, the consensus view is that the economic recovery will at least stall, if not fall into another recession” early next year, Masamichi Adachi, a senior economist at JPMorgan Chase, said in a recent research note. Mr. Hatoyama’s short-term remedy for Japan’s economic troubles has been to funnel money to struggling households, including offering new cash subsidies for families with small children and free high school education. But his government has appeared distracted by a dispute with Washington and a campaign finance investigation. And budget constraints have forced Mr. Hatoyama to backtrack on some promises, hurting his popularity. “The new government’s ability to take action is being tested,” he said at a news conference on Wednesday. “We will do whatever it takes to achieve this.” The government’s new blueprint for economic growth in the long run is more global in outlook. The government says that it will push to create a free trade zone in Asia by 2020 to leverage the region’s economic growth, and that it will make Haneda Airport in Tokyo a 24-hour hub for international flights. Japan also needs to become less reliant on the United States and bolster economic ties in Asia, Mr. Hatoyama said. “Until now, our connection with the United States has been very strong. Naturally, this will continue to be the case in terms of our national security. But for economic growth, it is necessary to look closely at Asia as a new frontier,” Mr. Hatoyama said. The plan envisions creating a $540 billion market for environmentally friendly technology and renewable energy that would employ 1.4 million people. It seeks to create 2.8 million jobs in the health and care-giving sectors to serve Japan’s aging population. The new strategy calls for efforts to more than triple the number of foreign visitors to Japan, to 25 million by 2020, and create new jobs in a bid to support the country’s ailing tourism industry. The plan aims to expand Japan’s economy at an average rate of 2 percent over the next 10 years, with a goal of increasing gross domestic product to 650 trillion yen, or $7 trillion, from the 473 trillion yen projected for the current fiscal year. The government will bring the unemployment rate to the 3 percent range in the “medium term” from 5.2 percent in November, Mr. Hatoyama said. Analysts say those goals are unrealistic, however, given Japan’s shrinking population and low rate of immigration . The government has also offered scant details on how its economic plan would be financed. “A lack of government willingness to tackle the severe challenges of fiscal consolidation, and an aging population, prevents firms and households from feeling confident about the future beyond the next fiscal year,” Mr. Adachi said.

Japan
Economic Conditions and Trends
Labor and Jobs
International Trade and World Market


Knicks’ Mike Bibby Makes Contribution at Point Guard

Abstract: NEWARK — The final Knicks -Nets game in New Jersey on Wednesday night bore witness to point-guard matchups that might have left the fans preferring a game of four-on-four had the stakes not been high. With Deron Williams and Jordan Farmar out, the Nets split most of their point-guard minutes between Sundiata Gaines and Armon Johnson, both D-League veterans. For the Knicks, Mike Bibby started for an ill Baron Davis, and he was backed up by Toney Douglas. Gaines (18 points, 6 assists) was one of the Nets’ best players and Johnson, fighting for a contract through the remainder of the season, added 6 points in the Knicks’ 104-95 win. Both Bibby, a beleaguered veteran, and Douglas, an inconsistent youngster, were afterthoughts during the Linsanity Era. The position is the Knicks’ Achilles’ heel as they march confidently toward the playoffs. Bibby finished plus-18 and may have stated his case for being a part of the playoff rotation, chipping in a season-high 8 assists and adding 8 points (his most since Jan. 7). Bibby, who has the reputation of being a defensive liability, struggled trying to contain Johnson and Gaines, but hit shots at critical junctures and, more often than not, he made the right pass. “I believe in Mike Bibby,” Coach Mike Woodson said. “He doesn’t move that swift or up and down the floor as quickly as he used to. In games like this you need a stable guy out there who can direct traffic, and he played a lot of minutes. I thought he was solid all the way through in terms of running our offense.” Woodson coached Bibby with the Atlanta Hawks and respects his postseason pedigree. Bibby was a high-scoring point guard for five consecutive Sacramento Kings playoff teams. While his production may have fallen off a cliff the way Wile E. Coyote does, Woodson’s continuing faith in him has generated reciprocal respect. “There’s a big trust factor,” Woodson said. “I spent three years with Mike. We broke through with that Atlanta team with Mike running the point guard. The first year and then the next two years we were able to go to the second round with Mike running the point guard. So there’s a big time comfort level with Mike.” Before the game, Bibby said he disagreed with the Hawks choosing not to renew Woodson’s contract in 2010. “I just think he got a raw deal in Atlanta,” Bibby said. “Win 53 games and don’t get hired back. You know, it’s kind of hard for me to fathom.” Bibby’s performance against the Nets an in Tuesday’s win over the Celtics qualify as small steps in a positive direction. “Last game was probably the first time this season I felt comfortable out there as far as handling the ball and getting the guys involved,” Bibby said of the victory over the Celtics. If Bibby cracks the playoff rotation, the Knicks will cross their fingers that a player who has five 40-point games and 35 30-plus scoring games on his résumé can rediscover his jump shot. “In Sacramento,” Bibby said. “I was scoring 20 points a game. “Here, it’s a different role for me.” he added, explaining that his assignment is to set up shooters like Steve Novak and the rest of their teammates. “And when the time comes, I knock down the open ones.” Bibby will turn 34 in mid-May, and the Knicks hope their season will still be in progress.

Basketball
New York Knicks
Woodson Mike
Bibby Mike


School Nurse in Queens Set Flu Response in Motion

Abstract: It was a routine call last Thursday from a diligent high school nurse that put health detectives in New York City on the trail of a swine flu outbreak. Over the next few days, things unfolded much like a criminal investigation, with alert epidemiologists cast in the role of the police officer who remembers information on a wanted poster. But as so often happens in New York, the arrest — or in this case, getting the evidence that clinched the diagnosis — was almost prevented by a traffic jam. The detective story behind the discovery of a new strain of flu in New York City emerged Sunday as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that eight cases of swine flu at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens had been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as the federal government declared a national public health emergency. As of Sunday evening, public health officials said that there were 20 confirmed cases in the United States and that they expected that number to rise. At a morning news conference in Manhattan, Mr. Bloomberg and the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said that a review of emergency room admissions, drug prescriptions and data collected from doctors across the city indicated that the outbreak in Queens was at that point the only sign of the new strain of flu in New York City. Dr. Frieden said initial fears of an outbreak at a day care center in the Tremont section of the Bronx appeared to be unfounded, with tests on five of six children coming up negative for swine flu and the testing of the sixth child continuing. Results were also negative, he said, for the children of two families in Manhattan who had recently returned from Mexico and reported flulike symptoms. The city’s health department was accelerating its computerized early warning system for outbreaks, known as the syndromic surveillance system, Dr. Frieden said. Expanded after Sept. 11, 2001, out of concern for a bioterrorist attack, the system feeds electronic reports of certain symptoms, or syndromes, to the city’s health department, and can quickly detect patterns. The detective story involving St. Francis began with a school nurse, who called the city’s school health nurse on Thursday to report about 75 students with symptoms including upset stomach, nausea and fever. The city nurse was struck by the number of cases and consulted her medical director, who told her to alert the nurse at the Bureau of Communicable Disease, officials said. Several people at the bureau simultaneously began to consider the possibility of swine flu, because they had heard from other state and federal agencies that it appeared to have crossed the border from Mexico into California. Dr. Scott A. Harper, a medical epidemiologist at the bureau, remembers his colleagues saying: If it could reach California, then why not New York? A team from the health department arrived at St. Francis about 1:30 p.m. Friday, by which time the number of sick students had risen to about 150, according to Brother Leonard Conway, the school’s principal. In interviews, investigators learned that some students had been to Mexico for spring break. A second team was called to come and take specimens for testing. The traffic Friday afternoon was bad, Dr. Harper said, and the second team did not arrive until 3:30. “You can imagine on Friday afternoon, there are a number of logistical barriers to surmount,” he said. By the time the second crew arrived, almost all the students had been picked up by their parents and gone home, the principal said. The second team was able to test nine students — five who had remained at the school nurse’s office, and four others who had visited a local doctor. The investigators called the students’ parents, and got permission to test them. Eight of the nine samples were determined to be Type A flu of a subtype they could not identify, meaning a new strain that the city had not yet encountered. Following protocol, the samples were flown to the Centers for Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta on Saturday, where the strain was confirmed as the swine flu. On Sunday, St. Francis announced that it would be closed Monday and Tuesday, and a cleaning company began sanitizing the building. “There is a bit of panic out there over this, and I’m telling them that they should call their doctor, or if there are no other choices, go to an emergency room,” Brother Conway said. Dr. Frieden said that in the next phase of the investigation, the city would try to track where in Mexico the St. Francis students went, and how the flu might have been transmitted. “We’re by no means out of the woods, not even close to it,” Dr. Frieden said. “Every night that we don’t have a lot of people going to emergency rooms is one that the next day we breathe a little easier.” Nevertheless, the health department has been on high alert since Thursday, calling in 200 employees to work on the swine flu outbreak. The city’s health agency, Dr. Frieden said, would be checking every 12 hours to determine if any of the roughly 60,000 patients who are admitted to emergency rooms in a typical day had flu symptoms. If authorities find a case of swine flu serious enough to require hospitalization, it would indicate the need to mobilize resources like antiviral drugs and respirators, officials said. Mr. Bloomberg tried to tamp down any growing sense of panic, saying Sunday that his advice to New Yorkers was to “just go about your business, enjoy the good weather.” He encouraged people with flu symptoms not to go to the hospital unless they were seriously ill, because such an enclosed and sometimes crowded environment could become an incubator for further outbreaks. And though the city has neighborhoods with large Mexican populations, city officials said there was no reason to focus on those communities because the flu spreads quickly. Later Sunday, Gov. David A. Paterson said that he considered the declaration of a federal emergency to be proactive, and noted that such emergencies had been declared for floods in the Dakotas and for crowds gathered for the presidential inauguration. “This is a situation that we’re monitoring, but we don’t see any real danger ahead,” Mr. Paterson said. If travelers and workers at Kennedy International Airport were any guide, the swine flu outbreak had not totally sunk into the public consciousness. Alberto Fernandez, 24, a construction worker who lives in New York City and had just returned from Mexico on Sunday, was typical of travelers interviewed at the airport. “Sure, it concerns me, because I don’t want to get sick,” Mr. Fernandez said. “But let’s face it, this is really not a big deal. I’m really not the least bit afraid of catching this in New York.”

Influenza
Livestock Diseases
Swine Influenza
New York City
Education and Schools
Nursing and Nurses
Queens (NYC)


The Raptors Outdo Themselves in Undoing the Knicks

Abstract: TORONTO, Jan. 15 - Like most New Year's resolutions, the Knicks' pledge to play tighter defense in 2006 was short-lived. In search of their seventh consecutive victory, which would have been their longest streak since the 2000-1 season, the Knicks sustained their most lopsided defeat of the season Sunday. Making matters worse, their 129-103 loss to the Toronto Raptors at the Air Canada Center came against the only team in the N.B.A.'s Atlantic Division that has a worse record. Toronto (13-24), which has won seven of its past nine games, moved one game behind the Knicks (13-22) in the division. The Knicks could have easily viewed the Raptors as easy prey. Their winning streak included victories against Phoenix and Dallas, two of the top teams in the Western Conference. The Knicks also found out before game time that the Raptors' catalyst, the starting point guard Mike James, would not play because of a sore back. James is averaging 16.7 points and 5.1 assists. But in stepped the backup guard Jose Calderon, whose double-double -- 13 points and 10 assists -- spearheaded a record performance for the Raptors. Toronto's 129-point outburst was a franchise high, unmatched even when Vince Carter was a fan favorite here. The Raptors also scored 30 points in every quarter for the first time. "They just whooped us," Knicks Coach Larry Brown said. "They executed and made shots and their zone bothered us. When they weren't stopping us, we just made quick shots. We were a step behind all night." The Knicks, who seemed to have jelled in recent games, looked porous on defense and struggled to convert even simple layups and jump shots. The Raptors led by as many as 30 points twice, and were ahead by 120-90 with 4 minutes 48 seconds to play. Asked if he was worried about his team's defense after all the breakdowns against Toronto, Brown said: "That's concerned me forever. We've got to get better in that area." Defense was a weak area for the Knicks even during the team's hot streak. "It's fool's gold if you are winning games and are not playing the right way," said Knicks forward Antonio Davis, who had 2 points and no rebounds. Jalen Rose, who has reportedly been coveted in recent weeks by the Knicks, scored a season-high 31 points off the bench, including 18 in the second quarter. He tied a season high with six assists. "It's pretty strange for us to have a big-time blowout like that," Rose said. "When we have a record like we have over all, you don't see too many games like that." Morris Peterson added 28 points for Toronto, also a season high, and forward Chris Bosh recorded 23 points and 6 rebounds. "You can see how good Bosh has become," Brown said. "He used to be content to take jump shots. Now he puts it on the floor and posts up. That's a much-improved team." Eddy Curry led the Knicks with 20 points, but only 8 of those came after the first quarter. Stephon Marbury had 18 points and 13 assists, and forward David Lee also had a double-double with 15 points and 12 rebounds. Jamal Crawford, who has excelled as the Knicks' first man off the bench in recent games had 12 points. He entered the game averaging 25.8 points in his previous four games. "We've had a little slip," Crawford said. "It seemed like we never got our rhythm. We were all over the place." The Knicks opened the game in familiar fashion, pounding the ball inside to the wide-bodied Curry, who scored his team's first 10 points going against Toronto's overmatched center Rafael Araujo. Midway through the first quarter, the 6-foot-11, 290-pound Araujo lost a jump ball to the Knicks' 5-9, 180-pound guard Nate Robinson. The ball was pushed upcourt to Channing Frye, who scored to cut Toronto's lead to 21-17. The Knicks never pulled closer. Toronto led by 9 points after the first quarter and opened a 66-53 advantage by halftime. At the end of the third quarter, the Raptors had a 97-79 lead and began removing their starters for the remainder of the game. The Knicks are host to Minnesota on Monday afternoon.

TORONTO RAPTORS
NEW YORK KNICKS
NEW YORK KNICKERBOCKERS
BASKETBALL


Panel Upholds Sprinter’s Suspension

Abstract: The sprinter Justin Gatlin ’s appeal of his four-year drug suspension was rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Friday, ensuring that he will not be able to defend his Olympic gold medal in the 100 meters at the Beijing Games this summer. Gatlin, who tested positive for testosterone in 2006, was hoping to have his ban reduced to two years. The C.A.S. hearing had been expedited so Gatlin could compete in the United States Olympic trials if his appeal was successful. The ruling, posted on the C.A.S. Web site, did not list reasons for the rejection. It did, however, alter the starting date for Gatlin’s suspension to July from May, so he will not be eligible to compete until July 25, 2010. Gatlin, 26, tested positive on April 22, 2006, at the Kansas Relays. He tied the world record in the 100 meters three weeks later with a time of 9.77 seconds in Doha, Qatar, but that record was erased after the positive test result was released. “I will continue to fight for my right to participate in the great sport of track and field in a time frame shorter than four years,” Gatlin said in a statement. “I have never been involved in any intentional doping scheme.” C.A.S. rulings are final and not subject to appeal. Gatlin has contended that his positive test stemmed from a cream rubbed on him by a masseur. “This case has been complex and nuanced, and we are glad that it has come to a final resolution,” the USA Track and Field president, Bill Roe, said in a statement. “Throughout the entire Balco saga, the critical lessons have been clear: athletes must take responsibility for the substances they put into their bodies, and must choose wisely the individuals with whom they associate.” Gatlin had a previous brush with antidoping rules while at the University of Tennessee, when he tested positive for a stimulant in a medication he took for attention deficit disorder. The international governing body for track, the I.A.A.F., reduced his two-year ban to one year at that time, but his testosterone test made him a repeat offender. Antidoping agencies could have pushed for longer, but settled on four years when Gatlin agreed to cooperate in an investigation of his former coach, Trevor Graham. Graham was recently convicted on a felony perjury charge for lying to federal Balco investigators. The chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, said that Gatlin did make several taped phone calls to Graham to help with the investigation. Tygart said he believed that without that cooperation, Gatlin would have faced a longer suspension. When Gatlin appealed, the C.A.S. could have lengthened his ban to eight years if its arbitrators believed it was warranted. “Given all the circumstances, four years is a significant consequence,” Tygart said. “I think it sends a solid message that doping is not going to be tolerated.” The complete explanation of the C.A.S. ruling is expected to be released in a few months. Gatlin was the top American sprinter at the time of his positive test. The record, which he shared with Asafa Powell of Jamaica, has been surpassed by Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, who ran 9.72 last weekend.

Gatlin Justin
Court of Arbitration for Sport
Olympic Games (2008)


Oklahoma State Tops Georgia, Scoring One for the Big 12

Abstract: STILLWATER, Okla. — The defining debate of college football last season centered on the Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences. The argument about which conference was superior raged throughout last season and was settled only when Florida beat Oklahoma in the Bowl Championship Series title game to give the nod to the SEC. With the Big 12 and the SEC each having three teams ranked in the top 10 of the Associated Press preseason poll this year, the debate is again expected to dominate. Yet instead of having to wait until the end of the season, the first salvo in the argument was fired by the Big 12 on Saturday, when No. 9 Oklahoma State defeated No. 13 Georgia, 24-10, before a record crowd of 53,012 at Boone Pickens Stadium. In perhaps the biggest season opener in university history, Oklahoma State overcame a less-than-expected performance from its high-octane offense and leaned on a defense that seemed improved under the first-year defensive coordinator Bill Young. “The game was played very much like what you see in the SEC,” Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy said. “The way the defenses competed and minimal turnovers, not a lot of yards. I don’t think anybody would have predicted that.” But Gundy’s excitement about the victory, his enthusiasm was tempered by what he described as “below-average” play by his team on special teams and offense, the latter of which had just 307 yards. “We didn’t play our best game,” he said. Georgia (0-1) had three turnovers, but Oklahoma State also showed flashes of why it is ranked in the preseason top 10 for the first time. It also gave credence to the high expectations that its fans, including the Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, have for this season. There is even talk of a national championship for an Oklahoma State program that has never made a B.C.S. bowl appearance. “They played a great game,” Georgia Coach Mark Richt said. “They’re a very fine football team.” But early Saturday, Oklahoma State was stagnant. It led at halftime, 10-7, but received a jolt to open the second half with a 74-yard kickoff return by Perrish Cox to the Georgia 24. After converting a fourth-and-1 from the Bulldogs’ 3, Cowboys quarterback Zac Robinson scored on a 1-yard run less than four minutes into the second half. “That was real big,” Oklahoma State running back Kendall Hunter said of Cox’s kick return. “That really motivated the team.” Georgia rallied to 17-10 on a 53-yard field goal on the next possession, but quarterback Joe Cox lost a fumble at the Oklahoma State 32 with 10 minutes 26 seconds remaining in the fourth, effectively ending any hope for a Bulldogs comeback. The turnover led to a 12-yard touchdown reception by Oklahoma State’s star wide receiver, Dez Bryant, with 7:59 left. A Heisman Trophy candidate, Bryant made three catches for 77 yards and 2 touchdowns. “We didn’t do our part on offense,” Joe Cox said. “I didn’t do my part as a quarterback. We gave up the ball too many times.” The game was a rare window into the Big 12-SEC debate because only one other regular-season game is scheduled between teams from the conferences this season. But that matchup, between Arkansas and Texas A&M next month, will hardly resonate like Oklahoma State’s victory. “This means a lot to the Big 12,” Hunter said. “It shows we’re up there with any conference.” Georgia opened the game in classic SEC fashion. It marched 80 yards in 10 plays and scored on Cox’s 4-yard pass to wide receiver Michael Moore with 9:42 left in the first quarter. But Young insisted that neither he nor his defense was fazed by the Bulldogs’ success on their first drive. He said the Oklahoma State coaching staff had preached in fall camp about being even-keeled. “We’ve got a lot of poise and a lot of experience,” Young said. “You never get too high. You never get too low.” While their offense struggled in the first half, the Cowboys showed considerable defensive improvement from last season, when they surrendered an average of 405.5 yards. That figure ranked 93rd in the Football Bowl Subdivision. On Saturday, Oklahoma State allowed 257 yards, an impressive feat considering Georgia gained 80 on its opening drive. “It was a heck of a win,” Young said, adding, “We need to win, and we need to get on a roll to get some momentum.” And even though the Big 12 was better on this day, do not expect the comparison with the SEC to subside. This was only opening weekend.

College Athletics
Oklahoma State University
University of Georgia
Football