Part of Door Frame Dismantled in Search for Clues to Slaying

Abstract: Investigators removed part of a door frame yesterday from the Fifth Avenue apartment where a celebrity real estate broker was bludgeoned to death last week, a law enforcement official said. The section was taken from the frame of the entrance to the home of Linda Stein, who was found dead in her penthouse apartment at 965 Fifth Avenue last Tuesday night. The frame had a smudge that will be subjected to laboratory examination, investigators said. Ms. Stein, 62, promoted the punk rock movement as a co-manager of the Ramones, and later moved on to a career in real estate. She used her show business contacts — including friendships with Elton John and Madonna, among others — to become a self-described “broker to the stars.” A woman with a forceful personality, Ms. Stein had a number of tumultuous personal and business relationships, her friends have said. But no one has been arrested, nor have the police given a motive for the killing. Searching for more clues yesterday, detectives were joined by officers from the Emergency Service Unit and the Crime Scene Unit. Investigators have repeatedly returned to the scene; on Friday, for example, they removed a sink. “They are looking for possible forensic material,” one official said of the latest visit to the crime scene. “There is a thought that there might be a print on a location.”

Murders and Attempted Murders
Manhattan (NYC)


The Mets Release Duaner Sánchez

Abstract: VIERA, Fla. — Duaner Sánchez was scheduled to pitch Tuesday. But as his teammates gathered their gear for the trip here, he walked out of the clubhouse, past the buses and toward his truck in the players’ lot for the final time. Sánchez was released in a morning meeting with General Manager Omar Minaya. The somewhat surprising move affirmed the Mets ’ skepticism that he would ever be as successful as he was in 2006, before a taxicab accident and two subsequent shoulder operations interrupted a once-promising career. The Mets had been concerned about his diminished velocity and spotty command throughout spring training, and Sánchez did nothing to prove otherwise Monday against Baltimore. He could not muster a pitch faster than 89 miles per hour for the second straight outing, and he gave up two runs and three hits while issuing one walk, his sixth in five innings. “We looked at it, really, his overall performance based upon last year to what we see now, and we didn’t see the improvement that we felt was needed to be effective in the major leagues,” Minaya said. The Mets intend to round out the bullpen with an internal option, increasing Bobby Parnell’s chances of making the team. Parnell pitched a scoreless inning Tuesday in the Mets’ 5-5 tie in 10 innings with Washington. Cutting Sánchez also gives them flexibility if they decide to keep another left-handed reliever to join Pedro Feliciano. “We feel very comfortable and confident with the group that we have to choose from,” Manager Jerry Manuel said, before mentioning the team’s two major acquisitions, Francisco Rodríguez and J. J. Putz. “When you add K-Rod and J. J., it makes you have some people that can be expendable in that sense.” Some players spotted Sánchez after his meeting with Minaya, but others, like Ramón Castro and Mike Pelfrey, seemed shocked by the news. When told, Castro laughed, assuming it was a joke. Pelfrey could summon only a “wow.” Brian Schneider saw Sánchez, whom he said looked shaken. Sánchez, who left the clubhouse before the Mets announced the decision, did not immediately answer messages left on his cellphone. “What can you really tell him?” Schneider said. “It’s not one of those things you expect, seeing one of your guys get released.” The timing might have been a surprise; the Mets could have waited another week to gauge his improvement and still owed him the same amount of money, roughly one-sixth of his $1,687,500 salary — about $276,000. But they became disenchanted with Sánchez as early as last July, when they attributed his decline in velocity to poor conditioning. Their off-season bullpen retooling left Sánchez, once a dynamic crossover reliever, with a marginal role, and he realized that he was not guaranteed a spot. He arrived in Port St. Lucie in early January, pleasing team officials, but he failed to impress them once he started pitching. “I know I have it,” Sánchez said Monday of his velocity. “I’ve got no problem with that. I just don’t want to come out of the chute throwing hard. That’s not me. I want to make sure that when I reach back, I know I have it there.” His departure nearly completes the bullpen’s turnover since 2006, when the Mets had the best relief corps in the National League. That was partly because of Sánchez, who went 5-1 with a 2.60 earned run average while evolving into one of baseball’s best setup relievers. Only Feliciano remains, a sign of how much the bullpen has deteriorated since July 31, 2006, when Sánchez sustained a separated right shoulder in a taxicab accident. Two operations followed, and Sánchez did not return until last April. Manuel rarely used him in important situations last September, although he seemed confident as late as Monday afternoon that Sánchez was making progress. But then Manuel met with Minaya, and Sánchez’s fate was sealed. “I asked the question, Where is he compared to last year?” Minaya said. “We didn’t see that much of an improvement.” He added later, “There were some positive signs there, but at the end of the day, you got to make a call, and the call was made today.”


Vigneault Interviews for Rangers’ Coaching Job

Abstract: CHICAGO — The top candidate for the Rangers’ coaching vacancy, Alain Vigneault, met with General Manager Glen Sather and the club’s management staff Monday in La Quinta, Calif. Vigneault coached the Vancouver Canucks for seven seasons until he was fired last month after the Canucks were eliminated in the first round by the San Jose Sharks. Vigneault led the team to six division titles and the 2011 Stanley Cup finals. The Rangers have also received permission to interview Lindy Ruff, who was fired as the Buffalo coach this season, his 15th behind the Sabres’ bench. The Rangers’ interest in Vigneault and Ruff was confirmed by a person close to the situation but not authorized to speak publicly. Mark Messier, the former Rangers captain and a special assistant to Sather since 2009, is also considered a candidate for the coaching job. Sather fired John Tortorella after the Rangers were eliminated by the Boston Bruins in the second round of the playoffs last month. Sather, 69, said he would continue as the Rangers’ general manager next season, but he is expected to be succeeded as soon as the next season by one of his two assistant general managers: Jim Schoenfeld or Jeff Gorton. Gorton ran the Rangers while Sather was hospitalized after prostate surgery in March. As the interim general manager of the Bruins for four months in 2006, Gorton acquired Tuukka Rask, signed Zdeno Chara and drafted Milan Lucic and Brad Marchand, all key figures on Boston’s team entering the Stanley Cup finals Wednesday. “I thought they did a real good job,” Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli said Tuesday of what Gorton and the Bruins’ staff did in 2006.

Ice hockey
Coaches
Canucks
Alain Vigneault
Buffalo Sabres
Lindy Ruff


Rehab Center Moves From Bronxville, and Not Everyone’s Happy

Abstract: BRONXVILLE THOSE who have ever had to resort to physical therapy know that between the stretches, bends, massages, heat packs and ultrasound, there is plenty of time to schmooze. So word spread quickly among the grizzled and slightly creaky clients that Lawrence Hospital Center here was moving its physical and occupational therapy unit two and a half miles outside town to a building in Eastchester. By September, the move was a fait accompli. Many of the patients were upset. Why, they wondered, would their hometown hospital do something like this to people who for the most part are no longer in their prime — indeed, some use wheelchairs — and may not have the vim and verve to take two buses to Eastchester? Many of these critics lived in a pillared cooperative near the hospital known as Brooklands, with lots of elderly residents who reveled in the two-minute walk they had. More far-flung patients liked the fact that they could get off at Bronxville’s Metro-North station and also be at the hospital in two minutes. “Everybody is really upset,” said Maria Liscio, 75, a widowed travel agent who lives in Brooklands and needed therapy for her scoliosis. “It was an excellent department, and it was very convenient. A lot of people don’t drive.” These folks did more than just complain. They sniffed and snooped and sleuthed and came up with some intriguing connections. They spoke to Vincent Marchiselli, the Sam Spade Sr. of this saga. He is 80 and lives in Scarsdale and still works as a funeral director. He goes to Lawrence periodically for physical therapy because his knees swell up from childhood polio. He also happens to be a former state assemblyman from the Bronx who knows his way around a bureaucracy or two and still has friends in high places. When the other patients and workers informed Mr. Marchiselli that the rehabilitation unit not only was moving but also that gossip had it that the new building was owned by doctors at the hospital, he had a friend check property documents in the Westchester County Clerk’s office. The records revealed that the plain brick building at 329 White Plains Road in Eastchester that would house Lawrence’s physical therapy operation had been bought by RM Office Property L.L.C. for $5.1 million last January and that two of the principal owners were indeed attending physicians at Lawrence, Drs. Ralph E. Binder and Michael J. Morelli, who are both pulmonologists. Dr. Morelli is also on the hospital’s board of trustees. “What they did they did to accommodate doctors who have gotten into the real estate business, and it upset the entire community for no good reason,” Mr. Marchiselli said of the hospital. Heather Morrison, Lawrence’s vice president of development and marketing, said lawyers and corporate compliance officials “went over the deal with a fine comb” to make sure that no special favors were involved. The 5,000 square feet of space was leased for 10 years at market rate starting at $241,430 a year, she said. The hospital’s trustees were aware that one of their own was a landlord and approved the rental, and Dr. Morelli recused himself from deliberations. “We did our due diligence,” Ms. Morrison said. “We’re not getting a deal, and they’re not getting a deal. Nobody’s getting a deal.” The hospital, she said, needed to expand its physical therapy for the coming wave of baby boomers. (There are some things that are apparently recession-proof — like aging.) So it looked around at several suitable sites, and the optimal one turned out to be in Eastchester. The building already housed doctors’ offices — including those of Drs. Binder and Morelli — and had a broad ground floor once used by a fitness club that could be converted into the larger rehab gym the hospital needed and that could accommodate new equipment. Hospitalized patients will still receive physical therapy at the hospital. “We are hearing from patients who love the new facility,” Ms. Morrison said. “It has valet parking, is very easily accessible, it has a larger gym — and it has new equipment so we can use various therapies that we haven’t been able to do before.” Speaking for both doctors, Dr. Binder said hospital executives liked the space and negotiated the deal with a broker in early 2008. “I never perceived they were doing us a favor,” he said. “If not here they would be someplace else. I can’t imagine why they would do me favor.” Still, John C. Coffee, the Adolf A. Berle Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and an expert on corporate governance, said that “better nonprofit institutions had a policy against self-dealing” transactions and avoided it scrupulously unless it could be shown that the deal was significantly cheaper than other alternatives. Although it is too late to do anything about the move, the Senior Sherlocks are breaking out in mild smiles of I-told-you-so satisfaction, knowing there was something slightly off about a decision that made no sense to them in the first place. As Mr. Marchiselli says in his earthy way, “If it’s there and it’s doing the job, why inconvenience people?”

Therapy and Rehabilitation
Relocation of Business
Lawrence Hospital
Westchester County (NY)


PhoneFactor Allows Secure Logging On, With a Cellphone as a Sentinel

Abstract: A deteriorating financial system isn’t the only fear online banking customers face. The specter of hackers snatching passwords or breaking into corporate computers is a constant threat. But defeating such criminals may be just a phone call away. PhoneFactor ( www.phonefactor.com ) is a service that adds a layer of security to user names and passwords by calling your mobile phone and asking for confirmation to allow a login. Positive Networks, the company behind PhoneFactor, says the software is primarily used by financial institutions and corporations whose employees connect to company computers remotely. Free versions are available for two services, the blogging software WordPress and the remote-access service LogMeIn. The LogMeIn software, for example, can be downloaded and installed on any Windows computer you want to access remotely. Then every time someone — even you — tries to tap into that computer with your user name and password, a message is sent to one of PhoneFactor’s data centers, which in turn calls your phone and asks you to allow access by pressing the pound key. So even if a hacker has your password, your account remains secure. JOHN R. QUAIN

Computers and the Internet
Computer Security
Software
PhoneFactor
Positive Networks


Cyprus Is 'Very Close' to Bailout Agreement, President Says

Abstract: NICOSIA — Cyprus is close to agreeing on a bailout package with international lenders, President Demetris Christofias said Thursday as officials from the lenders left the country after the latest round of talks. The Mediterranean island nation sought financial aid, expected to top €10 billion or 60 percent of its gross domestic product, in June after its banking sector was battered by exposure to Greece. “After tough negotiations,” Cyprus is “very close to signing a memorandum,” Mr. Christofias said in a statement from Brussels, where he is attending a two-day summit of European Union leaders. “Very few issues remain and it’s possible that the gaps in these issues will be bridged very soon,” he added. Cyprus and its potential creditors have been at odds over a host of issues, including the amount needed to recapitalize Cypriot banks, privatization plans and pension cuts. Representatives of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the I.M.F., who were due to leave Cyprus over the weekend, left on Thursday after nearly two weeks of negotiations. Talks will continue over the telephone, a Finance Ministry spokesman said. The representatives are expected to return at a later date, he said. “If the president says we’re close, we’re close,” Finance Minister Vassos Shiarly, who has been leading the negotiations, told the Cypriot Parliament on Thursday.

Cyprus
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
European Central Bank


Massachusetts: M.I.T. Will Release Documents In Hacking Case

Abstract: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday announced that it would release documents related to the case against Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist who committed suicide in January , about a month before he was to go to trial on charges that he illegally downloaded academic articles from the university’s computer network. In a letter to the M.I.T. community, the university president, L. Rafael Reif, said lawyers for Mr. Swartz had requested in federal court that the institution make evidence related to the case public. Mr. Reif said M.I.T. planned to release those documents, with some information redacted, when it completed an investigation led by a computer science professor, Hal Abelson, into the university’s role in the case. Professor Abelson said in late January that he hoped to complete the investigation within a few weeks.

Aaron Swartz
MIT
Hacker (computer security)
Suicide
Massachusetts
College


New York City Settles With 6 Occupy Wall Street Protesters Pepper-Sprayed by the Police

Abstract: New York City has agreed to pay a total of $332,500 to six Occupy Wall Street protesters who said the police unjustly blasted them with pepper spray four years ago in an episode that helped propel the movement into the spotlight. The settlements, reached in recent weeks, range from $52,500 to $60,000 per person in cases arising from the Occupy movement’s early days in September 2011. They are among a number of payouts the city has approved over its handling of the protests against economic inequality; it has fought other claims. The city’s Law Department said on Monday that the latest settlements were in the city’s best interest. The Police Department said in a statement that it had not altered its pepper spray guidelines. Officers can use the chemical for purposes including protection, but not against people who do not actively resist. The protesters’ lawyers said the lawsuits held the police accountable for their actions. “We think it’s an amount that reflects that the city is aware that its actions were entirely improper,” said Mark Taylor, who represents three of the protesters, Damien Crisp, Kelly Hanlin and Julie Lawler. Mr. Taylor and Aymen Aboushi, a lawyer for the protesters Chelsea Elliot and Jeanne Mansfield, said the lawsuits aimed to alter police officers’ approach to demonstrations. “This lawsuit was never about the money, but rather change,” Mr. Aboushi said. The cases stemmed from a march one week after Occupy protesters first gathered and camped out in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. Online video showed Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying a cluster of marchers, mostly women, who were corralled behind orange netting. The images helped galvanize the Occupy movement. Inspector Bologna deployed the chemical “without the slightest provocation” as the protesters stood peacefully, said Ron Kuby, a lawyer for Kaylee Dedrick, who was seen on video being sprayed and crumpling to the ground. Inspector Bologna’s union said he acted out of concern for safety and prevented more injuries and tumult. He was not charged with any crime, but he was found to have violated Police Department guidelines and was docked 10 vacation days. The city has reached some other sizable settlements concerning the Occupy demonstrations, including a $583,000 agreement with 14 protesters who said they were wrongfully arrested on New Year’s Day 2012; $230,000 that the city and Zuccotti Park’s private owner are paying over allegations that a book collection was destroyed when the park was cleared in November 2011; and $55,000 to a man arrested while shooting video at an Occupy demonstration, according to lawyers in those cases. But a federal appeals court this winter dismissed a lawsuit over the arrests of more than 700 Occupy supporters marching on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1, 2011. Some other Occupy-related lawsuits also continue, including cases involving police use of pepper spray.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Beef Ban in India Reaches Into Cages of Lions and Tigers

Abstract: MUMBAI, India — Palash, the largest tiger at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, still paces his cage for the hour leading up to dinner and still pounces on his meal when his handlers lift the gate to his feeding room. But lately what the 440-pound feline finds is not his usual 15 pounds of raw beef, fresh from the slaughter. Instead, he and the park’s eight other Bengal tigers, three lions, 14 leopards and three vultures are subsisting almost exclusively on decidedly lighter fare: chicken. The change in diet has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with India’s particular mix of politics and religion. The Maharashtra state government, led by the country’s governing Hindu nationalist party, recently banned the possession and sale of beef, imposing religious dietary restrictions on Hindus and non-Hindus alike. Violations can be punished by up to five years in prison. The law has been sought by Hindu right-wingers, who helped bring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party to power last year. Their ability to get the ban passed is seen by many as a sign of their growing power in the B.J.P.-led governments in important states. The new rules caused grumbling from Mumbai’s cosmopolitan, sometimes beef-eating elite — a group that includes some Hindus — who were sore over the sudden disappearance of steaks in restaurants. Others were unsettled by the rising culture wars between the Hindu right and those who oppose its agenda, including minorities. In this case, that group includes the state’s mostly Muslim cattle traders and meat retailers, who fear the ban will damage their businesses. The traders are now weeks into a strike over the ban, refusing to supply shops with even buffalo meat, which is still legal. And that is where the animals at the national park come in. Until recently, the animals at the park had feasted on a mixed diet of fresh beef, water buffalo and chicken. But the ban pulled beef from the menu, and the strike — at least for now — put fresh buffalo out of reach. Image Workers at a slaughterhouse in Mumbai, India. Beef traders are in their third week of a strike against the state beef ban. Credit Danish Siddiqui/Reuters The animals’ handlers, who seem baffled by the attention in the Indian news media since the ban, give mixed reviews on the switch to white meat. Babu Vishnukote, one of the feeders, says the animals are devouring the chicken, which he sees as a good sign. But Shailesh Bhagwan Deore, who oversees the care of animals kept in captivity at the park, fears the leaner diet might eventually deplete the animals’ strength. “In fresh beef, the animals get the taste of blood,” Mr. Deore said. “They enjoy that.” The fight, of course, is not over what the park’s animals are eating; they will be able to tear into freshly slaughtered buffalo meat as soon as the striking traders begin supplying it again. Underlying the debate is unease among some liberal Indians worried that the ban shows the growing power of the Hindu right in the country. Neerja Chowdhury, a journalist and political analyst, said the passage of the ban seemed to indicate a kind of quid pro quo between Mr. Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or R.S.S., a Hindu nationalist organization that backed his recent attempts at land reform despite its reservations. “He’s walking a tightrope because he himself is trying to come across as somebody who is pursuing inclusive politics,” Ms. Chowdhury said. “The general is taking one view, but the foot soldiers are taking a different view.” The protection of cows is a volatile subject in India, where the animals are revered by the majority-Hindu population. In a recent interview with The Indian Express, Noorjehan Safia Niaz, an activist, railed against the law, which she says unfairly affects poorer members of the country’s Christian, Muslim and Dalit communities who are reliant on beef because it is generally cheaper than chicken. “The decision to ban beef is a communal one targeted at the marginalized Muslims and Dalits,” she said, adding that the decision was tantamount to the government “entering our kitchens and asking us what to eat.” “It is an extremely personal attack,” she said.

Meat
Beef
India
Zoo
Maharashtra
Hinduism
Narendra Modi


Cyber Monday Sales Give Retailers a Holiday Shopping Boost

Abstract: Cyber Monday may have started as a made-up occasion to give underdog e-commerce sites jealous of Black Friday a day of their own, but it has become an undeniably real thing — surprising even the people who invented it. Last year was the first time that the Monday after Thanksgiving was the biggest online shopping day of the year by sales, and the first day that online spending passed $1 billion, according to comScore , a research company that measures Web use. On this Monday, early sales reports indicated that it could again be the best day of the season for e-commerce companies. Though comScore did not release official sales figures on Monday, it said it expected e-commerce sites to reach $1.2 billion in sales, which would be a 17 percent increase over last year. IBM Benchmark, which tracks e-commerce sales, said they were up 15 percent. “We believe that Cyber Monday is definitely going to be the biggest shopping day of 2011 online,” said Eric Best, chief executive of Mercent, which does online advertising and e-commerce on third-party marketplaces like Amazon.com for 400 brands, including Zappos.com and HSN. Still, e-commerce analysts cautioned that strong Cyber Monday sales did not necessarily promise a merry online shopping season in a dreary economy. Instead, shoppers could be seeking deals because they are financially struggling. “I don’t think that what happened is any telltale sign that people are breaking out their wallets,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research . “A happy Web season doesn’t mean the economy is improving, just that people are becoming more mature from a technology standpoint and more savvy about finding good deals.” Some online retailers took a rosier view. “I don’t think we’re just pulling sales forward,” said Peter Cobb, co-founder and senior vice president of eBags. “I do think it’s a sign of a long, extended holiday season.” Over all, online sales are expected to increase 15 percent this holiday season, more than last year and significantly more than the 2.8 percent increase expected offline. Shoppers spent about 38 percent of their total weekend budget online, a slight increase over last year, according to the National Retail Federation. On Black Friday, traditionally a bricks-and-mortar shopping day, people spent $816 million online, 26 percent more than last year, comScore said. But many shoppers held out for Monday, when they expected deep discounts online. Seventy-eight percent of e-commerce sites offered promotions, according to Shop.org, an industry group. Almost half offered discounts, and a third had free shipping. “We were all surprised last year when we saw it turned out to be the biggest day of the season,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore and an e-commerce expert. “But more and more retailers have become a part of the Cyber Monday kickoff, more and more consumers are aware of it and know there are special deals coming — and you put that together and you’ve got an important day.” EBags, which offered 30 percent off handbags and luggage on Monday, said as of 7 p.m. Eastern time that sales were up 45 percent over last year, the biggest day in its history. Wayfair, one of the biggest online home goods retailers, reported a 30 percent increase in revenue midday, while sales at Ideeli, the flash sale site, were up 40 percent. Etsy, the online marketplace for homemade goods, said sales were up 80 percent. Mobile shopping drove online sales on Monday, because people returning to work after the holiday shopped on their lunch break or under the conference table in a meeting, said Claudia Lombana, shopping specialist at eBay . As of 2 p.m. Monday, PayPal recorded a sixfold increase in mobile sales compared with last year. “It shows the incredible lift of this day,” said Mr. Cobb. “This will be the biggest day of the season, the year and actually the history of the company.” Still, there are naysayers who view the day as more hype than reality. At Blue Nile , the online jeweler, the last day for free shipping by Christmas remains the biggest sales day, said Mark Vadon, Blue Nile’s chairman. “The majority of consumers are procrastinators and they’ll wait as long as they can,” he said. “Cyber Monday is the start of the wave, not the top of the wave.” The day is nevertheless important, Mr. Vadon said, because it is the first time online retailers collect substantial data on where they will need more inventory and where they should offer promotions during the crucial holiday season. Many retailers had such high hopes for the day that they tried to expand it. Toys “R” Us offered Cyber Monday deals on Sunday night and will continue them through the week, as will Target , which went so far as to offer Cyber Monday deals in September. “We are pleased with the reaction to our online sales, and are excited about the start of Cyber Week at Target.com ,” Lee Henderson, a Target spokesman, said Monday. Cyber Monday was dreamed up in 2005 by Shop.org as a marketing ploy to kick off online holiday shopping. More people had high-speed Internet at work, the thinking went, the easier to shop with. But the day was far from the biggest shopping day of the holiday season, coming in at No. 12, according to comScore. Still, by 2007, despite the prevalence of high-speed Internet in homes, three-quarters of retailers were running Cyber Monday promotions, and shoppers and the media had latched on to the day as a new tradition. “It was crazy, not what we were expecting,” said Ellen Davis, vice president of the National Retail Federation, which includes Shop.org . Now, retailers, hoping to stand out, are borrowing Shop.org’s formula to invent their own days. You might have missed Sofa Sunday, which Catalog Spree, an iPad app with retailers’ catalogs, has nicknamed the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when it predicted people would shop on tablets on their sofas. Coming soon are Mobile Sunday, which PayPal christened the second Sunday in December, and Free Shipping Day on Dec. 16, brought to you by FreeShipping.org . And beware of Red Tuesday, which the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies warns will hit shoppers who go into debt on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. At Amazon — where Cyber Monday last year edged out the last day with free shipping by Christmas as its busiest day — deals included a $500 KitchenAid mixer for $260, a $599 Panasonic Camcorder for $299 and a $299 Microsoft Xbox 360 with games for $199. Gilt, the flash sale site, had new sales every three hours on Monday, including a chartered Virgin America flight for 145 friends for $60,000. “The retailers are driving a lot of this,” said Mitch Spolan, senior vice president for national sales at LivingSocial, which showed national television and radio ads through Monday to push its promotions. “Last year it was the biggest day of the year, and as retailers know that, they compete. It’s a sport.” And Ms. Mulpuru said: “Just like Thanksgiving weekend shopping is a ritual in America, when people go with their families to look for deals, as soon as they go to the office on Monday they look online.” She added, “It’s almost ceremonial.”

Retail
E Commerce
Computers and the Internet
Christmas


In 10-3 Rout, Dodgers Push Cubs to the Brink

Abstract: CHICAGO — It was as if all the Chicago Cubs ’ ghosts came together Thursday to suit up for the home team. Leon Durham might as well have been at first base, with Alex Gonzalez at shortstop and a Billy goat and a black cat rounding out the infield. It was that ugly at Wrigley Field. The Cubs were the best team in the National League in the regular season, but they have looked spooked and sloppy on the October stage. They made four errors — one by each infielder — in a 10-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 2 of the Division Series Thursday. The night before, their starter walked seven in another lopsided defeat. “The last two days, they’ve probably been the two worst games we’ve played all year, from a walks and errors standpoint,” Manager Lou Piniella said. “It wasn’t fun to watch, I can tell you that.” Two games into a postseason they hoped would end their 100-year title drought, the Cubs are headed to California needing a victory Saturday to avoid another swift elimination. They were bounced in three straight last fall by Arizona, and have lost their last eight playoff games. Five of those have been played at Wrigley, where the Cubs have lost by an aggregate score of 39-13. They are introducing a new generation of fans to the pain endured by their forefathers. “We pretty much gave them one game tonight, and we had a tough night last night,” Cubs center fielder Jim Edmonds said. “You can’t win in the playoffs like that. I can’t explain it. It’s pretty embarrassing. Good teams do it the right way, and we haven’t been good yet.” In Carlos Zambrano, the Cubs were realistically confident before Game 2. Zambrano threw a no-hitter last month and has been the Cubs’ biggest winner the last several seasons. He was pitching against Chad Billingsley, 24, who had never started in the playoffs. Yet the Cubs have lost all five of Zambrano’s postseason starts, dating to 2003. He did not pitch badly this time — allowing three earned runs in six and a third innings — but his defense failed him. “I’m not surprised, I’m shocked, because we have good defense,” Zambrano said. “D-Lee, for me, is the best first baseman. Also Ramirez. It’s weird, you know? I think it’s the first time four people in the infield made an error. There’s nothing you can do about it; just keep throwing the ball.” Zambrano’s nightmare started with a clean single by Andre Ethier to start the second inning. With James Loney hitting, Ethier took off for second, pulling shortstop Ryan Theriot away from his position. Sure enough, Loney’s grounder skipped just to Theriot’s right, and he bent back but could not field it. With runners at the corners, Matt Kemp struck out, bringing up Blake DeWitt. Then the Cubs began a torturous sequence in which they booted two double-play balls in a row. The first was by Mark DeRosa, the second baseman, who said he should have stepped back to give himself more time to field DeWitt’s sharp grounder. Instead, he bobbled it and made a wild shovel pass to second. Ethier scored, Loney was safe at second and the inning continued. “I put the horns on myself tonight, no doubt, for that play,” DeRosa said. “The score indicates it was a lot worse, but that play really changed the game.” First baseman Derrek Lee made things worse, botching Casey Blake’s grounder and loading the bases. Zambrano took care of Billingsley with a strikeout, but Rafael Furcal pushed a bunt toward DeRosa at second. DeRosa came in for it and flipped to first, but it was too late to catch the speedy Furcal. Loney scored, and the Dodgers had a 2-0 lead even though their last four base runners had not gotten the ball out of the infield. “When you give extra outs, chances are they’re going to be capitalized on, and that’s what we were able to do,” Dodgers Manager Joe Torre said. “I thought Furcal’s was a huge at-bat, and that was strictly on his own.” Russell Martin came up next. Zambrano said later he should have been more aggressive with Martin, because he felt confident in his stuff. But he fell behind, 3-1, and Martin lashed a 95-mile-an-hour fastball up the alley in left-center field. Three runners trotted home, the Dodgers led by 5-0, and the stands had the same sudden silence that greeted Loney’s grand slam in Game 1. The Dodgers did it all without Manny Ramirez, who had not even batted in the inning. He struck out to end the carnage, but made his presence felt in the fifth. Ramirez had homered in Game 1, digging a curveball just inches off the dirt and pounding it deep into the bleachers above left-center. This time he got a fastball from Zambrano and launched it onto the roof of a center-field party suite. It was Ramirez’s 26th career postseason home run, extending his own record, and it put the Cubs in a 6-0 hole. They were powerless to do anything about it against Billingsley, who retired the side in order in the fifth and the sixth. “Chad did a great job stopping that kind of offense out there, and Raffy, he did great with that bunt single right there,” Ramirez said. “I just got a pitch and I drove it. We’re going to L.A., we need one more win, and we’re going to keep playing hard. They’re the best team in the National League, and anything could happen.” Zambrano left to cheers in the seventh, after walking Ramirez with one out. He returned to the bench and hung his head, covering it with a towel, talking with a teammate and then staring straight ahead. By the seventh-inning stretch, the Cubs were down another run when the Hall of Famer Billy Williams led the crowd in “Take Me Out to The Ball Game.” The song that played during a pitching change a few minutes later was more appropriate. It was “Living on a Prayer.”

Playoff Games
Chicago Cubs
Los Angeles Dodgers
Baseball


Nassau Leader Faces Skirmish Before New Bid

Abstract: GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Jan. 3 - Even as the Nassau County executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, prepares to begin a campaign for governor this year, he is battling political brush fires on Long Island. The latest ignited on Tuesday as two fellow Democrats in the County Legislature bolted to form a coalition with the Republican minority. Political chaos followed. A standing-room-only audience waited two hours for the Legislature's organizational meeting, which never took place. The presiding officer, Judith A. Jacobs, resigned from the Democratic Party in a complex tactic to foil her removal from power. Her allies got a supportive court order, and the maneuvering ended with control up in the air. Whatever the outcome, some politicians said that the breakdown of party discipline jeopardizes Mr. Suozzi's image as master of his domain. After winning this traditionally Republican county in 2001, rescuing it from near-bankruptcy and scoring a big re-election victory last fall, he projected himself as Nassau's wunderkind. But now "it doesn't look like Nassau has any leader at this point," said Arthur J. Kremer, a Democrat and former chairman of the State Assembly's Ways and Means Committee. "This is damaging for Democrats in general and surely doesn't help Suozzi." At a time when Mr. Suozzi plans to campaign across the state, his local programs may be bogged down in legislative infighting. "Any general in a war will tell you the worst thing is to fight a rear-guard action," Mr. Kremer said. Mr. Suozzi's supporters contend that he is doing just fine, despite the local ups and downs. But the Legislature is not Mr. Suozzi's only headache. His dominance has been undercut in his hometown, Glen Cove, where he began as mayor. In November, his politically estranged cousin, Ralph Suozzi, ran as an independent and unseated the county executive's handpicked successor, Mayor Mary Ann Holzkamp. The county executive sought to soothe the rift in his inaugural speech on Sunday. Recounting a family history that includes service as mayor for both his and Ralph's fathers, he added, "Ralph, we are all very proud of you." The newly installed Mayor Suozzi blew a kiss across the stage. The county executive has also been stymied in extending his influence to the rest of Long Island. In 2003, his chief deputy, William Cunningham, ran in the Democratic primary for county executive in adjacent Suffolk. Steve Levy beat him and won the general election, but resentment lingered that Mr. Suozzi had invaded Suffolk's turf. Recently Mr. Levy and the Suffolk's Democratic chairman, Richard Schaffer, shunned their Nassau neighbor by endorsing the Democratic front-runner for governor, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. After making cuts in Nassau's workforce and demanding contract givebacks, Mr. Suozzi also has frayed relations with labor leaders, especially in the police unions. They spent $500,000 unsuccessfully opposing his re-election last fall. But Mr. Suozzi's supporters say he can turn those disputes to his advantage, portraying himself as a tough fiscal manager and an outsider willing to take on powerful interests. While Nassau legislators bickered on Tuesday, Mr. Suozzi's aides said he was at home, sick. His campaign manager, Kim Devlin, said: "Tom received 60 percent of the vote two months ago, had over 1,200 supporters at his inauguration, on a Sunday on New Year's Day, that included both Ralph Suozzi and Mary Ann Holzkamp, and he continues to cooperate with Steve Levy on bicounty initiatives. If that isn't strength on your home front, I don't know what is." The Legislature is a separate branch, she said, and, alluding to past disagreements, she added, "All you have to do is look at the last four years to know that Tom Suozzi doesn't control anything the Nassau County Legislature does." The leadership fight resulted when two of the 10 Democratic legislators, Roger Corbin and Lisanne Altmann, joined in a coalition with the nine-member Republican minority. Under the county charter, the post of presiding officer goes to the legislator who gets the most votes from fellow legislators. The minority leader post goes to the runner-up who is not from the same party as the presiding officer. The coalition's plan was to cast 10 votes for Mr. Corbin as presiding officer. Their 11th vote for presiding officer would go to Peter J. Schmitt, the Republican minority leader. The remaining eight Democrats planned to support Ms. Jacobs. But since she was a Democrat like Mr. Corbin, Mr. Schmitt would continue in the minority leader's post with the one vote. To foil the coalition, Ms. Jacobs quit the Democratic Party to become an unaffiliated voter. Her allies argued that she since she was no longer in the same party as Mr. Corbin, she would become minority leader, pushing Mr. Schmitt aside. That prospect might cause the Republicans to withdraw from the coalition, the Jacobs group hoped. But the Republicans argued that state law delayed enrollment changes till after the next election so that the Jacobs strategy was fatally flawed. Her side countered that the law prevented switching parties to influence primaries but did not apply to becoming an unaffiliated voter. And if the law did apply, it would be an unconstitutional curb on free association, her side said. It got a court order blocking the Legislature from acting on the minority leader post. Mr. Schmitt said he would not act until Ms. Jacobs's party status was resolved. Flanking him were Mr. Corbin and Ms. Altmann. Frustrated by the latest events, they both called the maneuvers "a circus."

LONG ISLAND (NY)
DEMOCRATIC PARTY
SUOZZI THOMAS R


Ferdinand Out of World Cup; Drogba Injures Arm

Abstract: JOHANNESBURG — The center back Rio Ferdinand, England’s captain, has been ruled out of the World Cup with a knee injury sustained during training on Friday. The injury came just eight days before England is set to open the tournament against the United States in Rustenburg, South Africa, where Ferdinand damaged a knee ligament during a tackle in Friday’s training. The English soccer federation said that Ferdinand would miss four to six weeks and that Michael Dawson would fly to South Africa to take his place on the roster. Ledley King, who has a long history of knee problems, will most likely start in Ferdinand’s place alongside John Terry in central defense against the Americans. Ferdinand is considered England’s best defender, and it remains to be seen now whether the back line will have the speed and mobility to contend with the world’s best forwards deep into the tournament. Friday’s injury was the latest in a frustrating year for Ferdinand, whose back problems limited his playing time at Manchester United. England is already without David Beckham, who is recovering from a ruptured Achilles’ tendon. Meanwhile, the story of the injured forward Didier Drogba of Ivory Coast kept evolving Friday after he injured his right arm during an exhibition match against Japan in Sion, Switzerland. At one point, his teammate Kolo Toure told The Associated Press that Drogba said to him that he would be out of the World Cup after breaking his arm. L’Equipe, the French sports newspaper, reported that Drogba had also confirmed that he would not play. Later Friday, L’Equipe reported that Drogba had retracted his remarks. He had a dislocated elbow, not a fractured arm, the paper reported, and planned to have emergency surgery that might allow him to play in the Ivory Coast opener against Portugal. A spokesman for the Ivory Coast team told The Guardian of London of Drogba: “He’s not out of the World Cup. He can still play.” Drogba’s absence would be a huge blow to Ivory Coast, which is in the so-called Group of Death against Brazil, a five-time winner; Portugal a 2006 semifinalist; and North Korea. It would also deal a further blow to the marquee power of the World Cup, which is missing a number of visible stars, including Beckham, Michael Ballack of Germany and Michael Essien of Ghana because of injuries. Andrea Pirlo, the Italian midfielder, will miss Italy’s opener against Paraguay on June 14 with a strained calf muscle. His availability for the remainder of the tournament is not yet known. If Drogba can play, and play effectively, it will renew hopes that one of six participating African teams may win the World Cup the first time it is being held on the continent. He had approached the Cup in top form after completing a terrific season as the leading scorer in the English Premier League, scoring 29 goals in 32 matches for Chelsea, which won the league title. Drogba injured his arm 15 minutes into Friday’s 2-0 victory over Japan. He scored an early goal then left the match after a collision with defender Marcus Tulio Tanaka in what The A.P. reported was a high challenge. Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Ivory Coast coach, told The A.P. that he did not blame Tulio, a Brazilian-born center back. “It wasn’t bad or stupid,” Eriksson said. “He didn’t want to hurt anyone. Football is a game of contact.”

Drogba Didier
World Cup 2010 (Soccer)
Soccer
Ivory Coast


Maliki Blames Baath Party for Iraq Bombings

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Reconciliation between followers of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and the Iraqi government seemed less likely than ever on Tuesday after harsh rhetoric from both sides. In an audiotape, a former deputy of Mr. Hussein, who is the last high-ranking fugitive from the American forces, called for Iraqis to topple their government and return the Baath Party to power. At the same time, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki angrily blamed Baathists for a series of car bomb attacks in the capital. Both developments may stall efforts by Mr. Maliki’s government to reach out to former Baathists as part of his country’s reconciliation process. The audiotape by the Hussein ally, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was deputy chairman of Mr. Hussein’s Revolutionary Command Council, was broadcast on Al Jazeera on Tuesday, and an e-mailed transcript was provided separately to The New York Times by a Baath Party representative in Syria. Mr. Douri, 65, is a member of the “ deck of cards ” of 52 Iraqi officials that American troops distributed after the invasion in 2003. American intelligence officials say he is active in financing and organizing insurgents, including Baathists. The United States has posted a $10 million reward for his capture; American and Iraqi officials have accused the Syrian government of giving him refuge. Mr. Douri called Mr. Maliki’s government and Iraqi elections illegitimate because they were a result of the American military occupation. Americans were withdrawing, he said, because they failed in Iraq but hoped to leave a puppet government in place. “The political process is the occupation’s main project, so attack it through all means available to you,” Mr. Douri said, addressing “jihadis” in Iraq. He said a Baathist government in Iraq would seek good relations with the Obama administration and “put behind them what happened in the past.” The transcript of Mr. Douri’s broadcast, e-mailed to The Times by a Baathist-led coalition called the National Islamist Pan-Arabist Front, made no mention of a series of seven car bombs, six of them on Monday , that killed more than 40 people. Mr. Maliki’s office released a statement late Monday blaming the Baathists, in conjunction with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, for the car bomb attacks. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a homegrown extremist group with some foreign leadership. The prime minister’s statement described the bombings as “a gift of the disbanded Baath Party on the ill omen of its anniversary.” Tuesday was the anniversary of the founding of the Baath Party, which ruled Iraq from 1968 until Mr. Hussein was ousted by the Americans. Mr. Douri’s statement rejected any possibility of negotiations unless the Iraqi government met a series of conditions, which included allowing armed Baathists to take over the government and disbanding all institutions created after the American invasion. Mr. Maliki in recent statements has made a distinction between people with Baathist backgrounds, who may have been supporting the insurgency, and terrorists with groups like Al Qaeda . That was seen as a positive step in encouraging reconciliation, but it also drew strong criticism from Mr. Maliki’s own Shiite constituency. Tuesday’s car bomb attack took place near a mosque, the Husseiniya al-Newab, in the largely Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya. A police official said that eight were killed and 20 wounded, all civilians. Monday’s six car bombings were also all in Shiite neighborhoods and killed at least 33 people, mostly civilians, according to police reports. The attacks did not bear the usual signature of Al Qaeda, which has more often employed roadside bombs and suicide bombings, either in vehicles or by individuals wearing explosive vests. The latest seven attacks all apparently used cars that were remotely detonated while parked or stopped. “The followers of the destroyed regime have planted death and destruction in neighborhoods of our beloved city with the cooperation of the terrorist Al Qaeda organization,” Mr. Maliki’s statement said. “They’re trying to stir up sectarian unrest and instability.” The prime minister offered no specific evidence to link the bombings to the Baath Party but noted that attacks had occurred every April 7 since Mr. Hussein was toppled. “These criminal blasts reveal how bloody and despised this party is by the sons of the Iraqi people who have suffered from catastrophes and destruction for 35 years of their dictatorship,” Mr. Maliki’s statement said. In Anbar Province on Tuesday, a suicide bomber rammed a car loaded with explosives into the armored car of an Awakening Council leader in Garma, near Falluja, in an unsuccessful attempt to kill him, according to a Falluja police official. It was the third assassination attempt since December on Col. Saad Abbas al-Shimary, head of the Garma council. The other two attempts involved a suicide bomber in a truck and an effort to poison him. One policeman was killed and nine were wounded in the latest bombing. Garma, a former stronghold of insurgents, has had several suicide bomb attacks, including one last June that killed 20 people, including 3 Marines, at a meeting of local sheiks.

Baghdad (Iraq)
Baath Party
Maliki Nuri Kamal al-
Al Qaeda
Iraq War (2003- )
Ibrahim Izzat
Shiite Muslims
Civilian Casualties
Terrorism


Coca-Cola’s Profit Falls Slightly

Abstract: The world economy may be stumbling, but its consumers are still buying Coca-Cola , Fanta and Sprite. The Coca-Cola Company, the maker of those brands and many other beverages, reported on Tuesday that its second-quarter profit edged lower , to $2.79 billion, or $1.21 a share, compared with $2.8 billion, or $1.20 a share, in the period a year earlier, when more shares were outstanding. Revenue grew 3 percent, to $13.09 billion. Coke’s performance held up despite higher ingredient costs and a 4 percent decline in sales in Europe, where a combination of abysmal weather and economic and financial crises dented the appetite for fizzy drinks. Nor is the outlook rosy, Muhtar A. Kent, Coke’s chief executive, warned analysts. “We find ourselves navigating through a challenging global economy,” he said. But Coke has been performing well under such conditions for the last couple of years, he said. “Operating in this environment has become the norm for us,” Mr. Kent added. Sales volume was up 4 percent worldwide and 1 percent in North America. The company’s use of a mix of packaging sizes, which allows it to adjust various prices — and profit margins — has helped it, as have lower prices for plastics, aluminum and other commodities. Coke’s big Olympic marketing campaign has started, with Mr. Kent carrying the torch on one leg of the pre-Olympic relay. Coke will do more recycling of its packaging at these Games than ever before, and has committed to reusing what it recycles within six weeks. Coke faced an unexpected challenge in the second quarter from Americans who apparently stayed home instead of setting out in their cars for summer vacations. That meant more people bought lower-margin multipacks of sodas than the more profitable single-serving sizes sold in gasoline stations and convenience stores. “It was counterintuitive because actually gas prices had eased off a little bit,” Mr. Kent said. Shares of Coke rose $1.21, or 1.6 percent, to $77.69.

Coca-Cola Company
Soft Drinks
Economic Conditions and Trends
Company Reports


U.S. Open Increases Prizes

Abstract: Following in the footsteps of the French Open and Wimbledon, the United States Open is increasing singles prize money by 11 percent. The men’s and women’s champions will each receive $1.9 million, a $100,000 increase. Payouts are rising 21 percent in the first round of singles and 19 percent in the second round.


De Blasio Says New York Learned From Past Storm Mistakes

Abstract: Grappling with the first of three snowstorms expected to hit New York City in a week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that his administration had learned from its mistakes and had already made changes to speed snow removal. Articulated buses rolled out to their routes with chains on their tires. The Sanitation Department monitored street conditions using the Police Department’s surveillance cameras. And on the Upper East Side, residents could not help but notice that the streets had been promptly cleared. “The response to the last storm obviously left something to be desired, so we did a review of our efforts, and we’ve come up with some initial changes that we actually were able to implement right away,” Mr. de Blasio said in a news conference at City Hall. On Jan. 21, the mayor faced accusations that his administration had purposely neglected the Upper East Side in deploying snowplows. He said on Monday that the review had attributed the plowing failures to a combination of factors, including the speed of the storm, stalled buses and traffic on the Queensboro Bridge. “We’ve tried to get ahead of a lot of those root causes this time,” Mr. de Blasio said. On the Upper East Side on Monday, the streets were slushy and had puddles at each corner, but they were plowed. Some residents seemed happily surprised. “My husband was leaving to go across town, and I said, ‘You’re never going to be able to get across town,’ ” said Carol Potter, 50, who lives on 87th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. “But I looked down and taxis were going, cars were going, and there was no beeping of horns.” Also on Monday, a 73-year-old Russian immigrant, Stanislav Chernyshov, was killed in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, when he was hit by a backhoe clearing snow from the apartment complex where he lived. The police said the backhoe was privately contracted. At his news conference, Mr. de Blasio pointed to a number of improvements in the city’s response to the latest snowfall, the third such storm of his administration. He said the city had decided on Sunday afternoon to cancel garbage and recycling collection on Monday, allowing salt spreaders to be dispatched by midnight and to begin work as the first snowflakes fell on Monday. Another crucial adjustment, the mayor said, was to improve coordination among city agencies, and between the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the buses. Aside from equipping accordion-style buses with chains, city agencies and the M.T.A. had tow trucks on hand to rescue stalled buses quickly, he said. Officials said that a Sanitation Department supervisor was assigned to a police command center to watch surveillance video, track road conditions around the city and redeploy equipment. Although the weather has been challenging, it has also let Mr. de Blasio portray himself as an everyman: He has been repeatedly photographed shoveling snow outside his home in Brooklyn. On Monday, the mayor, who has a reputation for sleeping late, noted that he had been outside shoveling by 6:30 a.m., and again at 7:30.

Snow Snowstorms
Sanitation Department NYC
MTA
Bill de Blasio
NYC
Roads and Traffic
Upper East Side Manhattan


Beyond the Bouffant

Abstract: SINCE the 1940s, obtaining a hairdressing license in New York State has meant logging 1,000 hours at a cosmetology school, passing a written test and demonstrating styling ability in a three-hour practical exam. But it’s a rare hairdo that remains fashionable for six decades, and in recent years the techniques tested in the practical exam have been widely considered outdated. So it was on a recent Friday afternoon that more than 80 aspiring hairdressers lined up somewhat anxiously at the Empire Beauty School on West 34th Street near Fifth Avenue to display their styling aptitude in an entirely updated test. Last month, to better reflect styles currently in vogue and dispense with relics like the comb-out bouffant and a finger wave yielding a head full of tiny curls, the state introduced a new practical exam. Blow-drying was added to the test, which also places increased emphasis on the use of chemicals for hair coloring, straightening and relaxing. But the most striking change was to dispense with the live models that hairdressers were required to take with them to demonstrate their cutting and styling abilities. Testing sites had become overcrowded; models often had trouble getting out of work in time; hairdressers were being stood up. Now, the testers bring mannequin heads. Those who had registered for the new version of the exam, nearly all of them women, arrived toting huge duffel bags, rolling suitcases and carrying the required mannequin head, topped with human hair. The mannequins, like the fledgling hairdressers, were overwhelmingly brunette. “They say blondes have more fun,” said Fred Minni, an 85-year-old hairdresser who supervises the test, “but I don’t believe it.” In the exam rooms, the hairdressers clamped down their mannequin heads and proceeded to cut, dry, curl and highlight the locks as examiners paced behind them, inspecting their work and marking points on clipboards. Easy-listening pop music played in the background, ostensibly to simulate a salon atmosphere. But some aspects of the test kept it from being truly realistic. The mannequin heads, attached as they were to the counter, occasionally required the hairdresser to perform a stranglehold and twist that would hardly pass muster in most salons. Making his rounds, Mr. Minni admired the concentration of the test-takers and empathized with the mannequin heads. “When you get a haircut,” he said, beaming, “you feel so great. I know I do.” Later, as the blow-dryers began to hum, he whispered, “It’s like a symphony.”


Serena Williams Ousted

Abstract: Alize Cornet, a Frenchwoman ranked 26th, ended the hopes for an all-Williams final at the Dubai Championships with her first victory over a No. 1 player, a 6-4, 6-4 upset of Serena Williams in the semifinals. Venus Williams made the final by beating Caroline Wozniacki, 6-3, 6-2.

Tennis
Alize Cornet
Serena Williams
Venus Williams
Caroline Wozniacki


Finding Inner Strength

Abstract: SUMNER, Wash. — Melanie Roach is a former gymnast who owns a gymnastics facility. Her husband is a state legislator. At 33, she is the mother of three young children, including 5-year-old Drew, who is autistic . And she can lift 238 pounds over her head. All of which makes her one of America’s most unlikely Olympic hopefuls. For a start, Roach, who is 5 feet 1 inch and 117 pounds, looks nothing like a weight lifter. She was a gymnast until 10 years ago, when she left behind a middling career, took up weight lifting and in 1998 set an unofficial world record by lifting twice her body weight, a first for an American woman. But she hyperextended her right elbow four months before the world championships in 1999 and had a herniated disk in her back eight weeks before the Olympic trials in 2000. She attempted to compete despite the injury, only to end up crying in the stands. The back injury bothered her for seven years — through three pregnancies and three times as many comeback attempts. “She rose to greatness so quickly, and then all of a sudden it was over,” said Roach’s training partner Alexis Reed. “You almost asked yourself, a year or two later, ‘Did that really happen?’ ” The problems she encountered in competition were nothing compared with the challenge she confronted with Drew after his autism was diagnosed in 2005. Roach said she was preoccupied with everything he would never be able to do — school dances, church missions, college classes. He did not have bad days; he had bad weeks, bad months, filled with relentless tantrums. “It was literally in a week my life changed,” Roach said. “I went into depression . I went through a mourning process. Almost like I lost a child.” She said she would kneel at his bedside every night, praying he would get better. In December 2005, Roach, a Mormon, went to see her bishop. “This is not what I signed up for,” she said. “This is exactly what you signed up for,” he replied. That message not only changed her outlook about Drew, it changed her outlook about weight lifting. “She learned that no matter how much money and time she put into it, she couldn’t change the outcome,” said her husband, Dan. “That has really helped with lifting. In the end, it’s the same concept.” The family spent $25,000 on specialized therapy for Drew, and he has shown improvement. The family developed routines and safeguards. Every door, pantry and bedroom in their house is locked, even from the inside. They cut gluten from his diet , calming his demeanor and increasing his comprehension. They do not watch television in the morning, so Drew can get ready for school without distraction. From 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., Dan takes care of Drew, when he often throws what the family calls parties, jumping on the bed, opening and shutting the bedroom door 20 times, breaking into fits of giggles. “Still, Drew isn’t able to come up and tell me how his day is,” Roach said. “There will always be a part of him I cannot get to.” Each morning when Drew boards the bus, Roach looks him in the eye and says goodbye. She makes eye contact and says, “I’m waiting.” “I love you,” Drew says back. As much as Drew helped his mother learn to enjoy weight lifting, the constant movement of the complex family helps him, too. Drew used to throw fits when confronted with new environments, like when they turned left at a certain stoplight instead of right toward his grandmother’s house. But autism is a challenge they will always confront, long after the Olympics. While cleaning out Dan’s office last month, Drew lay on the ground. “No tantrums,” his mother said firmly. “No tantrums! No tantrums!” Drew screamed. “Drew’s disability grounds them for life with other people who have challenges that are insurmountable,” Dan’s mother, Pam Roach, said. “You can’t surmount autism. You can learn to live with it.” Roach trains for the Olympics in her gymnastics facility, a converted day-care center now filled with a symphony of barbell clangs and grunts. She made the transition from gymnastics into weight lifting in quick fashion. Guided by a coach, John Thrush, who trained elite prospects in his garage, Roach, then Melanie Kosoff, won her first national championship in 1997. She met Dan in September 1998, and they married six months later. During the courtship, they traveled to Finland for the world championships. Melanie needed to complete one lift for a bronze medal, but “bombed out” on the platform, the pressure of meeting expectations heavier than the weight itself. After she lost, Dan told her that he lost his first election by 300 votes, or one-half of 1 percent. On the streets of Finland, they wondered where everything went wrong. “And it didn’t get better, unfortunately,” Melanie said. “That was the beginning of the snowball effect.” The first comeback, in 2003, lasted seven months before the back pain returned. She describes it as “way past 10,” worse than childbirth, and she notes she had her three kids naturally, at home. “The best way to put it is as volatile as you can imagine,” said Greg Summers, Roach’s chiropractor . “I see four to five herniated disks a week, and hers is the worst I have ever seen.” During long evenings Roach spent icing in the bathtub, she and Dan talked often about retiring for good. Even when she returned to the national team, she considered giving up her spot. Unable to stand up straight, spending days at a time in bed, she called Summers in desperation. Other doctors told her she risked serious injury, said that she could end up in a wheelchair. “Most orthopedic surgeons would cringe at the fact she was doing anything, let alone weight lifting,” Summers said. At the world championships in October 2006, Roach finally told the team doctor about the herniated disk and three fragments imbedded in the nerve. The doctor recommended a surgeon in Los Angeles. Five days after surgery, Roach was lifting weights without bending her back. Seven months later, she won her seventh national championship. She later won a bronze medal at the Pan American Games and regained her No. 1 ranking among United States lifters. “Amazing,” Dan Roach said. “We literally went from the world championships to the operating table and back in less than a year.” But when would Melanie Roach enjoy it? Back in the gym, with a poster from the Finland flameout and a Beijing T-shirt hanging from the wall, Roach lifted bars bent with colored plates while the song “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie blasted through her earphones. “Weight lifting is the easiest part of my day,” she said. Thrush can tell immediately how well Roach is balancing the complexities of her life. He said he knew Roach was struggling with the pressure at the national championships in March, when she successfully lifted only two of six attempts. To qualify for Beijing, she must finish fourth or better in the 53-kilogram weight class at the Olympic trials in Atlanta on May 17. “You’ll have an opportunity to be an average, everyday woman after August,” Thrush said he tells Roach when she seems distracted. “You need to be selfish now.” Team Roach marches on through a life that Dan Roach described as “organized chaos.” Bonnie Kosoff, Melanie’s mother, moved in recently to take care of the children. Summers and Thrush travel to events. “You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child?” Kosoff said. “Well, it takes a village to get someone to the Olympics, too.” The changed outlook remains. Had Roach gone to the Olympics in 2000, she said, she would not have three kids or the business. Had there been no Drew, she may never have learned what Thrush tried to teach her all along — the concept of slow and small but steady and incremental progress. But the biggest change that Drew inspired was in Roach, the athlete. She now enjoys the Olympic quest, 14 years after it started. Summers, the chiropractor, said he first noticed the difference at an airport recently. Roach had been stopped by security and told she could not proceed with the fingernail polish in her carry-on. She stopped, smiled, propped up her feet and applied a fresh coat.

Olympic Games (2008)
Families and Family Life
Autism
Gymnastics
Roach Melanie
Weight Lifting


E.C.B. Keeps Rates Steady as Inflation Shows Signs of Rising

Abstract: FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank made no changes on Thursday in its program to revive the eurozone economy, as it expressed slightly more optimism about the prospects for growth in the region. The lack of any significant policy moves was expected. Growth in the 19-member eurozone is neither so terrible that it requires a new burst of stimulus from the bank nor so torrid that there is a need to apply the brakes, analysts say. The European Central Bank’s Governing Council is now expected to pause for a while, after several years in which it pushed the boundaries of monetary policy. The bank left its benchmark interest rate at zero, where it has been since March. It also left intact a penalty rate of minus 0.4 percent on money that commercial banks keep at the central bank. The so-called negative interest rate is designed to force commercial banks to lend money rather than hoard it. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said that growth in the eurozone this year would be 1.6 percent, slightly more than earlier forecasts. But the bank’s economists left their growth predictions for 2017 and 2018 unchanged at 1.7 percent for both years. Mr. Draghi said at a news conference in Vienna that although the risks facing the eurozone had declined, “it’s not a dramatic effect.” The bank has already made aggressive moves in recent months by buying government debt in large quantities and cutting interest rates to their lowest levels. This month, the bank will expand those measures by buying corporate bonds and by effectively paying banks to lend to businesses, all in a bid to spur Europe’s economy. Analysts would have been surprised, indeed shocked, if the bank had taken action on Thursday after a monetary policy meeting in Vienna, one of the Governing Council’s periodic forays outside its base in Frankfurt. The bank is also not expected to make any major changes to policy for some time to come. The meeting on Thursday “was a continuation of a series of wait-and-see events,” Christoph Kutt, head of interest rate strategy at DZ Bank in Frankfurt, said in an email. Inflation in the eurozone was minus 0.1 percent in May, according to an official estimate on Tuesday, still far from the bank’s official target of 2 percent. But a 1 percent increase in the price of services in May, as well as a turnaround in oil prices that has pushed them near $50 a barrel from around half that in January, signal that overall inflation could rise in months to come. To the disappointment of some analysts, the central bank did not raise its inflation forecasts for 2017 and 2018. That is a sign that the bank remains concerned about the risk of deflation, a sustained decline in prices that can be disastrous for economic growth and employment. The European Central Bank’s charter defines its main job as keeping inflation below 2 percent, but not too far below it. Another reason the central bank had not been expected to announce new stimulus on Thursday is that its previous measures are just going into effect. In March, it said it would begin buying corporate bonds in an expansion of its so-called quantitative easing program, a way of pumping money into the economy. Those purchases are scheduled to begin on June 8. In addition, the central bank will begin a program on June 22 intended to address a shortage of credit in countries like Italy. Under some circumstances, the European Central Bank will pay commercial banks to take its money, which the banks must lend to customers. The central bank will want to take some time to see how those programs are working, analysts said. The eurozone economy is recovering, but slowly and unevenly. During the first quarter, the total value of goods and services produced in the eurozone surpassed the previous peak reached in early 2008, before the region was struck by financial and debt crises. But unemployment remains above 10 percent and is falling only gradually, and eurozone growth is not so brisk that economists see any need for the bank to think about removing stimulus to prevent overheating. That is in contrast to the Federal Reserve, which is expected to raise interest rates in the United States as early as its next meeting, June 14 and 15. Along with questions about the direction of the economy, there is potential for a new crisis that would push the European Central Bank to mobilize. Britain will hold a referendum on June 23 about whether to remain a member of the European Union. A vote to quit the union would raise concerns that other members would leave, perhaps causing the bloc to fall apart. The uncertainty would have an economic effect, making businesses cautious about hiring and investing. In such a situation, the central bank would be under pressure to intervene once again. Mr. Draghi said on Thursday that he and other members of the Governing Council believed that Britain should remain in the European Union. But if British voters elect to leave, he said, “The E.C.B. is ready for all contingencies.”

EU
Interest rate
European Central Bank
Economy
Banking and Finance
Mario Draghi


Albany Moves to End Standoff in New York City Over Teacher Evaluations

Abstract: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders said on Monday that they had reached an agreement to help New York City and its teachers’ union settle on a teacher evaluation system and save the city from losing hundreds of millions of dollars in future education financing. The agreement on a new measure in the state budget seeks to resolve a standoff between the Bloomberg administration and the United Federation of Teachers about how to assess the performance of public school teachers, as required by a 2010 state law. That standoff cost the city at least $250 million in state aid when it missed a Jan. 17 deadline to finalize details of its evaluation system, and put hundreds of millions more dollars in jeopardy . Under the agreement, New York City, along with three other New York school districts, will have until May 29 to work out the details of an evaluation system. If they cannot, the matter will be settled by a round of binding arbitration overseen by the state education commissioner, John B. King Jr., that will impose a system by June 1. The districts will not get back the money they have already lost, but the agreement will protect them from future penalties, as long as they carry out the evaluation systems. Negotiations in New York City had foundered over the question of how long the system should be in place. The union wanted a two-year agreement, which the city opposed. Under the new measure, the system would remain in effect indefinitely, but could be altered through agreement by the school district and the union. City Hall claimed it as a victory. “The union wanted to use the expiration of the evaluation system to keep ineffective teachers in classrooms, not to mention hold the city hostage in future negotiations,” said Lauren Passalacqua, a spokeswoman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Michael Mulgrew, the union president, said the union merely believed districts should be able to make necessary adjustments to the systems. “What the agreement says is you cannot change evaluation without doing a collective bargaining process, and collective bargaining is a good thing as far as teachers and the union are concerned,” he said.

NYC
New York
UFT
Performance Evaluations
Teachers
Andrew Cuomo
K-12 Education
Labor Unions


Valeant Shares Plunge After C.E.O. Is Subpoenaed by Congress

Abstract: TRENTON, N.J. — Shares of beleaguered Canadian drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals plunged again Monday after its chief executive was subpoenaed by a congressional committee. The Senate Aging Committee said in a statement that J. Michael Pearson, Valeant’s chief since September 2010, is among the witnesses expected to testify on April 27. The committee is holding its third hearing since December on soaring prices for prescription medicines, which are becoming unaffordable for many patients. The high prices for many drugs — some costing $100,000 or more for a course of treatment — also are straining the budgets of insurers and government health programs. The most expensive drugs are generally ones for cancer and rare diseases, but the trend includes many brand-name drugs that have had hefty price increases year after year, as well as old drugs with limited competition. Executives at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., Turing Pharmaceuticals and several other drugmakers have been buying up rights to those old drugs and then raising prices many times over what they had cost. Executives of the companies have been invited or subpoenaed to testify at hearings on the issue held by multiple Congressional committees. Valeant is in crisis, with three ongoing federal probes into its accounting and business practices, insurers demanding bigger discounts from its inflated list prices for many of its drugs and executives leaving. Activist investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management, one of Valeant’s largest shareholders, just took over two positions on its board of directors to try to salvage the fund’s investment in Valeant.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International
Senate
Congress
Old age,elderly,senior citizens
Pharmaceuticals
Price
Turing Pharmaceuticals
Mike Pearson


India Comes Together to Say Farewell

Abstract: Millions of pairs of eyes — thousands at Wankhede Stadium, many more across India and the world — homed in on the piece of bat extending from the hands of Sachin Tendulkar. After all, that was the bit slicing through the air as Tendulkar, considered perhaps the best batsman in history, playing on the first day of his final cricket match, added to his already staggering career run total. Out of sight, however, a few inches of a new grip hidden beneath Tendulkar’s palms made an equally compelling statement, banded in green, white and orange. Those colors, corresponding to the stripes of the Indian flag, also covered the cheeks of many of Tendulkar’s fans and pointed to the unique, and at times stupefying, relationship between a country and its hero. The rapture Tendulkar inspired in his fans during his 24-year Test cricket career was, like his career numbers, beyond compare, to the point that what might normally pass for hyperbole could often seem insufficient. He was sometimes called the god of cricket, and admirers gave themselves over to his worship: in November, days after his final match, a village in northern India unveiled a life-size statue of Tendulkar and laid the foundation for a temple to house it . Supporters attending one of his final matches described to the Indo-Asian News Service the “pilgrimage” they were making . Tendulkar’s statistics are indeed astounding — his run total in Test matches is more than 2,000 ahead of the second-best mark — but they alone fail to explain his hold on India . Neither does his role in a 2011 World Cup victory. As important, it seems, was the timing of his career, which coincided with major changes in his country and his sport. Tendulkar’s rise from humble beginnings always seemed a metaphor, but as politicians, celebrities and even cricketers around him were tarnished by scandal, he remained a beacon. Younger stars of his sport often appeared cocksure; Tendulkar, although eventually one of the world’s richest athletes, was celebrated for his quiet efficiency . The devotion built to something close to hysteria ahead of his farewell, a Test match against the West Indies, with crowds packing the streets outside the stadium in Mumbai. Fans knew this day was coming: Tendulkar, 40, his play in decline for years, had already retired from one-day internationals and from the Indian Premier League, leaving only his departure from Test, cricket’s longest and grandest format. The result — an easy victory for India — was an afterthought: the outpouring of emotion would be the same either way. Those watching were at once savoring their chance to observe a master and waiting for the match’s conclusion to send him off. When the match, and Tendulkar’s career, ended, some in the crowd wept. Tendulkar’s teammates embraced him and gathered to form a tunnel. Tendulkar, a stoic symbol of a sport and a nation, hustled past them instead, his eyes wet with tears.


New Librarian of Congress Offers a History Lesson in Her Own Right

Abstract: WASHINGTON — On the night in April 2015 that Baltimore went up in flames, Carla D. Hayden, the city’s chief librarian, was under pressure to board up a neighborhood library branch and wait out the violence triggered by the death of Freddie Gray after being injured in police custody. But she had other ideas. “I thought, what would that show?” Dr. Hayden said. “That we’re afraid?” Instead, as a CVS drugstore across the street was looted and burned, and as the governor of Maryland declared a state of emergency, Dr. Hayden and her staff decided they would open their doors the next morning, welcoming in the weary public. For Dr. Hayden, who was sworn in on Wednesday as the 14th librarian of Congress, the unrest was the test that clarified her values: Libraries are about far more than books. “The people of that neighborhood protected that library,” Dr. Hayden said during a recent interview in her new office overlooking Capitol Hill. “There were young men who stood outside. It was such a symbol.” At 64, Dr. Hayden is the first African-American and the first woman to lead the 216-year-old library, one of the world’s largest, and the nation’s leading repository of knowledge and culture. “To be the head of an institution that’s associated with knowledge and reading and scholarship when slaves were forbidden to learn how to read on punishment of losing limbs, that’s kind of something,’’ she said. Appointed by President Obama, Dr. Hayden is the first new librarian of Congress since 1987, and brings with her another generation’s ideas about accessibility, technology and the role that libraries play in society. Her goal is to open to more Americans the riches of the Library of Congress, which has always balanced mixed loyalties — to members of Congress who look to it for impartial research, to scholars who live in its archives and, finally, to the public. “At this point in its history, the value of the library as a place for scholars will not diminish. In fact, we want it to grow,” she said. “But more people will appreciate that they can be scholars, too, by positioning the library to look outward.’’ That means increasing digital access to the library, Dr. Hayden said, and better tying the library’s collections — including Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence and thousands of Abraham Lincoln’s personal papers — to school curriculums around the country. She has also shown interest in greater collaboration with the nation’s public and university libraries. In her remarks on Wednesday after being sworn in by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Dr. Hayden said she wanted Americans to see more material like Rosa Parks’s notes and letters, which the library has digitized and recently made accessible to anyone with internet access, from classrooms in Wisconsin to an American Indian reservation in New Mexico. “Anyone, anywhere can read her words in her own handwriting,” Dr. Hayden said. “That is a real public service and a natural step for this nation’s library.” Early reviews are good so far, particularly in comparison to Dr. Hayden’s predecessor, James H. Billington, a Russia scholar who, after nearly 30 years in the job, resigned amid criticism in 2015. Dr. Billington had presided over a series of library management and technology failures that were documented in more than a dozen reports by government watchdog agencies. Image Friends and relatives waved and cheered during the ceremonies. Credit Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press “It’s obviously too early to declare victory, but the signs are very encouraging,” said John Palfrey, a founder of the Digital Public Library of America, and a supporter of Dr. Hayden who had frequently sparred with Dr. Billington. Much of the optimism felt by Mr. Palfrey and others is because Dr. Hayden is the first trained librarian (she holds a Ph.D. in library science from the University of Chicago) to lead the library since Lawrence Quincy Mumford retired in 1974. She has worked at almost every level, from children’s librarian to president of the powerful American Library Association — experiences that backers say make her uniquely prepared to lead a library that now has a collection of more than 162 million items, 3,100 employees and an annual budget of close to $650 million. “Why do we need a librarian to run the Library of Congress?’’ Mr. Palfrey said. “I think that answers itself.’’ Still, Dr. Hayden’s task will not be easy. The watchdog reports have identified decades of weaknesses at the library, including a backlog of millions of books and items piled up in warehouses that are in danger of being permanently damaged, while only a fraction of the library’s books and other printed materials have been made available online. Karl Schornagel, who wrote many of those reports while serving as the library’s inspector general from 2001 to 2014, said that the library had suffered from having “no comprehensive information technology strategy” at a time when digitization was revolutionizing what, and how, libraries collect. “Looking at the big picture, the Library of Congress stands as an island,’’ Mr. Schornagel said. “Everyone else in the world is communicating, coordinating and sharing resources.” After Dr. Billington’s departure last September, Congress enacted a law limiting the term of the librarian of Congress, which was previously considered a lifetime appointment, to 10 years. Bernard A. Barton Jr., the library’s first permanent chief information officer in years, began addressing a backlog of information technology concerns. And David S. Mao, who had served as the acting librarian after Dr. Billington’s departure, started an administrative reorganization. Dr. Hayden, who said that much of her early effort will focus on building and retaining staff, has a reputation as a fierce advocate for her patrons and employees. In 2003 and 2004, while serving as president of the American Library Association, Dr. Hayden clashed frequently with Attorney General John Ashcroft over what she perceived as privacy overreaches in the USA Patriot Act. The spat, which raised her national profile, resurfaced as a minor point of contention as she was being confirmed by the Senate. In Baltimore, she overhauled what was widely considered a failing urban library system and became part of the city’s leadership ranks. “Her voice is valued,” said Rachel Garbow Monroe, the president and chief executive of The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation in Baltimore, who worked with Dr. Hayden for nearly two decades. Under Dr. Hayden, Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library was early to adopt new digital tools and expand programming as part of a wave of change that has transformed libraries across the country into community resource centers. Dr. Hayden, who plans to commute to Washington from Baltimore each day, said it is now time to transform the Library of Congress. “There were times when it needed to be seen as a place for scholars, and there was a time when it needed a little muscle politically to get its budget growing and build a new building,” she said. “It’s time in this library’s life, with 162 million items, in all different formats, to take advantage of a librarian that has been through those type of changes.”

Library
Library of Congress
Carla D. Hayden
Appointments and Executive Changes
ALA
James H Billington
Washington DC
Baltimore


Major Online Attack on Twitter Is 3rd This Year

Abstract: An online attack Friday morning on Twitter was the result of the simplest of security breaches: someone got the password to enter the master directory of Twitter’s Internet addresses and then redirected users to an alternate site instead. No user information appears to have been stolen in the attack. But the security breach — the third major one at Twitter this year — underscores the continuing weakness of the company’s systems as its micro-blogging service is becoming more important to business and even global politics. The incident also highlights a basic vulnerability in the way life is lived as it becomes increasingly digital: With so much vital information stored on the Web, people are only as safe as their passwords. During the assault, which security analysts said began about 1 a.m. and lasted roughly an hour, hackers tinkered with Twitter’s domain name servers, which are hosted by a Manchester, N.H., company called Dyn. When Web surfers tried to reach Twitter’s pages, they were sent instead to a site for the “Iranian Cyber Army,” which claimed responsibility for the attack. The domain names were eventually fixed and redirected back to the correct servers at about 2 a.m., but because of time the reset took, Twitter’s Web site was not fully functional again until an hour later, according to Rod Rasmussen, president of Internet Identity, an Internet security company, who watched the attacks unfold in real time through a new technology his company is building. Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, declined to discuss details of the attack, and it was not clear how its security was compromised. But Dan Kaminsky, director of penetration testing with the security firm IOActive, said that “in terms of this sort” of domain name server attack, “this is easily one of the most common hacks.” He said that a recent report by Verizon Communications found that 61 percent of Internet security breaches happen through simple password failures. Security specialists say it will be extremely difficult to determine who was behind the attack. There was some indication that the attack came from within the United States, but authorities are still investigating. Beth Jones, a senior threat researcher at the Internet security firm Sophos, said the attack did not look very sophisticated and probably was not the effort of a Web terrorist or other professional. “It could have been any number of people doing it,” she said. Ms. Jones said the incident may have been “hacktivism,” an attack with a social or political motivation. “The point could purely be just to prove the site is insecure,” she said. Although the attack did not appear malicious, it easily could have been, Ms. Jones said. “Instead of throwing up a banner to cover the site, what if it had been an exact replica of the home page?” she said. “If this attack had been a phishing page instead, who knows how many millions of credentials they could have gotten?” The attack was another black eye for Twitter, which had two major security breaches this summer. In July, the technology blog TechCrunch published internal Twitter documents that had been stolen by an unidentified hacker who apparently figured out an employee’s e-mail password. In August, unidentified attackers bombarded several social networking sites, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, with millions of junk e-mail messages in an attempt to block the Web pages of a 34-year-old economics professor who was writing about a skirmish between Russia and the republic of Georgia. The other sites withstood the assault, one of the most common types of Internet attacks, but Twitter struggled with its service for days. Roel Schouwenberg, a senior antivirus researcher at Kaspersky Lab, an Internet security company in Woburn, Mass., said the latest incident was an embarrassment to Twitter. “Even if it was the fault of the hosting company, Twitter has a track record this year of having weak passwords and being compromised,” he said. In September, Twitter raised $100 million from investors, adding $55 million it had raised. Despite all that new money, “Twitter still doesn’t seem to invest all that much in security,” Mr. Schouwenberg said. In a blog post Friday afternoon, Biz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter, confirmed that the hijacking occurred. “The motive for this attack appears to have been focused on defacing our site, not aimed at users,” he said. “We don’t believe any accounts were compromised.” Mr. Stone and other company officials declined requests for interviews. Twitter’s vulnerability appears to have increased as it has grown in popularity. “As soon as you become high profile, you are a much more interesting target to people,” Mr. Schouwenberg said. In November Twitter.com had more than 19 million unique visitors, an increase of 500 percent from Novemer 2008, according to Nielsen Mobile. The company’s failures have not had a major impact on users, even businesses who are using it to communicate with customers or conduct transactions. From its very beginning, Twitter has experienced short failures, although they have become less frequent over the last year. Tony Hsieh, chief executive of the shoe retailer Zappos.com and an avid user of Twitter on company matters, said Friday’s breach “didn’t concern me. I didn’t even know about it.” Richard Binhammer an executive at Dell, which has generated $6.5 million in sales through Twitter, said that Twitter conversations tend to be sporadic anyway. “It’s not like you’re on it all the time, depending on it for everything,” said Mr. Binhammer, who is active on the computer maker’s Twitter accounts. “So when all of a sudden they have an outage, I’ll pick up later, just like everybody else.” Other companies said that they were watching Twitter’s performance closely to make sure they could depend on it to meet their customer service needs. Andy Dunn, chief executive of Bonobos, an e-commerce company, said he hoped to someday use Twitter as his primary way of communication with customers and others, replacing e-mail. But the service would need to be more reliable to do so. “We’re not there yet,” he said. Laura Fitton, founder and chief executive of Oneforty, a start-up that aggregates listings of third-party Twitter services, is willing to be patient. “Twitter’s been around for three years and been dealt some pretty heavy blows,” she said. “And they’re still standing. Each time, they still come out on top.”

Twitter
Computer Security
Social Networking (Internet)
Kaminsky Dan
Stone Biz
Computers and the Internet
Blogs and Blogging (Internet)


James Berg, 65, Dies; Negotiated Labor Peace for City’s Landlords

Abstract: James F. Berg, who as the chief negotiator for most of New York City’s major landlords was given large credit for an era of labor peace in their buildings because of the trust he inspired on both sides of the bargaining table, died Nov. 18 in Manhattan. He was 65 and lived in Bay Shore, N.Y. The cause was cancer, his wife, Nancy, said. For nearly 30 years, Mr. Berg was president of the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations , the collective bargaining agent for the owners of more than 4,000 residential and commercial buildings in the city. In that time there were only two strikes by building workers, both in the 1990s, one lasting a week and the other four weeks. “Jim was an unusual representative for a group of employers,” said Mike Fishman, the president of Local 32BJ, a division of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 70,000 building workers in New York City. “He had an acute sense of fairness, and he understood that the people who worked for the employers he represented were human beings who needed to be treated with dignity and respect. They had to be able to live in the city in which they worked.” Paul Salvatore, the general counsel to the Realty Advisory Board, who was Mr. Berg’s negotiating partner for more than 20 years, said that because both sides trusted Mr. Berg, “he was able to achieve results, including peace in the industry, that many believed was impossible.” He added, “In dozens of major collective bargaining agreements over three decades, Jim was central to creating win-win situations for labor and management.” Two years ago, Mr. Berg and the union negotiated a four-year contract that gave raises averaging nearly 4 percent a year to 26,000 janitors, doormen and other workers at more than 1,000 office buildings, among them the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center and the World Financial Center. The contract raised the basic wage to $22.65 an hour from $19.15 an hour over the four years, keeping New York City’s building-service workers the most highly paid in the nation. “From a wage standpoint, the last agreement was pretty spare on wages,” Mr. Berg said at the time. “I don’t think this agreement is inconsistent with the cost of living in the city.” His concern for workers was fostered, in part, by his father. James Francis Berg was born in the Bronx on Nov. 6, 1944, one of three children of Harold and Ruth Berg. His father was a labor union lawyer. After graduating from Fordham in 1965, Mr. Berg earned his law degree from St. John’s University. He then served in the Army in Vietnam, managing field medical units that evacuated the wounded, earning a Bronze Star and rising to captain. A week after returning from Vietnam, on his father’s advice, he went for an interview at the Realty Advisory Board and was hired as a staff lawyer. Besides his wife, the former Nancy Gay, whom he married in 1983, Mr. Berg is survived by two sons, Kenneth and Paul; a brother, Tom; a sister, Carol DiPrima; and two grandchildren. Negotiating with the building workers’ union was not always easy. For nearly 20 years Mr. Berg sat opposite Gus Bevona, a union leader with a reputation as one of the most prickly and unpredictable negotiators in the city. “He was a tough guy to deal with,” Mr. Berg said in 2003, “but I had to deal with him, so I dealt with him.” Mr. Berg always seemed willing to find common ground, said Mr. Fishman, who took over as president of Local 32BJ in 1999. “Jim played a critically important role after 9/11 in making sure that workers who suffered and those who lost their jobs were taken care of,” Mr. Fishman said. “Everybody received health care coverage, and every single person who lost their job because of the attack was eventually employed in the industry.” With Mr. Berg’s help, he said: “We convened all the contractors, and those who had lost their jobs were put on a preferential hiring list. We did it together.”

Berg James F
Organized Labor
Labor and Jobs
Deaths (Obituaries)
New York City