Aye, There’s the Rub: Would the Bard Pay?

Abstract: STRATFORD HERE is, as Shakespeare said in another context, a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. For 25 years, the state of Connecticut had a charmed jewel in its possession — an octagonal 1,500-seat theater here modeled on Shakespeare’s original Globe that mounted productions of the Bard’s works with some of the nation’s greatest actors. Tens of thousands of schoolchildren, not to mention tens of thousands of grown-ups, streamed here from all over the Northeast to view Katharine Hepburn as Portia in “The Merchant of Venice” (she was paid $350 a week plus the use of a fisherman’s cottage), James Earl Jones as Othello and Christopher Plummer as Iago. Before or after the show, theatergoers picnicked on the lawn while gazing at the dreamy mouth of the Housatonic River as if they were sitting at Shakespeare’s Stratford birthplace on the River Avon. Wandering madrigal singers entertained them and Shakespeare himself (or an actor in costume) would mingle. Then, by some accounts, the patron who had generously covered the theater’s deficits died, and his survivors could not continue writing checks. In 1982 the theater filed for bankruptcy protection and, except for one brief season, has remained dark. Today it is derelict, its gray painted exterior flaking, its outdoor balconies sagging, its signature Elizabethan sundial fading. A gaping hole in the roof lets in rain that has weakened the backstage floor. Plenty of townspeople have wondered how this could have been allowed to happen — why a state with one of the nation’s wealthiest and most educated populations could allow a gem to rot away for a quarter century and permit a generation of Northeastern children to miss out on live Shakespeare. Now, though, there is a chance for this story to signify something — something hopeful. In 2005, the state deeded the theater to the town, and after some stumbles, its officials are negotiating with a white knight, Bill Hanney. He is a 39-year-old movie theater builder who for the past year has operated the Theater by the Sea in Matunuck, R.I., and put on productions like “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” and “Evita.” The mayor and town council have approved a bond for $2.5 million to renovate the theater, and Mr. Hanney has offered to put in some of his own money. If his blueprint is realized, the curtain could go up by next year, with money flowing to hotels and restaurants and jobs created for a community of 50,000 hurt by the loss of a military tank contractor. But there are fears on all sides that the town might not get it right. Mr. Hanney admits he has never seen a Shakespeare play and thinks Shakespeare is not what modern audiences crave. He wants to put on the same popular musicals that he shows in Rhode Island, allowing him to recycle the scenery, costumes and casts and spread his costs. Most of Stratford’s 10-member town council seems ready to take him at any price. But the mayor, two council members and a sizable slice of residents insist that Shakespeare retain a starring role — perhaps four months in a year-long season. They point out that Shakespeare is wildly successful in Stratford, Ontario; in Central Park in Manhattan; and in more than 100 countrywide festivals. Why should Connecticut be such barren ground? So to be or not be is still the question for the Stratford theater. Councilman Michael Julian thinks that Mr. Hanney’s experience as a movie theater builder will help him to size up the refurbishing that will be needed, and he hopes Mr. Hanney can do so without demanding another pound of flesh from the council. The mayor, James R. Miron, who preferred the developer to be a nonprofit organization that could raise government and foundation grants, is more of a skeptic. He points out that the town has received estimates of up to $20 million to restore the building to mint condition. Still, what makes him optimistic is that much of the theater is in good shape, including the framework, the proscenium stage, and the teak indoor paneling. There is even a dusty prop room with swords, masks and the head of a donkey — perhaps the mask Bert Lahr wore as Bottom in “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream” — left over from the heyday. “It would be a shame to let this theater stay dark,” Mr. Miron said, showing a reporter around with a flashlight. “The themes of Shakespeare are as relevant today as they were 400 years ago. They comment on the human elements we all share.” Mr. Miron, a lawyer who grew up in Stratford, has said he would not sign any contract that “does not devote a significant portion of the year” to Shakespeare. Mr. Hanney said in an interview that “I will do as much Shakespeare as people want to pay for.” Whatever contract is finally hammered out could not dictate the degree of passion that producers put into Shakespeare, which may be crucial to success. What everyone realizes is that more years of dawdling may leave the theater unsalvageable. There’s also a recognition that the time is ripe; the council membership changes every two years and another council may not be so kind. If the Hamlet-like indecision continues, the town will have ended up — pardon the mixing of metaphors and plays — burying Shakespeare, not praising him.

Theater
Connecticut
HERE Arts Center
Globe Theater


Court in Egypt Clears a Mubarak Official

Abstract: A Cairo court on Tuesday acquitted former President Hosni Mubarak’s longtime interior minister of the last of several criminal charges that have kept him behind bars, opening a potential path to his release. The acquittal of the former minister, Habib el-Adly, is the latest in a long string of rulings since the 2013 military takeover that have exonerated former officials jailed after the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt . Other decisions, meanwhile, have sent many of the uprising’s young leaders to prison. Mr. Adly presided over Egypt’s notoriously brutal internal security forces from 1997 through 2011, and he was among the most widely loathed figures in the Mubarak government. During the 2011 uprising, demonstrators demanded his execution. He was acquitted on Tuesday of charges that he had improperly awarded a $12 million contract for the manufacture of license plates to a German company without an open bidding process. An appeals court had overturned a previous conviction on the charges and ordered a retrial. Another court had already cleared Mr. Adly of charges that he directed the killing of unarmed civilian demonstrators during the 2011 protests. He was tried alongside Mr. Mubarak, and last fall, a court dropped the charges against both men. Mr. Adly may face other corruption charges, but he has exceeded the maximum period of incarceration without a conviction allowed under Egyptian law.


Updates on Service Restoration in New Jersey

Abstract: New Jersey POWER TENS OF THOUSANDS STILL IN THE DARK Jersey Central Power and Light reported 15,485 customers still without power, excluding the 30,000 customers in coastal areas requiring major rebuilding. The areas hit worst were concentrated to the west in Morris, Hunterdon, Sussex and Somerset Counties. About 1,200 customers in Hopatcong were still awaiting service. In Tewksbury, where the police were protecting line crews from irate homeowners, Mayor Dana Desiderio questioned the power company’s assertion that only 411 customers still lacked power and its assurances that all customers would regain electricity by Sunday night. Public Service Electric and Gas said 3,020 customers still had no power, most of them in Union, Middlesex and Somerset Counties, which experienced high winds along the Watchung Mountains during Hurricane Sandy and heavy snowfall during last week’s northeaster. TRANSPORTATION HUDSON TUNNEL IS REPAIRED Amtrak finished repairs on the second of two Hudson River rail tunnels, a spokesman said late Sunday, and was “in the final testing phases,” but expected that the tube’s reopening would allow more Amtrak trains to enter into Manhattan during Monday morning’s rush. It was unclear if New Jersey Transit would immediately expand its service through the second tunnel, as well. Temporary PATH train service to Manhattan will be extended to Pennsylvania Station in Newark and Harrison, N.J., on Monday. The trains will run from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., also stopping at the Journal Square, Grove Street and Newport stations in New Jersey and at the 14th, 23rd and 33rd Street stations in Manhattan. Disabled passengers will have access to the platforms only at Newark, Journal Square and 33rd Street. New Jersey Transit said that limited service would resume on Monday morning on the Bergen and Pascack Valley lines, where local power failures had knocked out signals. Limited service on the Raritan Valley Line to Newark will resume as far west as High Bridge. New Jersey Transit also arranged for new ferry service to Pier 79 on West 39th Street in Manhattan from Hoboken, for $5 each way. SHELTERS STILL IN NEED The state said 1,269 people remained in shelters on Sunday. DAVID M. HALBFINGER

Transit Systems
Power Outages and Blackouts
Hurricane Sandy (2012)
New Jersey


Closing of State Line Power Station, on Illinois-Indiana Border, Is Expected to Leave Problems Behind

Abstract: For years, environmental and health organizations have called for the closing of the 83-year-old coal -fired State Line Power Station, one of the Chicago area’s top polluters. Now the plant, which is in Hammond, just across the Indiana border on Lake Michigan and adjacent to Calumet Park, is burning through its last stores of coal. It will stop generating electricity by March 31. Federal air quality regulations that take effect in coming years and — more immediately — competition from inexpensive natural gas make it uneconomical to run the plant, according to Dominion Resources, the Richmond, Va., company that bought it in 2002. While many environmentalists are cheering the closing, it raises new environmental and land-use challenges. It will also be an economic blow to Hammond, and to about 100 employees, most of them members of the United Steelworkers union and many who have worked there for decades. “It’s not a good thing for the city economically, but at the same time the air we breathe will be a little cleaner — what’s that worth financially?” said Mayor Thomas M. McDermott Jr. of Hammond. Similar situations are playing out nationwide as aging coal plants close, including a Dominion plant in Salem, Mass.; six Midwestern and Eastern coal plants owned by FirstEnergy Corp.; and, potentially, the Fisk and Crawford plants in Chicago in coming years. Lower natural gas prices from the increase in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of shale gas deposits have made it much less profitable to produce electricity from coal. This is especially true for facilities like State Line and the Chicago coal plants, which sell electricity on a highly competitive short-term wholesale market rather than through long-term contracts. “These companies bought coal plants based on certain assumptions about the price of natural gas,” said William Boyd, a professor of energy law at the University of Colorado. “Shale gas turned their world upside down, and retrofitting old coal plants to meet new environmental regulations doesn’t make sense anymore.” Some coal plants elsewhere in the country have been retrofitted to burn natural gas. But Dominion and Midwest Generation, which owns the Chicago plants, said converting would be too expensive. Doug McFarlan, a spokesman for Midwest Generation, said, “We will continue to evaluate numerous factors — including the capital expenditures required to comply with environmental regulations and market conditions that impact our ability to recover costs — in making decisions about future investments in any of our power generating units.” Dominion had planned to close State Line in 2014, but last summer the company said the plant would be shut down by March. Environmental advocates have long said the sooner the better, since medical studies link emissions from coal plants to higher rates of asthma attacks, cardiac disease and premature death among surrounding residents. Old coal plants like State Line — the current boilers date to 1955 and 1963 — have not had to meet the same environmental regulations as new plants. Environmentalists have portrayed State Line as a justice issue because three-quarters of nearby residents are minorities and almost one-fifth live below the poverty line. Even so, the closing will have serious economic consequences for the already struggling area. State Line is the biggest property tax payer in Hammond, at about $4.5 million a year. At Pucci’s Restaurant and Pizzeria, which for decades has delivered food to overtime workers and served beer and pizza to men dropping by after their shifts, the prospect of cleaner air does not count for much. “It’s almost a tragedy,” said Frank Pucci, an owner of the restaurant. “Some of my best customers are losing their jobs. I’ve been in the area all my life, and nobody ever talked about the so-called pollution from State Line.” Moving up the closing date is a major frustration for about 30 workers who turn 55 between now and 2014. Employees who are 55 and older when laid off can continue to purchase moderately priced health insurance through Dominion, but younger workers cannot. “With our exposure to coal dust, mercury, welding gases — I don’t know what my medical future will be,” said Jeff Kuzma, 52, a welder who has worked at the plant for 33 years. Dan Genest, a spokesman for Dominion, said other employers had called wanting to hire their workers, and the company is hosting a job fair on Thursday. But workers are skeptical. “We all know age discrimination is against the law, but realistically these companies are going to want someone who can put in a lot more years,” said David Weaver, president of Steelworkers Local 12502, who started as a janitor at State Line 30 years ago and worked his way up to control room operator. As the shutdown nears, urban planners, environmental leaders and elected officials are envisioning new uses for the property, including transforming it into a park that would connect existing Chicago and Indiana bike trails or making it the site of a wind or solar farm. There have also been calls to preserve the plant’s Renaissance revival architecture, with its intricate brickwork. Environmentalists, however, fear the site may be contaminated with toxins and heavy metals, which could potentially run into the lake during rains or leach into the groundwater. Jim Norvelle, another Dominion spokesman, said the company currently had no plans to test the site for contamination, or to sell or develop it for recreational, commercial or alternative-energy uses. Officials at the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management said they had no information indicating that the site was releasing hazardous waste. Unless new information comes to light, there are no government mandates for testing or cleanup. Howard A. Learner, the executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, a Midwest environmental advocacy organization, has called for an independent evaluation of the site. According to Environmental Protection Agency records, chemicals released into the air by the plant in 2010 included nearly 30,000 pounds of sulfuric acid, 1,180 tons of hydrochloric acid and 143 pounds of mercury. It released a total of about 44,000 pounds of copper, barium, zinc and lead into Lake Michigan, the federal records said. “We don’t know what’s there, but there are some red flags,” Mr. Learner said. “This is the tip of the iceberg of a broader problem as more old coal plants shut down.”

Shutdowns (Institutional)
Coal
Indiana
Illinois
Natural Gas
Environment
Economic Conditions and Trends


Nets Need More Than Good Game Plan to Beat the Heat

Abstract: After the Miami Heat blew them out of Game 1, the Brooklyn Nets rebounded with a focused, but ill-fated, performance in Game 2 on Thursday night. As has been the case many times, even the right game plan, executed well, was not enough to beat a team as good as the Heat, the two-time defending N.B.A. champions. The Nets managed Thursday to correct most of the errors that left them vulnerable to a parade of layups in Game 1 , in which the Heat outscored them by 24 points in the paint. In Game 2 , the Heat scored 34 points in the paint, to the Nets’ 32, and found only one bucket on a cut to the rim, compared with seven in Game 1, according to the Synergy Sports. The Nets kept LeBron James from accumulating too many easy points at the rim and free throw line, and did a good job slowing down Dwyane Wade, who scored 14 points. But while the Nets have contained the Heat, they have not been able to take them out of their game, as they did in the regular season. The Heat are prepared, composed and show no signs of breaking stride after their sixth consecutive playoff win this year, and eighth over all. Image Deron Williams went scoreless in Game 2, and has yet to shoot a free throw in the series. Credit Steve Mitchell/USA Today Sports, via Reuters There were more than a few heartening moments for the Nets in Game 2, most notably Mirza Teletovic’s barrage of 3-pointers. Teletovic set a franchise playoff record with six 3-pointers, all off opportunities manufactured by snappy ball movement. Amazingly, the Nets also won the rebounding battle despite their smaller lineup. It was precisely the type of unexpected performance that could propel an underdog to a vital road victory, but the Nets failed to capitalize. While Teletovic cooked from behind the arc, point guard Deron Williams could not get a single shot to drop, finishing 0 for 9. Williams went scoreless in Game 2, and has yet to shoot a free throw in two games against Miami after averaging nearly six per game in the first round. For a player of his stature, Williams rarely receives the benefit of the doubt from referees, and he expressed surprise that a few of his drives did not pay off with trips to the line in Game 2. Though Williams has a case, his explosiveness looks dampened, perhaps because of his oft-injured ankles, which were treated with an injection between Games 6 and 7 of the first round. Facing the Heat’s speedy point guards, Williams has not been able to turn the corner on pick-and-rolls or isolations, and when he does get inside, the Heat are meeting him at the rim, where Williams’s inability to elevate because of his nagging ankle problems makes it difficult to finish cleanly. The Heat’s aggressive defense is designed to push point guards away from the rim on pick-and-rolls, and Brooklyn likes to use Williams as a decoy to draw the defense away from the Nets’ shooters. One could cite Teletovic’s performance and argue that Williams’s approach worked in Game 2, and, indeed, Williams made a number of excellent passes. But the Nets will need more raw production from Williams because they cannot count on Joe Johnson to carry them as he did against the Toronto Raptors. Image Joe Johnson driving against Miami's Shane Battier. The Nets have counted on Johnson's production, but they will need more offense from Williams to challenge the Heat. Credit Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press Like the Nets, the Heat do not mind switching on defense. Usually, that is exactly what Johnson wants: he forces a mismatch, then forces his way to the paint. The Raptors never found a way to handle Johnson’s combination of size and skill, but the Heat have a stable of capable defenders who, though unable to completely lock down Johnson, can make life difficult for him without requiring the assistance of a second defender. Shane Battier is the primary defender on Johnson, and unlike DeMar DeRozan of the Raptors, he has the strength and guile in the post to deter Johnson from those devastating drives that ended in so many deft Johnson floaters in Round 1. Even without strong games from Williams and Johnson, the Nets were able to make it interesting on the strength of Coach Jason Kidd’s guerrilla tactics. Playing Teletovic at center in the fourth quarter was the kind of risk the Nets must take to get the Heat out of their rhythm. The Heat were just too poised, and too good, when it mattered most. With the game still in reach and three and half minutes to play, the Heat extended a possession three times with offensive rebounds, punctuating the 100-second trip with a layup from James. Without a single player taller than 6-foot-8 on the court, the Nets could not keep the more athletic Heat from the ball. Finally, the Heat ran one of their favorite late-game plays, a pick-and-roll between Wade and James, and James slipped to the rim for an uncontested layup, giving the Heat a 10-point lead with just under two minutes to play. In the regular season, the Nets’ unconventional style made the Heat uncomfortable. It forced the Heat into ugly turnovers and lazy possessions. In two playoff games, the Heat have been careful with the ball, and conscious of making sure they keep the ball moving to exploit mismatches. The Nets have not exhausted every avenue to victory: A big game from Williams or Johnson would go a long way to a win at home. But through two games, it is clear that the Heat have a different gear in the playoffs, one the Nets cannot match.

Basketball
Brooklyn Nets
Miami Heat
LeBron James
Mirza Teletovic
Joe Johnson


Panel Suggests Higher Gas Tax to Help Rebuild Roads

Abstract: A commission established by Congress to study options for financing the nation’s roads and bridges recommended on Thursday raising the federal gas tax by 10 cents a gallon. In a report, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission cited a “crisis” of neglect for infrastructure, and also called for an eventual switch to a tax based on miles driven, rather than gasoline consumed. Raising the federal gas tax, now 18.4 cents a gallon, is so politically tricky that the idea has gone nowhere in 16 years. The tax is the main source of federal dollars for fixing roads and bridges. The commission said that a 10-cent increase would cost the average household $9 a month extra. The report also called for raising the federal diesel tax, now 24.4 cents a gallon, by 15 cents.

Gasoline Tax (US)
Taxation
Senate
House of Representatives
United States


Larry Klayman, Plaintiff in N.S.A. Case, Savors Victory

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Larry Klayman knew how to pick a legal fight long before Monday, when he took the first round in a judicial crusade on behalf of the little guy against big-government snooping. But not always a winning fight. In the 1990s, he filed numerous lawsuits against President Bill Clinton and his administration, alleging a litany of personal and professional transgressions. Mr. Klayman later nettled Vice President Dick Cheney over his secret energy policy meetings and claimed that members of George W. Bush’s administration might have known in advance of the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington. More recently, Mr. Klayman, who has been called “Litigious Larry,” sued OPEC, accusing oil-rich nations of price fixing and of trying to “bring Western economies to their knees.” And he sued Facebook and its founder for $1 billion when, he said, it was too slow to take down a web page that threatened Jews with death. Many of his lawsuits have fallen far short of the success bombastically predicted by Mr. Klayman. But on Monday, a federal judge agreed with his contention that the National Security Agency had exceeded its constitutional authority by systematically gathering the telephone records of Americans. Mr. Klayman, in Klayman-like fashion, quickly proclaimed it the “biggest ruling in the history of government litigation” and said it validated his repeated legal assaults against the establishment. “It’s a little like a MIRV nuking a missile,” he said in an interview on Monday night, referring to the use of a weapon with several warheads to take down an incoming threat. “If only one in 10 gets through, you’ve accomplished something. You’ve got to keep punching.” Mr. Klayman, 62, is a fixture of sorts in Washington. He founded, and then parted ways, with the conservative interest group Judicial Watch, which continues litigating grievances despite Mr. Klayman’s bitter departure. (He sued Judicial Watch, too, accusing it of breach of contract and other offenses.) His 2009 book is titled “Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment.” Mike McCurry, who was a press secretary in Mr. Clinton’s administration, recalled Mr. Klayman as an “annoying critic” for the Clinton White House and for successors from both parties. But Mr. McCurry noted that his methods have sometimes succeeded in the courts. “His latest legal challenge might create some evidence that there is method in his madness,” Mr. McCurry said. Mr. Klayman has not spared the current Democratic administration. At a Tea Party rally in October, he urged conservatives “to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.” Last year, Mr. Klayman filed a lawsuit in Florida arguing that Barack Obama was ineligible to be president because “neither Mr. Obama, nor the Democratic Party of Florida, nor any other group has confirmed that Mr. Obama is a ‘natural born citizen’ since his father was a British subject born in Kenya and not a citizen of the United States.” Image Larry Klayman reviewed presidential ballots in Florida in 2000 as a member of the conservative interest group Judicial Watch. Credit Vincent Laforet/The New York Times Mr. Klayman’s own political career was short-lived. In 2004, he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the Senate in Florida, receiving only about 1 percent of the vote. But it is a point of pride for Mr. Klayman that his legal “missiles” have no guidance systems that aim them in only one direction. He is proudly nonpartisan, he said, giving himself credit for being “one of the first” to call for Newt Gingrich to resign over ethics scandals when he was the speaker of the House. Mr. Klayman said his legal attacks on the government’s spying programs are further evidence that he cares less about the party in power than about forcing the powerful to answer to their critics. “To me, this is completely a nonpartisan issue. It doesn’t have anything to do with Republicans or Democrats,” he said on Monday. “I’m just happy for the American people.” In his ruling on Monday, the judge in the N.S.A. spying case embraced some of the bigger-than-life language that is Mr. Klayman’s forte. In his 68-page decision, the judge, Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, called the N.S.A.’s use of its technology “almost Orwellian.” He added that he could not “imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval.” But even as he agreed with Mr. Klayman’s accusations, the judge took pains to note Mr. Klayman’s less-than-traditional legal style. Judge Leon wrote that Mr. Klayman responded during arguments in court that the N.S.A. was “messing with me.” The judge added: “Unfortunately for plaintiffs, none of these unusual occurrences or instances of being ‘messed with’ have anything to do with the question of whether the N.S.A. has ever queried or analyzed their telephony metadata.” Nonetheless, the judge agreed with Mr. Klayman’s bottom line. Headlines on major news organizations’ websites quickly followed. Mr. Klayman’s relentless legal career has won him many critics. Brad Blakeman, a professor at Georgetown University and a former official in Mr. Bush’s administration, said their paths crossed when Mr. Klayman filed a lawsuit claiming trademark violations involving Mr. Blakeman’s conservative group, Freedom’s Watch. Mr. Klayman lost that particular battle. “Larry Klayman fights for himself and his own delusions of grandeur,” Mr. Blakeman said on Monday. “He’s probably one of the more despicable people I’ve ever encountered. If you look up gadfly in the dictionary, I believe you’ll see a picture of Larry Klayman. He’s a professional antagonist. He’s a bully.” Stressing that his opinions of Mr. Klayman were only opinions, Mr. Blakeman waved aside the ruling on the N.S.A. and other examples of Mr. Klayman’s success. “A clock is right twice a day,” Mr. Blakeman said. “It’s the 22 other hours.” For the moment, Mr. Klayman seems pleased with himself and immune to criticism. He said he heard about the ruling on Monday while he was “sitting at my desk, sipping coffee.” He got a telephone call and then an email that the judge had ruled in his favor. “Frankly, it didn’t surprise me legally,” Mr. Klayman said. But, he added, “Given what I’ve seen in the last 10 years, I wasn’t out there gloating until it came out.”

Larry Klayman
Government Surveillance
Lawsuits
NSA
Richard J Leon


50 Die in Uganda as Militia Attacks With Guns and Spears

Abstract: KAMPALA, Uganda — More than 50 people were killed in clashes between Uganda’s security forces and a tribal militia near the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, in what appeared to be coordinated attacks against police posts and military barracks in three districts, military and police officials said Sunday. Ugandan troops killed at least 41 assailants, said a Ugandan military spokesman, Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda. At least 12 people — mostly police officers and civilians — were killed by attackers armed with guns, spears and machetes, said Fred Enanga, a Ugandan police spokesman. Seventeen suspects were arrested, Mr. Enanga said. The death toll from the clashes, which took place Saturday, could rise as Uganda’s security forces tried to arrest the fleeing assailants, who are suspected of being radical members of a tribal group that has long felt neglected by the central government. The attacks took place in Kasese, Ntoroko and Bundibugyo, three Ugandan districts with a history of antigovernment insurgency and tensions among rival tribes competing for limited natural resources in a mountainous region of western Uganda. Bundibugyo, where the most deadly attacks took place, is a frontier district about 180 miles west of Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The attacks were most likely carried out by “radical elements” within a group known as Obusinga bwa Rwenzururu, whose members — from the Bakonzo tribe — have long had a tense relationship with the neighboring Bamba tribe, the police said. Uganda’s military insists that recent violence has been set off by tribal tensions and deny a resurgence of rebel activity. Military officials recently warned that a Ugandan Islamic extremist rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces, which carried out a violent insurgency in the area in the 1990s, is trying to regroup. The group’s fighters now operate in eastern Congo. Mr. Enanga, the police spokesman, said security officials were questioning the suspects to establish the motive behind Saturday’s attacks. Angelo Izama, a Ugandan analyst with a regional research institute called Fanaka Kwa Wote, said that the Bakonzo and Bamba regularly fight over natural resources, especially farmland, and that some might feel that the security forces were not always fair arbiters in such conflicts. He said it was possible that some police officers were being “individually targeted.”

Uganda
Civilian casualties
Fatalities,casualties
Democratic Republic of the Congo


Tensions High in West Bank After Killing of Israeli Settler Couple

Abstract: RAMALLAH, West Bank — In a letter to the Israeli president just three months ago, Naama Henkin said she had contributed money to a fund for orphaned children, and asked him to do more to protect Jewish families like hers who live in West Bank settlements. The president, Reuven Rivlin, read the letter at the funeral for Ms. Henkin and her husband, Eitam, on Friday morning. The Henkins were shot dead, apparently by Palestinian gunmen, in the occupied West Bank the night before, and their four children are now among the orphans Ms. Henkin had tried to help. Hours earlier, a car was burned in the village of Bitilu by vandals who left behind graffiti vowing revenge for the couple’s killing. The Israeli military deployed four infantry battalions in the West Bank to search for the suspects and to ensure that the roads were kept safe from more attacks, said Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the military. During a visit on Friday to the site of the shooting, near the Jewish settlement of Itamar and the Palestinian village of Beit Furik, Israel ’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, described the attack as part of “a period of an eruption.” Clashes between Muslims and Jews flared in recent weeks at the contested Jerusalem holy site known as the Temple Mount to Jews and as Al Aqsa, or the Noble Sanctuary, to Muslims. The violence simmered over the summer as the political situation between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority remained stagnant. This week, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders talked aggressively — and largely past each other — in speeches to the United Nations General Assembly. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday accused President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority of “rejectionism” because of his refusal to resume direct negotiations with Israel with no preconditions. The day before, Mr. Abbas said he would no longer be bound by agreements with Israel if it continued to violate them. On Friday, after the attack on the Henkins, a senior Palestinian activist said in a telephone interview that Palestinians should “use all methods of resistance” against Jewish settlers. The activist, Sultan al-Einein, a member of the central council of Fatah, the political party led by Mr. Abbas, added, “We should kill their women as they have killed ours.” His statement came after a branch of a Fatah militant group, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack on its website. Video Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, spoke on Friday about the fatal shooting of an Israeli couple in the West Bank. Speaking on Friday in New York, where he met with Secretary of State John Kerry, Mr. Netanyahu complained that Palestinian leaders had failed to condemn the West Bank attack. “Palestinian terrorists murdered yesterday a young mother and father, leaving four little orphans,” Mr. Netanyahu said, noting the wide condemnation for the deadly shooting at a college in Oregon. “But I have to say, I have yet to hear any condemnation from President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Worse, I heard senior officials from his Fatah movement praise this action. They say this is the way to go. No, it is not the way to go. The way to go for any conceivable arrangement is to fight terrorism and to make sure that terrorism reaps no rewards.” For years, Mr. Abbas has been trying to suppress the chaotic groups of gunmen that formed the Brigades, part of a wider effort to end lawlessness throughout the West Bank. Also Friday, settler leaders held demonstrations on West Bank roads and called for a new outpost to be built near the site of the attack. “That is the fitting Zionist response,” said Yossi Dagan, the chairman of the Samaria Regional Council, a body that oversees Jewish settlers in the West Bank. “That is what the state has always done, and that is how terror is stamped out,” he told Israeli news media. After Friday Prayer, several dozen Palestinians demonstrated in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, throwing rocks and burning tires. Similar clashes also broke out near two Jewish settlements. For Palestinians, the attack on the Henkins was seen as retaliation for an arson attack by suspected Jewish extremists in late July that killed a couple and their 18-month-old son , leaving only their 4-year-old son alive. The attack occurred in Duma, which is in the same area as the Jewish settlement of Neria, where the couple lived. At the funeral on Friday, Mr. Rivlin said he had received the letter from Ms. Henkin after Palestinian assailants killed an Israeli man near a spring in the West Bank in June. It was signed “from a citizen,” he said. “We face a cruel terror attack and you stand at the forefront and pay an unbearable price,” Mr. Rivlin said. “We will fight terror fearlessly,” he said. “We will fight and all of us will win.” Ezra Herschberg, one of the couple’s neighbors, said he was not aware of Ms. Henkin’s charitable work, but he understood that Ms. Henkin had urged her friends on social media to write a will, and think of how they wanted the situation to be for their children if they passed away. “I’m relieved,” he said. “I know that their children have a place to be.”

Israel
Palestinians
Israeli settlement
Eitam Henkin
Naama Henkin
Murders and Homicides
West Bank
Reuven Rivlin


Donald Trump, Losing Ground, Tries to Blame the System

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump and his allies are engaged in an aggressive effort to undermine the Republican nominating process by framing it as rigged and corrupt, hoping to compensate for organizational deficiencies that have left Mr. Trump with an increasingly precarious path to the nomination. Their message: The election is being stolen from him. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump berated the politicians he said were trying to stop his nomination and denounced the Republican Party, which he cast as complicit in the theft. “Our Republican system is absolutely rigged. It’s a phony deal,” he said, accusing party leaders of maneuvering to cut his supporters out of the process. “They wanted to keep people out. This is a dirty trick.” His charges built on comments in the last few days by associates, senior advisers and Mr. Trump himself, seeking to cast a shadow of illegitimacy over the local and state contests to select delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. By blaming the process rather than his own inadequacies as a manager, Mr. Trump is trying to shift focus after Senator Ted Cruz of Texas outmaneuvered him in delegate contests in states like Colorado, North Dakota and Iowa, losses that could end up denying Mr. Trump the nomination. Asked about the appearance of disorganization, Mr. Trump said in an interview, “You have to remember I’m leading.” He added, “I’m more than 200 delegates ahead, so over all, I’m doing very well.” But in what sounded like a wink-wink aside, he said, “Don’t forget, I only complain about the ones where we have difficulty.” Image Supporters gathered Tuesday at Griffiss International Airport in Rome, N.Y. In response to recent setbacks, Mr. Trump has begun to say that Republican leaders are trying to cut his voters out of the nominating process. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times The new approach is a tacit admission that Mr. Trump’s campaign, which has been so reliant on national news coverage and mass communication via Twitter, has not been able to compete in the often intimate and personal game that is delegate courtship. His effort to sow doubt about the system plays into the suspicions and anxieties that many of his most ardent backers have about a political process they believe has intentionally disenfranchised them. And it allows Mr. Trump to divert attention from his recent losses in delegate races occurring all over the country. Mr. Trump has a pattern of claiming fraud when an election does not go his way. And his critics say this kind of misdirection is his specialty. “If Trump can’t win something, he’ll always say it’s someone else’s fault,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist who has advised several presidential candidates, most recently Mitt Romney in 2012. “Donald Trump is a place you go to settle scores,” he added, noting Mr. Trump’s tendency to play on grievances, whether political, economic or racial. “And that’s what he’s selling. ‘You’ve been cheated here, you’ve been cheated there,’ ” Mr. Stevens said. “ ‘I’ll get you yours.’ ” After losing the Iowa caucuses , Mr. Trump insisted that Mr. Cruz had prevailed by duping Ben Carson supporters into voting for him after spreading a false rumor that Mr. Carson was dropping out of the race. “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter at the time. Mr. Trump’s complaints also reflect the difficult math he seems likely to face at the convention. Each delegate denied pushes him further away from winning the nomination on the first ballot, after which most delegates would be free to vote for someone else. And after the most recent rounds of voting, Mr. Cruz is poised to have many loyal supporters who would stand with him on a second ballot or beyond. How Votes For Trump Could Become Delegates for Someone Else The rules for how Republican delegates are selected could end up turning votes for one candidate into delegates who will support another candidate at the convention. The Trump campaign has, by its own admission, fallen perilously behind in the delegate effort, narrowing Mr. Trump’s road to the nomination with each contest. The outlook in the coming weeks is not much better. Even if Mr. Trump prevails in high-profile battles like next week’s New York primary, there are growing signs that he is not well equipped to succeed in the lower-profile skirmishes for delegates. There, Mr. Cruz has an advantage. His campaign recently hired Ken Cuccinelli, a conservative former attorney general of Virginia and a veteran of the state’s internecine Republican battles, to oversee its effort to send pro-Cruz delegates to Cleveland. The process for choosing delegates can be convoluted and arcane. Even if one candidate wins a state, the delegates who are supposed to vote for him at the convention might privately support one of his opponents, and could do so formally after the first ballot. In some states, like Colorado, delegates selected at a district caucus then vote for separate delegates to the national convention. Because the approach varies by state, campaigns must be well versed in each set of rules. In an interview, Mr. Cuccinelli noted that 28 states or districts will select delegates this weekend. “We’ll have them all covered,” he said by phone from the Cruz campaign’s Houston headquarters, where he spends much of his time. Mr. Cuccinelli said he had only recently detected evidence that Mr. Trump’s staff was engaged in the shadow campaign to elect favorable delegates at state and local conventions. “We are very blessed that our opponent had no idea what he was doing on this until about a month ago,” Mr. Cuccinelli said. “A media-only campaign has its advantages, but it also has its very severe disadvantages.” Mr. Trump’s newly hired chief delegate strategist, Paul J. Manafort, did not respond to an interview request. How Trump Could Be Blocked at a Contested Republican Convention A coalition of Republicans is banking on a scenario in which Donald J. Trump fails to reach the 1,237 delegates required to secure the party’s nomination before its July convention, creating a potential opening for another nominee as the delegates vote on the convention floor. By taking the battle for delegate selection seriously only at this relatively late date, Mr. Trump may have crippled his hopes to win a multiballot convention. That is because in many states, the deadline for individuals to run for delegate has already come and gone. In 10 of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts, for example, the deadline has passed to run for one of the three delegate slots available to each district. And as the elections in which those 33 delegates will be chosen unfold in the coming weeks, the Cruz campaign plans to have a presence. Arkansas is another case in point. The deadline to apply to be a candidate for delegate was in February. And since the list of applicants became available early last month, Cruz volunteers in each of the state’s 75 counties have been vetting it for people they believe will be most loyal to him at the convention. Arkansas delegates are required to vote for the candidate they are pledged to based on primary results for only one ballot. After that, it is their choice. “If Senator Cruz is going to be president, then we need to make sure we have people who are loyal to Ted Cruz who are going to Cleveland as delegates,” said Bob Ballinger, a Republican state representative and the Cruz campaign’s Arkansas chairman. The goal, Mr. Ballinger added, is to find people “who are willing to go down and will stick with him through a second or third vote if it comes down to that.” This effort has already dealt Mr. Trump serious setbacks. In Colorado on Saturday, Mr. Cruz’s organizational muscle helped him capture all 34 delegates at stake. And in Iowa, which also chose delegates over the weekend, Mr. Cruz’s success could go a long way in helping him if the convention gets to a second ballot. Though Iowa binds its delegates on the first ballot for candidates based on the proportion of the vote they received in the statewide caucuses Feb. 2, they are free to vote as they please after that. Cruz supporters in Iowa were elected to 11 of the 12 delegate slots that were filled over the weekend and secured five of eight spots on a commission that will nominate another delegate slate. Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, said it was clear that the Cruz campaign was outworking its rivals. “Organization still matters,” he said.

Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
Ted Cruz
Republicans
Primaries


Serena Williams’s French Open Loss Surprising but Not Rare

Abstract: PARIS Serena Williams may yet hold up a trophy in Paris this spring. She and Bob Bryan are, for now, still entered in mixed doubles. But there can be no debate that the big one got away at the French Open on Tuesday evening as Williams, assailed by doubts in the city she considers a second home, found herself unable to summon the consistency or, more surprisingly, the nerve to win. As bravely as Virginie Razzano of France played in her 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3 victory, as poignant as her story was and remains, Williams was in prime position to improve her phenomenal record in first-round Grand Slam singles matches to 47-0. She was two points from victory in the second-set tiebreaker at 5-1. Even after Razzano won six straight points and then rolled to a stunning 5-0 lead in the third set, Razzano sent numerous signals that her big lead was not secure. But Williams, the rightful pretournament favorite, could not take the hint. Though she saved seven match points in one of the wildest final games in professional tennis history, she could not save the essential: missing returns off weak second serves, flailing at shots instead of biding her time, stumbling where her footing earlier in the match had been sure. “I’ve never seen her tighter, and I’ve never seen her choke more,” Lindsay Davenport, once Williams’s rival at the top of the game, said of the tiebreaker as she left Roland Garros on Tuesday night. “It was complete nerves for whatever reason,” Davenport said. “There was no reason to get tight in the tiebreak, and she did, and she was so tight even that last game. She had five break points, and she couldn’t put returns into play. It was like she just completely froze, and I don’t think anyone’s used to seeing, of all players, her freeze.” The fair question now is whether Williams can thaw in time for Wimbledon and the other major prize she will be chasing on grass this summer, the Olympics at the All England Club. History, on and off the court, indicates that it is never wise to count out a Williams, particularly a Williams on a mission. Neither Serena nor her sister Venus have endured as their rivals have faded by meekly accepting their lot. But Tuesday represented the latest in a string of Grand Slam disappointments for Serena Williams since she returned to the tour last June after health problems that included two foot operations and blood clots in her lungs. Williams was on a similar roll going into the 2011 United States Open final and came out flat against Samantha Stosur, who had never won a major singles title. Williams arrived in Australia in January looking fit and energized, only to tear ankle ligaments in a warm-up tournament and then lose early at the Australian Open to the unseeded Ekaterina Makarova. Then came Paris, where Williams arrived after the most complete and convincing clay-court buildup of her career. She won 17 straight matches on clay before withdrawing from the Rome tournament to protect a back injury. “Three in a row,” Davenport said of the Grand Slam defeats. “I think the loss to Stosur was huge. Based on her buildup and how she was playing on the hard courts going in there, that was quite a surprise. And then coming here, this is obviously a bigger surprise.” She continued: “It starts to add up.” Williams appeared, if anything, too intent on making up for past disappointments at the French Open, where she has not made it past the quarterfinals in singles since 2003 and where she has won the title only once, in 2002. How else to explain her agitation and gaffes with the match in her grasp late in the second set? Of the six points she lost in a row from 5-1, five ended with her errors and another with her error in judgment as she let a ball bounce past, thinking it was long before the chair umpire, Eva Asderaki, ruled it was good. Williams was a strange brew of passive and overaggressive against Razzano, who once beat Venus Williams in Tokyo with Serena watching in the stands but who is now 111th in the world with a losing career record in Grand Slam tournaments. An aggressor by nature and design, Williams was often the one behind the baseline as Razzano stepped inside the court and took Williams’s shots on the rise to deprive her of time. The most intimidating server on tour, Williams put only 52 percent of her first serves in play and won just 46 percent of the points off her second serve. Razzano — whose fiancé and coach died last May shortly before she played in the 2011 French Open at his request — was clearly inspired by this opportunity. “They don’t have the same game,” Razzano said of the Williams sisters. “But I’d already thought a bit how I wanted to play Serena. It’s been three days that I haven’t slept very well, three days that I haven’t been able to sleep before midnight, 1 in the morning, tossing and turning in my bed. I was already sharpening my teeth to play Serena.” Williams has plenty of scar tissue at Roland Garros, dating to another wild ride in 2003, when she was beaten by Justine Henin in a stormy semifinal. But Tuesday’s match was more reminiscent of a match here in 2008, when she also was in the midst of a convincing season and unexpectedly lost in the third round to Katerina Srebotnik. “Coming up to Paris, I think everyone expected me to win, as well as myself, and I just crashed and burned,” Williams said of that tournament afterward. Now she has crashed again two rounds earlier. But would we really be surprised if Williams roared back to win Wimbledon? “Never surprised,” Davenport said. “But if I had to guess right now, I would say it would be a huge accomplishment to get over everything that happened.”

French Open (Tennis)
Williams Serena
Tennis
Razzano Virginie


Fishermen Cross an Imperceptible Line Into Enemy Waters

Abstract: KARACHI, Pakistan — Fishermen bustled through a ramshackle harbor, a knot of narrow streets and one-room houses on the edge of Karachi, as they prepared to set out to sea for the summer fishing season. But one man was going nowhere. As other fishermen mended their nets in a field, Abdul Shakoor hunched outside his front door, weaving a rug. After 15 years on the boats, Mr. Shakoor said, he was seeking a new profession — a decision his wife, Zahida, heartily endorsed. “He’s getting into a boat again over my dead body,” she said firmly. “I won’t let him go.” Mr. Shakoor, 34, returned to Karachi recently after a two-year spell in an Indian jail. He is one of several thousand fishermen, both Pakistani and Indian, who have been arrested at sea in recent years by the opposing countries’ navies. The fishermen are accused of crossing a border they cannot see and whose exact location is in dispute. The quarrel goes back to the 1960s, when Pakistan and India first disagreed on the status of Sir Creek, a channel of water that separates Sindh Province in Pakistan from the Indian state of Gujarat. Since then, the argument has broadened into a wider dispute over how the land borders should extend into the Arabian Sea. Over the years, in a bid to break the impasse, the two governments have commissioned surveys, held talks and proposed compromises. When Gen. Pervez Musharraf ruled Pakistan, he claimed to have come close to a settlement during secretive talks with his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh . But General Musharraf was ousted in 2008, and, like so much between India and Pakistan, Sir Creek remains unresolved. Today, the two governments cannot even agree on which map to use when discussing their sea borders, lawyers say. And where diplomats have failed, fishermen are paying the price. Every year, dozens of fishing boats from both countries are detained by the Indian and Pakistani governments on charges of trespassing into enemy waters. Flung into jail, the fishermen often languish there for years, only to be released as part of the spasmodic peace process between the two countries. Currently, 249 Indian fishermen are being held in Pakistani jails, while 131 Pakistanis are being held in India, according to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry. A spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said that comparable figures were not readily available. Although treated as criminals, the fishermen are better described as victims of history and geography, unfairly penalized for having to ply their trade on a map without borders, their advocates say. “The purpose of the arrests is to demonstrate the governments’ authority, and to make a symbolic protest that the other state has allowed its fishermen into their water,” said Ahmer Bilal Soofi , a Pakistani lawyer who has worked on the Sir Creek dispute. “But it is the fishermen who suffer unnecessarily.” In the fishing village of Ibrahim Hyderi, boats painted in the floral style of Pakistani trucks crowded the harbor one morning recently, their flags fluttering in the breeze. On the “Mamoon,” a goat sat quietly amid the commotion. Crew members said they would slaughter the animal once they set sail and smear its blood on the bow. “To ward off the evil eye,” explained Shahid, a 16-year-old deckhand. When it comes to India’s border at sea, however, more than luck is required. A half-submerged shipwreck, known locally as “kaajal,” is used by Pakistani fishermen as a marker; a handful of well-off boats use GPS devices. Even so, arrests are frequent. Mr. Shakoor said that his boat was near the shipwreck when it was impounded by the Indian Navy in 2012. Five other boats were captured that day and escorted to a port in Gujarat, which was then led by Narendra Modi , now the country’s prime minister. The Indian authorities booked the six ship captains, Mr. Shakoor said, and threw their crews in prison. There, they met other Pakistanis, one of whom told Mr. Shakoor that he had been behind bars for 20 years. Conditions in the prison were miserable, Mr. Shakoor said, and a Pakistani diplomat visited just once during his two-year incarceration. All the time, Mr. Shakoor worried about the plight of his family back in Pakistan. “I would think about the terrible condition they must be in,” he said. His worries were well-founded: The wives of other men, still in jail, described a life of penury and struggle. “My children are crying for clothes and food,” said Laila, a mother of nine, whose husband has been in an Indian jail for two years and whose children crowded around her as she spoke. “My tears are running this house.” A fisherman’s life used to be less threatening. As recently as 10 years ago, several of them said, Indian boats were able to work freely off Manora Island, a small peninsula just south of Karachi. But in recent years, the fishermen have become pawns in a bigger diplomatic game. Both governments use them as political leverage at critical points. This May, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan released 151 Indian fishermen before he flew to New Delhi for the inauguration of his Indian counterpart, Mr. Modi. India released 353 Pakistani fishermen from 2008 to 2013, according to the Pakistani Interior Ministry, compared with 2,079 releases by Pakistan in the same period. (Pakistan appears to have arrested a greater number of Indian fishermen, which partly explains the discrepancy.) The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, an advocacy group, says the arrests violate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both Pakistan and India have signed. Mr. Soofi, the lawyer, said the legal situation was murky, but noted that the rival governments could protest by issuing formal warnings to the trespassing vessels instead of arresting their crews. But for Pakistan and India — neighbors who have fought three wars and amassed large nuclear arsenals — the fishermen are just the latest expression of an old fight. “Old enmities are played out through us,” said Kamal Shah, a spokesman for the Fisherfolk Forum. The fishing season was well underway by Independence Day celebrations, which fell in Pakistan on Aug. 14 and in India a day later. But the border is not the only challenge facing the fishermen. At Ibrahim Hyderi, where fishing crews transferred large blocks of ice onto their boats and stocked up on vegetables for trips of up to a month, fishermen explained the steep odds of their trade. In a good season, a haul of pomfret and prawns might earn each crew member $240. But in a bad season, it could be $20. Still, Mr. Shakoor, weaving his rug, said he yearned to return to the sea. “He doesn’t know anything else,” said Mr. Shah of the Fisherfolk Forum, sitting with the Shakoor family. “What will he do, become a thief?” But Mr. Shakoor’s wife, Zahida, stood firm. “At least he’ll still be here,” she said, recalling the day he returned from the Indian jail, a bedraggled figure in filthy pants. “I won’t even let my son become a fisherman when he grows up.”

Commercial fishing
India
Pakistan
Arabian Sea
Boats
International relations
Law of the Sea
UN
Karachi
Gujarat


A West Side Story of How Sephora Ate My Theater

Abstract: I’M walking north on the Upper West Side, listening to my iPod’s power mix, my musical antidepressant. I pass the tae kwon do school and pause to admire its new buttercup yellow sign. Then I stop short. The sushi place is there, but where I expect to see the Promenade Theater there is a marquee announcing the grand opening of — Sephora? To someone looking out from within the newborn temple of applied beauty, I must resemble a before picture: hair spiking wildly around the edges of my cap, Chucks worn down at the heels, raccoon circles ringing my tired eyes. I squint into the cosmetic wonderland and wonder: Where did they put the theater? The Promenade wasn’t one of the gilded Ziegfeld palaces of bona fide Broadway. Its lines were square, its walls an indeterminate quarry color that went well with dirt. It was an achievement of the drywallers’ union rather than the cherub carvers’ or the chandelier makers’. But it was a legit theater, not a movie multiplex given an extreme makeover, retrofitted to house performances like “Naked Altar Boyz Blowing Bubbles on Ice.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The Promenade was Off Broadway Uptown, and more often than not, when you went there to see a play, it stuck with you. But here is a Sephora that looks eerily like the one that ate the Scribner’s on Fifth Avenue. The theater is as gone as if the curtain had rung down and the crew had come in and struck the set — no, the building — overnight. Yet the ghosts of the Promenade still have a hold over me. When I moved to New York in the mid-’80s, I volunteered as an usher for Promenade productions in exchange for seeing the plays free. As I tore tickets, I’d ask theatergoers to please silence their pagers out of respect for the actors. Pagers begat cellphones begat BlackBerrys, but one thing remained the same: When I said “respect for the actors,” my heart swelled, because I was one of them, or hoped to be. I believed that one day I would be backstage in my Promenade dressing room, flaying my emotions raw in order to give my best performance for the next generation of actors who I knew were out there ushering and wanting more than anything to be in my shoes. In 1985, six months after moving to the city, I nearly exploded with joy as I sat in the audience for a preview of Sam Shepard ’s play “A Lie of the Mind.” I wanted to spend a few hours inside Mr. Shepard’s head, so I sat close: third row on the aisle. I chose a preview, so Mr. Shepard would be in the house, and I would be in the same “room” with my favorite living playwright, and just feet from two of my actress/idols: Geraldine Page and Amanda Plummer. It was an incandescent moment, and there were many more like it: Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken and William Hurt in “Hurlyburly.” Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women.” And my personal hero, Kathy Bates, alongside Athol Fugard in his play “The Road to Mecca,” and in Mr. Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class.” The Promenade is now quarantined behind the Philosophy Hope in a Jar moisturizer display. It looks oddly as if the theater had opened its mouth to yawn, and somebody had stuffed a superstore inside. Taking a deep breath, I enter the maw of makeup, passing a sign that reads, “Beauty Bestsellers: Get Addicted.” I think they’re talking lipstick, but I hark back to Mr. Shepard’s grizzled, alcoholic father figures lumbering through this space, somewhere between Dior’s Midnight Poison and Diesel’s Fuel for Life Pour Homme. It’s not as if I don’t know what I’m getting into here. I love Sephora, an institution that carries the tools I need to play my many parts. I’m one me at the holiday dinner table with my family (pink eye shadow and Xanax), quite another out to dinner with my boyfriend (shimmer powder and pheromones), at the dog run (dog saliva and ChapStick) or any place I may run into an ex (mascara and a satisfied smile). WHEN you come offstage, that’s when you put on your mask. This is why I am drawn to the Benefit display, featuring Bad Girl Betty, the cosmetic version of “Grease’s” Rizzo as interpreted by Quentin Tarantino. This chick carries nunchucks in her glitter purse and ninja stars in her cleavage. The Betty in me fondles lipsticks with names like Nice Knickers and Frenched. As I examine a tester of pink Champagne shimmer shadow, a mom with a New Jersey accent stops a sleek, black-clad Sephora employee with perfectly plucked brows and asks, “Where’s the Britney perfume?” I hold my breath, writing the next line in my head. Something like, “It’s under ‘S’ for Skanky.” Instead I hear, without a touch of irony: “We sold out over a week ago. I’m so sorry.” A Sephora employee is suddenly at my side. “Do you need help finding anything?” “Actually, yes, I do. Where is the Promenade Theater?” Blank stare. “Seriously. It was right here. We’d be standing in the lobby right now.” No recognition whatsoever. “They did great plays here. Great plays.” She can’t wait to get away from me. If this had been the Sephora that ate the sticky floors and mottled seats at the old Criterion Times Square multiplex, I’d hit the Urban Decay aisle. A spritz of Opium, a little Orgasm on the apples of the cheeks, a swath of Hotpants across the eyelid, finished off with lips stained Kinky, and I might be good to go. But I’m standing in the shell of the Promenade, and no new bronzer is going to make it any less gone. I don’t want any of this stuff. Not today. My younger self is calling me. I want to sit in a theater seat and lose myself in somebody else’s imagination for a few hours. I want to be reminded that my world does not stop at the front of my face. I want to forget the way I look so my soul can come out to play with those of Shepard, Fugard, Feiffer, Rabe, Durang, Baitz, Albee, Stoppard and all the actors who sat here, like me, dreaming their futures. Alone in the dark with great minds like that, you don’t need protective covering.

Upper West Side (NYC)
Area Planning and Renewal
Theater
Cosmetics and Toiletries
Sephora
Shepard Sam
Urban Areas


Carly Fiorina’s ‘Super PAC’ Aids Her Campaign, in Plain Sight

Abstract: LEXINGTON, S.C. — The table festooned with red “Carly for America” placards arrived hours before the candidate. Political operatives took up positions outside the front door to catch supporters of Carly Fiorina , the corporate executive turned Republican presidential contender, and gather their contact information before steering them inside to the room where she would speak. But the table, the placards and the workers did not belong to Mrs. Fiorina’s campaign. They were there because of the “ super PAC ” supporting her run for president. The Federal Election Commission forbids direct coordination between campaigns and super PACs, lest candidates effectively rely almost entirely on the huge, unlimited donations of a small number of billionaires. But in 2016, the groups are aggressively exploiting gray areas and loopholes in the rules, few of which the commission — deadlocked with its three Republican and three Democratic members — has hastened to close. One of the most important openings is the simplest: Candidates and super PACs are free to coordinate their plans if the information is shared in public view. Image Mrs. Fiorina autographed a sign made by her "super PAC," Carly for America, last week in Davenport, Iowa. Credit Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press That exception has taken on extraordinary power in the post-Citizens United campaign world, where candidates can give super PACs B-roll for campaign ads by posting video on YouTube, and campaign managers can signal a preference for positive advertising by alerting their Twitter followers. Mrs. Fiorina and other candidates who have depended the most on the unlimited money raised by allied super PACs have taken it a step further: making travel schedules available, then letting the outside groups arrange and finance the events. Under the rules, Mrs. Fiorina’s super PAC — whose name, Carly for America , makes it sound anything but independent — could not even call her campaign’s staff members to see where and when she was headed next. But Mrs. Fiorina has cleverly sidestepped that prohibition: Her campaign has created a public Google calendar , which it updates weeks into the future, showing the events she has planned. “Essentially, it inoculates a case of coordination by making it public,” said Kenneth A. Gross , a lawyer who specializes in campaign finance. “As long as it’s not hidden in a ‘Where’s Waldo’ game and meets a reasonable definition of being public, it is a way to avoid running afoul of the coordination rules.” Mrs. Fiorina, whose calendar already shows she plans to be in Iowa on Halloween, is not the only candidate to hit on this workaround. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky also have public calendars detailing their travels. A super PAC could pay for costly polling, then publish it where the campaign could review it free of charge, so long as anyone else could, too. Video The 2016 race could be the most expensive in history, in part because of spending by “super PACs.” Legally, the groups cannot coordinate with candidates, but there is plenty of wiggle room. Even a campaign’s television advertising schedule — crucial information for a super PAC so it does not buy commercial time that might trip over the candidate’s own ads — is fair game if it is posted in plain sight online. As super PACs shoulder more of what candidates used to do exclusively — taking on the burden of registering voters and organizing volunteers , for example, as a group backing Ben Carson has done — communication and coordination are critical. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has all but outsourced his retail politicking schedule to his super PAC, Believe Again . For town hall-style forums planned in Iowa , the super PAC is the organizer; Mr. Jindal is merely an “invited” speaker. Mrs. Fiorina has taken a different approach. Her campaign committee, Carly for President , selects the events she will attend, and the super PAC does the rest. In South Carolina last week, Mrs. Fiorina traveled with a few campaign aides who squeezed into a white sport utility vehicle, while a team of at least seven people from the super PAC swooped in, often hours ahead, at each stop to stage her backdrops, set up sign-up tables and arrange stacks of posters and placards. Which Presidential Candidates Are Winning the Money Race See how the latest fund-raising numbers from the campaigns and outside groups stack up. A spokeswoman for the super PAC said that its employees had merely looked at the calendar, noticed the South Carolina events and shown up. “It’s the same way that any other person in that area would do; it’s just that we come armed with ways that you can sign up and volunteer and help Carly out,” said the spokeswoman, Leslie Shedd. Asked in Charleston if the hand-in-glove relationship between the super PAC and her campaign might constitute a violation of F.E.C. rules, Mrs. Fiorina had little to say. “We are not coordinating, and no, I’m not concerned at all, therefore,” she told reporters before an aide quickly cut short the questioning. At nearly every event, Mrs. Fiorina was framed by two standing banners emblazoned with the “Carly for America” logo. In much smaller type that was not legible more than a few feet away, the banners said “Paid for by Carly for America.” Nowhere did the signs explain that “Carly,” in capital letters, was an acronym for “Conservative, Authentic, Responsive Leadership for You” — itself an evasion of an F.E.C. regulation that prohibits super PACs from using a candidate’s name in their own. As a result, Mrs. Fiorina’s campaign materials are barely distinguishable from the super PAC’s — right down to their logos, each of which features a star at the center of the capital A in “Carly.” That has allowed the super PAC to take on yet another significant, but costly, function of a modern-day presidential campaign: swag. Carly for President has no online store. But Carly for America sells everything from onesies to T-shirts for dogs saying “Hillary Who?” So far, at least, the super PAC, not Carly for President, has also been the main source for messages urging volunteers to spread the word about Mrs. Fiorina on social media or to build crowds for events when she comes to town. (The super PAC is not responsible for every aspect of every appearance, of course. When Mrs. Fiorina’s backdrop collapsed at an event on Sunday, neither Carly for America nor her campaign was to blame, aides said.) Until the Sept. 16 Republican presidential debate, the clever symbiosis with her super PAC seemed a neat fit for Mrs. Fiorina’s campaign. But since her strong performance in that debate, her crowds have swelled into the thousands, and that arrangement is being tested. “We were the little engine that could,” said Ms. Shedd, the super PAC’s spokeswoman. “Now, we’re kind of the big engine that can.”

Carleton Fiorina,Carly Fiorina
PACs
2016 Presidential Election
Campaign finance
FEC
Citizens United


Harlem Area Where Columbia Plans to Expand Is Blighted, State Agency Declares

Abstract: The Empire State Development Corporation declared a 17-acre area of Harlem blighted on Thursday, a step toward forcing property owners to sell their land as part of eminent domain proceedings to make way for the expansion of Columbia University . The long-awaited finding — that a slice of the west part of Harlem known as Manhattanville is full of deteriorating buildings — was part of the state development agency’s preliminary approval of the university’s $6.28 billion expansion plan. The plan, which the agency is expected to formally approve in the fall, has been opposed by some Harlem residents, who fear being displaced by the university. The expansion, which is to take place over 25 years, will transform a section of Upper Manhattan dominated by warehouses and auto-body shops into a campus with high-rise classrooms and laboratories, tree-lined streets and student housing. All but a handful of the expansion zone’s existing buildings will be torn down to make room for the new campus, which Columbia officials have said will eventually include many of the university’s science and research facilities. Columbia says it is short of space. On Thursday, Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia’s president, lauded the agency’s move. “We are gratified by the Empire State Development Corporation’s adoption of a general project plan as the next step for a civic project that has moved forward with widespread support from local officials, elected representatives and a wide coalition of public interest groups committed to sustainable growth and vibrant urban neighborhoods,” President Bollinger said in a statement. Much of the opposition to the expansion plan has been centered on Columbia’s refusal to pledge that it would not seek to have the state take over the privately owned land that the university has been unable to purchase. Mr. Bollinger has promised not to ask the state to invoke eminent domain for the area’s residential buildings, which are home to about 300 people, but he has refused to make similar promises regarding the few commercial properties that have not been purchased by the university. On Thursday, Columbia released its most direct statement to date about its intention to pursue eminent domain: “The university has requested that the E.S.D.C. consider exercising its eminent domain authority in order to ensure that commercial development in this old industrial area does not prevent the city and state from achieving the public interest goals in the proposed academic expansion, with all of the long-term economic, educational and civic benefits it will bring to the local economy and all New Yorkers.” The university has said it owns about 90 percent of the private property in the area bounded roughly by Broadway on the east, Riverside Drive on the west, 133rd Street on the north and 129th Street on the south. Two commercial property owners, however, have refused to sell. One of them is Nicholas Sprayregen, who owns four buildings in the expansion zone as part of his Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage moving and storage business. Mr. Sprayregen has been vocal in his opposition to eminent domain and has vowed to fight the university to the Supreme Court if necessary. For months, his buildings have displayed giant banners that read “Stop Eminent Domain Abuse!” On Thursday, Mr. Sprayregen, 44, vowed to continue fighting. “It is clear that the voices of the community have been unsuccessful in dissuading Columbia University or the state from voluntarily backing off the threat of eminent domain,” he said. “We will go full steam ahead in preparing our defense.” But on Thursday, many city and state lawmakers were aligned against Mr. Sprayregen. Along with the press release announcing the development agency’s approval of the expansion plan were statements of approval from Gov. David A. Paterson, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Deputy Mayor Robert C. Lieber and state Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright. The project has been approved by the City Council and is supported by the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer. On Thursday, the state development agency said that two separate studies had determined that the part of Harlem under consideration was “mainly characterized by aging, poorly maintained and functionally obsolete industrial buildings, with little indication of recent reinvestment to revive their generally deteriorated conditions.” Opponents of the expansion, however, have said for months that the study’s findings were a foregone conclusion because the consulting firm that performed the blight analysis on behalf of the state — Allee King Rosen & Fleming Inc. — had previously conducted Columbia University’s environmental impact study for the expansion. On Thursday, the state agency said that the consulting firm’s analysis had been audited by a second firm, Earth Tech Inc. This week, a state appellate court upheld a decision ordering the development corporation to release documents regarding the expansion of Columbia University to Mr. Sprayregen because of the conflict of interest. A public hearing on the project will probably be held in September, said Warner Johnston, an agency spokesman. A final vote will come after the hearing. After that, businesses facing the possibility of eminent domain would have 30 days to present their arguments, officials said. Columbia said on Thursday that it was willing to restart negotiations with the holdout businesses before eminent domain proceedings began. “The university remains committed to reaching mutually beneficial agreements with the two remaining commercial property owners on these blocks,” Columbia said in a statement.

Columbia University
Harlem (NYC)
Colleges and Universities
Eminent Domain
Empire State Development Corp


At More Offices, a Plan to Stick With That Old PC

Abstract: So the front panels of your office computers are held together with duct tape, and visitors laugh when they see your floppy disks. And yes, those dial-up modems are a little slow, but they still work, don’t they? You can wait one more year before spending your hard-earned cash on brand-new equipment that will just get old in a few years anyway. As a new report from Forrester Research indicates, businesses are expected to be less willing to open their wallets for new technology in 2007. Globally, technology goods and services spending is predicted to grow 5 percent next year, to $1.55 trillion. That would be a slowdown from gains of 8 percent in both 2005 and 2006. A big reason for the decline is the weakening United States economy, which is reverberating through the rest of the world. But businesses will be more likely to spend money on software than on computers or communications equipment, according to Forrester. So who knows? Next year could be a turning point for those extra-frugal executives who have been clinging to their Windows 95.

United States Economy
Computers and the Internet


Georgia Copes with Uncommon Cold

Abstract: ATLANTA — What people in the South don’t know about cold is a lot. When it gets chilly like this — and mind you, 20 degrees is really cold here — morning news anchors remind viewers to wear warm coats, hats and gloves. It just gets worse with even the hint of snow, which might come in the smallest amounts by Sunday, according to weather forecasters. “If they say the ‘s’ word on TV, everybody will be immediately running to Kroger or Publix to buy milk, bread and eggs,” said David E. Stooksbury, the state climatologist and a professor of engineering and atmospheric sciences at the University of Georgia . “I figure it means we are supposed to have French toast.” Like others here, Dr. Stooksbury does not take this cold snap all that seriously. “Why is it so cold? It’s called winter,” he said. That is not to say the weather is not unusual. Temperatures are running 15 to 20 degrees below normal, and forecasters predict a particularly cold winter in the Southeast. In Atlanta , for example, people usually Christmas shop in pleasant weather that hovers in the 50s. In south Georgia , the daytime temperature is normally in the 60s. So nighttime temperatures in the 20s and daytime temperatures barely reaching into the 40s can really mess up a Southerner. “You barely want to go outside,” said Shannon Hodder, 26, a lawyer from Austell, Ga., who managed to muster the energy Wednesday to jog in a wool hat and three layers of shirts. “It was so beautiful and warm just last week.” Although the fact that Georgians are freezing their peaches off might be the talk among playground parents and office workers, the real weather story is the drought, climatologists say. The winter is expected to be drier than normal, Dr. Stooksbury said. Much of the Southeast is already in drought conditions. Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture declared 151 Georgia counties agricultural disaster areas because of dry weather and the summer’s excessive heat. Farmers, estimated by the Agriculture Department to have lost as much as 30 percent of their crops, can now qualify for emergency loans . Although farmers who grow row crops like cotton, peanuts and corn can irrigate, the drought will be particularly hard on beef and dairy ranchers, who do not generally water their pastures, he said. But not everyone in Georgia thinks the cold, dry weather is an unwelcome development. In fact, a plumber in south Georgia is embracing the freeze. “This is the best temperature you can hope for,” said Dave Runyan, 67, who built what he calls the South Georgia Redneck Snowmaker in his backyard last winter, dreaming of just this kind of cold weather. The machine is built from spare septic tank parts. It blasts several feet of snow across his yard in the oceanfront city of Brunswick, just miles from the Florida border. Children are bringing sleds and inner tubes. Mr. Runyan said he just did it for fun. “I don’t get too excited about burst pipes or frozen pipes or having to crawl around in the wet, cold weather,” he said. “But sledding down the side of a hill, I’ll do that any day.”


Abortion Foes Tell of Their Journey to the Streets

Abstract: OWOSSO, Mich. — Action means many things to abortion opponents. Lobbyists and fund-raisers fight for the cause in marble hallways; volunteers at crisis pregnancy centers try to dissuade the pregnant on cozy sofas. Then there are the protesters like James Pouillon, who was shot dead here last month while holding an anti-abortion sign outside a high school. A martyr to some, an irritant to others, Mr. Pouillon in death has become a blessing of sorts for the loosely acquainted activists who knew him as a friend: proof that abortion doctors are not the only ones under duress, proof that protests matter, and a spark for more action. “Jim suffered the persecution for us,” said Dan Brewer, who recalls swearing at Mr. Pouillon during one of his one-man protests in the ’90s, only to join him later after becoming a born-again Christian. “Now we just have to go out and do it.” A national tribute is already planned. Anti-abortion groups are calling on protesters to stand outside schools with signs that depict abortion on Nov. 24 in 40 to 50 cities nationwide. Some who plan to take part, like Chet Gallagher, a former Las Vegas police officer, have been answering such calls for decades; he first got involved in the ’80s, when every month seemed to bring a new “rescue,” another chance to lock arms with fellow Christians and block access to an abortion clinic. Others have arrived at the cause after experiencing personal traumas — in the case of Deborah Anderson, an abusive childhood and then an unwanted pregnancy — while still more fell into it through personal connections. Together, these street activists make up an assertive minority of a few thousand people within the larger anti-abortion movement. Neither the best financed nor largest element in the mix, they are nonetheless the only face of anti-abortion that many Americans see. Indeed, persistent provocation is their defining attribute: day after day on street corners from California to Massachusetts , they stand like town criers, calling to women walking into abortion clinics, or waving graphic signs as disturbing as they are impossible to ignore. Their ranks are more infused with emotion — they would say commitment — than top-down discipline. Ziad Munson, a sociologist at Lehigh University who has interviewed hundreds of abortion opponents, said street protesters rarely moved into other areas of the movement and tended to work alone or in smaller groups. Even in cases when they form large and influential organizations, it is sometimes difficult to get beyond the culture of passionate dispute. To critics, like Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America , these protesters look like bullies bent on harassment. Among those who share their views but not their tactics, street activists have been marginalized as attention hogs who prefer to attract outrage rather than inspiring compassion. In the case of Mr. Pouillon, that outrage may have led to death. The police said the man charged in the killing, Harlan J. Drake, a local truck driver, was bothered by the signs Mr. Pouillon showed children as they came to school. The day he was shot, Mr. Pouillon was showing a mangled fetus, part of an almost daily effort to put abortion into the minds of his neighbors. “It’s all about the eyes,” he used to say to fellow demonstrators. “It’s all about the eyes.” But as the personal stories of Mr. Gallagher, Mr. Brewer and Ms. Anderson suggest, the motivations of many protesters are more complicated. They see themselves as righteous curbside critics, prophets warning the world with what they describe as the horrific truth no one wants to see. They have endured insults, threats and even estrangement from their families because they have found what nearly every activist craves: conviction, camaraderie and conflict. The Police Officer: From Civil Law to Biblical Chet Gallagher did not plan to join the blockade at the abortion clinic in Atlanta when he traveled there 21 years ago. But when he saw the passion of so many Christians outside the clinic, he said, he could not resist: he ended up in jail for 11 days, with James Pouillon and 700 others. Three months later, Operation Rescue , the umbrella anti-abortion group, arrived in Las Vegas, where Mr. Gallagher was a police officer. He refused to arrest protesters, and when his sergeant suspended him, he joined the “rescuers.” “I learned something that changed my life,” Mr. Gallagher said. “It wasn’t civil disobedience; it was biblical obedience.” Christian fervor nourishes anti-abortion activism like little else. Church groups nationwide regularly ask Mr. Gallagher to speak because he chose his spiritual beliefs over the law. Bible quotations appear on posters and on motor homes that have become traveling billboards , and in conversation they serve as evidentiary support, like statistics. This is a particularly American brand of faith: confrontational and action oriented. The most cited verses come not from the Gospels detailing the life of Jesus Christ but from the Old Testament prophets. Mr. Gallagher said he was inspired by Jeremiah 7, where the Lord says Israel ’s “people, animals, trees, and crops will be consumed by the unquenchable fire of my anger.” Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America , said she worried that the emphasis on judgment provides tacit approval for violence, like the recent killing of Dr. George R. Tiller , an abortion provider in Kansas . But Mr. Gallagher, 60, a white-bearded father of six, disagreed. He said Christianity must be emphasized because churches are the only institutions with the power to put abortion clinics out of business. Like Mr. Pouillon, who often protested outside congregations on Sunday mornings, Mr. Gallagher said far too many Christians nodded, but did not act. “It really can end,” he said of abortion, “if all the Christians just went out there for seven days in a row to tell the truth peacefully.” As for the more aggressive tactics he employs, like bringing protests to the neighborhoods where abortion doctors live, he said they were a product of faith, economics and politics. Faith, because he said he believed abortion doctors deserve to be shamed; economics because that shame might motivate them to do other work; and politics because the era of rescues ended in 1994, after President Bill Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act . The law made it a felony to use “force, threat of force or physical obstruction” to prevent someone from providing or receiving reproductive health services. “That required us to use some other strategies,” said Mr. Gallagher, who left the police force shortly after and is now director of operations for Operation Save America in Las Vegas. Among other things, the clinic law led to the proliferation of large anti-abortion signs with graphic pictures of mutilated fetuses. Mr. Gallagher said he believed that everyone, including children, should see them. “I know I offend a lot of people,” he said. “But I’ve talked to mothers who said, ‘Because you were there with those signs I decided to have that baby.’ “ Even in protesters’ families, not everyone agrees with the approach. Mr. Gallagher said his wife divorced him in 1989 after revealing she had three abortions before they met. They remarried in 1991, but Mr. Gallagher said some of their six children had gone years without speaking to him. “We know this is a real war and we have to fight it,” he said. “Some of our families suffered as a result. I wish I could say it was different but it’s not.” The Survivor: An Early Gusto for a Fight Deborah Anderson, 62, a professional test-driver for Ford with the style of a no-nonsense grandmother, introduced herself as “someone who should have been dead.” “I’m an unwanted child,” she said, standing at a vigil for James Pouillon with an anti-abortion poster peeling from overuse. “My mother couldn’t find a back-alley abortionist, so she gave me up for adoption.” She was 18 months old. Her sister was 4, and their adoptive mother, Ms. Anderson and her sister said in interviews, turned out to be abusive. Childhood in their suburb of Detroit was defined by broken bones beneath frilly dresses, she said. The girls ran away when they could, but when friends or the local priest visited, Ms. Anderson said, their mother chained them to poles in the basement. “I learned to bite and kick and scream,” she said. That gusto for the fight is a highly valued trait in protester circles. Mr. Pouillon earned kudos for standing with anti-abortion signs even while attached to an oxygen tank. Ms. Anderson also told stories of long, cold protests, insults and jail (after being arrested at Notre Dame in May when President Obama spoke). Her son, Jason Anderson, 35, an automobile engineer, said that as a teenager, he learned to take pride in his mother’s passion when he saw her enduring abuse for holding a graphic sign. “She’s really trying to open up people’s minds to the horrific nature of this,” he said. The most repeated anecdotes involve abortions averted. Ms. Anderson recalled what she said was her first triumph. It was the early ’80s. After becoming pregnant with a boyfriend while separated from her husband — and deciding to have the baby despite friends’ advice to abort, she said — she was a single mother with a bumper sticker on her Chrysler Fifth Avenue that said “the heart beats at 24 days for an unborn child.” One day in a parking lot near her home, Ms. Anderson said, a woman came up to her and said she had been on her way to get an abortion when she saw that simple statement and changed her mind. “There was a 2-year-old in the back seat,” Ms. Anderson said. At her home in Memphis , Mich., other examples followed: of two girls from Ohio who left an abortion clinic and, she said, told Ms. Anderson that her presence had persuaded them had not gone through with it; of a young man who knocked on her door in the dead of night, after seeing anti-abortion signs in her window. Then Ms. Anderson pulled out a black cassette recorder. Sitting on a red couch a few feet from two abortion posters, she replayed what she said was a voicemail message from several years ago. An older woman, sounding unsure and emotional, said she wanted to thank her because “you was at the clinic, and really helped my daughter.” Ms. Anderson smiled. “I can’t tell you how many babies have been saved because of abortion protesters outside the abortion mills,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about.” The Friend: Drawn to the Cause Within months of becoming a born-again Christian, Dan Brewer says, he knew he had to make things right. When he saw James Pouillon on a corner in Owosso one day, he stopped his car, walked over and asked forgiveness for having accosted him. “I put my head on his shoulder and cried,” he said. It was the beginning of what would become an alliance. Ziad Munson interviewed abortion opponents for a book, “The Making of Pro-Life Activists,” and said most people entered the movement through social connections and only later developed an ideological commitment. Mr. Brewer exemplifies the process. He did not have much passion for the cause early on, he said, but the resistance and support he experienced alongside Mr. Pouillon led him to more research and activism. He said there was something rebellious, something American, about standing up against abortion. In the past, he had occasionally held signs with bible verses emphasizing love, but they did not lead to as many conversations. Or conflicts — like the time a man drove up on the sidewalk, running over Mr. Brewer’s sign and forcing him to jump out of the way, he said. “I don’t want to say the conflict is fun, because it isn’t,” said Mr. Brewer, 40, an easygoing state pool champion with an earring high in his left ear. “But the interaction is fun, to be able to talk to people who take the time to listen to what you have to say.” A layoff last year from his job at a boat factory pushed him further. He joined Mr. Pouillon about three times a week, he said, partly for the camaraderie and partly — like other anti-abortion protesters — because he had come to see attention and opposition as proof of impact. He just never thought it could turn deadly. Nor did his son Cameron. Now 16, the second oldest of Mr. Brewer’s five children, including a foster child, Cameron was at school when the shooting happened at a nearby corner. He ran there, fearing for his father, instead finding a bloodied friend. “I got down next to him,” Cameron said. “I counted four bullet holes.” The Brewers said they did not expect more violence. And like hundreds of others, they said they planned to keep Mr. Pouillon’s efforts alive. Mr. Brewer may not be there as often, because he is taking nursing classes, but Cameron said he was eager to fill the void. “I thought it was cool that he did what he did,” he said. “Now that he’s dead, it makes you want to do it more.”


Antti Raanta Delivers Shutout in Rangers Debut

Abstract: Antti Raanta was just looking to get a win in his Rangers debut. He did much more than that. Raanta stopped all 22 shots he faced to become the fourth goalie in franchise history to get a shutout in his first start with the team, leading the Rangers to a 4-0 victory over the San Jose Sharks on Monday night at Madison Square Garden. With his fourth career shutout, Raanta joined Hal Winkler (1926), John Ross Roach (1928) and Marcel Paille (1957) as the only goaltenders to blank opponents in their first starts with the Rangers. “The only thing I was thinking was to win,” said Raanta, who was playing for the first time since being acquired from Chicago in a draft-day trade in June. “Our guys defended so well.” Marc Staal, Mats Zuccarello, Jesper Fast and Viktor Stalberg scored for the Rangers, who ended a three-game winless streak (0-2-1) after opening the season with three wins. Martin Jones finished with 24 saves in his first loss of the season as the Sharks lost their second straight after opening the season with four wins. Jones had allowed just two goals in the Sharks season-opening winning streak and came in leading the N.H.L. in goals-against average (0.49), save percentage (.982) and shutouts (two). Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault opted to keep the same forward lines and defense pairings that scored only once in the 2-1 overtime loss to the Devils on Sunday. Vigneault’s choice paid immediate dividends as Staal scored his first of the season 10 minutes 36 seconds into the game. The Rangers continued to attack in what was the team’s most complete performance of the season. While Raanta did not have to work especially hard, his toughest stop occurred early in the second period as the Rangers were killing a five-on-three Sharks power play. San Jose center Joe Thornton tried a quick shot from along the goal line as Patrick Marleau drove the net, but Raanta kicked the puck away. The save was significant when Zuccarello scored his fourth of the season later in the period. Fast had a breakaway goal 3:47 into the third period. Stalberg’s goal with 3:16 left ended the scoring. COYOTES’ VITALE SIDELINED Arizona placed center Joe Vitale on injured reserve with an upper-body injury and recalled forward Matthias Plachta from Springfield of the American Hockey League. Vitale was injured in Saturday’s game against Boston after a fight with the Bruins’ Kevan Miller. Plachta, a 24-year-old from Germany, appeared in three games with Springfield this season. KINGS’ PRACTICE WOES Los Angeles’s practice schedule is tentative these days while power shutdowns plague the neighborhood around its training complex. The Kings were forced to cancel the on-ice portion of practice Monday for the second time this month because the ice at the Toyota Sports Center was not playable.

Ice hockey
Antti Raanta
Rangers
San Jose Sharks