Shares Climb as G.M. Gets More Bailout Money

Abstract: Stocks climbed on Tuesday after the government expanded its bailout of the auto industry, bolstering hopes that lawmakers would continue to take steps to minimize the severity of the yearlong recession. The Bush administration said late Monday it would extend an additional $1 billion loan to General Motors and take a $5 billion stake in GMAC, the automotive financing company, in the latest move to ease the credit crisis . “The GMAC news is the driver of the lot,” said Steve Sachs, director of trading at Rydex Investments in Rockville, Md. “The government has been telling us for months that they will do whatever it takes, and there is probably more of it in store as we get to the inauguration and a few weeks past that.” The Dow Jones industrial average rose 184.46 points, or 2.17 percent, to 8,668.39. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 21.22 points, or 2.44 percent, to 890.64. The Nasdaq added 40.38 points, or 2.67 percent, to 1,550.70. The S.& P. has risen almost 18 percent since hitting an 11-year low on Nov. 20, but is still down about 40 percent for 2008. The Nasdaq was lifted by shares of big-cap technology companies that have larger cash reserves and are seen as better positioned to withstand the economic slump. Shares of Qualcomm, the wireless chip maker, rose 2.5 percent to $34.94, while the software maker Oracle gained 3.5 percent to $17.83, putting them among the top gainers on the Nasdaq. I.B.M. was the leading advancer on the Dow, rising 2.8 percent to $83.55. Investors shrugged off another round of economic reports that pointed to a deepening recession. Prices of single-family homes fell a record 18 percent in October, while consumer confidence also fell to a record low. In an effort to stem the recession, lawmakers have extended aid to many companies, most recently to the automakers G.M. and Chrysler, a unit of the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. On Tuesday, GMAC announced easier financing terms for car and truck buyers and G.M. announced zero percent financing for some vehicles, which could help bolster sales. This month, the government agreed to extend $17.5 billion to G.M. and Chrysler in an attempt to prevent their collapse. G.M. rose 5.6 percent to $3.80, while Ford added 3.2 percent to $2.29. Volume was slim on the New York Stock Exchange, where about 948.8 million shares changed hands, far below last year’s estimated daily average of 1.90 billion. On the Nasdaq, about 1.4 billion shares traded, well below last year’s daily average of 2.17 billion. Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by a ratio of about 4 to 1, while on the Nasdaq about two stocks rose for every one that fell. Interest rates were lower. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note was up 14/32, at 115 3/32, and the yield, which moves in the opposite direction from the price, was 2.05 percent, down from 2.10 percent late Monday. Following are the results of Tuesday’s Treasury auctions of four-week bills and 62-day cash management bills:

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (2008)


A Counterculture Spirit Flourishes, Preserved Under Fiberglass Domes

Abstract: DAVIS, Calif. — The trill of panpipes from a yurt wafted across the mulch hillocks of the Domes , a 1970s experiment in communal housing in which students live in igloolike fiberglass domes and snuggle up in snow-white interiors of plastic foam. Although plenty of campuses offer specialized housing — often reserved for vegans, teetotalers, athletes and other like-minded souls — it is probably safe to say that there is no place quite like the Domes, an early venture into sustainable living at the University of California, Davis . The complex of 14 tiny domes (elevation: 52 feet, population: 28-plus) is officially named Baggins End , after the Tolkien characters. Handcrafted signs by “Domies” enjoin visitors to take their time and “make a new friend” while meandering through the Domes’ gardens. There, amid fruit trees, scampering chickens and rows of spinach, they can marvel at a gazebo made from bicycle wheels, a metal Triassic flying reptile in a tree and a multicolored apiary that sums up the Domes’ philosophy: “Just bee.” Clarke Love, a junior civil engineering major and one of many green-thumbed Domies, relaxes by making prickly pear jam from scratch and “life force smoothies” from fresh collard greens, dandelions, figs, mint and whatever else is in season on the Domes’ four acres. Her gardens rely on recycled water from the Dirty Laundry Lounge, the Domes’ outdoor laundromat. Like the other Domes, which have sleeping lofts with vertiginous steps, the one Ms. Love shares with her domemate, Delaney McKinney, has a “sweet spot” — an acoustical effect similar to the “whispering gallery” in the United States Capitol, in which sounds are curiously amplified. “When it rains, there is such a beautiful sound, like a rain-stick,” Ms. Love said of her dome. “You feel in tune with nature,” she added. “For me, it’s pretty holy.” Rituals at the Domes seem drawn from an earlier era. Students meet for potluck dinners four nights a week in the yurt, which functions as a circular town square. Community decisions at weekly meetings are made by consensus. New Domies are required to attend an “anti-oppression workshop” to prepare for the rigors of a cooperative existence in which even a decision about whether to have a party is discussed ad nauseam and then voted on. In a world full of squares, Domies prefer the round. “There are no right angles here,” said Lucas Hill, a senior majoring in sustainable agriculture and food systems. “It makes you think creatively.” Opened in 1972 and designed by a contractor, the Domes were a pioneering low-cost student cooperative, albeit one built of artificial materials. Unlike geodesic domes, a period archetype, the fiberglass shells of these dorms were cast in one piece and then lowered by crane onto a concrete pad with prefabricated plumbing. They were meant as bulbous and iconoclastic expressions of the times, intended to inspire personal growth and an eco-friendly, grow-your-own commitment to the land. The spirit lives on in today’s Domies, some with nose jewelry, who plant almond trees, roast chicken, make acorn flour and walk barefoot through the mulch. “The hippie movement fell through,” Douglas Doria, a senior human development major, observed over a potluck dinner announced by the ting of a metal triangle. “But there are still people wanting something outside the norm.” The university, founded as an agricultural extension of the University of California, Berkeley, has long been recognized for innovation — in breeding tomatoes, for example, and other crops. Davis itself has been an early adopter of passive solar heating, ecologically planned communities, city bike trails and other progressive environmental amenities. Simon Sadler, an architectural historian and design professor, said the continued appeal of the Domes is “counterculture redux.” Last year, he pointed out, students protested tuition increases with a mass walkout, and in 2011 they made global news when a group of seated demonstrators supporting the Occupy movement was pepper-sprayed by a university police officer in riot gear. “The Domes represents the conscience of Davis,” Mr. Sadler said. “It’s a base camp for a fairly hard-core interest among young people in sustainable communities.” Several years ago, the structures were the subject of an impassioned “Save the Domes” campaign when university officials considered closing them, citing the exorbitant costs involved in fixing degraded foam, providing wheelchair access and addressing other structural and safety issues. Domies countered with wheelbarrows full of flowers and thousands of support letters. Eventually, hundreds of volunteers worked with the Solar Community Housing Association , which runs three eco-conscious co-ops in town: They patched foam, built paths and made two Domes wheelchair accessible. “Very few artifacts from the period survive,” said Kurt Kornbluth, the founder and director of the university’s Program for International Energy Technologies and a Domes alumnus. “And unlike Haight-Ashbury, the Domes are still happening.” Nevertheless, there can be misperceptions, even among peers, said Peter LaFollette, a senior chemistry major. “People ask if we have toilets and showers,” he said. “I tell them we have Wi-Fi and live two minutes from a grocery store.” Not everyone in the Domes milks goats, Mr. LaFollette noted, “unless you’re taking a class on goats.” (The university’s department of animal science has a dairy goat research facility.) Ashley Cable, a human development major, said that when she lived in a regular dorm she was “lonely and shy.” Over a potluck with bubble tea and drumming in the background, she explained that “having a vote in everything we do” has given her confidence. “My social skills have developed like crazy,” she said. Ms. Love admits that her friends sometimes think she lives in “super hippieville” — an impression that is perhaps reinforced by the sofa with a leopard throw pillow sitting in the middle of the Domes lawn. “It’s experiential,” she said. “You’re only in college for so long. You should definitely try extreme things.”

Sustainable living
College
Dormitory
University of California
Davis


Yankees Slash the Price of Top Tickets

Abstract: Twelve days after opening their new stadium, the Yankees on Tuesday bowed to the sour economy and the specter of empty seats by slashing in half some of their top-end, $2,500-a-game prices. Going further, the team also announced it will provide significant numbers of complimentary seats to existing season-ticket holders in premium sections, including some of the critical, and very visible, real estate behind home plate. The team’s price reductions and giveaways affect full-season ticket-holders in premium locations, but not those with partial plans. Those planning to buy premium seats for individual games will also get discounts that have not yet been detailed. Over all, the new policy represents a dramatic retreat from the team’s initial luxury-sales strategy for the new stadium, which was underlined in advertisements that crowed “Own the Greatness” and “Select the Greatest Seats in the World.” Last week, team officials said they would no longer discuss ticket prices or the many empty seats behind home plate and the two dugouts that were painfully visible at Yankee Stadium and on television during the team’s first homestand from April 16-22. The sight of those empty seats invited mockery from critics who said the Yankees had badly overreached. And the consternation it was causing for Yankee officials was made clear when Randy Levine , the team’s president, harshly criticized Don Garber, the commissioner of Major League Soccer , after Garber mentioned that the sight of some of the best seats at the new stadium going unfilled was “unbelievable.” The team had first hinted at a change in ticket policy April 2 when Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing general partner, said, “There’s no doubt that a small amount of our tickets might be overpriced.” But back then, still two weeks before the home opener, Steinbrenner could not have anticipated the empty swaths of blue seats that were supposed to be filled with people willing to pay $500, $600, $850, $1,250 or $2,500 a game for a premium seat. Steinbrenner announced the new ticket policy in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon. Neither he nor Levine was available to comment on the new policy. Nor was Lonn Trost, the team’s chief operating officer and the Yankee executive most identified with the initial ticket strategy. The new plan, which is only for the rest of the 2009 season, includes these features: ¶The full-season, front-row $2,500 tickets behind the dugouts will be reduced to $1,250, and those who have already purchased such tickets will get a refund or a credit . Still, at $1,250, those tickets will remain roughly twice as expensive as the highest-priced seat at Citi Field , the Mets ’ new home. ¶Tickets along the first- and third-base lines that cost $1,000 a game will be cut to $650. Refunds and credits will apply as well. ¶Fans who have purchased $2,500 front-row season tickets behind and to the sides of home plate will not get a price cut. Instead, they will receive an equal number of front-row seats, for free, for the rest of the season, in what may be an attempt by the Yankees to fill up the empty spaces so visible on TV. The Yankees’ willingness to give away some of those top seats, along with waiter-served food, is a clear signal that while 85 percent of the 4,397 premium seats have been sold, the most expensive ones are moving much slower. Alice McGillion, a team spokeswoman, would not say how many of the $2,500 seats have been sold for the season. She said the giveaways are part of “a promotional strategy.” She also said the team’s focus was on accommodating the fans who have paid $325 and more for full-season ticket plans — and not other fans who have paid less but might have seen their ticket costs jump substantially from last season. “This was a very specific pricing plan, going off Hal’s comments, to look at the premium pricing,” she said. But Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky , a frequent critic of the financing of the new stadium, criticized the new policy, saying: “The people who built Yankee Stadium with their tax money can no more afford $1,200 a game than they can afford $2,500.” The Yankees’ plan also provides significant numbers of complimentary seats for various numbers of games to buyers of season tickets that cost from $1,250 to $500 a game. In addition, other season-ticket holders higher up behind home plate will see their ticket prices cut from $750 to $500 a game. The team also said fans who buy three full-season plans for $325 a game in field-level sections that run from dugout to dugout will get a fourth one free. Those who have already purchased tickets in those sections will get free ones to future games this season depending on how many they have bought. The Yankees will not divulge the financial impact of the unsold seats and McGillion would not say how the refunds, credits and free premium tickets will affect team finances. The team has made clear in the past how much more financially beneficial the new stadium would be. In January, when the Yankees issued $258.9 million in tax-exempt bonds , they estimated that ticket and suite revenue in the 2009 season would be $331.5 million, based on attendance of 3 million. But in August 2006, when it sold $942.5 million in tax-exempt bonds, the team estimated $253.2 million in anticipated 2009 revenue, based on 3.4 million attendance — indicating that in the time between the bond issues, the team increased the prices it would charge at the stadium. In any case, the unsold seats represented a marketing, and image, problem for a team that had hiked nonpremium seats prices by 76 percent for its new stadium. “It was starting to hurt the overall brand,” said Donny Deutsch , chairman of Deutsch Inc., an advertising agency, when asked about the original pricing strategy. “People start asking whether you care about the fans.” A situation comparable to what confronted the Yankees occurred when Apple appeased alienated customers by dropping the price of its iPhones from $599 to $399; customers who had paid the higher price ultimately were offered $100 coupons good for Apple merchandise. For the most part, owners of luxury brands are reluctant to cut prices, since part of their mystique is the high price. Instead, they have given consumers optional extras, like leather seats, for free. Nonetheless, Yankee fans might not see the cut in ticket prices as anything but damage control. Robert K. Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a brand and research consultant, said, “It’s not about being good to our fans, it’s about, ‘Oh my God, we’ve priced the tickets too high.’ ”


What Does ‘Terminal’ Mean? (3 Letters)

Abstract: TO THE EDITOR: Re “ Testing the Limits of ‘Terminal ’” (Hard Cases, Oct. 15): Dr. Abigail Zuger hits on a central truth that all of us who have accompanied the dying know: In the end, what matters is not how many days or weeks a particular treatment extends life, or how precisely a diagnosis has nailed the problem. It is the memories that stay with us of caregivers who understand the sacredness of life’s end and who show kindness and concern about a patient’s total being. I thank Dr. Zuger for looking back and questioning whether there was not a better way to have helped a patient through the passage from life to death. Cathy Bernard New York TO THE EDITOR: Dr. Zuger brings up a thorny issue for every physician: When do we stop trying to save a life? As resident physicians in training, we work hard at saving life even when it seems hopeless. As we mature as physicians, we increasingly recognize there is a time to stop all the heroics and just come to terms that there is an end. The two intensivists who were mentioned in her article understood this and made a decision. It was not cruel, calloused or unfeeling — just a decision. I can tell from interacting with intensivists for the past 30 years that their decisions are not made lightly or dispassionately. I suspect the next stop for those two doctors was an equally difficult patient with a daunting disease, and more difficult decisions had to be made. I suspect they need some distance from the impact of those decisions so they, too, can maintain balance in their lives and continue to make tough choices. Harry Katz, M.D. Midland Park, N.J. TO THE EDITOR: Sparing needless and painful suffering to a patient facing an imminent demise is both wise and caring. What bothered Dr. Zuger the most, as she readily acknowledged, were the young physician consultants who reached their decision so quickly. What if older doctors had reached the same conclusion just as quickly? What is so wrong about coming to the proper decision quickly? Jerry Frankel, M.D. Plano, Tex.


Chinese Economy Is Slowing Down

Abstract: HONG KONG — As China’s leaders have been preoccupied with a political struggle leading up to a once-in-a-decade leadership change this autumn, there are increasing signs that the Chinese economy may be running into trouble. China announced Thursday that growth in imports had unexpectedly come to a screeching halt in April — rising just 0.3 percent from the same period a year earlier, compared with expectations for an 11 percent increase. Businesses across the country appeared to lose much of their appetite for products as varied as iron ore and computer chips. China has been the largest single contributor to global economic growth in recent years, and a sustained slowdown in its economy could pose problems for many other countries. Particularly exposed are countries that export commodities like iron ore and oil and rely on demand from China’s steel mills and ever-growing ranks of car owners. Exports, a cornerstone of China’s economic growth over the last three decades, grew 4.9 percent last month — half as much as economists had expected. And a slump in new orders over the last month at the Canton Fair, China’s main marketplace for exporters and foreign buyers, suggests that overseas shipments by the world’s second-biggest economy, after that of the United States, may not recover quickly. Growth in other sectors appears to be slowing, too, particularly in real estate. Soufun Holdings, a Chinese real estate data provider, released figures Monday showing that residential land sales in the country’s 20 largest cities had fallen 92 percent last week from the week before, as declining prices for apartments have left developers short of cash and reluctant to start further projects. In a series of interviews over the last week, bankers and senior executives from provinces all over China, in a range of light and heavy industries, cited a broad deterioration in business conditions. Two of them said that some tax agencies in smaller cities had been telling companies to inflate their sales and profits to make local economic growth look less weak than it really was, while reassuring the companies that their actual tax bills would be left unchanged. There are early signs of a credit squeeze, at least among private sector companies. Many seem to be asking their suppliers for more time to pay debts and complaining of cash flow problems. Zhang Jinmei, the sales manager at the Qitele Group, a company that makes playground equipment in the coastal city of Wenzhou, said that local investment and lending pools there were starting to charge higher interest rates for loans, a sign of worries about creditworthiness. “The business environment is getting tougher and tougher,” said Tom Zhang, the sales manager at the Hebei Haihao High Pressure Flange and Pipe Fitting Group. “Competition is very intense to get more business — our domestic sales are down from last year, though our export sales are more or less stable.” Some sectors are faring better. Car sales rose 12.5 percent in April from a year earlier, the Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers announced on Wednesday. The National Bureau of Statistics announced on Friday morning in Beijing that inflation in consumer prices slowed to 3.4 percent in April from 3.6 percent in March, while producer prices, measured at the factory gate, actually fell 0.7 percent in April from a year earlier. The fading of inflation pressures makes it easier for the government to stimulate the economy without pushing up prices. A clearer signal of China’s economic health may emerge later Friday when the National Bureau of Statistics announces April figures for industrial production, retail sales and fixed-asset investment. China has noticeably not loosened monetary policy in recent months to mitigate the economic slowdown. The government had been moving toward easing through the winter, lowering cash reserve requirements for banks in November and most recently in February, so that the banks could lend more. But the government has left the reserve ratio unchanged since then. It has also left regulated interest rates unchanged at the fairly high levels set last July, when the economy was much stronger. Changes in the reserve ratio or interest rates are ultimately decided not by the central bank in China but by the country’s political leadership. The government’s inactivity has coincided with the biggest political drama in China in more than a decade: the ouster of Bo Xilai, a leading advocate of renewed government control over the economy and public life. The Communist Party removed him March 15 as the party secretary in Chongqing and on April 10 suspended his membership in the Politburo and the larger Central Committee. On March 12, three days before Mr. Bo lost his job in Chongqing, the governor of the Chinese central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, strongly hinted that the government was prepared to lower the reserve requirement further, but it has done nothing since to follow up. “We have a lot of room to adjust the reserve ratio,” Mr. Zhou said at the time. “On the other hand, it is necessary to see whether there is a necessity to adjust.” Stock market investors appeared to be betting Thursday that Chinese leaders would be forced to ease policy in response to the latest trade figures. After early gains, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets dropped sharply in late morning when the export and import statistics were released. But both markets later rebounded, and they closed the day little changed. GaveKal Dragonomics, a research firm specializing in the Chinese economy, said in a report Thursday that it was “still true the Chinese leadership’s obsession with growth and stability is heightened during transition years. This makes it implausible that the leadership would allow the economy to collapse while they fight over who gets what job.” The sectors doing best in China these days seem to be connected to state-owned enterprises and local governments, which continue to enjoy preferential access to loans from the state-controlled banking system. Projects like rail construction and low-income housing continue to move ahead. But Chinese officials have long tracked prices of industrial commodities and activities like electricity consumption for signs of the economy’s health, said Andy Xie, an independent economist based in Shanghai. Growth in electricity consumption has been slowing. And while commodity prices have begun to weaken worldwide because of worries about European debt, they have particularly slumped in China in the last few weeks, according to corporate buyers and specialty data tracking services. One result is a lot of unhappy business executives. “Our industry sector is facing tough times, and some companies in our sector are struggling,” said Amanda Wang, the sales manager at Steady Shower Technology, a manufacturer of bathroom fixtures in Ningbo.

International Trade and World Market
China
Economic Conditions and Trends


Google Site Lets Readers Flip Through the News

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Google , long seen as an enemy by many in the news industry, is making a bold attempt to be seen as a friend with a new service it hopes will make it easier for readers to read newspaper and magazine articles. On Monday, the company introduced an experimental news hub called Fast Flip that allows users to view news articles from dozens of major publishers and flip through them as quickly as they would the pages of a magazine. Google will place ads around the news articles and share resulting revenue with publishers. Fast Flip, which is based on Google News , tries to address what Google considers a major problem with news sites: they often are slow to load, and so they turn off many readers. Google, the leader in Web search services and advertising, argues that if reading news online was closer to the experience of scanning through physical newspapers or magazines, people would read more. “Browsing news on the Web is much slower than it is in print,” said Krishna Bharat, a distinguished researcher at Google who developed Google News in 2002. “When it is fast, people will look at more news and more ads, and that’s something that publishers want to see.” The service is being initiated with the cooperation of about three dozen publishers, including major news outlets like BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek; magazines like Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic, Esquire and Good Housekeeping; and Web-only publications like TechCrunch, Salon.com and Slate. Some of the publishers said they viewed the experiment with caution, adding that no single solution could address the industry’s main problem: plunging advertising revenues. “I don’t look at this as the solution to the future of journalism,” said Richard Gingras, the chief executive of Salon Media Group, who previously worked as an adviser to Google executives on media strategy. “But who knows? We will learn from it.” Fast Flip, which is available at fastflip.googlelabs.com , first appears as a collection of images of news articles that Google has culled from the sites of its partners. The articles are displayed side by side in various horizontal rails that show them arranged by popularity; sections like politics, business, travel or entertainment; topics like tennis, Iran or the Beatles; and news source. Flipping from one article to the next, or from one rail to the next, is quick. The articles, which are images of Web pages that have been stripped of ads and other items that slow them down, load with scant delay. Readers can zoom into a specific section, publication or article. They can often read the majority of an article directly on Google, although if they click on it, they will be taken to the publisher’s Web site. “We are helping people immerse themselves in the content,” Mr. Bharat said. Microsoft is also trying to make Web content more visually appealing with the new Visual Search feature introduced Monday on its Bing search engine. Although not directed at news, it displays some categories of search results using thumbnail images instead of text. Google plans to place display ads alongside the stories and share the resulting revenue with publishers. Mr. Bharat declined to discuss what percentage of the revenue will be kept by Google but said publishers would receive the majority. Some publishers acknowledged that, if successful, Fast Flip would compete with already beleaguered news Web sites. But they were persuaded the experiment could be useful. “Of course there is a concern,” said Martin A. Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations for The New York Times Company. “That doesn’t mean you don’t participate.” He added that Fast Flip could help showcase sites like The New York Times better than current aggregators like Google News do. Some news publishers have long complained that Google has unfairly profited at their expense by selling ads on Google.com and Google News alongside newspaper content. Google has countered that its services help news publishers by driving traffic to them, and that any publisher is free to block Google from indexing its content. “The interesting thing about this service, when compared to search, is that there is a revenue model for us on Google,” said Scott Havens, vice president of digital strategy and operations for The Atlantic. Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell, said that the decision by Google to begin paying publishers for news content on its site is a significant change. “It is a chink in Google’s armor,” Mr. Doctor said. “It could be a path to peace and rationalization of the relationship.” While the experiment includes some major publishers, several of the top newspaper chains, including the News Corporation, Gannett, McClatchy, Tribune and MediaNews, are not part of it. Mr. Bharat said that while Fast Flip tries to recreate some of the experience of reading news offline, the service will also incorporate many Web features. For instance, it will rely partly on Google’s algorithms and partly on user behavior to rank articles. Those that are clicked on or e-mailed the most often will rise in the rankings. And when users save an article they like, friends may be automatically notified. There have been other attempts to make reading electronic news more efficient. They include Times Reader, an application that allows users to download The Times onto their computers, and versions of papers available for e-book readers like Amazon.com’s Kindle . But those efforts have gained only limited acceptance. Mr. Bharat said Google will offer a version of Fast Flip for some phones, and may allow news publishers to use its underlying technology directly on their sites.

Computers and the Internet
Google News
News and News Media
Newspapers
Magazines
Online Advertising
Google Inc
New York Times


Kenya Plans to Deport a Muslim Cleric, Abdullah el-Faisal

Abstract: LONDON — The Kenyan authorities were reported on Monday to be planning to deport a Jamaican-born Muslim cleric, Abdullah el-Faisal, who may have helped inspire the Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb an American airliner headed to Detroit on Christmas Day. Mr. Faisal has long been known to law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe. He was tried in Britain in 2003 on charges of spreading racial hatred and urging his followers to kill Christians, Hindus, Jews and Americans. He was deported from Britain in 2007. Reuters reported from Nairobi, the capital, that Mr. Faisal was in Kenya on a preaching tour. But intelligence officials feared that his speeches would encourage radicalism in a country that has been a target of attacks ascribed to Al Qaeda, including the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy. He was arrested Sunday in the port city of Mombasa. “The minister in charge of immigration has declared him as an unwanted immigrant. We don’t want him in this country,” a police spokesman, Eric Kiraithe, told Reuters. It was not clear when Mr. Faisal would be deported. “From what he says, he was coming to preach,” Mr. Kiraithe said. “The contacts he was maintaining, according to our intelligence, are not the best, are not in our national interests.” Mr. Faisal settled in Britain in the early 1990s and became imam of the Brixton mosque in South London, which was reported to have been frequented by Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who sought to blow up an airliner bound for the United States just before Christmas in 2001. Abdul Haqq Bakr, the chairman of Brixton Mosque and Islamic Cultural Center, said at the time that Mr. Reid had joined prayers at the mosque in late 1995 and left in 1998. Zacarias Moussaoui, who was sentenced in the United States in 2006 to life in federal prison after he admitted knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, plot, also prayed at the Brixton mosque. Mr. Faisal, a Jamaican-born convert to Islam who studied in Saudi Arabia, was found guilty in 2003 of encouraging followers to use chemical and nuclear weapons against their enemies from other faiths. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was deported four years later after the authorities accused him of influencing Germaine Lindsay, one of the four attackers in the London bombings of July 2005. Mr. Lindsay was also a Jamaican-born convert to Islam. Mr. Faisal’s name surfaced much more recently in investigations into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , the Nigerian man accused of the attempted attack on a Northwest Airlines flight. In an online posting in May 2005, under the name “farouk1986,” Mr. Abdulmutallab referred to Mr. Faisal as a cleric he had listened to, according to American military and law enforcement authorities. In his posting, Mr. Abdulmutallab wrote: “I thought once they are arrested, no one hears about them for life and the keys to their prison wards are thrown away. That’s what I heard Sheik Faisal of U.K. say (he has also been arrested I heard).” It was not clear how Mr. Faisal had made his way to Africa after being deported to Jamaica in 2007. The Kenya newspaper Daily Nation quoted the immigration minister, Otieno Kajwang, as saying that he entered Kenya from Tanzania using a border post at Lunga Lunga that was not connected to a central database in Nairobi. Daily Nation reported Sunday that Mr. Faisal has previously been denied entry into Kenya. He had traveled to Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, Swaziland, Malawi and Tanzania before arriving in Kenya, the newspaper said. He was arrested after attending prayers at a mosque. The newspaper quoted Mr. Kajwang as saying: “We are not deporting him because he is a Muslim. We are deporting him because of his terrorist history and the fact that he is on the international watch list. ”

Faisal Abdullah el-
Abdulmutallab Umar Farouk
Kenya
Deportation
Terrorism


Heat Beat Celtics to Reach N.B.A. Finals

Abstract: MIAMI — The rally was brash and ostentatious. Three towering figures rose above the fray, declaring their supremacy in bold, broad strokes. The Miami Heat were flexing and preening again, but with an authority and substance that no one, not even the Boston Celtics , could deny. LeBron James , Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — who united in one infamous, smoke-filled rally 23 months ago, making lofty promises that would define their character and their careers — staged a furious rally on the court late Saturday night, authoring a 101-88 Game 7 victory over the Celtics to clinch the Eastern Conference title and send the Heat back to the N.B.A. finals. The Heat will play the Oklahoma City Thunder for the championship, in what promises to be an electric showdown between two of the league’s premier scorers, James and Kevin Durant. The series starts Tuesday in Oklahoma. A year ago, the Heat’s title hopes were snuffed in the finals by the Dallas Mavericks, inviting mockery and scathing criticism, primarily of James. Every step they have taken since then has been directed at this moment. “It’s been a journey,” said James, who led the Heat with 31 points and 12 rebounds. “It’s been a long ride.” Wade spoke of redemption, a payoff that is now four victories away. The opportunity was nearly lost when Miami let a 2-0 advantage in this series become a 3-2 deficit. But James refused to let it go, closing out the series with 76 points and 27 rebounds over the final two games — a screaming rebuttal to anyone who still questioned his ability to perform under duress. James was steady, efficient, smart and ultimately overpowering. “He’s the best basketball player in the world,” Bosh said. “He just has to show up and do what he’s been working on and believe in himself, because we believe in him. If he does that, we all like where we stand when the smoke clears.” James, Wade and Bosh scored all 28 of the Heat’s points in the fourth quarter, turning a 73-73 tie into a rout within minutes. They held the Celtics to 6 points in the final 8:49. “Honestly, I just thought we had nothing left,” Coach Doc Rivers said. James played all 48 minutes and saved his best for the finish, scoring 11 points in the fourth quarter. Wade scored 9 of his 23 points in the final period. Bosh, again playing off the bench, had 19 points, with 8 in the fourth. Bosh, who has never been known as a long-distance shooter, set a career high with three 3-pointers, two in the fourth quarter. The Celtics simply could not keep pace. Paul Pierce’s fadeaways fell short. Ray Allen’s 3-point stroke faded. And the Celtics as we know them might soon fade into history. Pierce, Allen and Kevin Garnett are heading for a likely breakup, their title hopes derailed for the second straight year by a younger, bouncier Big Three. Allen (37) and Garnett (36) will be free agents next month, and their futures are uncertain. “I just want to stick with this group, if it’s a couple more days, a couple more weeks or whatever,” Rivers said. Allen’s eyes welled up on the podium after the game as he pondered his future. He needs surgery for bone spurs in his ankle but said, “There’s still a lot of basketball left in my legs — I know that for sure.” Rivers sounded wistful as he reflected on the five-year run of the Big Three, which started with a championship in 2008 and was plagued by injuries every year since. “I wish we could have had healthy runs,” he said. Few expected the Celtics to even get this far — not after losing 15 of their first 32 games this season, not after late-season injuries to Pierce (sprained knee) and Allen, and certainly not after losing the first two games of this series. They lost a key player, Jeff Green, before the season, and another, Avery Bradley, during this playoff run. “I can’t be any prouder of the guys who came and put the work in every day,” said Pierce, who finished with 19 points. Pierce, Garnett and Allen had played six previous Game 7s, winning four of them. James had played in two previous Game 7s — both during his Cleveland tenure — and lost both, including one in Boston in 2008. This Game 7 had the potential to define an era for two franchises. “These are the moments that the players will remember when they rest their head on their pillows 20 years from now,” Miami Coach Erik Spoelstra said before tipoff. This moment arrived because James forced it, with a transcendent, 45-point, 15-rebound effort in Game 6. In the wake of that effort, James made a vow: “I won’t regret Game 7.” He was unclear on the specifics. But it was clear this game would not be a repeat of Game 6. James took a more conservative approach this time. The fourth quarter opened with the score deadlocked at 73-73, the Heat having overcome an 8-point deficit in the third. James twice broke loose for thundering dunks, electrifying an anxious crowd. James, who had played a measured game to that point, then unloaded. He drove and dished to Bosh for a 3-pointer. He followed with a tough running jumper, then a deep 3-pointer of his own, for a 91-84 lead. Moments later, Wade’s runner made it a 9-point game, and the building began to rumble in anticipation. Rajon Rondo paced the Celtics for most of the game, as he had for most of the series, and finished with 22 points, 14 assists and 10 rebounds. Allen scored 15 points and hit three of his signature 3-pointers in what may have been his farewell performance. Garnett had 14 points but struggled to find a rhythm after some early foul trouble. At the final buzzer, Rivers sought out James, embraced him and whispered words of encouragement as he seeks his first championship. “I basically told them to go do it,” Rivers said. “I’m proud of him.” REBOUNDS Erik Spoelstra, who has been an ardent supporter of Manny Pacquiao, seemed mildly perturbed to learn that the boxer was rooting for the Celtics. Spoelstra is half-Filipino and has worked with Pacquiao on community events in the Philippines. “You know what, Manny, you’re making it very tough on me,” Spoelstra said before the game, and before Pacquiao’s loss Saturday night against Timothy Bradley. “I’m going to have to get confirmation from Freddie Roach or something.” He added, “Otherwise I might have to root for Bradley tonight.”

James LeBron
Wade Dwyane
Bosh Chris
Miami Heat
Boston Celtics
Basketball


Fed Up, Greece Lists Tax Dodgers

Abstract: Trying to crack down on rampant tax evasion, the Greek authorities have made good on promises to name — and shame — some of the worst offenders. The Finance Ministry made public a list of 57 Athens doctors who officials believe are guilty of a variety of tax offenses, including failing to give patients receipts for their fees or even recording the visits. Twelve of the doctors had reported a combined income of slightly more than $15 million from 2001 to 2008, yet they had deposited more than twice that much — about $39 million — in their bank accounts, the ministry said Thursday. Experts estimate that the Greek government may be losing as much as $30 billion a year to tax dodgers, a figure that would have gone a long way to solving the nation’s debt problem. When the authorities audited the tax returns filed by 150 doctors with offices in one of Athens’ most expensive neighborhoods last year, they found that more than half of them were claiming incomes of less than $40,000. Such an income would have made it virtually impossible to pay the rent. Thirty-four of them claimed they earned less than $13,300, making them exempt from paying any tax. And tax inspectors said that one dentist in the area reported an income of just $375. So far, 11 doctors have been fined a total of $5.4 million. The fines range from $70,840 for a radiologist to $1.7 million for the head of a diagnostic center. Some will face criminal charges. The list dominated the television news cycle, though the doctors’ names were published in only a few newspapers. It drew fire from the general secretary of the Athens doctors association, Giorgos Eleftheriou, who told Imerisia, a business newspaper, that doctors were being unfairly singled out. “Tax evasion is one thing,” Mr. Eleftheriou said. “Misleading Greek taxpayers by laying the blame on doctors is quite another.”


Disney Invests $200 Million More in Vice Media to Support New Programming

Abstract: Disney has invested another $200 million in Vice Media, doubling its stake just weeks after its first investment, people familiar with the deal said on Tuesday. The cash infusion brings Disney’s stake in Vice to about 10 percent, according to one of the people. The investment does not change Vice’s valuation, the person said, which last month was put in the range of $4.2 billion to $4.5 billion. The money will help finance original programming, including TV shows, the people said. Vice is expected to unveil its new cable channel, Viceland, as early as the end of February, and intends to fill it with lifestyle and entertainment programming. Viceland will replace H2, the History channel spinoff owned by A&E Networks. The investment — which brings Disney’s total to $400 million — is the latest show of support for Vice, whose brash voice and ability to attract young male viewers has attracted piles of cash from traditional media companies seeking to reach its core audience. A&E Networks, the television group owned by Hearst and Disney, invested $250 million last year, and 21st Century Fox has invested $70 million. Vice also has a weekly newsmagazine show on HBO and is expected to introduce a daily newscast on the premium cable network next year. Family-friendly Disney and insurgent Vice might seem like strange bedfellows, but one reason for the relationship could involve the challenges facing the cable television business. As subscriber losses and ratings declines hold back growth at some of Disney’s older channels, including ESPN, Viceland could pick up some of the slack. Disney declined to comment on Tuesday. A&E Networks and Vice said last month when they announced the long-awaited deal that the channel would initially be distributed to about 70 million homes in the United States. Despite Vice’s raciness, Disney believes in the fledgling company’s multiscreen approach to delivering news and entertainment and its understanding of young adult audiences, said people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships. Although the odd-couple nature of Disney and Vice carries risks, Disney has come to believe that the Vice brand can be kept entirely separate from its own. Brooks Barnes contributed reporting

Vice
Walt Disney
Cable television
History Channel
HBO
Hearst
21st Century Fox


In Job, Appointee Profits and Christie Gains Power

Abstract: When Gov. Chris Christie pushed to expand financial incentives to keep businesses in New Jersey, one of the first companies to benefit was a client of David Samson, a lawyer with a long and close relationship to the governor. When Mr. Christie announced government-backed financing for college and school construction projects, Mr. Samson’s firm got a piece of that business. And after Mr. Christie named Mr. Samson chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, they both benefited when Mr. Samson and the board he led approved billions of dollars in bridge construction contracts. Labor unions grateful for the hard-hat jobs threw their endorsements to Mr. Christie, and clients of Mr. Samson’s firm wound up with the work. The lane-closing scandal that has enveloped Mr. Christie’s administration and the Port Authority for months has focused intense scrutiny on Mr. Samson and the 120-lawyer firm that he helped found in 1972. A number of potential conflicts have been reported by other news media, and the agency’s executive director, Patrick J. Foye, last week said that Mr. Samson lacked the moral authority to remain chairman. A comprehensive examination of Mr. Samson’s dealings with Governor Christie and his administration, both inside the Port Authority and out, shows the extent to which their ambitions and successes became intertwined. Mr. Samson and his law firm benefited financially. Mr. Christie benefited politically. And each enhanced the other’s stature as their relationship deepened in ways that were not apparent at the time. Mr. Samson has had a long career at the nexus of law and politics in New Jersey. But since Mr. Christie took office in 2010, his firm, Wolff & Samson, has risen to become one of the biggest bond counsel firms in the state, advising scores of private clients and state agencies, and jumped up in rankings of the state’s biggest lobbying firms. The efforts of the two men became increasingly bold as Mr. Christie’s national profile increased and Mr. Samson became a central figure in the region’s construction field. Perhaps the clearest example of this symbiosis, previously unreported, came last April, when Mr. Samson presided as the Port Authority awarded two bridge construction contracts worth a total of $2.8 billion. Mr. Samson paused after the vote of the 12-member board to call the occasion “joyous and happy.” It certainly was for two clients of his law firm. One longtime client was I.M.T.T., which owns a liquid storage facility on the Bayonne waterfront. The company is half-owned by the Macquarie Infrastructure Company , one of the contractors Mr. Samson and his fellow commissioners awarded $1.5 billion to replace and maintain the Goethals Bridge. A second contract, for $1.3 billion, was to raise the Bayonne Bridge to allow clearance for the largest container ships — though Port Authority experts had seen the project as a lower priority. Mr. Samson “came in like gangbusters” and insisted on proceeding immediately, one former project official said. The Port Authority awarded that contract to a team including Skanska Koch, a division of a multinational construction company based in Sweden and another client of Mr. Samson’s firm. Wolff & Samson lawyers were then in the throes of settling a costly dispute for the company in federal court on Long Island. Mr. Samson did not recuse himself from either vote, according to minutes of the meeting. Mr. Samson’s spokeswoman, responding to multiple requests delivered by phone and email, declined to comment on the votes or other apparent conflicts that have been raised in recent weeks. Asked about the potential conflicts in Mr. Samson’s votes, his spokeswoman provided a one-sentence statement from Mr. Samson’s lawyer, Michael Chertoff, who is a former secretary of homeland security. “Since assuming the chairmanship of the P.A.N.Y.N.J., David Samson’s commitment has been to benefit the region and not about personal gain,” Mr. Chertoff said in the statement. Image Under David Samson, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey awarded a $1.3 billion contract to a client of his law firm for work on the Bayonne Bridge. Credit Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times None of this occurred in a vacuum, of course. Both Skanska and Macquarie are worldwide leaders in their field, and no one has suggested that the bid process was tainted. Mr. Samson’s law firm has a deep bench of skilled lawyers who handle a broad range of complicated matters. And both he and Mr. Christie operate in a state with a long history of cozy, back-scratching relationships among politicians, lawyers and businesses tied to real estate and construction. But the April 2013 vote was just one of many instances in which Mr. Samson’s work at the Port Authority lined up with the interests of his law firm — and, in many cases, with Mr. Christie’s political priorities. Jameson W. Doig, a scholar who has long studied the Port Authority, said that while the Port Authority had not been immune to allegations of political influence, he had not seen anything in his research going back to the 1920s that compared to how Mr. Samson and Mr. Christie have used the bistate agency’s vast resources to advance the governor’s interests, at times benefiting Mr. Samson’s clients in the process. “Chris Christie has been very active in using the Port Authority for his own purposes, more so than any other governor,” said Mr. Doig, a research professor at Dartmouth College. “And that increased when David Samson arrived.” ‘The General’ and Christie Mr. Christie, 51, and Mr. Samson, 74, were lobbyists and lawyers in the 1990s, Mr. Christie at Dughi Hewit and Mr. Samson at his own firm. They served as the state’s top law enforcement officers for a brief period of time: Mr. Christie as the United States attorney from 2002 to 2008, and Mr. Samson as the attorney general for 13 months starting in 2002. Mr. Christie still refers to Mr. Samson as “the general.” The governor has said that at one point during that brief overlap he and Mr. Samson were informed that members of the Latin Kings gang had threatened to kill them both. “That brings you together,” Mr. Christie joked. In 2007, Mr. Christie gave Mr. Samson a $10 million contract to be the compliance monitor for a medical implant company, a position that was part of a settlement under which Mr. Christie agreed not to criminally prosecute the company on federal kickback charges. Two years later, when Mr. Christie ran for governor, Mr. Samson was the lawyer for his campaign. After he won the election, Mr. Christie chose Mr. Samson to lead his transition team, along with Jeffrey S. Chiesa, then a new Wolff & Samson lawyer who had befriended Mr. Christie at Dughi Hewit and followed him to the federal prosecutor’s office. Soon after he took office in 2010, Mr. Christie, a Republican, pushed for a vast increase in the tax breaks and other subsidies that could be awarded to businesses if they remained in New Jersey. He held a news conference that summer at the headquarters of Honeywell International, in Morristown, warning that the manufacturer planned to move to Pennsylvania, and arguing that New Jersey needed a major increase in its business-retention program. What was not widely known at the time was that Honeywell had hired Mr. Samson’s law firm to lobby for retention subsidies. Lawmakers passed the legislation, a more than sixfold increase to the maximum per-job award. Honeywell later dropped that program after Mr. Christie pushed for an increase to a second program. Wolff & Samson lobbied for that legislation, and helped persuade the state Economic Development Authority to award Honeywell $40 million in tax breaks, the most allowed, under the second program. Mr. Samson’s firm received $540,000 in lobbying fees from Honeywell from 2010 through 2012. Mr. Christie, in turn, trumpeted a major victory in an otherwise painfully slow economic recovery, saying his legislation had been “instrumental in Honeywell’s decision to stay and expand their operations in New Jersey.” Last year, Honeywell announced it was moving one town over to Morris Plains and putting its 147-acre Morristown campus up for redevelopment — prompting critics to ask whether that had been the company’s intent all along. “You just have to wonder if the threat was real or if it was idle,” said Jon Whiten, deputy director of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal-leaning nonprofit group. Booming Bond Business Along Route 3 in the Meadowlands sits a developer’s garish folly, a long-unfinished mall and amusement park once known as Xanadu. In 2011, Mr. Christie pressed for another change in state law, this time to make incentives available to Triple Five, the new developer of the project, now renamed the American Dream. Its lawyer: Wolff & Samson. In November, the state Economic Development Authority awarded Triple Five tax credits worth $390 million. Image The new developer of an unfinished mall and amusement park formerly known as Xanadu is also a client of Wolff & Samson. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Mr. Christie pointed to Triple Five when he accepted the backing of the Laborers’ International Union in December 2012, one of the first major endorsements of his re-election campaign. “Here I’m looking at the men and women who are going to take that thing and turn it from ugly and into a job machine for the men and women of New Jersey,” he said. “The Christie train has left the station and we are driving it,” said Ray Pocino, regional manager of the laborers union. He singled out the Bayonne Bridge, the Revel casino in Atlantic City and American Dream as projects Mr. Christie championed that were putting his members to work. During Mr. Christie’s first three years in office, New Jersey awarded $2.11 billion in business incentives, almost double the $1.25 billion awarded during the prior decade, according to a report by New Jersey Policy Perspective. “The state has been a one-note band for the last couple of years,” Mr. Whiten said. Yet as of December, New Jersey had recovered only 44 percent of jobs lost in the recession, compared with a national average of 87 percent, Mr. Whiten said. New York was at 156 percent. In addition to its lobbying work, Wolff & Samson serves as counsel on municipal bond issues, including being on the list of firms that can be hired to perform legal work when the Economic Development Authority issues bonds to support projects. So when the development authority approved $102 million in tax credits to help Panasonic, which had threatened to leave the state, move instead from Secaucus to Newark, Mr. Samson’s firm was listed as bond counsel for a related $10 million bond proposal. It was bond counsel when the authority issued $237 million in bonds to support a major expansion at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and on at least three bonds totaling about $43 million to support the construction of privately run charter schools, something the governor had pushed to expand. Since Mr. Christie took office, Mr. Samson’s firm has served as counsel for $10.3 billion in municipal bonds, WNYC radio reported. Its share of the municipal bond counsel business has jumped to 22 percent under Mr. Christie, from 2 percent during the administration of Gov. Jon S. Corzine, according to an analysis by Thomson Reuters. Marc Pfeiffer, who worked in municipal financing for New Jersey for decades, said it would not be surprising that a firm known to be close to any governor would pick up business. “The bond counsel selection process is not immune to the political process,” said Mr. Pfeiffer, now a research fellow at Rutgers University’s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. Mr. Christie, shovel in hand, got to take credit for putting New Jersey back to work. “This is another success story about one of our largest businesses choosing to stay in New Jersey, continue to grow and invest in our state and people,” Mr. Christie said at Panasonic’s groundbreaking in 2011. ‘An Activist Chairman’ When Mr. Samson arrived in 2011 as chairman of the Port Authority, an unpaid position, he made clear that, unlike most prior chairmen, he intended to insert himself into the day-to-day operations of the $8.2 billion-a-year agency. He commuted to its offices near Union Square two or three times a week, meeting with Mr. Christie’s other two top appointees at the authority, Bill Baroni and David Wildstein, according to people who worked closely with them. “He really decided to be an activist chairman from the beginning,” said one former authority official who spoke anonymously so as not to damage business relationships. Under Mr. Samson, the Port Authority approved transportation projects that critics said New Jersey would have otherwise had to pay for itself, most notably upgrades to the Pulaski Skyway. That allowed Mr. Christie to avoid raising the state’s low gas tax, keeping a campaign promise. Meanwhile, commuters at Port Authority bridges and tunnels saw their tolls rise sharply. Mr. Christie spoke against the increases but did not stop them. In another project, Mr. Samson and Mr. Baroni, the agency’s deputy executive director, arranged for the Port Authority to take over the failing Atlantic City International Airport. Image After Chris Christie became governor, the Port Authority took over the failing Atlantic City airport from a Wolff & Samson client. Credit Mel Evans/Associated Press Some Port Authority executives saw the move as an expensive effort to boost Mr. Christie’s re-election efforts in South Jersey. But New York’s turnover of an airport in Orange County to the Port Authority had given New Jersey’s governor a coupon to do the same someday. “It was always thought that Atlantic City would be the one they’d try to dump on the Port Authority, because Atlantic City loses money, it’s always lost money, it’s a dying town,” said a person who worked on the takeover who spoke anonymously to avoid hurting professional relationships. The airport was being served by just one carrier, Spirit Airlines, with 27 domestic flights a day from Atlantic City. A Port Authority study found that to break even the airport would need about 22 more flights a day. In March 2013, Mr. Baroni assured the Port Authority’s board that the takeover would “create a more integrated airport system” and perhaps even “create additional capacity in the region.” Mr. Samson thanked him. “That’s really exciting and is consistent with all our thoughts on where we’re going with this exciting operation agreement,” he said. What he did not say was that his firm served as bond counsel for the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which was suffering under the burden of running the Atlantic City airport. A transcript quotes Mr. Samson calling for the vote but does not list who voted in favor. Another document, the minutes, says Mr. Samson recused himself. But two people who were involved in internal discussions on the effort said Mr. Samson played an integral role in promoting the initiative. The Record, a New Jersey newspaper, reported last year that Mr. Samson took the lead in explaining to reporters the reasoning for the takeover. Port Authority policies allow for discretion by commissioners over when to recuse themselves from votes or discussions over issues, and if they do recuse themselves, they are not required to publicly divulge why. It is clear Mr. Samson made his support for the plan known to his fellow commissioners and was involved in planning. Mr. Doig, the Dartmouth professor, said the recusal afforded Mr. Samson an ethical fig leaf. “And the fig leaf is not adequate,” he said. During talks about the airport takeover, Mr. Samson and Mr. Baroni also were seeking to finance the extension of the PATH train from Lower Manhattan to Newark Liberty Airport. United Airlines, the primary carrier at Newark, had long pushed for the extension. In August, Mr. Christie and Mr. Samson met with United’s chief executive, Jeff Smisek. In November, they announced that United would begin making two daily flights to Atlantic City. And the Port Authority recently announced a $1.5 billion plan to extend the PATH to Newark Liberty, which would save Manhattan travelers from having to switch trains. The Atlantic City airport takeover did not just help a Wolff & Samson client. It also helped Mr. Christie bolster his relationship with Stephen M. Sweeney, the president of the State Senate, who has been crucial to his support in southern New Jersey and his ability to move initiatives through the Legislature. While the investigations into the George Washington Bridge lane closings brought the relationship between Mr. Samson and Mr. Christie into focus, Mr. Samson’s role in that event is less clear. But there are indications that he was not in the dark. In September, after Mr. Foye, the Port Authority’s executive director, reopened the lanes to the bridge that Mr. Christie’s appointees had ordered closed, Mr. Wildstein angrily sent an email saying “Samson helping us to retaliate,” records show. Mr. Samson has denied involvement, and Mr. Christie has stood by “the general.”

David Samson
Chris Christie
Port Authority
Bill Baroni
New Jersey
Conflict of interest


Increasingly, Business Travelers Must Cope With Small, Regional Planes

Abstract: THEY have less headroom, legroom and elbowroom than wide-body jets, but smaller planes are playing a growing role in American air travel, whether business travelers like it or not. With fewer people flying as the economy has slowed, airlines are increasingly using smaller jets and turboprops known as regional aircraft, or planes with 100 or fewer seats, flown by airlines like American Eagle, United Express, Comair and Pinnacle. Three-quarters of the airports in the United States are now served entirely by smaller aircraft, according to the Regional Airline Association . The number of passengers on regional aircraft has grown about 40 percent since 2003, and although traffic for all carriers fell in 2008, regional planes still make up half of all flights and carry 23 percent of passengers, according to the association. “If you’re not in the top 12 hub cities, you’re most likely on a regional jet,” said Rick Seaney, the chief executive of FareCompare.com . “If you’re not in a top 70 city, you’re probably on a prop.” Smaller planes allow airlines to fly to cities that might not warrant larger planes, particularly in a shrinking economy, or that are unable to accommodate wide-body jets. They also allow airlines to schedule more flights per day because their turnaround time is faster than that of larger jets. Regional planes “have been a huge benefit for the consumer because it’s one ticket, one Web site visit, you get the frequent flier miles, and you can connect to flights all over the globe,” said Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association. “In many cases, the R.J.’s are newer” than wide-body jets, he said, and furthermore “they can get into airports that larger airplanes can’t.” Business travelers like Richard Reinhardt might be less than enthusiastic about flying on smaller planes, but they are learning to cope. A management consultant from Memphis, Mr. Reinhardt, 64, travels two weeks each month, flying to places like Pensacola, Fla.; Joplin, Mo.; and Beaumont, Tex. Whenever possible he books on Northwest Airlink and other regional carriers that fly nonstop, to avoid changing planes in hubs like Atlanta or Chicago (traveling to some destinations can still require connecting at a hub, regardless of whether you are taking a regional or major carrier). But smaller planes have disadvantages. They often have only one class of service, even for passengers with a business- or first-class ticket who are connecting to a flight to, say, London. And as Richard Strauss, president of Strauss Radio Strategies, a public relations firm in Washington, has learned, regional planes often park far from jumbo jets at airports like Washington Dulles International, so connecting with an international flight can more often mean changing terminals. To avoid mishaps, Mr. Strauss, who says he flies about twice a month, tries to leave more time between connections. “If you’re taking a small plane to connect to an international flight, you can miss your flight,” Mr. Strauss said. And standby seats are harder to come by on smaller planes, he added. Lack of personal space is another problem. “I used to do a lot of work on the plane, but if I’m on a smaller regional jet, you can’t plan on doing any work because you can barely use your arms,” Mr. Reinhardt said. Aisle seats are a must, he said, adding that “if the person next to you is asking for an extender belt, you want to find another seat.” Mr. Reinhardt also says he sits in the front of the plane so he does not have to wait, stooped over in the back, for others to disembark. Storage limitations on smaller aircraft can also contribute to delays. Many airlines have begun charging $15 or more for checking bags, so more passengers are choosing the carry-on option. But regional flights lack adequate room in the cabin for some of those bags, so passengers must sometimes check them as they board and wait for them on the tarmac or in the jetway after the flight has landed. To avoid these delays, Mr. Reinhardt says, he packs light and uses a collapsible garment bag that just fits in the overhead bins on smaller planes. Despite these drawbacks, Mr. Reinhardt says he appreciates the fact that regional aircraft allow him to fly nonstop to hard-to-reach places. But flights of more than two hours test his patience. Indeed, the United Express flight from San Antonio to San Francisco on a regional jet is just under four hours. The US Airways flight from Memphis to Phoenix, operated by Mesa Air, lasts about 3 hours and 27 minutes. Often, the only way to fly on a larger jet on such routes is to connect through another city, making the trip longer, sometimes much longer. In fact, regional aircraft are increasingly flying longer trips. In 2008, they flew 461 miles per flight on average, 23 percent farther than they did in 2003, according to the Regional Airline Association. And those collecting frequent flier points can take advantage of those miles. Through code-sharing agreements, passengers on regional planes accrue mileage just as they do on larger aircraft, although some airlines like American have eliminated the 500-mile minimum award per flight. When booking travel, flights on regional aircraft are easy to spot. Tickets sold online will include the words “operated by” beside flight details. And “if it’s being operated by an airline you’ve never heard of, it’s a pretty good bet it’s a regional carrier,” said Tom Botts, a partner at Hudson Crossing, a travel industry consultant in New York. Sometimes choosing between a major and a regional carrier comes down to where you live. Some fliers, particularly on the East Coast, can choose from several airports. A New Jersey traveler, for instance, could drive to Philadelphia or Newark to catch a flight on a larger jet, if that was a priority. Most people, though, must decide between flying on a larger plane and flying nonstop. Many business travelers say that avoiding a stopover is the way to go. “At the end of the day, if I can fly nonstop from La Guardia” to Jacksonville, Fla., “instead of schlepping through Atlanta, I’ll take that any day,” Mr. Botts said. Still, he said, flying on regional aircraft means that “you do spend a lot of quality time with your arm touching the person next to you.”

Business Travel
Airlines and Airplanes
Budgets and Budgeting
biztravel


Kucinich Sues Over Olive Pit

Abstract: Representative Dennis J. Kucinich , Democrat of Ohio, has sued a Congressional cafeteria for dental damage he says he suffered after biting into an olive pit in a sandwich wrap. The lawsuit, seeking $150,000 in damages from companies involved with the Longworth House Office Building cafeteria, says the wrap, bought in April 2008, “contained dangerous substances, namely an olive pit” that a consumer would not reasonably expect to find in the wrap. It says that Mr. Kucinich suffered “serious and permanent” injuries requiring multiple surgical and dental procedures.

Kucinich Dennis J
Olives
Suits and Litigation


Edwyn Owen, Who Won Gold in 1960, Dies at 71

Abstract: TOPEKA, Kan., Oct. 10 (AP) — Edwyn Owen, who played on the 1960 team that won the first Olympic gold medal in ice hockey for the United States, was found dead Friday in a burning car near a park here. He was 71. Autopsy results released Monday said that Owen, who was known as Bob, died of smoke inhalation, thermal burns and heart disease. Investigators have not determined the cause of the fire but said part of the engine probably made accidental contact with dry grass, leading to flames that spread to the car. Owen played on the team that won the gold in Squaw Valley, Calif. He did not play professional hockey after the Olympics. He supported Topeka’s minor league hockey teams over the years. Owen grew up in St. Louis Park, Minn., and in 1958 graduated from Harvard, where he played hockey. Owen later moved to Kansas to teach business and started a consulting firm before retiring. His survivors include a son, Robert.

Olympic Games
Hockey Ice
Deaths (Obituaries)


Central China Hit by Drought, as Reservoirs Become ‘Dead Water’

Abstract: BEIJING — A severe drought along the Yangtze River region in central China has rendered nearly 1,400 reservoirs in Hubei Province temporarily unusable, devastated farm fields and made drinking water scarce, according to a report on Monday by Xinhua, the state news agency. The drought, which has lasted for five months, has brought water levels in the middle part of the Yangtze to a near-record low. For the second time since the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, began operating, officials have had to make emergency water discharges from it to help ease the drought. As of Sunday, 4 medium-size reservoirs and 1,388 small reservoirs in Hubei had dropped below the allowable discharge levels for irrigation, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the director of the reservoir management office for the Hubei Provincial Water Resources Department. One-fourth of all small reservoirs had what officials called “dead water” remaining, which could be pumped for use only in an emergency. The drought adds to concerns over the effect that a gargantuan water-diversion project will have on the central provinces of China. The project, called the South-North Water Diversion, is supposed to move water from the Yangtze and its tributaries north to Beijing along a canal, and to Tianjin along an eastern route. Both routes are supposed to be fully operational within the next couple of years. Criticism of the project has become widespread, and many people along the Yangtze and in the south say precious water resources should not be sent north, where there has been a chronic water shortage. The water on the middle route is supposed to flow from the Danjiangkou Reservoir in Hubei. The water level at the reservoir was measured at 443 feet on Saturday, about 13 feet below the level at which the water is considered dead, Xinhua reported. Du Yun, a geography scholar at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, said in an earlier interview that the central government had not done enough studies to assess the impact of the diversion project, especially when compared with all the research that was done before the building of the Three Gorges Dam. “For that project, the preliminary discussion and studies phase was decades long,” he said. “There was the participation of institutions and experts from across China. Compared to that, this water diversion project did not do as comprehensive a preliminary study as the Three Gorges project did.” As of Saturday, the drought had left 315,000 people and 97,300 head of livestock in Hubei short of drinking water, and more than two million acres of farmland had been affected, Xinhua reported. In neighboring Henan Province, the drought had affected at least 320,000 people. Officials discharged 400 million cubic meters of water from the Three Gorges Dam from May 7 to May 11, according to Wang Hai, a spokesman for the dam’s construction and operation management bureau, Xinhua reported on Thursday. This discharge is aimed at fighting the current drought and raising levels of the Yangtze to aid shipping. People in the city of Yichang, where the dam stands, have been hit especially hard. They say they have had to buy water rather than relying on water from their land. The water levels in the section of the Yangtze between Yichang and Jiujiang in Jiangxi Province were about 8 to 18 feet lower than average, Xinhua reported, citing a statement by the Hubei provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters.

China
Drought
Agriculture
Three Gorges Dam (China)
Xinhua
Du Yun


Lawsuit Opposing Kansas as Federal Lab Site Is Dismissed

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a Texas consortium protesting the Department of Homeland Security ’s choice of Kansas for a multimillion-dollar biodefense laboratory. The judge decided that the lawsuit was premature and dismissed it without prejudice, opening the way for the Texas Bio- and Agro-Defense Consortium to refile the lawsuit later, which the group said it might do. Details of the judge’s decision were temporarily sealed. Judge Mary Ellen Coster Williams of the United States Court of Federal Claims said in a hearing this month that the lawsuit seemed premature. She said the laboratory might never materialize and noted that a deal had not been struck for Kansas to provide land in Manhattan for the laboratory. The Kansas Board of Regents has agreed to provide the land, but the Homeland Security Department has not signed that agreement. “Instead of saying ‘no,’ the court simply said ‘not yet,’ ” Michael Guiffre, the Texas consortium’s lawyer, said on Friday. “We’ll be right back where we started as soon as D.H.S. figures out what it is doing.” The Texas group had contended that the department ignored the region’s high risk of tornadoes and that the site selection had been tainted by politics. Texas was one of six potential sites for the laboratory. The Kansas site was recommended unanimously by a panel of officials from the Homeland Security and Agriculture Departments and was chosen in a transparent process, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, Amy Kudwa, said. Ms. Kudwa declined comment on the judge’s decision because of the possibility of another lawsuit. The project is intended to replace an aging laboratory at Plum Island, N.Y., where foot-and-mouth disease research has been done since 1955. By law it has been confined to the island to avoid an accidental outbreak that could lead to the slaughter of millions of livestock. Other deadly diseases are also to be researched at the laboratory. The Department of Homeland Security hopes to award a contract estimated to be worth at least $525 million by September and to break ground on the laboratory next summer. Congress may slow that schedule by withholding money or at least requiring the department to study the risk of moving foot-and-mouth research to the heart of the country before it can start bidding a construction contract. In arguing for the dismissal of the Texas suit, a Justice Department lawyer had to persuade the judge that construction of the laboratory at the Kansas site was not yet settled. Jim Dublin, a spokesman for the Texas consortium, said the department “is leading us down the rabbit hole by claiming it does not know how, when and if it will build the bio-agro research facility in Kansas” even though it has said it chose Kansas.

Biological and Chemical Warfare
Laboratories and Scientific Equipment
Homeland Security Department
Security and Warning Systems
Texas
Kansas


After Mass Knife Attack in Japan, Disabled Victims Are Still in the Shadows

Abstract: ZAMA, Japan — A vicious knife attack killed his roommate at a facility for the developmentally disabled in July, but Kazuya Ono does not know that. Mr. Ono, 43, survived slashes to his throat and stomach by the attacker, a former caregiver at the group home, and remains in a hospital nearby. When he is agitated, he scratches himself so vigorously that he leaves marks on his face and arms. He shouts “blood, blood, blood!” at his nurses. He refuses to eat the hospital food, so his parents, Takashi and Chikiko Ono, bring Kazuya’s favorite curry and grapes for lunch. The Onos, who live here in Zama, a suburb of Yokohama, want the world to know more about their cherished son, who is autistic and has the mental capacity of a toddler. He is one of 26 survivors of the knife attacks that left 19 dead in Sagamihara, a mountain town outside Tokyo. The assailant reportedly told the police that he wanted to “eliminate the disabled from the world.” He may have accomplished that in more ways than he intended. The victims of the worst mass killing in Japan since World War II have also been eliminated from the public imagination. People do not even know their names, let alone the details of their lives. The police in Kanagawa Prefecture have declined to release the identities of the victims, citing the families’ desire for privacy, in a decision that is increasingly drawing criticism around Japan. Advocates for disabled people say withholding the names is consistent with a culture that considers them lesser beings. Keeping the victims hidden, even after their deaths, these advocates say, tacitly endorses the views of those — including the assailant — who say disabled people should be kept separate from the rest of society. Image A photograph of Kazuya Ono from a family album. Credit Ko Sasaki for The New York Times Mr. Ono, who wishes the families would insist on releasing the names, put it bluntly: “I want to create a world in which people are not ashamed of their disabled family members.” Osamu Nagase, a visiting professor of disability studies at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, said the public was implicitly approving the attacker’s perception that the victims “didn’t deserve life.” He added: “If we want to pay respect to those 19 victims, they cannot remain nameless. They cannot remain faceless.” Such nondisclosure is unusual. In other rare instances of mass killings in Japan, like the stabbings of five elderly victims on Awaji Island, south of Kobe, last year, or a knifing attack in 2008 that left seven dead in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, the police identified the victims within days. Indeed, across the globe, the naming of victims is seen as a way to honor them and the losses suffered by their families. As details about individual victims are revealed, the public is reminded of the humanity that has been brutally taken away. Yet in the case of the Sagamihara killings, the police said the families themselves had requested anonymity, specifically because the victims were disabled. Some, fearful of the stigma, had not even told relatives, friends or co-workers that their sons or daughters resided at Tsukui Yamayuri-en, the center where the attack took place. In Japan, the decision to withhold the names has been condemned by a number of disability rights groups, as well as many newspapers. “The families’ feelings should be respected,” an editorial in Tokyo Shimbun read, “but we need to know their names and keep the memories of how they lived and lost their lives.” Seiko Noda, a member of the House of Representatives and the mother of a disabled son, told another paper, Mainichi Shimbun, that withholding the names of the victims “denies their entire lives.” The Japanese news media, for its part, has extensively covered Satoshi Uematsu, 26, the attacker. Mr. Uematsu, who resigned from Yamayuri-en in February and spent a few weeks in a psychiatric hospital, went on a rampage in the middle of the night, breaking into the center and methodically going from room to room, slashing the throats of residents as they slept. Image Investigators after the mass killing at Tsukui Yamayuri-en, a residential care center for disabled people in Sagamihara, Japan. Credit Eugene Hoshiko/Associated Press Chillingly, he had sent a letter to a politician five months earlier, urging euthanasia for severely disabled people and outlining his precise plans to kill them “for the sake of Japan.” In a grim irony, Mr. Uematsu is most likely disabled in his own way. According to Japanese news reports, doctors at the psychiatric hospital issued a diagnosis of delusional disorder but then released him after concluding that he was not a threat to others. Advocates for disabled people say Mr. Uematsu’s views represent the extreme end of a continuum of discrimination in which those with disabilities are often spurned by a culture that prizes conformity. “The nail that stands out gets hammered down,” said Michael Gillan Peckitt, a part-time lecturer in philosophy at Osaka University who has cerebral palsy. “If you’re physically disabled or have intellectual disabilities,” he added, “you’re kind of a nuisance that way.” The intellectually disabled, who include those with Down syndrome as well as some forms of autism, are particularly isolated in Japan. Until as recently as 1996, the law allowed the government to involuntarily sterilize those with such disabilities. And today, they are much more likely than those with physical disabilities to live in institutions. According to government data, about one in six people with developmental disabilities lived in an institutional setting in 2011, the last year for which such figures are available. Among those who are physically disabled, the figure was one in 53. “Japan has been heavily criticized in the international community for the segregation of people with disabilities,” said Kanae Doi, Japan director for Human Rights Watch, noting that the country had many large institutions like Yamayuri-en, where close to 150 residents lived full time. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities , ratified by Japan in 2014, emphasizes the importance of integrating disabled people into communities rather than isolating them in institutional settings. Japan offers some services for the physically disabled, including elevators in train stations and chirping sounds at crosswalks and the bottom of stairs for the blind. Those who are physically disabled can also usually speak for themselves. “In the case of the intellectually disabled, more than 90 percent of them cannot talk,” said Toru Yuki, president of the National Intellectual Disabilities Association for Parents and Families, after a visit to Yamayuri-en. “They need someone else, their parents or their caretakers, who they can trust and we should be advocates on their behalf.” Mr. Yuki said he disapproved of the decision to keep the victims’ names from the public. At Yamayuri-en, a makeshift memorial stands outside the entrance. There are no names or photographs, just a table covered in a white sheet where visitors lay flowers and pray for the dead. On a recent afternoon, Risako Fushitani, 32, and her husband, Hideo, 43, came to pay their respects during a vacation from Osaka with their son, Takuro, 9, who is autistic. They placed a bouquet of chrysanthemums and set two cans of mandarin oranges and jellied almond milk on the table. “I would want to disclose my son’s name,” Ms. Fushitani said, her eyes filling with tears as she gazed at Takuro. “But if I think of how my relatives would react, I can kind of understand how the victims’ families are feeling.” Takashi Ono, who is Kazuya’s stepfather, said he also sympathized with the families reluctant to submit to scrutiny by the news media. Still, he said, he worried that they were motivated more by a fear of disgrace than privacy. At the hospital, Mr. and Ms. Ono have placed a stuffed version of Doraemon, a popular cartoon robot cat, on a side table in Kazuya’s room. Sometimes Kazuya takes off the helmet he wears to protect himself from injuries and rests it on the stuffed animal’s head. Sitting on a wine-colored sofa in a tiny living room, Ms. Ono flipped through a photo album, pointing out pictures of Kazuya at the beach, at summer festivals and swimming in a pool. “You have to spend so many years to teach him one thing,” Ms. Ono mused. “But whenever he mastered something, what great joy he gave me.” She recalled taking walks with him and bringing him to the dry cleaner she ran with Mr. Ono. “There is no need to hide him,” she said.

Japan
Murders and Homicides
Intellectual Disabilities
Abuse of the Disabled
Disability
Satoshi Uematsu
Sagamihara
Tsukui Yamayuri-en
Yokohama


A Look at Our Love Affair With Air-Conditioning

Abstract: With summer just about officially over, we can dispassionately explore what the world was like a little more than a century ago, before Willis Carrier installed his “apparatus for treating air” in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn, printing plant. “I live in New York, a city that doesn’t exist without air-conditioning,” Salvatore Basile writes in “Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything” (Fordham University Press). To Americans, New York is a Northern city, but in his breezily anecdotal book, Mr. Basile reminds readers that we practically share a latitude with Madrid, if not the siestas. The heat could be brutal, particularly when 5,000 ceiling fans, while the largest such installation in the world, were all that cooled the city’s subway cars. Air-conditioning was not just about comfort. It triggered a cultural and demographic revolution. It made windowless offices, work and retail spaces and entertainment venues possible (and also permitted the introduction of heat-generating computers). It also diminished street life. And beyond New York, it made living in the Sun Belt bearable, shifting not only jobs and population there, but also political power. The words “Newark” and “renewal” have regularly been paired in headlines in The New York Times. “Throughout the last five decades, business leaders and elected officials have often pronounced an imminent turnaround of Newark, indeed a renaissance,” Robert Curvin writes in “Inside Newark: Decline, Rebellion and the Search for Transformation” (Rutgers University Press). His own take on New Jersey’s largest city is more sobering: “Newark today is old, tired and decrepit, but it is rebuilding.” Mr. Curvin, a former civil rights leader, editorial writer for The Times, dean at the New School and now a visiting scholar at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, weaves revealing and passionate personal observations (he describes himself as “an elder of the Newark story”) with astute political insights to reach a depressing verdict on the past: Too often, the victors in local politics belonged to the spoils. “The opening of the political system was supposed to come with group benefits — or so argued the democratic theorists,” he writes. “But unlike other ethnic groups, political power for blacks and Latinos did not readily translate into group benefits in Newark.” “The leaders of postindustrial Newark made choices, and many, if not most, chose the least common denominator,” Mr. Curvin concludes, “simply trading for a job or position with little or no regard for the social concerns or conditions of the poorer citizens of the city.” One reason was the politics of decline. More fundamental was the vacuum of civic culture, which he addresses with an agenda for change. Ever wonder about the derivation of Dead Horse Bay or the railroad flat? Or what the sommelier does at Del Posto ? In an endearing combination memoir and Baedeker, the illustrator Julia Rothman serves up factoids and ruminations in “Hello NY: An Illustrated Love Letter to the Five Boroughs” (Chronicle Books). “I’ve often been told ‘You’re so New York!’ ” she writes. But what does that mean? “I have lived here all my life and will never leave, so I might never know.”

Books
Robert Curvin
Salvatore Basile
Julia Rothman
Air conditioning
Newark NJ
NYC


As Knicks Slip, Kristaps Porzingis Learns He Must Add Greed to His Game

Abstract: MEMPHIS — Kristaps Porzingis sat at his locker at FedEx Forum on Saturday night with an ice bag strapped to his right shoulder and a towel draped around his neck. His shoulder felt fine, he said, but the team would continue to be cautious. “No pain,” he said. The Knicks were fresh off a narrow loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, and Porzingis had struggled throughout the second half to find space against aggressive defenders. It has become a bit of a theme at the midpoint of his first N.B.A. season. Teams are learning about Porzingis. His minutes are mounting, and his tendencies are becoming familiar to opponents who now have oodles of game film at their disposal. “During the game, I have to figure out a way to still shoot and get the ball,” Porzingis said. “It was tougher because they were paying more attention to me, but I’m going to have to find a way to score in those situations.” Those difficult situations were aggravated by the absence of Carmelo Anthony, who missed his second straight game with a sprained right ankle. When Anthony plays, he operates as a magnet for defenders, drawing their focus away from teammates like Porzingis. Anthony’s importance cannot be overstated. The Knicks have lost all four of the games he has missed this season. Porzingis said he viewed it as another challenge in a season full of them: How can he engineer more offense for the team, especially when Anthony is sidelined with an injury? These games, then, are valuable opportunities for the Knicks to grow and to learn. Consider that the Knicks, in their four games without Anthony, have outscored their opponents by an average of 2.3 points through the first three quarters. But in the fourth quarter and overtime, opponents have outscored the Knicks by an average of 8.8 points. It was more of the same in their 103-95 loss to the Grizzlies, who broke open a tie game by opening the fourth quarter with a 21-6 run. Too many of the Knicks’ possessions consumed the shot clock, pass after pass against pressing defenders leading to forced shots. The Knicks are an unselfish group, but there is a delicate balance between teammates who share and individuals who create. “We couldn’t find a way to break them down together,” Coach Derek Fisher said. “We were playing late in the clock.” For Porzingis, in particular, playing without Anthony is like learning how to ride a bicycle without training wheels. Imagine the possibilities for this team once Porzingis, 20, discovers how to do it on his own, to be more assertive, to adjust to defenders. Everyone around him, including Anthony, will benefit. “I’ve got to learn from Carmelo, the way he does it,” Porzingis said. “He always gets the ball whenever we need him to get the ball. Those are the things I need to do.” The Grizzlies, with their beefy veteran frontcourt, offered another lesson. Porzingis recalled how, not so long ago, he could trail his teammates in transition and spot up at the top of the 3-point arc — one of his favorite shots. Defenders were often slow to close out on him, and for good reason: Who really expects a 7-foot-3 power forward to slow up on a fast break so his teammates can get him the ball for a 24-foot jumper? It was no secret to the Grizzlies — including Zach Randolph, a 6-foot-9, 260-pound bulldozer who made sure that Porzingis became familiar with him over the course of the evening. After scoring 10 points in the first quarter, Porzingis finished with 17. He had one field-goal attempt in the fourth quarter. “Zach Randolph was all over me, not really worrying about anything else,” Porzingis said, adding, “They’re taking stuff away from me, so I’ve got to respond to that.” Before the game, Dave Joerger, the coach of the Grizzlies, said he would give Porzingis “different looks” and mentioned several types of defenders: a player with length, an agile wing, an old-fashioned bruiser. Joerger wanted to confuse Porzingis, make him uncomfortable. The Grizzlies eventually found the winning equation by sticking Randolph on him. If nothing else, Porzingis’s getting the full smorgasbord of defenders will only aid his development, even if he experiences growing pains. Last week, Porzingis shot 5 of 17 from the field in a loss to the Nets . His primary defender was Thaddeus Young, a 6-foot-8 forward who used his strength and quickness to offset Porzingis’s size. “It’s a learning process,” Porzingis said. “I’m not going to come into the league and know how to do that. But as I grow as a player, I think I need to know how to be able to find those positions where I can get the ball and make sure I can attack.” Throughout the season, Porzingis has been unfailingly deferential to Anthony — an approach that Anthony clearly appreciates. Anthony appears to have taken a vested interest in Porzingis, who said he would continue to seek Anthony’s advice. “I’m watching him every day,” Porzingis said.