Defibrillators Lift Medtronic’s Profit

Abstract: Medtronic , the biggest maker of electronic heart devices, said yesterday that fourth-quarter profit rose 9.7 percent on higher sales of implantable defibrillators, the company’s top product. Net income increased to $812 million, or 70 cents a share, for the quarter that ended on April 27, from $740 million, or 61 cents, a year earlier, the company, based in Minneapolis, said. Profit beat analysts’ estimates. Sales of Medtronic’s market-leading defibrillators grew 1.6 percent from a year earlier, to $770 million, the company said. The results do not signal an end to a defibrillator sales slump that began last year, one analyst said, because Medtronic pushed its staff to increase sales at the end of its fiscal year. That added product to customers’ inventories in a practice called channel stocking. In September, Medtronic began a $100 million promotional campaign to increase sales of the $30,000 devices, after recalls prompted caution among doctors and patients and hurt fiscal first-quarter sales. “Little good can come out of this quarter,” said Glenn M. Reicin, an analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York, in a note to clients. “Strong growth will only magnify the channel stocking issues that management has been denying all along” and raise concern that demand will fall in the next quarter, he said. Defibrillators are stopwatch-size devices put in the chest to shock stopped hearts back to normal rhythm. Medtronic holds about half of the $5.6 billion-a-year defibrillator market, followed by Boston Scientific and St. Jude Medical. The earnings were released after the markets closed. Shares of Medtronic rose 23 cents, to $50.80. Profit of 66 cents a share, excluding some items, beat the 62-cent average estimate of 20 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Revenue rose 6.9 percent, to $3.28 billion, the company said.

Medtronic Inc
Company Reports
Defibrillators


Denials Follow Report of Syrian Envoy’s Resignation

Abstract: PARIS — A woman identifying herself as the Syrian ambassador to France announced her resignation by telephone on French television Tuesday evening, in what would be the first such defection from the government of President Bashar al-Assad in months of unrest. But Syrian state television and Al Arabiya television both followed by broadcasting telephone denials in Arabic from someone they identified as the ambassador, Lamia Shakkour, who said the France24 news channel had been taken in by an impostor. It was not possible Tuesday night to confirm whether Ms. Shakkour had resigned, been impersonated, or resigned and then changed her mind. She took the ambassador’s post in August 2008 after it had stood vacant for nearly two years amid French-Syrian tensions over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon. Her father had also served as Syria ’s ambassador to France, and she is a member of a Christian minority loyal to the Assad government. The resignation had appeared credible in large part because of its rationale and timing. The woman said she could no longer support the government’s violent suppression of protesters; her statement came after violent clashes in the town of Jisr al-Shoughour that the government portrayed as a massacre by “armed groups” but that residents said was the government’s own answer to a wave of defections from military forces sent to besiege the town. Syria bars foreign journalists from entering the country and neither the government’s nor the residents’ accounts of the events could be independently verified. Nevertheless, either version would represent a serious escalation in both the chaos and violence of the Syrian uprising and harsh government efforts to crush it. Telephone calls and e-mails to the Syrian Embassy in Paris were not answered. The embassy Web site was not functioning in the evening; attempts to access it prompted a message saying the account had been suspended. The French Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm the resignation. France24, which had arranged for Ms. Shakkour to appear by telephone on a live debate about Syria and used a telephone number for her Tuesday that it had used before, said it was convinced that she was the woman who made the resignation statements, in both English and French. Reuters said it had confirmed the resignation by e-mail via the Syrian Embassy Web site before it was taken down. In the telephone statement on France24, the woman identified as Ms. Shakkour said that she recognized “the legitimacy of the people’s demand for more democracy and freedom” and that she could not “ignore that demonstrators have died, that families live in pain.” “I can no longer continue to support the cycle of extreme violence against unarmed civilians,” she said. “I can no longer ignore all the strong men, women and children who have died.” Her resignation was effective immediately, she said, and she had informed “the private secretary of President Bashar al-Assad.” The Arabic Web site of the Syrian state broadcaster, SANA, said that reports of the resignation were “untrue and false” and part of a “distorting and biased media campaign against Syria.” The Web site also quoted her as saying: “I greet President Bashar al-Assad and salute Syria, the homeland every Arab citizen carries in his heart. I am deeply disturbed by the false reports on some Arab and foreign satellite channels, part of a distorting and tendentious campaign aiming to achieve one thing: destroy the credibility of this great nation through its children and its young.” Al Arabiya television broadcast a telephone interview in which someone identified as Ms. Shakkour insisted that she was “still the Syrian ambassador, the ambassador of the Syrian Arab Republic," and said that she had not talked “to any channel in the world.”

Diplomatic Service Embassies and Consulates


In a Smoky Haze, Turks Cling to Their Cigarettes

Abstract: ISTANBUL — The Italians have a saying for it: “Fuma come un turco,” meaning, “He smokes like a Turk.” There are actually plenty of people who smoke more than the Turks, but there are times when a visitor here may find that hard to believe. The famous Istiklal Avenue, one of the world’s most appealing pedestrian spaces with its cobbled pavement and little red trams clacking down the middle, bells dinging, can be covered over on a crowded weekend night by an inescapably dense, mile-long cloud of secondhand smoke, hovering between the elegant, tall buildings on either side. Along dusky alleyways in Kadikoy, the trendiest part of Istanbul, on the once less fashionable Asian side of the Bosporus, cafes typically have a few tables inside and many more outside — where smoking is allowed. On even the coldest days, the outside tables are crowded, smokers kept warm by overhead heaters and lap blankets provided at each chair. Some restaurants go so far as to remove their outside walls, replacing them with transparent plastic sheeting, to make the entire place at least officially outdoors. Image People smoked nargiles, or Turkish water pipes, outside a cafe off of Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul. Most cafes have more seats outside than inside to accommodate smokers. Credit Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times If the government has its way, however, the cafe culture’s smoking days are numbered. In April it proposed a law limiting outside smoking tables to no more than 25 percent of an establishment’s total — almost the reverse of the present trend, at least in major cities like Istanbul. That prospect is greeted with horror in the cafes. “If there’s such a law, we’ll have to close down,” said a waiter named Okan, at a hip bar in Kadikoy. (He asked that the bar not be named, as there were not only smoking scofflaws inside, but Che Guevara posters and hammer-and-sickle logos too.) “We don’t want to get shut down.” Turkey has made tremendous efforts to counteract its reputation — and its smoking habit — with measures that are nearly as strict as those in any Western country, and far stricter than those found in most developing societies. It has outlawed smoking in public places, not only inside restaurants but also outside government buildings, and even banned it above decks on the innumerable ferry boats plying the Bosporus. Turkey’s nonsmoker-in-chief, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, used his growing power and popularity to push through most of these antismoking measures beginning in 2008. Even the cherished tradition of the nargile, or Turkish water pipe, in which flavored plugs of tobacco are smoked through long tubes that cool the smoke, has faced tough legislation during his administration. As Mr. Erdogan famously said, “There can be no such freedom as the freedom to smoke,” likening it to suicide. Turkey’s health system even pays for drug and nicotine replacement cessation therapies, and some doctors regularly text their smoker patients to remind them of the risks. When a cigarette appears in a movie, Turkish censors either blur it or put a cartoon flower over it. Image A woman got a light for her cigarette from a vendor selling roasted chestnuts on Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul. On crowded nights on the avenue, a dense cloud of secondhand smoke hovers over the street. Credit Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times As progressive as those measures may be, they have had relatively little impact on getting Turks to cut back. The percentage of smoking Turks did initially fall in the years after the new measures, and continued to decline among young people, according to the latest government figures, from 2012. But more recent data from the Turkish Thoracic Association in 2014 show a slight increase in the percentage of smokers: 42 percent of men and 13 percent of women. That may well be because taxation of cigarettes and tobacco products in Turkey remains substantially below the guidelines recommended by the World Health Organization. A pack of brand-name cigarettes here costs $3, compared with as much as $15 in some European countries. Three dollars is a lot of money for people on the modest salaries paid here, although not enough to affect habits in a country where many people can remember a time when it was common to smoke inside hospitals. Many Turkish smokers feel aggrieved by the changes, and reports that smoking bans may be extended to parks and other outdoor spaces distress them further. Ismail Gungor, 26, a lawyer, is a two-pack-a-day smoker who says “my aim is to turn my mustache yellow — I’ll smoke as long as my health allows it.” But he’s tired of freezing half to death in the process, when he goes to restaurants and bars, and feels there should be licensed places for smokers to frequent. He was at the Tarantula Cafe drinking — and smoking — with his friend Gurkan Kurt, 26, an engineer. Mr. Kurt had quit smoking for three days, until he met up with Mr. Gungor on a recent Saturday. “Oh, well,” he said. Government regulation is not the only obstacle faced by Turkish smokers, who are more than three times as likely to be men. “The women smoke less, and they’re always pressuring us to quit smoking,” Mr. Gungor said. Mr. Kurt does not have that problem. “I don’t tell them I smoke,” he said. Like many other Turkish smokers, they do not dispute their country’s nicotine-stained reputation. Barkan Karsh, a Turkish academic consultant who works in Macedonia, said people there not only use the “smokes like a Turk” expression, but they also use a Turkish word for tobacco, “tutun,” as slang for a cigarette. This is a bit rich, because Macedonia ranks fourth-highest among countries in per capita cigarette consumption, according to the Tobacco Atlas, published by an antismoking group, while Turkey is only 29th. “Even Macedonians say they should change ‘smokes like a Turk’ to ‘smokes like a Macedonian,’” Mr. Karsh said. Somehow, it doesn’t have quite the same ring. “Actually it’s kind of an urban legend that Turks smoke so much,” Gokhan Bicici, a local journalist, said. “Especially younger people are smoking much less.” He has a point. The Tobacco Atlas maintains that some countries consume more than twice as many cigarettes per person as Turkey, among them Montenegro (the world leader with 4,124 cigarettes consumed per adult annually), Belarus and Lebanon. Macedonia and Russia are nearly as bad. As for Italy, it’s really not much better than Turkey. No. 34 among nations in smoking, Italians consume roughly the same number of cigarettes as Turks. According to World Health Organization data for Turkey and Italy , fewer adult Italians are smokers than adult Turks, but among young people, smoking rates are more than twice as high in Italy. Perhaps the expression should actually be, “Fuma come un italiano” (or, as they say in Turkish, “O bir Italyan gibi sigara iciyor”).


Street Sense Wins Travers, but Works Harder Than Expected

Abstract: SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y., Aug. 25 — Calvin Borel knew the horseplayers were wrong. The colt he was riding, the Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, was not a lock to capture the 138th Travers Stakes, and the six other horses in the Midsummer Derby were better than they looked. Borel was especially worried about a lightly raced colt named Grasshopper. Borel had ridden Grasshopper in his past two starts for the trainer Neil Howard. Last month, Borel and Grasshopper blew away an allowance field here by six lengths. Borel believed Grasshopper was bred for the mile-and-a-quarter trip and was therefore sitting on a big race. Borel was correct. Grasshopper and his rider, Robby Albarado, hit the quarter pole first. Borel and Albarado are Cajuns from southwest Louisiana who are based in Kentucky. They are friends, too, who dueled memorably down the stretch of the Preakness Stakes, when Albarado and Curlin chased down Borel and Street Sense to win by a head. Here, on a steamy August day with $1 million on the line, it was Borel and Street Sense who turned in the come-from-behind half-length victory. “I had him measured all the way,” said Borel, which was a surprise to nearly everyone here who had made Street Sense a prohibitive 1-to-4 favorite. In fact, Albarado might have been the most astounded of all. He had cruised Grasshopper around the oval in leisurely fashion, leading the field through a half-mile in a comfortable 48.18 seconds and a mile in 1:36.93. “At every point, I thought I could beat him,” Albarado said of Street Sense. When Street Sense finally hooked Grasshopper in midstretch, however, the race was on. Inside, Albarado was crossing his reins and asking his colt to dig deeper. Outside, Borel was alternately whipping Street Sense and trying to square the colt’s head with his shoulder. “I know how Street Sense is,” Borel said. “Once he gets in front, he kind of gives up a little bit. He’s a colt who likes to be on the fence, and when he’s not on the fence, he doesn’t feel that sure of himself.” In their clubhouse box, Street Sense’s owner, Jim Tafel, and his trainer, Carl Nafzger, watched as Borel tried to get Street Sense’s attention. They won this race in 2000 with Unshaded, and were well aware of the history of the Travers. They desperately wanted to win again. “Whenever you get a slow pace, it gives everyone a shot to run at you,” Nafzger said. “I thought we had them at the 1/16th pole if Calvin could hold him together.” In a half-dozen powerful strides, Street Sense demonstrated the grit that made him the 2-year-old champion and now the winner of 6 races in 11 starts. “I let him mess around for 40 or 50 yards, and then I hit him left-handed quick and he pulled away,” Borel said. Albarado said he knew he was beaten. “We had plenty to fight back,” Albarado said. “Street Sense has been in these battles. Mine hadn’t. It was all brand new to him.” It was not a particularly fast race — they covered the mile and a quarter in 2:02.69. Nor was it a moneymaker for bettors: Street Sense paid $2.70 for a $2 bet. But for the crowd of 38,909 who raucously greeted Street Sense in the paddock, it was a fitting finale. Borel whooped and hollered as he guided Street Sense to the winners’ circle, and colt and rider were treated to a standing ovation. Howard knows Grasshopper has a bright future, but for now the spotlight is on another colt. “Street Sense is unbelievable,” he said. “We got beat by an unbelievable horse.”

Street Sense (Race Horse)
Horse Racing
Borel Calvin


U.S. Agrees to Buy Lockheed Jets for $3.68 Billion

Abstract: Lockheed Martin has been awarded a preliminary contract valued at up to $3.68 billion to build 31 additional F-35 fighter jets for the United States military, the Defense Department said on Friday. Details of the agreement will be worked out between the two sides in 2013, said Joe DellaVedova, spokesman for the Pentagon’s F-35 program office. Lockheed also won additional contracts valued at up to $1.2 billion for spares and sustainment of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Counterfeiting Trade Settles Into a New York Standby: Self-Storage Units

Abstract: Time was, if you wanted a knockoff purse, you went to Canal Street in Chinatown and looked for a store with a back room. The police raided these stores and took the bags, but more always arrived. Finally, the handbag companies began to sue the landlords of the buildings, who in turn drove out the purse vendors. By 2011, the operations had moved from Canal Street to surrounding streets, like Hester and Mott. There, vendors held paper catalogs or their phones with pictures of purses. A customer would choose one, the seller would make a call and someone would hurry out of a nearby apartment building with a bag. Now, the vendors and their suppliers, like so many New Yorkers, have turned to that recession-proof New York City industry geared toward hoarders and the cramped: self-storage. At a CubeSmart self-storage building in Ridgewood, Queens, three units — 5153, 5154 and 5156 — looked like all the others from the outside. Behind the metal doors and padlocks of neighboring compartments sat the Christmas ornaments, outgrown baby clothes and high school yearbooks of hundreds of New Yorkers, tucked away for a modest monthly fee. But these three lockers held something different this month. Their contents had most likely been shipped from China in large containers, hidden among legitimate goods and transported to the city. Inside the lockers were hundreds of purses — counterfeits of the high-end handbags sold in flagship stores eight miles away on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. On Nov. 1, the police raided the CubeSmart building with a search warrant, seizing knockoffs labeled Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Burberry, among other brand names. Two Queens residents, Jing Ye, 43, and Xu Jing, 46, were arrested and charged with counterfeiting. The setting for the raid, far removed from the traditional black-market operations in Chinatown, suggests a continuing game of hide-and-seek. “We keep building better mousetraps, but all we’re doing is getting smarter mice,” said William P. Ryan, a retired New York City police detective and president of Ryan Investigative Group , who has conducted investigations for the companies who produce the real bags. Image Imitation versions of high-end handbags that were seized after the raid at the CubeSmart building. Credit Queens District Attorney's Office At places like CubeSmart, monthly fees range from about $40 for a 5-by-5-by-4-foot space, to $386 for a space the size of a one-car garage. “Fairly inexpensive,” Mr. Ryan said. “You can probably get two or three storage lockers. You can upgrade without having to leave the facility. You can accept deliveries.” And visitors do not attract attention. “People coming out of storage spaces with big boxes aren’t setting off bells,” Mr. Ryan said. He said he had seen vendors on Canal Street lead small groups of tourists to a storage center a few blocks away, on Spring Street, and enter. Soon after, the tourists would exit, each one holding a bag. The police have raided several storage buildings in Queens neighborhoods not known for tourist foot traffic, but where suspects had arranged to meet buyers. In 2014, an undercover officer met a woman, Saie Chen, several times at Treasure Island Storage in Jamaica near the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road, each time buying purses in bulk. Officers later seized thousands of purses and other counterfeit goods and arrested seven people. The raid on CubeSmart in Ridgewood this month was not the first. Last year, officers searched seven lockers there and seized “a massive amount” of items, according to a criminal complaint, and arrested three people. One of those lockers, 5153, was involved in this month’s investigation as well. Employees at CubeSmart last week referred questions to corporate headquarters, where a representative did not return calls on Thursday and Friday. A worker at a competing storage business nearby shrugged and said employees did not know what was in the lockers. Mr. Ryan was less sympathetic, suggesting a “willful blindness.” “They’re not paying attention to handbags and all this stuff moving in and out on a daily basis,” he said. “Suppose they weren’t moving handbags, they’re moving weapons. ‘See something, say something?’ Not in these places.” There are other frustrations. Gathering evidence for a search warrant can take many hours of surveillance, with little payoff in terms of penalties. Six of the seven defendants in the 2014 case pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a violation; the seventh, Ms. Chen, pleaded to a misdemeanor and was fined $250. The case from last year is pending, as is the one from this month. At the Gucci store in Manhattan, news of the raid in Queens was likely to have been quickly forgotten. The week after the search, the police arrived outside the Fifth Avenue store for a different reason , placing pedestrian barricades and blocking traffic and potentially discouraging prospective customers from entering. The man whose name is on the front of the building had just been elected president of the United States.

Counterfeit
Handbag
Storage
CubeSmart
Canal Street Manhattan
Chinatown Manhattan


Ryan Hoffman, a U.N.C. Football Player Two Decades Ago, Is Now Homeless

Abstract: LAKELAND, Fla. — With sunset minutes away, the man in the neon yellow knit hat took his usual spot here at a busy intersection. Across from a Publix supermarket and on the edge of a Circle K parking lot, he sat against a streetlight holding a worn cardboard sign with dirt-stained hands that could easily palm a basketball. “Lost Job. Laid Off. Homeless.” Here was the man I had been looking for. At the urging of his family, I had tracked him down after a string of texts to several prepaid cellphones kept — and lost — by this man, who is plagued with short-term memory problems. For weeks, I had wondered what he would be like and how many details he could remember from his former life, which he had abandoned — or which maybe had abandoned him? — years ago. And now, here he was, looking forlorn in the fading light, his big, blank blue eyes beseeching drivers for a dollar or two. Each time cash appeared through a car window, he sprinted there, retrieved the bills with a “God bless,” and just about skipped back to his spot by the lamppost. “I really don’t want to do this,” he said, “but I have to. Gotta eat.” His life wasn’t always like this. Nearly 20 years and more than 100 pounds ago, this panhandler in the yellow knit cap, Ryan Hoffman, was a hulking offensive lineman for a college football team ranked in the top 10, a starting player renowned for his toughness and durability. Now his old Levis are so big that even a belt on its ninth notch can’t keep them from sagging below his hips. “Look, I’m still in tiptop physical shape and can probably run a marathon,” Hoffman said, the words tumbling out of a mouth missing a tooth that was knocked out in a street fight. “It’s my brain that keeps me from being a productive member of society. I’m physically very strong, but I’m mentally so weak. Something is wrong with me. I don’t know what it is, but I used to be normal, you know? “I’m confident — well, I’m pretty sure — that football had something to do with it.” Football’s toll on its participants is well established. We know about dozens of former N.F.L. players who were left with severe brain damage from repeated blows to the head. Their stories often contain disturbingly similar details — depression, substance abuse, memory loss, dementia — and their brain damage was always revealed posthumously. But there are many more former players out there wondering if they are football’s next casualties. Most of those players are not famous. Most never made a dime off the game. They are relatively anonymous men who played the sport in college and only later, for some reason or another, have found themselves struggling in life. Just like their N.F.L. counterparts, Hoffman and those former college players have been left to wonder: Did football do this? Are the hits to the head I took the reason for my decline? Or would I be in this condition even if I’d never played a down? They might never know the answer, because a definitive answer may not exist. Hoffman blames football for scrambling his brain, but at this point it is impossible to disentangle what could be football-related brain injuries from his subsequent drug use and possibly genetic mental illness. He simply cannot be sure. No one can. Image A plaque showing Ryan Hoffman in 1997, during his senior year at North Carolina. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times He and players like him are faced with the same terrifying uncertainty as former pros. Yet none of them will benefit from the $765 million settlement the N.F.L. has agreed to pay to thousands of its former players, and few of them can expect much help. Spun out of a college football system that makes billions of dollars for the N.C.A.A. and its member universities, these former college athletes are little more than collateral damage. “Those are the players who are being left behind in this whole concussion debate, and unfortunately, for some of them, it’s a life-or-death issue,” said Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association, the newly formed college players union. “But even if the N.C.A.A. paid a billion-dollar settlement, it may not be enough to help all the college players suffering right now. There are just too many of them.” Making Sense of It All Hoffman, 40, is about as far from the game as one can be. For more than eight months, he has been homeless. He has been stabbed. He has been shot. He acknowledges addictions to alcohol and prescription medication. He has served time in jail. He has sold his blood for $20 to $30 a pop, and has sold drugs, too. But sometimes even that is not enough to buy food; he once was arrested for stealing an eight-piece fried chicken bucket from a supermarket. Once upon a time, though, Hoffman was a football star, a 6-foot-5, 287-pound left tackle at the University of North Carolina, the ironman on a team that went 11-1 and sent a half-dozen players to long careers in the N.F.L. In 1997, his final college season, he played nearly every snap. His position coach, Eddie Williamson, called him “the epitome of an offensive lineman:” physical, durable, driven. But when his dream to play in the N.F.L. never materialized, Hoffman stumbled into the real world, and he has failed to right himself ever since. The pattern of his downfall is not unique. It is football’s ongoing problem. At the Sports Legacy Institute, which studies sports-related brain trauma and its aftereffects, more and more phone calls are flooding in from former college players (or their families) concerned that football has damaged their ability to live normal lives. “They’re starting to connect the dots, because the players are literally watching themselves change,” said Chris Nowinski, one of the institute’s founders. Nowinski said he used to field the calls himself, but now needs help because of the volume. Hoffman’s sister and only sibling, Kira Soto, was the first person to make the connection between football and her brother’s radical changes in behavior. After seeing reports about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease caused by repeated hits to the head, Soto researched its symptoms. Depression. Sensitivity to light. Memory loss. Impulse control. Aggression. With every sentence, she could feel her stomach lurch. She was reading a description of her brother. Image An undated photo of Hoffman provided by his mother, Irene. “If Ryan can’t get help soon," she said, “I’m afraid we’ll find him dead on the side of the road.” “That’s exactly when I thought: ‘Oh, my God, football. Football did this to Ryan,’ ” she said. Their mother, Irene, felt relieved that the family finally had an answer. Their father, Chad, said that while mental illness runs in the family and could have contributed to Ryan’s decline, he also believes football has permanently damaged his son. The problem is that it cannot be conclusive that Ryan has C.T.E. because not everyone with it exhibits symptoms of it, and because it can be diagnosed only after a person’s death. Hoffman’s family members fear they may learn the truth sooner than later. “If Ryan can’t get help soon,” Irene Hoffman said, “I’m afraid we’ll find him dead on the side of the road.” Promise, and Then Problems Ryan Hoffman’s memory is flimsy. Just hours after I met him at a seafood place for lunch here in January, he told me that he was not hungry because he had just been to a great seafood place. He suggested I try it. But he does remember things about his life as a football player. “You try to hold on to those memories when they’re all you’ve got,” he said. Hoffman took up the game as a high school freshman and pushed through the hard hits and the headaches and the time he vomited several times on the team bus riding home from a particularly physical game. Soon the recruiters from the top college programs came calling. Nebraska. Florida State. Alabama. Hoffman, with the help of meticulous research by his father, a management consultant, picked North Carolina. But what his parents did not realize was that Ryan was about to become another interchangeable piece in America’s football machine. Once he arrived on campus, he was just a number — in his case a Carolina blue 79 — but Ryan reveled in it. “I thought I’d just play my sport, then make the N.F.L. and go live in some big mansion,” he said. Hoffman recalled having only one concussion, during his junior year, but couldn’t remember the details. He said he might have had others, too, but never complained because he feared losing his starting position. He never thought about the possible consequences. Yet by his final season, Hoffman said, he noticed that his mind had begun to warp, and that antisocial thoughts — punching strangers, drinking and driving — had begun to creep in. When Soto visited him that year, she also noticed something odd: Hoffman had lined up clear plastic bags around his bedroom, spaced perfectly apart, containing things like his keys and his notebooks. “I asked him why he was acting so weird — why the Ziplocs? — and he said, ‘It’s the only way I can mentally remember where things are,’ ” she said. Image Hoffman gathering his blankets from where he slept in between the doors of a closed restaurant in Lakeland, Fla. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times “Looking back,” she said, “he probably felt himself losing control.” Lost Without Football Maybe Hoffman was too small to be a pro. Maybe he wasn’t fast enough. Whatever the reason, no N.F.L. team called Hoffman during the draft or afterward, and by the spring of 1998 his football career was over — just as it was for the thousands of other players that year (and in other years) who didn’t make the step up to the N.F.L. Many went on to productive careers and happiness outside football. Some were not as fortunate. After graduation, Hoffman moved into his father’s house in Florida, jobless and without direction. He struggled to sleep. He complained of headaches and dizziness and of hearing loud noises like shotgun blasts inside his head and of seeing flashing lights. In college, Hoffman’s worst offenses were speeding tickets and fishing without a license. Now he was getting into fistfights regularly, getting arrested, stealing, using marijuana, abusing Valium. Doctors could not figure out what was wrong. They prescribed Xanax and Adderall, and diagnosed a long list of psychological disorders: depression, schizoaffective disorder, manic depression, borderline personality disorder, anger impulse control disorder. His sister enrolled him in welding school and got him a job at a parasailing company. He worked in construction, then as a roofer, then at a mattress plant. He even fought in M.M.A., encouraged to do so by his father, who thought Hoffman’s growing anger could be put to use there. Nothing lasted, including his marriage. Hoffman divorced in 2008, and his daughter and stepson moved in with a grandmother. His life was unraveling like a tattered old Tar Heels jersey. “I didn’t have football anymore,” Hoffman said, “so I felt lost.” Last summer, Chad Hoffman tried one last time to get his son back on track. He called in a favor from a friend to land Ryan an office job, but Ryan was a week late to the interview and then lost the position on the first day. Exasperated, the father decided he could provide no more, either financially or emotionally. For so many years he had supported his son with money for doctors, lawyers and bail, not to mention cars that Ryan would crash and a room that Ryan would trash. Chad had long worn one of Ryan’s bejeweled bowl rings when he wanted to dress up, but now he ripped it from his finger and tossed it at his son. “When you’re ready to join me on this, we can move ahead together,” he recalled telling his son. Ryan Hoffman left and never came back. These days most of his things are tucked into one corner of his sister’s garage: a red bicycle that he had put together from used parts; a worn duffel bag from the Sun Bowl, now filled with sweatshirts and socks; a scuffed laptop; his rock collection. His worldly possessions now take up barely 10 square feet. Image Hoffman, right, with his girlfriend, Michelle Pettigrew, left, and a friend at a McDonald's in Lakeland. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times He considers himself lucky some nights if he can find an abandoned home where he can sneak in with his flattened cardboard box and thick gray mover’s blanket and settle into a restless sleep. Other nights, he naps on the concrete porch of a shuttered business, or in a dark field, keeping one eye open for police. His family worries. “How do you help someone you love so much, and who is so precious to you, who you’d give your life for, but who doesn’t want help and who can’t think straight anymore?” Chad Hoffman said, his eyes filling with tears. “Maybe you can’t. “How did someone who had that much talent end up like Ryan? Maybe we’ll never find out.” What Now? How many parents of former college players are asking the same thing? When I wrote last year about Rayfield Wright, the Hall of Fame offensive tackle, and his battle with early-onset dementia, more than a dozen emails arrived in my inbox from college players who empathized with him. Football had damaged their brains, too, they wrote. But those players weren’t Pro Football Hall of Famers; most had been mere practice dummies or complementary players like Hoffman, comets who once dazzled on Saturday nights but quickly fizzled out and disappeared from view. Hoffman, picking up a used cigarette in the parking lot and lighting it, said he was not jealous of those who made the leap to the N.F.L. that he could not. The rosters of his college teams are littered with players who went on to long pro careers. Dre’ Bly. Alge Crumpler. Greg Ellis. Vonnie Holliday. One of Hoffman’s old linemates, Jeff Saturday, went from Chapel Hill to Indianapolis, where he won a Super Bowl as Peyton Manning’s longtime center. Saturday told me he was shocked to hear that Hoffman was homeless and aimless now because Hoffman had been so focused in college. Hoffman was elated to hear that Saturday remembered him. “I’m proud of those guys who made it,” Hoffman said. “And, you know, maybe if I would have made it in the N.F.L., maybe I would’ve gotten paralyzed or something.” Instead, he is paralyzed in other ways. Months after the police supposedly confiscated his identification last year, he has yet to apply for a new government I.D. Day after day he told me, “Yeah, maybe tomorrow I’ll go to the office to get one.” Image Hoffman collecting $2 from a driver while panhandling in Lakeland. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times Without an I. D., Hoffman can’t stay in a shelter, so he spends his days and nights looking for places to hang out for a while. His girlfriend, Michelle Pettigrew, lives on the street with him, and often snuggles next to him when he’s panhandling. Hoffman has also befriended a 22-year-old high school dropout who told me he has a mental illness, is addicted to drugs and is occasionally suicidal. Hoffman said he feels a responsibility to keep Pettigrew and the young man safe. He is in charge of finding them a place to sleep every night. He said that duty gives him a purpose, but that he wants so much more. “I really just want to get a job, so I can be a good father,” he said, wiping tears. “I don’t want my daughter to see me like this.” Soto continues to seek help for him. At one point in 2010 she reached out to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who steered her to the University of South Florida. Hoffman underwent neuropsychological testing there, but his first visit there was also his last. “Those doctors said there was definitely something there and that I should follow up with more tests, but I never did because I didn’t like them prodding,” he said. “I’m afraid they will tell me something I don’t want to hear.” Instead of seeking regular medical help, Hoffman said he self-medicates, often by using his panhandling money to buy apple pie moonshine off the street or $2 Modelos from convenience stores. He said he felt “like a king” at North Carolina because of how football players were treated. Now, when he needs a shower, he drops by a friend’s house, maybe once a week. For toilets, he relies on gas stations and McDonald’s. He is losing weight, week by week, and is down to 185 pounds. The dimple that once graced his face is all but gone, not that there is much to smile about. His family lives about 200 miles northeast, a world away. Hoffman’s mother wires him $20 here, $100 there, mostly for new cellphones because Hoffman keeps losing his. She is desperate to keep tabs on him. Before Christmas, she sent him a text message on his girlfriend’s phone: Where are you now? Don’t give up. Ryan, I can’t assist you if I don’t hear from you. Need to hear from you, Ryan. Hoffman responded: sorry. depressed and its got best of me. might not make it. i quit. His mother wrote back: Where are you? Don’t give up. Hoffman: i need a phone. i’m miserable. i want to die. “Sometimes, I just pray that a meteorite hits me,” Hoffman told me. “I think about drinking until I die and just lay down. But I need money to get a drink, so I need to work. A little bit of me still thinks there’s hope. I have some issues, but I’m still viable. “I just need a little help. I just don’t know how to get out of this myself.” Inside that shell of a man — a player turned panhandler whose spotlight is now a dim streetlight — there is still that athlete who doesn’t want to quit.

College football
Ryan Hoffman
Brain
Concussion
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
UNC


Short-Sales Ban Caused Some Bears to Growl

Abstract: BEAR funds felt the pinch of the short-selling ban that the Securities and Exchange Commission declared near the end of the third quarter. On Sept. 19, a few days after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, intensifying a global financial crisis, the agency temporarily banned short-selling for a number of financial stocks; the S.E.C. lifted the ban last week. Initially, the rule prohibited short sales on 799 stocks, but that list quickly grew to more than 900. And critics contended that many of these — like General Motors and the Zale Corporation, the jewelry retailer, which both finance customer purchases — stretched the definition of financial companies. “What they are doing is destroying liquidity in a market that desperately needs liquidity,” said Steven C. Leuthold, who manages the Grizzly Short fund and was a critic of the S.E.C. rule. But he said he was not surprised by the S.E.C.’s temporary ban. “No one likes to see people making money when most people are losing money — why, it’s un-American,” he said. Bear funds come in two distinct breeds. The Grizzly fund is the kind that shorts individual stocks, which involves selling borrowed shares that the manager hopes to buy back later at a lower price. Its main competitor in this category is the Prudent Bear fund. Then there are the inverse index funds. These can be either traditional mutual funds or exchange-traded funds, but they share the goal of returning the exact opposite — or in some cases, twice the opposite — of a particular index. The two largest managers of inverse index funds are Rydex Investments, based in Rockville, Md., and ProFunds, based in Bethesda, Md. After the S.E.C. announced the short-selling ban on financial stocks, both Rydex and ProFunds stopped accepting new investments, even from existing shareholders, into their inverse financial-sector E.T.F.’s. “We thought it was the prudent thing to do,” said Michael L. Sapir, the chairman and chief executive of ProFunds. Pre-existing shares of these E.T.F.’s continued to trade during the ban. After it was lifted, both companies began accepting new money, and creating new units, in their financial sector E.T.F.s. During the ban, neither company stopped taking new money into its other inverse E.T.F.’s or mutual funds, although many indexes on which they are based contain some financial stocks. Ryan Harder, a senior portfolio manager at Rydex, who is in charge of both the inverse mutual funds and E.T.F.’s., said the S.E.C. ban did not affect the company’s other inverse funds because they do not usually short individual stocks. Instead, they use a combination of futures and swaps that aim to return the opposite of an entire index. Unlike the inverse mutual funds and E.T.F.’s — which are often mirror images of plain-vanilla index funds offered by the same company — the main actively managed funds, Grizzly Short and Prudent Bear, are run by investors who have long expressed bearish opinions on the markets and the economy. The S.E.C.’s temporary ban did not alter the funds’ existing short positions, and managers for both of these funds said they had shorted some of the stocks on the list before the ban. But the S.E.C.’s move prevented them from adding to those positions at the end of the third quarter — just as their views had came into vogue. David W. Tice, the founder and co-manager of Prudent Bear, said he had not overweighted financial stocks before the ban because the shares had been too volatile of late. “We like to be in stocks that are underperforming, but volatility is our enemy,” he said. “We want them to go down and stay down.” Federated Investors, an asset manager based in Pittsburgh, recently agreed to buy this fund from his firm, David W. Tice & Associates, which is based in Milwaukee. The deal is expected to close by year-end, and the fund will be renamed Federated Prudent Bear. Mr. Tice will become the chief portfolio strategist for Federated; and Doug Noland, a co-manager, will be more responsible for the day-to-day portfolio management. Mr. Noland said his preference was to short individual stocks, although the fund will also buy exchange-traded futures that short market indexes. He said they did not use private contracts, like swaps, with other financial companies because of the counterparty risk. Mr. Leuthold said that around 25 percent of the Grizzly fund had been short financial stocks before the S.E.C. ban. Ordinarily, he said, they would try to keep sectors within 20 percent of the portfolio. But in the through-the-looking-glass world of bear funds, when stocks fall, they become a bigger slice of the pie. The Grizzly fund returned 8.9 percent in the third quarter, while Prudent Bear returned 0.6 percent, according to Morningstar. But in a sign of just how volatile this sort of investing can be, the inverse financial sector E.T.F.’s plunged on Sept. 19, the day that the S.E.C. announced the temporary ban on short-selling financial stocks. All three of these E.T.F.’s lost money in the third quarter. The ProShares Short Financials E.T.F. fell 14.8 percent, while the ProShares UltraShort Financials E.T.F. lost 36.6 percent. The Rydex Inverse 2x S.& P. Select Sector Financial E.T.F. fell 34.4 percent.

Mutual Funds
Securities and Commodities Violations
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Stocks and Bonds


Ukraine President Says Europe’s Security Depends on Stopping Russia

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Accusing Russia of waging a campaign of “military aggression and terror” against his country, President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine told European leaders here on Saturday that their own countries’ security depended on stopping Russian troops from stoking a conflict in eastern Ukraine that he said could escalate into a wider war. His warnings won no pledges of military assistance from the European Union, but helped set the stage for a new round of sanctions against Russia. Leaders ducked an immediate decision on what new measures to take, despite agreeing that Moscow had escalated the conflict sharply in recent days. They instead asked the European Commission, the union’s executive arm, to prepare proposals for expanding existing sanctions, and said these must be ready “for consideration within a week,” according to a statement issued early Sunday. Saying that Russia was pushing the conflict in Ukraine toward “the point of no return,” the president of commission, José Manuel Barroso, said European leaders who gathered Saturday in Brussels would endorse new, tougher measures in an effort to make Moscow “come to reason.” Some European leaders, particularly those from former Communist nations in Eastern Europe, called for direct military assistance to Ukraine’s badly stretched armed forces, which are battling pro-Russian rebels on three fronts in eastern Ukraine. But officials said a decision on military aid would be left to individual countries. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, speaking early Sunday after the meeting broke up, said that Germany “will certainly not deliver weapons, as this would give the impression that this is a conflict that can be solved militarily.” But she said further sanctions were needed, as “the situation has deteriorated considerably in the last few days,” and would be imposed “if this situation continues.” She said it was unclear whether Russia’s actions in Ukraine constituted an invasion under international law, but added that “the sum of all the evidence we have seen so far is that Russian arms and Russian forces are operating on Ukrainian territory.” Despite her numerous phone conversations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, she said she could not make “a final judgment” on his intentions and whether he might still try to take “further parts of the country under his control.” Ukraine’s military said on Saturday that Russian tanks had entered and flattened a small town between the rebel-held city of Luhansk and the Russian border. Mr. Poroshenko, alongside Mr. Barroso in Brussels, said that Ukraine still hoped for a political settlement with the rebels, but that a flow of Russian troops and armored vehicles into Ukraine in recent days to support them were setting off a broader conflict. “We are too close to a border where there will be no return to the peace plan,” Mr. Poroshenko said, asserting that since Wednesday, “thousands of foreign troops and hundreds of foreign tanks are now on the territory of Ukraine, with a very high risk not only for the peace and stability of Ukraine but for the peace and stability of the whole of Europe.” He added that this made Europe’s solidarity with Ukraine “crucially important for all of us.” Russia has dismayed European leaders by repeatedly denying that it has sent troops or military hardware into Ukraine. After the Ukrainian authorities released videos on Tuesday of captured Russian troops, Moscow conceded that some of its soldiers had crossed into Ukraine but said they had done so “by accident.” Rebel leaders say Russian servicemen are fighting in Ukraine during their holiday leave. Aleksandr Zakharchenko, a separatist leader in Donetsk, said earlier this week that these soldiers “would rather take their vacation not on a beach but with us, among brothers, who are fighting for their freedom.” Russia’s evasions and denials in response to mounting evidence of its direct involvement in supporting pro-Russian separatists has left even Europe’s more cautious leaders, notably Ms. Merkel, ready to endorse further sanctions. Ms. Merkel, the dominant figure in European policy-making, said early Sunday that Germany still favored a negotiated settlement and that Europe needed to keep the pressure on Russia with additional sanctions. “We need to do something to clearly demonstrate what are the values we defend,” she said. She said that Russia’s opaque political system made it difficult to assess whether sanctions already in place were affecting Russian decision-making but added: “I would say they are.” Ms. Merkel has spoken regularly with Mr. Putin, by telephone during the crisis but has had no success in curbing Russia’s support for the rebels, who had been losing ground in the face of a Ukrainian offensive. Now, reinvigorated by new arms and fighters from Russia, the rebels are expanding territory under their control. Mr. Barroso said that he, too, had spoken by phone with Mr. Putin and “urged him to change course” during a “long and frank” conversation on Friday. While not directly accusing Russia of sending soldiers into Ukraine, as Mr. Poroshenko and NATO have done, Mr. Barroso said Russian moves to feed fighting in eastern Ukraine were “simply not the way responsible, proud nations should behave in the 21st century.” Further sanctions, Mr. Barroso said, would “show to Russia’s leadership that the current situation is not acceptable and we urge them to come to reason.” European leaders, he added, had long stated that any further escalation of the conflict would set off additional sanctions, and they would “be ready to take some more measures” at the meeting in Brussels. President François Hollande of France also backed new measures against Russia, telling journalists in Brussels that “what is happening in Ukraine is so serious” that European leaders were obliged to increase sanctions. But France is expected to block calls by some leaders to extend an existing ban on future military sales to Russia to include already signed contracts. France has resisted pressure from Washington and some European capitals to cancel a contract for the sale of two naval assault ships to Russia, a deal worth 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.6 billion. Arriving Saturday for the summit, Dalia Grybauskaite, the president of Lithuania, demanded that existing and future military contracts with Russia be prohibited. Europe, she said, could not “listen to the lies that we are receiving from Putin” and should offer military support to Ukraine. Russia, she added, was “in a state of war against Ukraine and that means that it is in a state of war against countries that want to be closer to the European Union and that means practically that Russia is in a state of war against Europe. That means we have to help Ukraine battle back, to defend its territory and its people, to help militarily.” Fighting in eastern Ukraine has been going on for months, mostly around rebel-held Donetsk and Luhansk. But the conflict expanded last week after the rebels — backed by Russian forces, according to NATO — opened a front along a coastal road leading to the industrial port city of Mariupol. Ukrainian military units and the civilian population were preparing on Saturday to defend the city against any assault by the Russian-backed militias, Ukraine’s military spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko, said in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. “We are very grateful to the Mariupol residents, who have also helped in the fortification of the city against the armored vehicles of the enemy,” Colonel Lysenko said. The city fell briefly under the control of pro-Russian fighters earlier this year, but after they were driven out it had been firmly in the hands of Ukraine. The governor of the Donetsk region, forced from his headquarters in the city of Donetsk, decamped there to maintain a formal, if largely impotent, government presence. Colonel Lysenko said that local residents were volunteering to join the armed forces, but that the military had enough men there “to repel the Russian military and its mercenaries.” He repeated accusations that the Russians were sending arms and men across the border to support rebel fighters, who have declared independent states in Donetsk and Luhansk. He asserted that Russian tanks had entered Novosvitlivka, a small town on the road from the Russian border to Luhansk, and flattened “virtually every house.” He did not give details on when the reported attack took place. Ukraine also accused Russia on Saturday of helping to shoot down one of its combat aircraft in eastern Ukraine. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, speaking early Sunday in Brussels, described the situation in Ukraine as “deeply serious” and said, “We have to show real resolve, real resilience in demonstrating to Russia that if she carries on in this way the relationship between Europe and Russia, Britain and Russia, America and Russia will be radically different in future.”

Ukraine
Petro Poroshenko
Russia
Europe
EU
Vladimir Putin
Donetsk Ukraine
Military
International relations
European Commission


F.A.A. Computer Problem Snarls Flights

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Flights over much of the eastern United States were delayed Thursday by a pre-dawn failure in a fairly new communications system, which led to the shutdown of a computer that accepts flight plans from the airlines and feeds them to air traffic controllers. It was the fourth major systemwide disruption attributed to the communications system, which the Federal Aviation Administration began putting into service earlier in this decade as a way to cut costs and assure reliability. But when it failed, at about 5 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, the airlines had to send flight plans by fax, and the controllers typed them into their computers, sort of a hunt-and-peck exercise that was so cumbersome that many planes were delayed more than an hour. But there was no risk to planes in flight, according to the F.A.A. By mid-morning the system was working again, but the backlog caused widespread airport delays. The crucial computer that was knocked out, the National Airspace Data Interchange Network, situated in Atlanta and with a backup in Salt Lake City, had also failed in August 2008 , with a similar result, but for a different reason. Flight plans typically consist of hundreds of alpha-numeric characters giving the flight number, type of equipment, takeoff location and various intermediate points, with altitudes. When the first failure happened at about 5 a.m. — a router, according to the F.A.A. — it knocked out not only the computer that handles flight plans, but one that sorts through “notices to airmen,” or F.A.A. alerts about short-lived problems like equipment failures or runway closings, and delivers them to pilots. By early afternoon, the F.A.A.’s online status board was showing the problem limited to the Northeast. The computer that handles the flight plans was repaired by around 9 a.m., but by then a huge backlog developed. “It may take many hours for the system to catch up,” the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in a statement , adding, “Airport efficiency is being cut by at least half in places like New York - J.F.K.” Airlines reported problems in other areas as well. Around the country, planeloads of passengers heard pilots blame the air traffic system as they sat on the tarmac. AirTran Airways, based in Orlando, Fla., quickly announced that passengers with tickets for Thursday could rebook without charge, as is commonly done in storms. The aviation agency’s data processing system has a variety of problems. While it was hailed as a marvel when it was introduced decades ago, much of it is written in obsolete computer language and the agency has been slow to provide updates. And with a requirement for up-to-the-minute, round-the-clock performance, parts of the system have crashed while technicians tried to install upgrades, like uninterruptible power supplies, or software fixes. Each failure causes frustration. At LaGuardia Airport in New York on Thursday morning, Gilbert Valdez, a teacher a the University of Tricosi in Chicago, who flies in four or five times a year, showed up early for his 2 p.m. flight home because he had heard about the disruption. “It’s kind of nerve wracking because I don’t want to be stranded at LaGuardia,” Mr. Valdez said. “I just want to get home.”

Airlines and Airplanes
Air Traffic Control
Computers and the Internet
Airports
Federal Aviation Administration


Man With Fake Explosives Killed in Paris on Charlie Hebdo Anniversary

Abstract: PARIS — French police officers fatally shot a man who was wielding a cleaver and yelling “Allahu akbar” as he tried to attack a police station in northern Paris on Thursday, setting off alarms as France marked the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The man arrived in front of the police station on the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or at 11:30 a.m. with a meat cleaver, wearing what turned out to be a fake explosives belt. He then brandished the knife and yelled “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” before police officers opened fire. Witnesses said the officers had ordered the man several times to stop and step back before shooting him. The office of the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, on Thursday evening confirmed that the assailant’s fingerprints matched those of a man who was convicted of theft in southern France in 2013. The man told the police at the time that he was named Sallah Ali, that he was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1995, and that he was homeless, the prosecutor’s office said. Thursday’s attack prompted the temporary closing of schools, shops and streets. The man’s body lay on the sidewalk outside the police station for more than an hour and 20 minutes, covered with a white cloth. A robot was deployed, and after that, two dogs and then an investigator wearing heavy gear inspected the man’s jacket, before determining that it was a fake suicide vest. Investigators found a cellphone on the man, a piece of paper with the flag of the Islamic State on it, and an “unequivocal handwritten claim of responsibility” in Arabic, according to Mr. Molins’s office, which said it was investigating the attack as an attempted terrorist assassination of someone in a position of public authority. The police are also investigating whether Mr. Ali had any real ties to the Islamic State. Image Outside the police station in northern Paris on Thursday. Credit Anna Polonyi/The New York Times Mr. Molins did not detail the content of the handwritten claim, but French news media reported that the man had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and had written that he was avenging French “attacks in Syria.” Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, speaking on the i-Télé news channel on Thursday evening, said that investigators still needed to clarify whether the attacker was radicalized or if he was mentally unstable. “A fake explosives belt, the cries, the allegiance in his pocket, these are signs that could link him to a network, but at the same time these could be the signs of someone unbalanced,” Ms. Taubira said. “The investigation will clarify all of this.” Ms. Taubira added that there was an “extremely heavy climate” in France that might push people with “psychological weaknesses” to act in similar ways. The police station is in the 18th Arrondissement, a multicultural district that has a large immigrant population but that is also rapidly gentrifying. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve visited the station after the attack and praised the “great courage” of the police. The episode occurred a year after gunmen carried out attacks in and near Paris, including on Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket, killing 17 people. The assault also comes less than two months after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks here , which left 130 dead. Image Before investigators moved in, the police used a robot and dogs to determine whether the attacker had been wearing explosives. Credit Anna Polonyi/The New York Times Most of the participants in the Nov. 13 attacks wore explosives vests, six of which were detonated that night: three at the national soccer stadium north of Paris, two at the Bataclan concert hall, and one at a restaurant in central Paris. In addition, a man who died in a police raid on Nov. 18 on a hide-out in the northern Paris suburb of St.-Denis — who has not yet been identified but who investigators say they believe took part in the attacks — also detonated a suicide vest. The attack on Thursday occurred a little over an hour after President François Hollande concluded a speech to forces at the Paris police department during which he warned that terrorism was still threatening the country. Mr. Hollande thanked the police and security forces and paid tribute to the three officers who were killed in the attacks last January. “We will never forget them,” he said. “They died so that we may live free.” Mr. Hollande added that over the past year, nearly 200 people had been barred from leaving France on suspicion of seeking to join terrorist groups in Syria or Iraq and that over 50 foreigners had been barred from entering the country. He also urged the security and intelligence services in France to do better at cooperating with each other. “Faced with these kinds of adversaries, it is crucial that each department work in perfect coordination, in the greatest transparency, and that they share all the information that they have,” Mr. Hollande said.


Britain: Legislator Is Charged With Sexual Assault and Rape

Abstract: A deputy speaker of Parliament has been charged with several counts of sexual assault as well as rape, the authorities said Tuesday. The Crown Prosecution Service said enough evidence had been gathered to prosecute the official, Nigel Evans, a member of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party, for eight offenses. Mr. Evans, 55, who was arrested twice earlier this year, has denied any wrongdoing. He was charged with two counts of indecent assault, five counts of sexual assault and one count of rape, the prosecution said. He is accused of assaults dating from 2002 to 2013 and involving seven male victims.

Rape
Conservative Party
Nigel Evans
Great Britain


Hiding, Praying, Booby-Trapped: Captives Detail Saharan Ordeal

Abstract: The gunmen, dressed in fatigues and wearing turbans, stormed in well before dawn aboard pickup trucks, announcing their arrival with a burst of gunfire. Dozens of employees were eating breakfast at the time before heading off to the vast network of tubes and silos of the In Amenas gas field, where hundreds of Algerians and foreigners work to extract natural gas from the arid sands of the Sahara. “God is great,” the gunmen cried as they arrived. It was the beginning of a terrifying ordeal — one in which foreign hostages would come under fire from both the gunmen holding them and the Algerian government soldiers trying to free them. For many of the captives, it is an ordeal that has yet to end. Some hostages were forced to wear explosives on their bodies. Others hid under beds and on rooftops, praying to survive but expecting death. One was shot in the back while his fellow captives looked on. Left by their captors with their cellphones, some phoned home with terrifying accounts of the horrors unfolding all around. These were among the chilling tales recounted Friday by some of the hundreds of workers who managed to escape the national gas field on the eastern edge of Algeria that had been stormed by Islamist militants two days before. The gunmen, fighters with a group called Al Mulathameen, said they were acting to avenge the French intervention in nearby Mali, Algerian officials said. But there were indications that the attack had been planned long before the French military began its offensive to recapture the northern half of that country from Islamist insurgents. The attackers appeared to know the site well, even the fact that disgruntled Algerian catering workers were planning a strike. “We know you’re oppressed; we’ve come here so that you can have your rights,” the militants told Algerians at the facility, according to one Algerian former hostage. Another hostage said the fighters had asked about the plans for a strike. “The terrorists were covered with explosives, and they had detonators,” said a senior Algerian government official who was briefed on the crisis. He said the situation remained a standoff on Friday, with “a few terrorists holding a few hostages.” Former captives said that several of the fighters appeared to be foreign, with non-Algerian accents. One Algerian worker said that some of them may have been Libyan and Syrian, and that one might have been French. Another gunman who spoke impeccable English was assigned to speak to the many foreigners. When the Algerian military eventually intervened, the situation grew even more chaotic. According to one witness, Algerian helicopters attacked several jeeps that were carrying hostages. The fate of at least some of those hostages remains unknown. The Algerian state news agency reported that 12 Algerian and foreign workers had been killed since the start of the military operation and that dozens remained unaccounted for. From the start, it was clear that the gunmen only wished to harm foreigners. Algerian workers, along with other Muslims who could prove their faith by reciting from the Koran, were herded into one area, workers said. “They told us, ‘We are your brothers. You have telephones: call your families to reassure them,’ ” said Moussa, an Algerian worker who asked to be identified only by his first name. Image Stephen McFaul, a hostage who escaped, in an earlier photo with his sons. Credit McFaul Family, via Reuters Algerian women in the group of hostages were released right away on Wednesday morning, Moussa said, but the militants initially declined to release the Algerian men, saying it was for their own good. “We’re afraid that if we free you, the army will shoot at you,” he quoted them as saying. Foreigners, meanwhile, were taken away, their hands bound with rubber, both Algerian witnesses said. Some of the employees resisted. Several Filipino workers who had refused to leave their rooms were beaten, Moussa said. At one point, the fighters shot a European as he tried to flee, he said. The other Algerian described seeing a middle-aged European man, perhaps a security official, shot in the back in the cafeteria, where the lights had been switched off. He believed the man had died. Before being captured, Stephen McFaul, 36, an electrical engineer from Belfast, Northern Ireland, barricaded himself in a room with a colleague at the first sound of gunfire, quietly using his cellphone to assure his family that he was all right. “I joked that I was from Northern Ireland and that I had been through better riots,” he told the colleague, according to John Morrissey, a representative for his family in Belfast who was responding to reporters for media organizations around the world. Mr. McFaul, who had been sent to work in Algeria only three weeks ago, was seized a few hours later, Mr. Morrissey said, and ultimately placed in the last jeep of a five-jeep convoy that came under heavy air attack from Algerian forces. The first four jeeps were destroyed, and when Mr. McFaul’s vehicle veered off the road, he and a fellow worker managed to climb out of the back window, which had been broken. Their hands had been tied, their mouths taped and they had been forced to wear vests loaded with explosives, Mr. Morrissey said. The two made a run for it, reaching the security forces, who disarmed the explosives. The spokesman said Mr. McFaul was “bright and together and nervously excited” about returning home. At least one American, identified by a Corpus Christi, Tex., television station as Mark Cobb, also escaped. Mr. Cobb, who is from the Corpus Christi area, is said to have taken cover in an unused room and then made his way out of the plant unharmed, according to the station, KRIS-TV. On Friday, the station said, Mr. Cobb sent a text message to a friend that said, “I’m alive.” Other foreigners, like Alexandre Berceaux, a French employee of a catering company working at the site, hid themselves as best they could. “I stayed hidden for nearly 40 hours in my bedroom,” Mr. Berceaux told Europe 1 Radio. “I was under the bed, and I put boards everywhere just in case. I had food, water; I didn’t know how long I would be there.” He said he was certain he would be killed. “When the Algerian soldiers, whom I thank, came to get me, I didn’t even know it was over,” he said. The soldiers came with his colleagues, he said, “otherwise I would never have opened the door.” Mr. Berceaux said Algerian soldiers found some British hostages hiding on the roof and were still searching the site for others when he was escorted to a nearby military base, from which he expected to be transferred to France. Others might still be hidden, he said. Among the casualties was a French citizen identified as Yann Desjeux, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said in a statement on Friday evening. Mr. Desjeux had contacted his family by telephone midday on Thursday and died sometime later, according to the French newspaper Sud Ouest, which also had spoken to Mr. Desjeux on Thursday. The newspaper said a freelance journalist had dialed up a militant he had been in contact with previously and discovered that the man was involved in the raid on the factory. The journalist asked if any Frenchmen were captives, and the militant then passed the phone to Mr. Desjeux, 52, who said he was being well treated and that the captors wanted the French government to warn Algeria not to raid the factory. The circumstances of his death were not clear.


Bringing a New Identity to Staten Island’s Fresh Kills Landfill

Abstract: Raj Kottamasu, 29, is a community coordinator for Freshkills Park, which is built above the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island. Raised in West Bloomfield, Mich., he is the only member of his family who is not a doctor and thus describes himself as a black sheep. Park or a landfill? Freshkills was a landfill from 1947 to 2001. At that point, then the city held an international design competition to re-envision the site as a park. It’s a 2,200-acre site, and 45 percent was active landfill, and the other 55 is made up of creeks and wetlands. It hasn’t opened yet. We have started construction on a 20-acre piece of the 2,200 acres. We hope to have 70 acres open within the next two to three years. It’s a 30-year project to build out the entire park. How did Fresh Kills become Freshkills? That’s part of this rebranding strategy that one of our consultants did for us, which was about making the name a little less harsh. “Kills” is a Dutch word for stream or estuary, but the specific words “Fresh Kills” were maybe a little harsh sounding. The effort was not to rename the site, but to reorient what it was thought about. It’s mostly to signal that something is different, or a shift in approach. What do you do? So my job is to get people into thinking about this site as a park and being excited about its potential as a park. The garbage is still there. It’s always going to be there. The narrative we are harvesting from this site’s history is that Freshkills was this symbol of environmental neglect and wastefulness, and we have an opportunity to turn it into this huge asset instead of a liability. The details: There are seven of us that work exclusively on the Freshkills Park project, that is a mixture of planners, architects, landscape architects, policy makers and environmental educators. It’s my job to build the political and public support that maintains momentum on this project. I do the grant writing and the fund-raising. I go onto the site once or twice a week. Getting the job: I went to graduate school for urban planning at M.I.T. and was engaged in thinking about public spaces and public art and in particular how digital tools can help in storytelling. I saw this job posting on a jobs board and applied. Did you have to know anything about landfills? I knew very little about landfills before I started this job posting. Now I consider myself a very educated amateur, if not a minor expert. There are a lot of landfills that have been converted into parks, historically and contemporarily. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens was the Corona ash dumps, which were referenced in “The Great Gatsby.” Bureaucracy 101: The application process, that was my introduction to city bureaucracy and a primer. I applied in August, and I was called back in October. Luckily then once I met with my prospective team, they were really quick to get back to me. A week later I had the job. But then I had to wait until January to start. A lot of paperwork has to be processed, and a lot of approvals have to be made before anyone can be hired on the public’s dime.

Waste Materials and Disposal
Careers and Professions


Designed for Efficiency, New Computer Software at Health Dept. Misfires

Abstract: In July, the San Francisco Department of Public Health started using an $11.2 million electronic medical records system, Avatar, that was designed to streamline billing and improve care for tens of thousands of clients. Thus far, however, it has brought administrative chaos to the mental health and substance abuse services in the city. Documents obtained by The Bay Citizen under a California Public Records Act request show that shortly after installing Avatar, providers struggled to use the new software, causing health officials to lose track of millions of dollars of services. Officials are scrambling to fill in the missing data to meet deadlines to qualify for reimbursement from the state. The department has a $310 million budget for mental health and substance abuse, and San Francisco General Hospital, city-run clinics, community organizations and private therapists provide the services. Medi-Cal reimburses the department for some of those costs. Problems related to the conversion to Avatar delayed for months the payment of about $450,000 to individual therapists, Anne Okubo, the health department’s deputy financial officer, told the San Francisco Health Commission on Tuesday night. The department was forced to use a third party to make the payments, which are still incomplete. In addition, some therapists and social workers report that the demands of the new software have cut into the time they spend with patients, eroding the quality of care. In an Aug. 19 e-mail headed “problems with Avatar,” Steven Schreibman, a social worker at Sunset Mental Health, a city-run clinic, wrote that the software required “excessive time charting and performing data entry” and had led to “shorter sessions with clients” and “delays in our capacity to accept new clients.” Senior health department officials and Netsmart Technologies, Avatar’s developer, said the problems were glitches that were to be expected as the city made the transition to a more efficient record-keeping system. “We knew it was going to be rough initially, because there is a learning curve,” said Jo Robinson, who heads the Community Health Behavioral Services division, where Avatar was introduced. Kevin Scalia, a Netsmart Technologies executive vice president, said that he does not see this as a big problem. “From our point of view,” he said, “everything is going swimmingly.” During the Health Commission meeting on Tuesday, health department officials accepted congratulations for putting Avatar in use on time without going over budget. The system, which encompasses billing and clinical documentation, has 2,600 users in San Francisco and is used in 25 of California’s 58 counties. In San Francisco, Avatar replaced three software systems used by Community Health Behavioral Services, as well as paper charts. Department managers told the Health Commission that Avatar would lead to “improved client care” and had “positive fiscal impacts,” but they acknowledged there had been problems. In September, the department compared the cost of mental health and substance services reported by the hospital, clinics and organizations in March, before the software was put into use, to those reported in July using the new system. The data showed that the mental health services reported had plunged 55 percent. Substance abuse services reported fell 32 percent. The large discrepancies caused alarm because they indicated that providers were having problems using the software, according to documents and interviews. “Substance abuse — serious problems!” Ms. Okubo, the deputy financial officer, wrote in a Sept. 1 e-mail to health department officials and Netsmart Technologies, which is based in New York. “Almost all providers with Avatar data have huge reductions in revenues. It’s pretty clear none are getting Avatar.” A month later, as more providers gained access and proficiency with the software, the picture improved, but significant discrepancies remained. “Everyone was learning, and we were fumbling,” said Ms. Robinson, director of Community Health Behavioral Services. Gathering the correct data quickly is crucial for the city to be reimbursed by Medi-Cal. The department expects to receive $90.9 million from Medi-Cal this fiscal year for mental health and substance abuse. It is racing to clean up the July data before deadlines in November and December to submit the correct information to the state for reimbursement. Ms. Okubo is confident that will happen. “The expectation is that the system will be billing at the same rate,” she said. But some organizations worry that the services they are providing will not be fully reflected in the new system. At the Health Commission meeting, Estela Garcia, executive director of the Instituto Familiar de la Raza, a community organization that provides mental health services, asked the commission to protect organizations like hers from any financial liability related to Avatar. “I want a hold-harmless policy until the system is fully up and running,” Ms. Garcia said. How long that will take is unclear. One mental health program director, who would not allow his name to be used because it could jeopardize his relationship with the department, said his staff had gone to repeated training sessions to try to get up to speed. “Avatar turns out to be a total disaster,” the program director said. “What is going to happen to contracted agencies if their billing is short at the end of the fiscal year as compared to the terms of their contract, because they can’t master Avatar?” Some providers say the demands of the new system detract from the care they are able to provide. A psychologist who works with a community organization under contract to the city, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was afraid of losing his job, said he used to do all his charting and billing on paper and was told that the new system would be more efficient. So far, that has not proved to be the case, he said. “We are seeing the same number of patients,” he said, “but we are providing substantially less service to them, because the time we are now spending just to do the billing alone, not to mention the record keeping, it’s become the majority of our time.” Greg Cross, a field representative for Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents hundreds of social workers, psychologists and counselors who work for the city, said he had met with officials to discuss Avatar’s impact on workload as well as performance expectations. At the Health Commission meeting, Fred McGregor, the health department’s senior information technology manager for community programs, said that the department was aware that providers find the demands of Avatar “a little onerous” and that it was working on a redesign to make clinical assessment more efficient. Mr. Schreibman, the social worker, made it clear in his August e-mail that change was needed quickly. “The kind and amount of work skill involved using this software represents a change in our job description,” he wrote. “This is not the job we accepted when we chose to do clinical work for the city.”

Computers and the Internet
Software
Electronic Health Records
Medicine and Health
Service Employees International Union
San Francisco (Calif)


BP Pays Out Claims, but Satisfaction Is Not Included

Abstract: GRAND ISLE, La. — Brian Zito’s 30-foot shrimp boat is called the Lucky 13, but with the BP oil spill keeping it in port here, he is thinking of renaming it the Unlucky 13. Mr. Zito is one of thousands on the Gulf Coast in the uncomfortable position of relying on BP, the company that cost them their livelihoods, for money to live on. He got a $5,000 check from BP last month, the standard amount for boat owners. “Oh, I got the money, but it’s a joke,” said Mr. Zito, 54, who borrowed thousands of dollars to fix up his boat in time for the season, and who pointed to a wrinkled piece of paper in his truck showing that he was recently paid $1,823 for just one day of shrimping. “This year, I could have made $5,000 in two nights.” As the oil spreads outward from the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico, so does the economic hardship. It is now affecting everyone from fishermen and seafood processors to the owners of vacation rentals who cannot attract guests to oil-marred beaches. In response, BP has opened 25 claims offices across the gulf and sent $46 million in checks so far to some 17,500 Gulf Coast residents for their lost income. But some boat owners, like Mr. Zito, complain that BP is not paying enough. Others say they have had a hard time getting their claims paid. BP said another 17,500 claims — about half of all submitted — had yet to be paid because of questions about documentation, which can be hard to come by in a cash industry like fishing. When President Obama visited here on Friday, he said he did not want to hear that BP was “nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the gulf who are having a hard time,” while spending billions of dollars on dividends and millions of dollars on advertising. Darryl Willis, a vice president of BP America who is in charge of the claims process, said the company would honor all legitimate claims. “We will make these payments for as long as it takes,” he said in a conference call with reporters on Saturday. Mr. Willis said that BP had initially decided to pay all captains $5,000 a month and all deckhands $2,500 to get the process moving, but that they would readjust and pay more to people who could show that they were losing more because of the spill. And he said claims adjusters were trying to work with people who lacked documentation, by accepting pay stubs or bank statements from some claimants who lacked tax forms. But some people are still struggling to get their claims paid. As she left First Mount Zion Baptist Church in Empire, Darvin Riley, 38, said she was having trouble getting her $2,500 check for the work she had missed as a deckhand on her brother’s shrimp boat, the Captain Kaden, because some of his paperwork was out of date. “We’re not going out, and we’re not making any money,” she said. But for the most part, said Clint Guidry, the acting president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, the problem is not that BP is not paying claims, but that the claims it is paying are too small. “It’s kind of like having a really good job and then getting injured,” he said. “You get worker’s comp. But try paying your bills with that.” Some lawyers see another possible problem with the claims process: it may delay lawsuits. Stuart Smith, an environmental lawyer in New Orleans, said that by paying the claims, BP may be able to forestall some lawsuits, which can be filed only if claims against the company have not been resolved within 90 days. “So you set up this massive claims process that is directed and controlled by the corporate polluter,” Mr. Smith said. “You have to talk to BP before you go to court. It’s outrageous.” The anger at BP is evident here, with signs stapled to telephone poles and houses with messages like “President Obama, BP took my money. Where’s my change?” and “BP = Bayou Polluters” and “Where the hell is my money, BP?” At Camardelle’s Live Bait on Highway 1, Chris Camardelle, 50, was still riding high from Mr. Obama’s visit to his shop on Friday. But he was troubled that the checks he had received from BP so far would not be nearly enough to offset the income he was hoping to earn this spring and summer in what he called his “haymaking days.” “Remember, we’ve got to make enough money to save for the whole winter,” he said. “And we’ve just been making all these repairs to our boats, getting ready for the shrimp season. My bank loans are $5,000 a month for just this live bait shop. Right now, I’m barely floating.”

Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Offshore Drilling and Exploration
Accidents and Safety
BP Plc
Gulf of Mexico
Fishing Commercial


Amendments Trimmed, Senate Moves Ahead on Farm Bill

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Senate began voting Tuesday on a slimmed-down list of amendments to a farm bill that would set the nation’s food and agriculture policy for the next five years. The number of proposed amendments had grown to about 300, covering a range of issues like crop insurance subsidies and aid to Pakistan. But late Monday, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, reached an agreement that narrowed the list to 73. “This is not a great agreement, but it’s a good agreement,” Mr. Reid said Monday night. Among the amendments approved on Tuesday was a proposal by Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, to add more peas, lentils and chickpeas to the federal school lunch program. The vote was 58 to 41. Another amendment, by Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, would require the Agriculture Department to study an insurance program for poultry producers that would protect them from disease outbreaks or bankruptcies. It passed on a voice vote. The Senate voted down amendments by Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, that would have changed the eligibility requirements for recipients of food stamps and would have ended bonuses to states for increasing enrollments in the food stamp program. Mr. Reid and Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, had hoped to remove several amendments unrelated to farm policy. But several still made the final list, including an amendment by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, that would require the Defense Department to study the impact of $500 billion in spending cuts. Another unrelated amendment, by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, would cut off federal financing for presidential nominating conventions. The farm bill seeks to change policy fundamentally by eliminating millions of dollars in payments to farmers and farmland owners as a cushion against losses when crop prices fall. Instead, crop insurance, which guarantees revenue when there are drops in prices or crop yields, would become the primary safety net for farmers. But unlike direct payments to farmers, crop insurance subsidies do not have payment limits. Several lawmakers, including Mr. Coburn and Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, have offered amendments that would reduce the amount of the insurance subsidies that higher-income farmers could get. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, offered an amendment that would prevent anyone with over $250,000 in annual adjusted gross income from receiving any kind of federal farm payment. Mr. Paul said current farm policy allowed people like the former basketball star Scottie Pippen to receive farm payments. The amendment was defeated after Ms. Stabenow said the farm bill would already limit payments to higher-income farmers. An amendment by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, would have cut the amount paid to insurance companies to subsidize their costs in selling crop insurance. Last year, the government paid insurance companies $1.3 billion, and Ms. Gillibrand’s amendment would have reduced that amount to offset a $4.5 billion cut to the food stamp program. But the Senate rejected the amendment, 66 to 33. An amendment by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, would allow the agriculture secretary to issue grants to promote the maple syrup industry. The farm bill would cut $23 billion from agriculture programs, mostly by eliminating direct payments and cutting financing for food stamps, which the Agriculture Committee said would contribute to reducing the deficit. But critics have argued that savings from ending the direct payments would be plowed into two other programs that could prove costly: a $3 billion insurance program that would subsidize crop insurance deductibles for farmers, and another program that would add an extra layer of protection to guarantee 10 to 15 percent of a farmer’s revenue, paying out not only in years of heavy losses but also when revenue dips less severely. Crop insurance already guarantees about 75 percent of a farmer’s revenue.

United States Politics and Government
Agriculture and Farming
Senate
Food


Manchester City Continues Hot Streak Against United

Abstract: Sergio Agüero’s second-half goal earned host Manchester City a 1-0 victory over 10-man Manchester United in the Premier League on Sunday, extending City’s winning streak in the derby to four games. United played with 10 men after center back Chris Smalling was sent off in the 39th minute, and Agüero broke down United’s makeshift defense when he converted Gaël Clichy’s cross in the 63rd minute. City ended a three-match losing streak in all competitions to stay 6 points behind unbeaten leader Chelsea. After 10 games, United is 13 points off Chelsea in ninth, its worst start to a league season after 10 games since 1986. Manchester City has won four straight derbies in the league for the first time since 1969-70. VILLA LOSES SIXTH STRAIGHT Harry Kane’s last-minute winner capped a late comeback by Tottenham in a 2-1 victory over 10-man Aston Villa that gave the home team its sixth straight loss in the Premier League. Down to 10 men after Christian Benteke’s straight red card in the 65th minute, Villa scored in the 84th through Nacer Chadli before a free kick by the substitute Kane deflected off the wall and into the corner. Villa went ahead with a goal by Andreas Weimann in the 16th, but its momentum was checked when Belgium striker Benteke was sent off for putting his hands in Ryan Mason’s face as they squared up. Tottenham moved up to eighth, and with the defeat, Villa was left 2 points off the bottom three. VALENCIA MOVES TO SECOND Valencia defender Shkodran Mustafi scored twice in a 3-1 win at Villarreal to help his team climb into second place in Spain. Valencia’s win, with Sevilla’s 1-0 loss at Athletic Bilbao, kept the top five teams all within 2 points through 10 rounds. Real Madrid leads with 24 points. Mustafi struck in the 64th and 73rd minutes after Villarreal midfielder Manu Trigueros scored an own goal in the sixth to spoil his team’s strong first half. Trigueros scored in the 88th. Bilbao’s Aritz Aduriz scored to ruin Sevilla’s hopes of overtaking Madrid. Sunday’s results put Valencia ahead of the defending champion Atlético Madrid in third on goal difference, with both teams 1 point behind Real Madrid. Barcelona is in fourth place, ahead of Seville on goal difference, and 2 points behind Real Madrid. MöNCHENGLADBACH UNBEATEN Patrick Herrmann scored two goals and set up another for Borussia Mönchengladbach to underline its strong start to the Bundesliga with a 3-1 win over previously undefeated Hoffenheim. Mönchengladbach equaled the club record of 17 competitive games unbeaten set by the 1970-71 team, coached by Hennes Weisweiler, and stayed 4 points behind leader Bayern Munich, trailing second-place Wolfsburg on goal difference. Bayern and Mönchengladbach are the only remaining unbeaten teams. Promoted Paderborn moved to seventh with a 3-1 win over visiting Hertha Berlin.

Soccer
Sergio Aguero
Manchester City Soccer Team
Manchester United