Managing Estate Sales Becomes Big Business

Abstract: When Gary Berman’s mother died in January, at age 81, leaving behind the two-story house in Forest Hills, Queens, where she had lived for more than 60 years, he and his sister divided the items with sentimental value, then decided they wanted to sell the knickknacks and the big-ticket items, mostly a collection of midcentury modern dining room furniture. A cardiologist by profession, Dr. Berman, 60, knew what he wanted to get rid of, but had no idea of how to find someone to do it. So he did what all of us do these days: He went on Google and searched until he came across a company called Lucky Rabbit Estate Sales, which happened to be based nearby in Fresh Meadows, Queens. “I literally picked the phone up and said, ‘Can you help me?’ ” Dr. Berman said recently. Lucky Rabbit could and did: Within days of the call, Paul J. Dunn, one of the company’s owners, was consulting with Dr. Berman about how to hire a cleanup crew, how to price a matching buffet-table set and how to protect against theft when the estate sale actually took place. “I didn’t have a clue at first that there were so many things involved,” Dr. Berman said. “It was definitely an education, but even more, it was almost like another form of grieving.” Liquidating a relative’s estate is one of the most personal ordeals, yet it is becoming increasingly common, people in the industry say. As the population ages, the estate sale business is booming. In many cases, the parents of baby boomers like Dr. Berman are reaching the ends of their lives just as their children are looking to retire and downsize, and both trends benefit the business. It is impossible to know how many estate liquidation companies operate in the United States or how much their numbers are increasing, because the industry is unregulated and has no central licensing body. But Julie Hall, the president of the American Society of Estate Liquidators, a trade association, said that there could be 14,000 companies nationwide and that the market was expanding. “It’s definitely growing at a rapid rate,” Ms. Hall said. She said she received about six inquiries from potential new start-ups every few days, “and the market is already flooded.” “The competition is fierce, and only the strongest and the best will do exceptionally well,” she said. Though the business has traditionally found clients among the relatives of those who have died, economic problems have also contributed to the recent spike in sales, Ms. Hall said. That is particularly the case with older people, retired or close to it, who want to sell their possessions to simplify their lives and to make ends meet. Image Some of the items that were on sale. Credit Jake Naughton for The New York Times For now, Ms. Hall said, most estate sale companies are mom-and-pop operations that cater to a regional clientele. But in recent years, she added, a handful of successful franchise businesses with wider-than-local ambitions have emerged. One of those is Blue Moon Estate Sales in Fuquay-Varina, N.C., south of Raleigh. After six years in business, the company, run by a married couple, Ken and Debra Blue, now has five franchises in North Carolina and Texas, and its home office. The Blues — he is a former I.T. specialist and she is a nonpracticing doctor — got into estate sales after buying and selling antiques for nearly 30 years, because they saw that economic and demographic trends would make the industry grow. “Years ago, people had lots of kids and not very much in the way of possessions, so it was easy to clear up an estate,” Ms. Blue explained. “Now people have fewer kids and a lot more stuff. And since the kids don’t tend to want that stuff, you have more sales.” Estate sale people like to say that the liquidation business is built upon the four D’s: death, divorce, debt and downsizing. According to AARP, some 8,000 Americans a day will turn 65 for the next two decades or so. Combine that with high divorce rates, the passing of the World War II generation and a mortgage debt-fueled financial crisis that people are still recovering from, and a result is more estate sales. Estate sale companies typically keep 25 to 50 percent of the proceeds from sales, based on the number of items offered. For that, they handle the staging of the event at a client’s house, including online promotion, hiring workers to conduct the sale, setting prices (usually nonnegotiable) and cleaning up before and after. If the lot for sale is especially large or valuable, some companies may recommend an auction, although allowing buyers to bid instead of paying a fixed price can be risky, industry people said. The competition among companies is stiff enough, in fact, that many have started to expand their business models to include ancillary services. Caring Transitions of Greater Southeast Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, for example, offers its clients a full range of options: moving company referrals, resettlement assistance and help with how to downsize. “We take people from the moment that they want to sell, and lead them through packing, space consulting and the clean-out process,” said the company’s co-owner, Paula Houston-Allen. “We want to help them set up easily somewhere else and make sure that their former home is move-in ready.” Ms. Houston-Allen, a former doctoral candidate in sociology, is perhaps more attuned than many to the industry’s demographic future. She said that she got into estate sales two years ago when she and her husband, the other co-owner, began to notice that people in their 50s and 60s, like themselves, were grappling more and more with their parents dying and leaving behind a life’s worth of possessions. Image Paul Dunn, an owner of Lucky Rabbit, in the living room preparing for the sale. Credit Jake Naughton for The New York Times “Our biggest source of referrals is customers like ourselves,” she said. “We saw these transitions happening in our own life, and in the lives of those around us, and we understood that there was a great need.” That need has started to extend beyond selling the items in a cluttered old house. As people increasingly live their lives online, companies like BestBequest.com, a cloud-based safe deposit box, and Afternote.com have sprung up to help them preserve what is being called their “digital legacies” on Facebook, Instagram and other social media networks. Still, it is physical stuff that is causing concern in the industry. According to Ms. Hall, because of population trends, “a tsunami of personal possessions” is likely to crash into the industry in the next 10 years. Even as the number of liquidation companies continues to grow, she said, the market for what they sell is starting to soften. “We’re all losing our moms and dads, and their furnishings are flooding the market,” Ms. Hall added. “At the same time, the boomers are casting off their own stuff, and their own children don’t really want it. Generations X and Y want Ikea and Pottery Barn. They don’t want Grandma’s coffee table or china.” Naturally, there are often disagreements between sellers and sales people over what to charge for certain cherished items, since antique family heirlooms can find little appeal on the open market. “A lot of people are very suspicious about the estate sale business when it comes to price,” Ms. Houston-Allen said. “They’re emotionally attached to the things they’re trying to sell, and they can’t believe that it’s going so cheaply.” What tends to sell best these days, Ms. Hall and others said, are not heavy antiques, but sleeker, simpler furnishings. “There is a massive trend in the buying market toward simplification,” Ms. Hall said. “Armoires, entertainment centers, the giant desks and tables that our grandfathers had — they’re basically obsolete. Why? Because new apartments don’t have space for dining room sets, and the younger generation doesn’t tend to entertain.” Luckily for Dr. Berman, most of his mother’s things were modern pieces in keeping with the current style. And they ended up selling fairly well, partly because Mr. Dunn of Lucky Rabbit managed to attract about 300 people to the sale, including several professional furniture dealers. “Paul said, ‘Don’t come, you’ll only get emotional,’ ” Dr. Berman said. But he went anyway, when the sale was almost over. The financial success of the process did not allay the emotional cost of emptying the house where he had grown up. “When I went in there, it was a little shocking to see the couch, the dining room furniture — everything was gone,” Dr. Berman said. “It was bittersweet, but at least I knew that the belongings had gone on to a new home rather than being on a garbage truck.”

Wills and Estates
Baby Boomers
Old age,elderly,senior citizens
Queens


Wyoming, Long on Pride but Short on People, Hopes to Lure Some Back

Abstract: LARAMIE, Wyo. — Residents of Wyoming often brag about its status as the nation’s least populated state, boasting of its traffic-free highways and starry night sky — and taking pride in the fact that its cattle outnumber people by two to one. Cattle, however, cannot open businesses or build homes, and so this spring, Wyoming embarked on a new quest: getting its young people back. “We’ve got to make sure that we have the workers of tomorrow,” the governor, Matt Mead, said in an interview. The state seeks to fill open jobs in fields including nursing and teaching, he said, and to bring in people who will expand its new sectors, like technology. This effort has taken the form of an Internet-based recruitment program called Wyoming Grown. Young Wyomingites who have left the state sign up on the program’s website , and quickly receive a call from a recruiter who helps link them to work here. A snail mail letter from Mr. Mead follows. “It’s the personal touch that Wyoming can provide,” he said. “I didn’t want to just say, ‘We’re kind of interested in you coming back.’ I wanted to say, ‘I’m the chief executive of the state — I personally want you to come back.’ ” Wyoming has long struggled to keep young people within its borders. It has one of the least diversified economies in the nation, meaning those not interested in energy or agriculture often head elsewhere. Image A cyclist on a pedestrian bridge that passes over the Union Pacific Railroad yard next to downtown Laramie, Wyo., home to the University of Wyoming and a city that many call Laradise. Credit Michael Ciaglo for The New York Times A postschooling trip down Interstate 25, to the bright city lights of Denver or Fort Collins, Colo., is practically a state tradition. But as baby boomers age and retire, this exodus is of increasing concern to officials, who worry that Wyoming will not be able to care for its older residents or fill their jobs. The state has about 600,000 residents — Manhattan, by comparison, has 1.6 million — and recently had its slowest population growth rate since 2001, adding just 930 people in 2014. The state is dotted by shrinking agricultural communities where the median age is well above 40. Wyoming Grown is run by the state’s Department of Workforce Services and is modeled on similar programs in South Dakota and Idaho. The program welcomes non-Wyomingites, but targets those who grew up here, people who will not go running after their first winter of brutal wind and subzero temperatures. The program’s website tugs at the heartstrings of those who have left. “You know the Wyoming spirit,” reads the front page, “low-drama, tenacious and independent.” But it also works to present a modern face. “We have yoga, microbreweries, triathlons and live jam sessions,” it reads. “Were you thinking Wyoming is all ATVs, fly fishing and rodeo? Well, they’ve gotten even better. But so have the lattes.” Jordell Brady , 32, of Green River, Wyo., called the program “genius.” Ms. Brady moved to Westminster, Colo., a suburb of Denver, in 2008, seeking excitement. But the area — with its soaring rents and traffic-clogged streets — soon began to grate on her. “You can’t go to a lake without a million people there,” she said. “Life is easier in Wyoming. It’s slower. It’s a place where you actually appreciate the sunsets.” She heard about the program from her mother and enrolled in May, on the day after it started. She continues at her job as an analyst at a supply company in Denver, while a recruiter works to help her find a job back home. Wenlin Liu , a state economist, said that Wyoming’s dependence on coal and oil money had long made it vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles. He applauded the state’s effort to diversify its economy, but cautioned that the recruitment program would have a limited effect. Image Harrison Welshimer, 27, is among those spurred to return by the program. Credit Michael Ciaglo for The New York Times “We have this chicken-and-egg problem,” he said, explaining that Wyoming struggles to lure new industries because it does not have qualified employees to fill their ranks, but has trouble recruiting qualified workers because it does not have companies that interest them. “We’re trying to attract these people back,” he said of Wyoming Grown, “but we may not have enough opportunities for them.” Dakota Roots, which helped inspire the Wyoming program, is credited with motivating about 4,000 people to relocate to South Dakota since 2006. The number does not include spouses or children who may have accompanied those people. One hundred and five people enrolled in Wyoming Grown from May to early July, and seven have found jobs with the help of its recruiters. Harrison Welshimer, 27, is among those spurred to return by the program. A classical saxophonist and a native Wyomingite, he left his home state in 2011, seeking a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, and tossed his outdoor gear into a trash bin. Eventually, he settled in Denver. But he felt stifled by city life. In June, he moved back to Laramie, a university city that many call Laradise, a place where bankers make house calls and residents occasionally hitch their horses outside downtown bars. Mr. Welshimer has a paid internship and plans to open a Wyoming-based business that will bring singer-songwriters to Laramie, with the hopes of turning it into a music hub teeming with hip, up-and-coming independent artists. He also bought new outdoor gear, which he recently used to wrestle steers at a local festival. “This is a very risky thing for me — to come back,” he said. “But that’s where the love of the state comes in: I don’t care. I’ll figure it out.”


Mets Are Close to Signing a Japanese Relief Pitcher

Abstract: The Mets are close to signing the Japanese pitcher Ryota Igarashi to a two-year deal, according to a person who was briefed on the situation but not authorized to discuss the matter. It was not a high-profile outfielder or starting pitcher, but the Mets also needed to improve their bullpen. The Mets had no comment on the negotiations, but Arn Tellem, Igarashi’s agent, confirmed that talks were at an advanced stage. “We are in serious discussions with the Mets,” he said in an e-mail message. “I have no further comment.” Igarashi, a hard-throwing 30-year-old right-handed reliever, pitched for the Yakult Swallows in the Japanese Central League since 1999 and was heavily scouted this year by many major league teams, including the Mets, the Yankees, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and Arizona. Most of those scouts projected him as an effective late-inning reliever. Last year, he was 3-2 with a 3.19 earned run average and had 44 strikeouts in 53 2/3 innings. Other than 2004, when he had 37 saves and a 2.66 E.R.A., he has not been the Swallows’ closer, but has excelled in the setup role. The Swallows were so reluctant to lose him that at times last season when scouts were in attendance, the team did not use him in obvious setup situations that would have showcased his talents. With the Mets, Igarashi will have the chance to become Francisco Rodriguez’s setup man. The Mets lost J. J. Putz and Billy Wagner from last season’s crew of late-inning relievers.


Who Won the Republican Debate? Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Impress Critics

Abstract: The sixth Republican presidential debate was notable for sharp exchanges between Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a heated argument about immigration and taxes between Mr. Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, and sustained fire from everyone in the field directed at Hillary Clinton. Commentators from across the web were impressed with Mr. Cruz’s quick wits, and they said that Mr. Trump seemed to regain his footing after being rattled when the Texas senator brought Mr. Trump’s Scottish mother into an argument over his eligibility to be president. For the rest of the candidates, the challenge was breaking through on a loud and crowded stage. “I think Ted Cruz won, thanks to how strong he was especially at the beginning, taking on Trump over the citizenship nonsense. Good close, too.” “Trump was Trump and that means he had a good night. I give him a 60 percent shot of being the G.O.P. nominee.” — Ari Fleischer , former White House press secretary “Top three all helped themselves: Trump, Cruz, Rubio. Mixed bag for the others.” “Cruz dominated the start. Trump won some key exchanges & had a very good closing. Rubio consistently very strong at this.” — Guy Benson , political editor of Town Hall “It’s official, the bromance between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz is over. That’s my take.” — Donna Brazile , Democratic political strategist and commentator “I think the winner of this night was Ted Cruz. He is becoming more and more plausible as a potential nominee.” — Rich Lowry , editor of National Review “Winners tonight: Donald Trump and Marco Rubio but Ted Cruz and Chris Christie with enough to smile about. Jeb Bush hangs on.” — Hugh Hewitt , conservative radio host “My debate report card grades: Trump: A-, Cruz: B+, Christie: B, Rubio: B, Bush: B-, Kasich: B-, Carson: C.” — Mark Halperin , managing editor of Bloomberg Politics “Jeb, Christie, and Kasich needed home-run performances. At most, doubles. Carson had no reason being there.” — Rick Wilson , Republican political consultant “John Kasich honed his delivery in the G.O.P. debate Thursday night, giving clear, plain-spoken explanations of his economic priorities. In fact, his strongest moment was an interruption — a weakness for Kasich in previous debates. But he didn’t find himself among the debate’s top moments.” — Chrissie Thompson , The Cincinnati Enquirer “Trump was the strongest, both in absolute terms and relative to what he needed to do given his current standing in the polls. After a somewhat slow start, he was a dominant force throughout the debate. It’s been a subtle process but he’s no longer that freak show who is bizarrely running up the poll numbers. He’s the front-runner.” — Josh Marshall , founder of the liberal website Talking Points Memo “Watching Ben Carson closing remarks” was like “being served a bowl of oatmeal with no sugar, no milk, no fruit and it’s not even hot.” — Montel Williams , commentator and talk show host “Jeb looks, sounds desperate.” “Trump great. NYT always wrong.” — Michele Bachmann , former congresswoman from Minnesota

2016 Presidential Election
Political Debates
South Carolina
Republicans


Eagles to Use Backups as McNabb Gets Night Off

Abstract: With Donovan McNabb ready for the regular season, the Philadelphia Eagles will play their backup quarterbacks tonight against the Jets . A. J. Feeley will be Philadelphia’s starter in the team’s preseason finale at Lincoln Financial Field, while the second-round draft pick Kevin Kolb will also play. McNabb, who has completed 11 of 20 preseason passes, will not play, preserving his health for Philadelphia’s regular-season opener at Green Bay on Sept. 9. The Eagles raised some eyebrows at the draft when they selected Kolb with their first pick, No. 36 over all. But McNabb will turn 31 in November, and serious injuries have cut short his last two seasons. The Eagles felt it was time to groom a young quarterback, and Kolb has performed well during the preseason, completing 48 of 73 passes for 397 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions, with a quarterback rating of 84.1. Pleased with Kolb’s preseason work, Coach Andy Reid wants to use the Jets game to take a closer look at Feeley. “A. J. will start the game, for however long,” Reid said Tuesday during a news conference, then added that the playing time would “give him a chance to work with the starters.” The attention-getting news of Philadelphia’s preseason came last week, when the team cut the veteran middle linebacker Jeremiah Trotter. The Eagles will open the season with three new starters at linebacker — Omar Gaither in the middle, Chris Gocong on the strong side and Takeo Spikes on the weak side. Gocong and Gaither may play limited minutes against the Jets, but many starters will not play for the Eagles (1-2). Is the Eagles’ new-look defense ready for the season? The veteran safety Brian Dawkins did not sound worried, though he admitted that Trotter was a team leader. “Omar is not Trott, let’s get that straight,” Dawkins said last week. “Omar is going to bring what he brings to the table. He’s a smart guy, very vocal, he can move. He can get to some passes. That’s what he’s going to bring to us. He’s not going to have to do too much. We have too much talent around him. All he has to do is play his position.” REID’S SON FACES CHARGES A son of Eagles Coach Andy Reid, Britt Reid, was charged yesterday with driving under the influence and drug violations while awaiting sentencing for a separate road-rage incident earlier this year. (AP) RUCKER APPEALS SUSPENSION Bengals defensive end Frostee Rucker is appealing a one-game suspension for violating the N.F.L.’s personal conduct policy, the result of settling a domestic violence case in April. His case resulted from an incident in 2005, when he was a student at Southern California. He was accused of getting into a fight with his girlfriend at a party in Los Angeles. (AP) DOGS CHEW ON VICK The woman who paid $7,400 on eBay for 22 Michael Vick trading cards, chewed up and slobbered on by two Missouri dogs, acknowledges she had not heard of Vick before he was indicted on dogfighting charges. The woman, Laura Norton-Dye, 40, of Cape Girardeau, Mo., who outbid 30 others, has requested the money be donated to the Humane Society of Southeast Missouri and to Safe Harbor, a local animal sanctuary. (AP) AROUND THE LEAGUE Punter Scott Player, 37, the Arizona Cardinals’ longest-tenured veteran in seasons and in games played, was released. He appeared in 140 games in nine seasons. ... The Bengals signed Aaron Elling as insurance in case Shayne Graham’s bruised hip keeps him out of action. (AP)

Philadelphia Eagles
New York Jets
Feeley A.J.
McNabb Donovan
National Football League
Football
Athletics and Sports


Umpiring Reversal Plays Role in Mets’ Loss

Abstract: At 6 feet 7 inches, Mike Pelfrey cuts an imposing figure on the mound, and his performances this season have similarly commanded respect. But he started Monday’s game with added motivation to pitch well. After struggling in his previous start and being bypassed for his first All-Star Game appearance, Pelfrey was unable to recover Monday night in the Mets’ 8-6 loss to the Cincinnati Reds , largely because of a controversial call that led to his unraveling. In the top of the fifth inning, with the bases loaded and no outs, the umpires called a conference and ruled that Pelfrey had hit Scott Rolen on the arm with a pitch to force in the run that gave Cincinnati a 2-1 lead. It was hard to tell on replay whether Rolen was hit, but the second-base umpire, Dan Iassogna, said he had the best view to make the call. The umpires’ ruling precipitated a wild protest by the Mets , an ejection for Manager Jerry Manuel and three straight run-scoring hits off Pelfrey that sent him to the showers after a six-run inning. The crowd of 36,764 at Citi Field showered the umpires with boos. “We got together and all talked about what we saw, and as a crew we felt it hit Rolen and wasn’t a swing,” said Dale Scott, the crew chief and third-base umpire. “The easy call would be to keep it the same. We’re not looking to make the easy call; we’re looking to get it right.” Manuel said the umpires became caught up in the moment. “What I saw was a reaction to the batter,” he said. “Not what you saw, but what you were reacting to. I thought that was wrong.” Before the game, the Mets added two relievers to help their overtaxed bullpen, providing some length in extended relief situations — exactly what was needed on Monday. The Mets recalled the left-hander Raul Valdes from Class AAA Buffalo and opted to skip Hisanori Takahashi in his next start to use him in relief beginning Wednesday. They called on Valdes with two outs in the fifth, after Pelfrey had allowed seven runs, nine hits and four walks. Valdes retired the only batter he faced. “That’s always been something frustrating,” Manuel said of the missing bridge between the Mets’ starters and closer Francisco Rodriguez, adding, “You would like to at this point in the year have that sorted out.” On the disputed play, the umpires initially ruled that catcher Rod Barajas had caught Rolen’s foul tip for the third strike, but Rolen and Cincinnati Manager Dusty Baker protested and the call was overturned. Livid about the decision, Barajas had to be restrained by his teammates, and Manuel was ejected after gesturing wildly. “He might have a good acting career when he’s done playing,” Pelfrey said of Rolen’s reaction. “That’s terrible.” After the play, Pelfrey retired two batters but then succumbed to a slew of hits that blew the game open. Drew Stubbs hit a two-run single, Corky Miller hit a two-run double and pitcher Travis Wood tripled in a run. “It kind of snowballed on me,” Pelfrey said. “I kind of let my emotions get the best of me.” The Mets responded with a five-run rally in the bottom of the inning. Angel Pagan hit a leadoff home run, Barajas had an R.B.I. single and Alex Cora smashed a two-run double, but the Mets could not keep it up. “That’s a big hill to climb,” David Wright said. “You get down that big that early, that’s a tough one.” Last Wednesday, Pelfrey allowed 12 hits in four and two-thirds innings against the Florida Marlins. It was not the Pelfrey who the Mets knew. “He kind of righted the ship for us when we were going through a struggle and needed a big start,” Manuel said of Pelfrey’s season. “He gave us that big boost. As far as the pitching staff, he’s been the guy that’s been the most stable over time.” And there was a little something extra at stake. Pelfrey found out Sunday that he was left out of the All-Star Game, although he seemingly had the credentials — a 10-2 record and a 2.93 earned run average. Now he is 10-3 with a 3.39 E.R.A. Pelfrey has prided himself on his unwavering demeanor on the mound, but that did not show on Monday. He had his chance to make a statement against the Reds ’ hot-hitting lineup, but after a questionable call turned the night, he was left frustrated. “What are you going to do?” Pelfrey said. INSIDE PITCH Jose Reyes, who has a strained right oblique muscle, could return to the Mets’ lineup Tuesday and would probably bat right-handed. ... Carlos Beltran, who is recovering from off-season knee surgery, is likely to join the Mets after the All-Star break when they face the San Francisco Giants. He went 2 for 4 and played nine innings in center field Monday for Class A St. Lucie.


In Mexico, 3 Relatives of Slain Activist Are Killed

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — When Josefina Reyes Salazar was murdered in the border state of Chihuahua last year, not long after she accused the military of playing a role in the killing of her son, protests brought attention to the family’s plight. But its torment did not end there. On Friday, the police in Chihuahua found the bodies of Ms. Reyes Salazar’s brother, sister and a sister-in-law along a road near Ciudad Juárez, the country’s most violent city. They had been abducted by armed men on Feb. 7 outside a gas station near Ciudad Juárez, which sits along the border with Texas. A month earlier a house belonging to Ms. Reyes Salazar’s mother had been set ablaze, and last summer, a brother of Ms. Reyes Salazar was killed. In all, six members of the family have been killed, one of the more glaring examples of the threat that human rights activists like Ms. Reyes Salazar face in Mexico . In December, in a case that shocked a country long inured to sensational murders, another grieving mother, Marisela Escobedo, was shot to death in front of Chihuahua’s capitol as she demanded justice for the killing of her daughter. Other activists have been killed or received death threats in the past few years as Mexico has waged a battle against organized crime. Reyes Salazar family members lashed out at the state and federal governments on Friday; Ms. Reyes Salazar’s two sisters promised to keep protesting with a hunger strike . State officials had said the family members might have had links to organized crime, but a spokesman for the family said that assertion was an attempt to sully the family’s name. No arrests have been made in any of the killings. Two weeks ago, Amnesty International warned that the family had received threats and urged state and federal officials to protect it, but it was unclear if any such aid was offered or rejected. The family is “clearly being targeted in the most brutal way,” said Susan Lee, the Americas director for Amnesty International . “The Mexican authorities’ top priority must be to ensure the safety of other relatives.”

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Murder Charge After Driver Kills a Muslim Teenager

Abstract: KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Muslim teenager was run down by a sport utility vehicle and killed on Thursday, and the driver has been charged with first-degree murder in what the police are investigating as a possible hate crime. The victim, Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein, 15, was killed outside a Somali community center here. According to a probable-cause statement, the suspect, Ahmed H. Aden, 34, of Kansas City, struck the teenager as he got into a car. A witness reported seeing the boy “fly through the air” before the S.U.V. ran over him. His legs were nearly severed, and he died in a hospital of his wounds. Prosecutors were requesting a $250,000 bond. No lawyer was listed for Mr. Aden in online court records. In the weeks before the crash, worshipers at the center said, they saw a black S.U.V. painted with threatening messages at the community center and cruising around a nearby shopping area. One of the messages was “Islam is worse than Ebola,” said Mohamed Ahmed, 13. Image Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein Credit Department of Motor Vehicles “I would have thought the police would have taken care of it, but they didn’t,” he said. Mohamed Farah, 50, a friend of the boy’s family, said he had called the police more than once in October about a suspicious man who had been coming around the center. “I feel like I lost a part of my body,” he said. Court documents say Mr. Aden crashed the S.U.V. and got out of the vehicle with a knife. Occupants of the car that the boy had been getting into told police officers that they had followed Mr. Aden, and they pointed him out. One witness said the suspect had swung what appeared to be a baseball bat at people, and another witness reported that Mr. Aden had pulled out a handgun and said, “Stay there,” as he tried to get away. Mr. Aden initially told the authorities that he had lost control of his vehicle. He later said he had struck the teenager because he looked like a man who had threatened him several days earlier, the probable-cause statement said. Federal agents were assisting in the investigation and “have opened this matter as a federal civil rights investigation as a potential hate crimes violation,” according to an F.B.I. spokeswoman, Bridget Patton. Ms. Patton said she could not release any information on why the case might be considered a hate crime. Bakar Abdalla, 31, said the boy’s father was a teacher at the community center. Khadra Dirir, the victim’s aunt, said he had regularly studied the Quran and had delivered a group prayer the night he died. “If you asked him a verse, he could tell the chapter,” she said.

Islam
Hate crime
Murders and Homicides
Kansas City MO


Ballparks Come, Ballparks Go, the Memories Are Forever

Abstract: My father played hooky to attend the first game in Yankee Stadium. I always think of him when I see pictures of the raw new ballpark in the Bronx. The first time he took me to the Stadium was in 1947 to see a dying man in a camel hair coat, rasping on the loudspeaker, which made me a Babe Ruth fan for life. Ever since, the Stadium has seemed funereal to me. But then again, we were Brooklyn fans. Somehow or other, my other enduring memory is an empty Yankee Stadium on the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral in 1968, not a soul in the house. My friend Jim Bouton felt the need to throw that day, so he pitched off the mound, and I squatted where Berra and Dickey had squatted, using a mitt borrowed from Coach Jim Hegan’s locker. (Hegan used a falsie to protect his hand, but I told Bouton I didn’t need the extra armor.) We dressed in the main clubhouse and used the players’ sauna. The Stadium was stone silent. After decades of working at the Stadium, the original or the instantly antiquated rebuilt version, I try to see the awe through other people’s eyes — Tony Gwynn taking videos before the 1998 Series, rookies’ eyes widening, fans on a pilgrimage. I think of it as a hard place, with Steinbrenner meanness squashing the humanity in guards, ushers, executives. But I remember “Good friends we had/good friends we lost/Along the way,” as Bob Marley put it — Steve Hamilton, Bill Robinson, Bob Fishel, Michael Burke, some of the finest people I’ve ever known. I think about Mantle’s shot off Barney Schultz in the 1964 Series. And Bob Sheppard’s dignity. In the last generation, an old Brooklyn fan could feel immense respect for Joe Torre’s team. Shea Stadium rose on the ashes of Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds, and the smoldering ashes of the Corona Dumps, memorialized in “The Great Gatsby.” The Mets arrived in my home borough in 1964, paint still drying, workers tightening bolts, usherettes dressed like stewardesses, Casey clowning it up. It was a dump built on a dump. I’ve spent months of my life in the doddering press elevator. I’ve seen fans clawing at the sod in 1969, paint peeling off the seats in the late ’70s, and Mookie Wilson’s bizarre at-bat in 1986 that made me hastily junk a column on the Red Sox finally exorcising the ghosts. Because it was home, I took my kids to games, talked baseball with the great mixture of fans when the airplanes and obnoxious sound system allowed us. I’ve seen sushi come to Shea. Seen the landmark Serval Zipper sign disappear out behind center field. Seen Omar Minaya from the neighborhood come back to run the club. Now both teams are putting up new ballparks, with fewer seats and higher prices. Our tax money is paying for infrastructure for stadiums where fewer of us can afford to go. I don’t claim to get it.

New York Yankees
Stadiums and Arenas
Baseball


From a Small Stream, a Gusher of Movie Facts

Abstract: BRISTOL, England THE closest that Col Needham gets to corporate life is the Dilbert calendar in his neat office — a converted bedroom in a quaint house in the ancient village of Stoke Gifford, a suburb of Bristol, the harbor city that is 90 minutes west of London by train. As the founder and managing director of the Internet Movie Database, Mr. Needham might just be the archetype of the telecommuting Web-head. The site he founded and runs, www.imdb.com , ranks as the 10th-most-popular entertainment spot online, according to ComScore Media Metrix. It had 18.6 million unique visitors in April, a 67 percent surge from a year earlier. In Stoke Gifford, Mr. Needham works solo — without even an assistant — but is in constant contact by instant message with other employees scattered across the globe and at the Seattle headquarters of Amazon.com, which acquired the business eight years ago. "Everybody assumes that we have a massive office complex on Wilshire Boulevard," Mr. Needham said with a grin. "I always say, 'We're headquartered on the Internet.' " Mr. Needham, a boyish, closely-shorn 39-year-old walked to the kitchen, put on the kettle and made tea. Part of what makes him a curiosity — beyond his enviable work setup — is that Internet Movie Database, or Imdb for short, has become a classic example of a hobby that turns out to be a powerful media asset. For years, it has quietly gone about its business almost entirely separately from its parent, and only subtly does it encourage users to go to the Amazon site to buy videos. "We didn't sit down and think, 'What's the best way to make money on the Internet?' " Mr. Needham said. "This is very much a labor of love. When we started the company, there was no commercial use of the Internet." Even so, Imdb's convergence moment may soon be at hand, say studio executives who have worked with Amazon on developing a download service that could let people burn DVD's on their desktops. Though Amazon and Mr. Needham decline to talk about plans, Imdb could play a more prominent role in the retailer's media strategy. Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers are all involved in the project, executives close to the project have said. Several weeks ago, one media executive who had been briefed on Amazon's strategy but did not want to be identified because it was still being formulated, pointed out one aspect of Imdb's popularity: if you use search engines to look for the title of virtually any past movie or television show, or the names of celebrities from those realms, Imdb often comes up as the first result. In the retail business, that is the equivalent of excellent shelf frontage, or, in television, of having a single-digit channel number rather than being relegated to Channel 284 on the cable lineup. There are glimpses of a grander media plan beyond Imdb. For instance, Amazon has quietly built up its own www.a9.com search engine, which places more emphasis on displaying results in multiple media formats than bigger rivals like Google and Yahoo. But even if Amazon's foray into downloading fizzles, Imdb holds its own. Its climb also provides some interesting lessons for burgeoning digital media barons. Internet Movie Database began in 1990 as a bulletin board database of movie credits. It was started by Mr. Needham and some film-buff friends. At the time, Mr. Needham was working as an engineer in Bristol at Hewlett-Packard (or, as he says in his native Manchester lilt, "Hewlett Pa-Cod") and had only a rudimentary strategy for financing the site. By 1998, the database had established itself as a favorite on the early Internet, and Mr. Needham was amused to receive a number of buyout approaches. One was an invitation to a London hotel in January to meet with Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Mr. Bezos told Mr. Needham that he thought the movie database could help Amazon sell VHS cassettes and DVD's — Mr. Needham points out that it was in that order in those days — but also recognized that the site would need to be run separately to maintain its personality. Amazon, of course, could handle the technological end and pour resources into upgrades. Today, Imdb makes money a variety of ways: from advertising, selling publicity photos, licensing its content, selling movie tickets through partners and offering a premium Imdb Pro service (started in 2002). For $99 a year, Imdb Pro subscribers get granular access to all kinds of industry data, like movie budgets and details about films in production. By chronicling everyone who ever worked on a film, the service has become a de facto directory of most everyone from key grips to producers, actors and directors. Its most clever feature is probably the Starmeter and Movimeter ratings, which gauge the popularity of people and films, based on search topics. To no one's surprise, Audrey Tautou was No. 1 last week on the Starmeter, up from No. 215 early last year, when she joined the cast of "The Da Vinci Code." Like the social networking sites that are now so popular in media, Imdb has found that much of its success is built on the participation of site visitors. Last year, Mr. Needham said, its users submitted information to the database 16 million times, adding minutiae like what commercials Hollywood actors have performed in abroad, or what video games they have done voice-overs for. When its users are not adding information, they are perusing — or debating and challenging — material related to the 787,000 film, television and video game titles detailed on the site. One can learn, for example, that while Jennifer Grey played Jeanie in the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986), Jennifer Aniston played Jeanie in the TV series "Ferris Bueller" (1990). Those submissions are then monitored — vetted is too strong a word — by a team of editors who take their entertainment geekdom seriously. Any factual mistakes they may not find on their own are usually brought to their attention by users, who also make frequent accusations that some Hollywood wannabes who submit their biographies to the site are padding their résumés. In Mr. Needham's office, the only visible connection to Amazon is a separate laptop that has a secure feed to the company's internal server in Seattle. On the wall is a gift from Mr. Bezos: a framed original poster of "Vertigo," Mr. Needham's favorite film. While Mr. Needham is thrilled to talk about the business, he is reticent about giving too many details. He does say that the company is profitable, that there are more than 50 employees and that they are in the United States, Britain, Switzerland and Germany. At Imdb, he says repeatedly that "the customer is the celebrity," and that the company is not. AS for his own fortunes, a clue is found in the original announcement of Imdb's acquisition in April 1998. It said Imdb and two separate European businesses were bought mostly for Amazon shares then worth close to $55 million. Though it is impossible to know how the shares were divided among the three companies, the shares would be worth roughly $213 million now. For his part, Mr. Needham dresses like a regular guy, and he drives a Toyota to take me to the train station. But it does turn out that the house in Stoke Gifford is actually just his former home; it now serves only as offices for him and his wife, although it retains all the furnishings, including his daughters' bunk beds. The Needhams live in what he calls their "dream house" about 15 minutes away. It is there that Mr. Needham keeps his prized possession: an ever-growing collection of 7,500 films, mostly DVD's. Asked whether someday it would all be digital, with his collection floating on a hard drive, Mr. Needham thought not: "I like to kick the tires of things I own."

Amazon.com Incorporated
Computers and the Internet
Motion Pictures


Napoleon Chagnon’s War Stories, in the Amazon and at Home

Abstract: What were our early ancestors really like as they accomplished the transition from hunter-gathering bands to more complex settled societies? The anthropologist Napoleon A. Chagnon may have come closest to the answer in his 35-year study of a remarkable population, the Yanomamö of Venezuela and Brazil. His new book, “Noble Savages,” has three themes. First, it is a beautifully written adventure story of how Dr. Chagnon learned to survive in an entirely alien culture and environment, among villages locked in perpetual warfare and jaguars that would stalk his tracks through the jungle. Second, it describes the author’s gradual piecing together of how Yanomamö society actually works, a matter of great relevance to recent human evolution. Third, it recounts his travails at the hands of the American Anthropological Association . Most tribes studied by anthropologists have lost much of their culture and structure under Western influences. In the 1960s, when Dr. Chagnon first visited them, the Yanomamö were probably as close as could be to people living in a state of nature. Their warfare had not been suppressed by colonial powers. They had been isolated for so long, even from other tribes in the Amazon, that their language bears little or no relationship to any other. Consisting of some 25,000 people, living in 250 villages, the Yanomamö cultivated plantains, hunted wild animals and raided one another incessantly. Trained as an engineer before taking up anthropology, Dr. Chagnon was interested in the mechanics of how the Yanomamö worked. He perceived that kinship was the glue that held societies together, so he started to construct an elaborate genealogy of the Yanomamö (often spelled Yanomani.) The genealogy took many years, in part because of the Yanomamö taboo on mentioning the names of the dead. When completed, it held the key to unlocking many important features of Yanomamö society. One of Dr. Chagnon’s discoveries was that warriors who had killed a man in battle sired three times more children than men who had not killed. His report, published in Science in 1988 , set off a storm among anthropologists who believed that peace, not war, was the natural state of human existence. Dr. Chagnon’s descriptions of Yanomamö warfare had been bad enough; now he seemed to be saying that aggression was rewarded and could be inherited. A repeated theme in his book is the clash between his empirical findings and the ideology of his fellow anthropologists. The general bias in anthropological theory draws heavily from Marxism, Dr. Chagnon writes. His colleagues insisted that the Yanomamö were fighting over material possessions, whereas Dr. Chagnon believed the fights were about something much more basic — access to nubile young women. In his view, evolution and sociobiology, not Marxist theory, held the best promise of understanding human societies. In this light, he writes, it made perfect sense that the struggle among the Yanomamö, and probably among all human societies at such a stage in their history, was for reproductive advantage. Men form coalitions to gain access to women. Because some men will be able to have many wives, others must share a wife or go without, creating a great scarcity of women. This is why Yanomamö villages constantly raid one another. The raiding over women creates a more complex problem, that of maintaining the social cohesion required to support warfare. A major cause of a village’s splitting up is fights over women. But a smaller village is less able to defend itself against larger neighbors. The most efficient strategy to keep a village both large and cohesive through kinship bonds is for two male lineage groups to exchange cousins in marriage. Dr. Chagnon found that this is indeed the general system practiced by the Yanomamö. After overtaxing one of his informants, the shaman Dedeheiwä, about the reason for a succession of village fissions into smaller hostile groups, Dr. Chagnon found himself rebuked with the outburst, “Don’t ask such stupid questions! Women! Women! Women! Women! Women!” During his years of working among the Yanomamö, Dr. Chagnon fell into cross purposes with the Salesians, the Catholic missionary group that was the major Western influence in the Yanomamö region. Instead of traveling by canoe and foot to the remote Yanomamö villages, the Salesians preferred to induce the Yanomami to settle near their mission sites, even though it exposed them to Western diseases to which they had little or no immunity, Dr. Chagnon writes. He also objected to the Salesians’ offering the Yanomamö guns, which tribe members used to kill one another as well as for hunting. The Salesians and Dr. Chagnon’s academic enemies saw the chance to join forces against him when the writer Patrick Tierney published a book, “ Darkness in El Dorado ” (2000), accusing Dr. Chagnon and the well-known medical geneticist James V. Neel of having deliberately caused a measles epidemic among the Yanomamö in 1968. On the basis of these accusations, two of Dr. Chagnon’s academic critics denounced him to the American Anthropological Association, comparing him with the Nazi physician Josef Mengele. The association appointed a committee that, though it cleared Dr. Chagnon of the measles charge, was nevertheless hostile, accusing him of going against the Yanomamös’ interests. In 2005, the association’s members voted by a 2-to-1 margin to rescind acceptance of the committee’s report. But the damage was done. Dr. Chagnon’s opponents in Brazil were able to block further research trips. His final years of research on the Yanomamö were disrupted. Dr. Chagnon’s legacy, on the other hand, is that he was able to gain a deep insight into the last remaining tribe living in a state of nature. “Noble Savages” is a remarkable testament to an engineer’s 35-year effort to unravel the complex working of an untouched human society.

Books
Women and Girls
Anthropology
Napoleon A Chagnon


Tyson Posts a Loss, but Surpasses Forecasts

Abstract: Tyson Foods posted a small loss for the quarter on Monday, but the results were better than expected, partly because of higher pork prices. Tyson, the largest American producer of beef, pork and chicken, said its chicken and beef units posted operating losses for the fiscal second quarter on higher feed costs and charges related in part to plant closings. The company did not provide an earnings outlook for the rest of the year, saying that volatility in the feed grain markets was expected to continue. But it said its beef unit should do better in the current quarter and pork should do well, though not as well as in the second quarter. Pork profits nearly doubled, helped by lower average hog prices and strong exports. For the second quarter, which ended March 29, the company, based in Springdale, Ark., reported a loss of $5 million, or 2 cents a share, in contrast to a year-earlier profit of $68 million, or 19 cents. The results included $47 million in charges, which translated to 8 cents a share. Excluding those charges, earnings would have been 6 cents a share. Analysts on average had expected a profit of a penny a share. Revenue was $6.61 billion, up from $6.50 billion a year earlier. Demand for chicken remains strong, and Tyson said it would not reduce production. The beef unit had an $11 million loss on an operating basis, compared with a $24 million profit a year earlier. That loss included $17 million in charges for changes at a Kansas beef plant and $8 million for packaging equipment.

Tyson Foods Incorporated
Meat
Pork
Chicken
Company Reports


Going to California Gives Kenseth a Boost

Abstract: Matt Kenseth is not the most demonstrative person, but his eyes light up when he starts talking about California Speedway, and for good reason. The two-mile oval in Fontana, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, has been really good to Kenseth. He has won the last two February Nascar Nextel Cup events at the track and has led 8 of the 11 Cup races he has run there and has four top-fives and seven top-10s. Kenseth also won the Busch race last spring, making it a weekend sweep for Ford at a time when Chevrolets were dominating at most tracks. So far this season, the February event is Kenseth’s only Cup victory. That makes the generally laid-back Kenseth upbeat heading into the Sharp Aquos 500 today. “I’m looking forward to going back to California,” he said, before qualifying 36th for the race. “We’ve usually been pretty strong on that type of track, and we’ve had some success there before, so coming off of a disappointing weekend at Bristol, it’s definitely good to be going to a track you feel you can run well at.” Kenseth crashed at Bristol on Aug. 25, finishing 39th. But just by starting the race, Kenseth, the 2003 Cup champion, clinched his fourth straight berth in the championship chase. A year ago, he had to make a late-season charge to qualify for the 10-race Chase for the Nextel Cup. This year, he has been much more consistent with eight top-fives and 15 top-10s in 24 starts, putting him fourth in the season standings. But Kenseth is looking for more, especially another victory or two with two events left before the start of the Chase. This year, each victory is worth a 10-point bonus for seeding purposes at the start of the postseason. “We’re locked into the Chase now, and that feels good and all, but we’ve got to start running better and build some momentum,” Kenseth said. “Of course, last year, we had all the momentum in the world heading into the Chase and couldn’t get it done once in the Chase, so momentum isn’t everything. “But we still want to score some good finishes in these next two races and get our cars running the best we can for those final 10 races.” Kurt Busch will start from the pole today, followed by Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne and Ryan Newman. FEELING GOOD Jimmie Johnson, the reigning Cup champion, spent part of last week in his hometown, El Cajon, Calif., near San Diego, holding the Jimmie Johnson Foundation’s first charity auction and golf tournament and visiting his old high school. Now he is eager to get back to work and try to defend his title. Johnson is sixth in the points and can wrap up a spot in the Chase simply by starting the next two races. And, with four victories (40 bonus points), Johnson is assured of being at or near the top of the standings when the Chase begins. “The new format this year definitely is a little more forgiving for me the way I’m positioned right now,” he said. “But, looking at the Chase, I think that our team is more confident in what we’ve been able to accomplish and the fact that we’ve won a championship.” Johnson added: “We’re just more relaxed, more confident and more secure with where we’re at and really looking forward to the Chase. Last year at this point, we had that tension inside of us where we were excited to get the Chase going, but had been close and hadn’t won a championship. To have the championship behind us and know that we can do it, know that we have the skills and the team and all that good stuff, I’m really excited for it, excited in a way that I haven’t been before going into a championship battle.” HELPING OUT Michael Waltrip and his new three-car Cup team have struggled. So he us looking for help just about anywhere he can find it, including from his brother, the three-time Cup champion Darrell Waltrip. Darrell Waltrip, who is working as a television analyst for Fox, retired from the Cup series after the 2000 season, although he has since run a Busch Series race and eight truck events. But Michael has put his brother into his Toyota racecars this year at a few tests to get the benefit of his experience. “He gives great feedback, and I like to think I am keeping him young,” Michael said of 60-year-old Darrell. “I love the fact that putting him in a racecar keeps him young, fresh, and even helps him up there in the TV booth. “We tested at Winchester for Bristol, and before I even took the checkered flag in qualifying, I had a message waiting for me on my cellphone from Darrell. He was pretty impressed with our lap and was pretty proud that he helped contribute in some way that led to our result. I’m just glad that Darrell can be a part of this.”

Kenseth Matt
National Assn of Stock Car Auto Racing


Nigerian Villages and Churches Are Struck in Deadly Attacks

Abstract: JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) — Explosions in Nigeria’s central region killed 32 people on Friday, and six people died in attacks on two churches in the northeast of the country, officials said Saturday. On Friday night, a series of bombs were detonated during Christmas Eve celebrations in villages near the central city of Jos, killing at least 32 people, the state police commissioner said; more than 50 were wounded in the attacks. Nigeria’s army chief, Azubuike Ihejirika, described “a series of bomb blasts” that he said did not seem related to the religious clashes that flare up sporadically between the country’s Muslim and Christian populations, roughly equal in size. “That is terrorism,” Mr. Ihejirika said. “It’s a very unfortunate incident.” At the start of the year, hundreds of people died in religious and ethnic clashes in Nigeria’s central region, where the mostly Muslim north meets the predominantly Christian south. The attacks come at a difficult time for President Goodluck Jonathan, who is running a controversial campaign ahead of his governing party’s primaries on Jan. 13. The internal rules for his bloc, the People’s Democratic Party, dictate that the party leadership rotate between northern and southern factions every two terms. Mr. Jonathan is a southerner who inherited office when President Umaru Yar’Adua , a northerner, died during his first term this year, and some northern factions in the governing party are opposed to his candidacy. Mr. Jonathan faces a challenge from former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for the party’s nomination to run for president, and some fear any unrest in Nigeria will be exploited by rivals during campaigning. In the attacks on two churches, which appeared to be religiously motivated, at least six people were killed in the northeastern city of Maiduguri. Attackers threw gasoline bombs late Friday at a church in the city, killing five people, including a Baptist pastor. A security guard at a nearby church died in a similar assault.

Bombs and Explosives
Deaths (Fatalities)
Churches (Buildings)
Jonathan Goodluck
Yar'Adua Umaru
Jos (Nigeria)


Johnson & Johnson Told to Pay $3.35 Million in Vaginal Mesh Case

Abstract: ATLANTIC CITY (Reuters) — A jury said on Monday that Johnson & Johnson should pay a South Dakota woman $3.35 million for failing to warn her doctor adequately of the potential dangers of a vaginal mesh implant made by the company’s Ethicon subsidiary, and for misrepresenting the product in brochures. It was the first verdict among some 1,800 vaginal mesh cases pending in New Jersey against Ethicon and Johnson & Johnson, and it could affect thousands of lawsuits against other manufacturers of similar products. The lawsuit, in state Superior Court in Atlantic City, was brought by Linda Gross, 47, of Watertown, S.D., in November 2008. It asserted that the Gynecare Prolift vaginal mesh was not safe and that J.& J. and Ethicon were liable, among other things, for “their defective design, manufacture, warnings and instructions.” The Ethicon product, before being taken off the American market last year, was used to treat pelvic organ collapse, a condition for which the plaintiff, a nurse, was treated in November 2008. That condition occurs when tissue that holds the pelvic organs in place is weak or stretched and bulges into the vagina. Ms. Gross filed her lawsuit after having an operation in 2006 to install a Gynecare Prolift for pelvic prolapse. Her suit said the operation led to a variety of problems, including mesh erosion, scar tissue, inflammation and “neurologic compromise.” The suit said she had to seek medical treatment and had 18 operations to repair the damage caused by the mesh. Ben Anderson, a member of the trial team for the plaintiff, called the jury verdict “a strong statement to Johnson & Johnson and Ethicon that they cannot put profits before women’s safety.” The verdict, by a panel of six women and three men, followed a six-week trial before Judge Carol Higbee. After the verdict was delivered, the judge ruled that she would allow arguments on punitive damages, beginning on Tuesday. Sheri Woodruff, a spokeswoman for Ethicon, said, “While we are always concerned when a patient experiences medical conditions like those suffered by the plaintiff, all surgeries for pelvic organ prolapse present risks of complications.”

Lawsuit
Johnson & Johnson
Medical device
Decisions and Verdicts


Restrictions Reduce Horseshoe Crab Fishing

Abstract: WESTHAMPTON DUNES CONSERVATION and commerce recently collided on a moonlit beach off Dune Road here when scientists counting horseshoe crabs mating in the sandy shallows bumped into a fisherman rapidly throwing the same crabs into his boat. Terse greetings were exchanged as opposing forces in a growing dispute headed in the directions they came from. Horseshoe crab fishermen are seething this spring after the state cut their daily catch quota to 200 crabs from 500, the first such cut in several years. Meanwhile, the scientists recommending those restrictions are pondering new measures as they try to manage the crabs more effectively. Horseshoe crabs look like well-armored hubcaps with knitting needles for tails. They are scary looking but harmless, inedible yet prized bait for two equally unusual but edible marine creatures: snails and eels. Past reductions on horseshoe crab harvests in Maryland and Delaware and a harvest ban in New Jersey sparked a gold rush in New York’s less restricted waters last year. As prices jumped from 25 cents a crab to more than $1, the 2007 harvest in New York nearly doubled its 150,000-crab annual quota, prompting the clampdown on the daily catch this year. “Horseshoe crabs do play an important role here commercially,” said Matthew Sclafani, a Cornell University Cooperative Extension researcher, who was leading the team of scientists that night on the shoreline. “Horseshoe crabs are also a very important species for shorebirds and fish that eat the crab’s eggs. We’re trying to find a balance between the two.” Fishermen say that balance is leaning too far in favor of the birds and fish. Past harvest restrictions throughout the Northeast were prompted in large part over concern for red knots, small shorebirds that glean horseshoe crab eggs, mostly from Delaware Bay beaches, to help fuel a 9,300-mile migration from South America to their Arctic Circle nesting grounds. As Delaware Bay horseshoe crabs’ numbers have dropped in recent years, so has the population of red knots, prompting an outcry from environmental groups and causing some of the state restrictions. These days shorebirds face numerous environmental challenges, said Peter Wenczel, a Southold bayman who is a member of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s horseshoe crab advisory board. One study found red knots died in South America from eating mussels tainted from red tide algae toxins, he said. “It’s no doubt the world population of wading birds is down, but it’s not just because of horseshoe crab eggs,” he said. Fishermen harvesting bait for exotic seafood may not marshal public sentiment quite like protectors of shorebirds and prehistoric-looking crabs. But baymen are also becoming endangered, said Edward J. Warner Jr., a Southampton Town trustee and a seventh-generation bayman who fishes for horseshoe crabs and conch in Shinnecock Bay. New York State issued 360 crab harvest permits in 2007. “These days all the fisheries have quotas on them; I just want to keep the local fishermen going,” he said. “Last year you could get $500 in crabs, so it was economically viable to pick them up. They should just let the fishermen catch the crabs and then, when they reach the annual limit, shut the fishery down.” But that practice led to the near 90 percent overharvest last year, said Kim McKown, a crustaceans expert with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Horseshoe crab research here lags far behind other states, she said, and until New York scientists know more about the health of New York populations they will be cautious. Along with the current quota reductions, the state has been closing known horseshoe crab nesting beaches to fishing, and it is now developing research in the South Shore bays between the Shinnecock and Moriches Inlets. “If there are areas of significant horseshoe crab and shore bird interactions,” Ms. McKown said, “then these are areas where it would be important to restrict the crab harvest in the future.”


Raise for California Coach

Abstract: California agreed to a two-year contract extension with Coach Sonny Dykes that will increase his pay immediately and keep him locked up through the 2019 season. Dykes had two years remaining on his original five-year deal. Dykes, who led the Golden Bears (7-5) to their first bowl game since 2011, will get a raise from approximately $2 million a year to $2.825 million per year for the next four seasons.

College football
Coaches
University of California


Saving Face in China

Abstract: This is an excerpt from a series of iPhone applications created by the International Herald Tribune to explain the culture and etiquette of major business centers. When it comes to doing business in China, “respect for people’s feelings is paramount — this sensitivity that needs to be taken in respect to people’s ‘face,’ ” Tom Doctoroff of J. Walter Thompson advertising said. “Face — a cliché, but it’s so true — is the currency of advancement,” he said. “It’s like a social bank account. You spend it and you save it and you invest. And when you take away somebody’s face you take away someone’s fundamental sense of security.” “You make someone lose face if you make them feel that they’ve given a wrong or silly answer” in a meeting, Mr. Doctoroff said. “You need to take whatever people are saying, whether it’s a creative idea or a strategy idea, and you need to find that kernel of wisdom in there. Usually there is something that is relevant. And they need to build on that. “If you end up with a Charlie Brown situation, with the entire class ha-ha-ing, that’s a disaster, and people will loathe you for it.” Christine Lu, chief executive of Affinity China, a luxury venture group, said, “If you understand that dealing with people in China is all about face — giving face, getting face, saving face and not letting that person lose face — then you’re all covered.” And when it comes to Westerners, there is a historic aspect to the Chinese concern about face, said Saul Gitlin of Kang & Lee Advertising. “Because of China’s history of exploitation by foreign countries who colonized China or raided China for business purposes, particularly in the business sphere, Chinese do not want to be seen culturally as having been ‘had’ by Western businesspeople,” he said. “That may sound fairly intuitive, but it is related to the very recent 200-year history in China, up through the middle part of last century, when Western businesspeople clearly had the upper hand commercially and politically in China,” he explained. Today, there is a fierce concern that China must “never go back to that inferior position during that dynastic and imperial period, when China was exploited by imperialist Western powers.” So “it’s very important for Western businesspeople to show respect.” Gender “The well-known Mao statement that ‘women hold up half the sky’ really is quoted in China,” said Laurie Underwood of China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. “It is a fact that the Communist system created an equal playing field for men and women, much more so than elsewhere in Asia and even more equal than in the United States.” Working mothers are the norm in China, she said. “In fact, there is huge pressure on mothers to go back to work in order to help the extended family. It is expected that the grandparents will care for the child. And because each couple generally has only one child, this also allows working moms to focus more on work.” As a result, “there is no stigma attached to working for a female boss and women are very much respected in business,” Ms. Underwood said. “The difference between foreigner and Chinese is much more important in Chinese business culture than the difference between men and women.” In Hong Kong and Shanghai, many businesses are Chinese branches of large multinational companies, so their view of women in the workplace already is different from the norm. “For a multinational, even if it’s infused with the local culture, it’s an international company, and that’s often now reflected in the management style,” said Ms. Lu of Affinity China. “Chances are your boss, whether he’s a foreigner or a returnee, somebody who’s lived and worked abroad or studied abroad — he’s internationalized in the way he thinks. So then it’s more of a level playing field.” Throughout China, a woman’s position within her company is respected, said Cynthia Lett, the founder and chief executive of The Lett Group, a company that specializes in business-etiquette training. “If you present a woman as vice president of sales for your company and she goes over for an initial meeting with a delegation, she will be accepted for who she is and what position she holds. If she’s the president of the company, all the better,” Ms. Lett said. “Position is much more important than gender.” Being an Asian-American woman working in China, Ms. Lu said, “can work for you or against you, depending on the type of personality you run across.” “On the one hand, I have a face that is ethnically Chinese, so there’s automatically a comfort level,” she said. “And I did grow up in a very Chinese household, so I do have an understanding of Chinese culture.” But “it can work against you sometimes in a different situation, where you’re never fully Chinese,” she adds. “You grew up in the U.S. You lived and worked in China for just a number of years, but your mentality and thought process and your entire foundation is really American. And that does come out too, sometimes, in business. But it’s really hard to determine if it’s a culture thing or a gender thing.”

Business Travel
Customs Etiquette and Manners
China
Shanghai (China)
Hong Kong


Derby Victory Is Nice, but at WinStar Farm, Business Is Business

Abstract: They love their horses at WinStar Farm. The owners, Bill Casner and Kenny Troutt, have played at every level of horse racing. The farm’s top management, Doug Cauthen and Elliott Walden, grew up in the horse business. When Super Saver galloped home first in the Kentucky Derby on May 1, WinStar had reached horse racing’s mountaintop. Now it hopes to sell the colt that took it there. No offense to Super Saver, the likely favorite in the 135th running of the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. It is what WinStar does: it is a horse-trader. “Everybody is going to be sold, it is just a matter of when,” said Cauthen, WinStar’s president. “We sell in every market and we buy in every market. We try to find value. We don’t have an unlimited budget, and our goal is to be profitable.” The farm has sold horses it has bred at yearlings sales — WinStar fetched $3.1 million at Keeneland in 2002 from Ireland-based Coolmore Stud for the eventual European champion One Cool Cat. WinStar has sold interests in horses en route to the Triple Crown trail — in 2008, it sold 50 percent of Court Vision to International Equine Acquisitions Holdings for several million dollars. The farm has sold horses as stallion prospects, too, even though WinStar stands seven studs of its own and considers them the core of its business. In 2007, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum’s Darley America reportedly offered more than $30 million to stand the 2007 Haskell Invitational champion Any Given Saturday. He was sold in a heartbeat. “We’ve sold six Grade 1 winners because you can’t keep them all because costs are high and we need to generate cash,” Cauthen said. When Casner and Troutt purchased what was then Prestonwood Farm in Versailles, Ky., 10 years ago, they not only wanted to win the Derby and every other big race but also wanted to build a commercial breeding and racing operation that would rival Coolmore and Darley. Casner and Troutt met 37 years ago at the old Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack in Omaha, where Casner was a trainer and Troutt owned some claiming horses. They struck up a friendship, which led to a series of business endeavors, not all of them successful, until they landed in the long-distance telephone business just as it was becoming deregulated. Building Excel Communications into a multibillion-dollar company took their attention away from the horse business but eventually paid huge dividends. They went public in 1996, merged into Bell Canada and became wealthy. Still, Casner and Troutt did not have what appears to be the bottomless pockets that Sheik Mohammed and Coolmore often dig into. “We were heavily involved in horses in our youth,” said Casner, who grew up in El Paso and as a teenager began galloping horses at Sunland Park in New Mexico. “We learned how not to do this business, and that was at the low end of the game. We also knew that horses are volatile and fragile commodities, and losing money is no fun. So we needed to be profitable to survive. We are not a folly; this is not a plaything.” The bluegrass of Central Kentucky is littered with the burnt cash and trampled dreams of wealthy people from other industries who thought they were smarter than everyone else. Most horsemen thought Casner and Troutt would join the many others. Instead, the pair hired the best and the brightest for every facet of their business. Cauthen, for example, whose brother Steve swept the Triple Crown in 1978 aboard Affirmed, is a lawyer by trade who has worked for Hall of Fame trainers, sales companies and breeding farms. “They put a terrific team together from top to bottom,” said Dan Rosenberg, the former president of Three Chimneys Farm and now an industry consultant. “They made a commitment to expend resources, and they did not stop and go, stop and go, and change courses like others have done. You also need some luck in the breeding and racing business, and they have had some luck.” Casner’s and Troutt’s first stroke of good fortune came with the purchase of Prestonwood — a smallish stallion named Distorted Humor whose runners had yet to hit the racetrack. When they did, in 2002, they were fast and won enough to make Distorted Humor the leading freshman sire. In 2003, after one of his sons bred by WinStar — Funny Cide — captured the Derby and the Preakness, Distorted Humor became not only a popular stallion but also an expensive one. He once stood for $300,000 a mating, a number that was cut to $100,000 recently but remains near the top of the market. Distorted Humor’s offspring have won 86 stakes races and more than $66 million. The woeful horse economy, however, has led to slashed prices in all areas of the industry. Luck intervened again in 2006 when Cauthen and his team decided to pay $160,000 at the Keeneland November mixed sale auction for a mare named Super Charger, a daughter of A.P. Indy in foal to Maria’s Mon. That foal was Super Saver. “We’re always looking for new blood,” Cauthen said. “We don’t want our herd to get stagnant.” Now Super Saver is conservatively worth $12 million to $15 million — he not only has a Derby victory but also regal bloodlines. Those numbers will rise substantially if he wins the Preakness and could reach $40 million if he sweeps the Triple Crown. So is there a spot on WinStar’s stallion roster waiting for him? “We’d love and hope that he would come home,” Cauthen said. “But we’re going to have to take seriously any and all offers that we can’t refuse. That’s how you make a profit in this business.”


Democrat Questions Cheney's Role in Leak

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney would need to resign if he had ordered a leak that resulted in the public exposure of an undercover C.I.A. officer. Mr. Dean cited news reports last week that I. Lewis Libby Jr., Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, had testified to a grand jury that his "superiors," whom he did not name, had told him to leak classified information to reporters to justify the Iraq war. But Mr. Libby's testimony, according to the document that was the basis of the news reports, did not say anyone had told him to disclose the name of Valerie Wilson, the undercover operative, as Mr. Dean appeared to suggest. The testimony dealt with a different but related disclosure of classified information from a report about Iraq's nuclear capability. In an interview on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," Mr. Dean appeared to expand on the news reports about Mr. Libby's testimony, saying grand jury testimony showed that "it turns out that the vice president of the United States may have been responsible for those leaks" about Ms. Wilson's role with the Central Intelligence Agency for political reasons. Any confusion on Mr. Dean's part about last week's disclosure underlines both the deep complexity of the investigation into who leaked Ms. Wilson's identity to the press and its potential for enormous political opportunities and pitfalls. There are two reasons the confusion is likely to continue as a criminal case against Mr. Libby proceeds. The first is that Mr. Libby is not charged with improperly disclosing Ms. Wilson's identity in the summer of 2003; rather, he is charged with lying to investigators about how he learned of her position at the C.I.A. and her role in the agency assigning her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, to go to Africa to determine if Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear materials. Mr. Wilson accused the administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities, and days later, his wife's cover was blown in a column by Robert D. Novak in July 2003. Mr. Wilson has asserted that his wife's identity was exposed in retaliation for his public criticism. The second troublesome dimension is that the issue deals with the unacknowledged but frequent practice of government officials selectively leaking classified information to journalists. Although such leaks are forbidden by law, there is widespread recognition that it is done. The document that was disclosed last Thursday, a prosecutor's letter to Mr. Libby's lawyers, shows that Mr. Libby told the grand jury he was engaging in just such a practice. The document said he told the grand jury that his superiors had authorized him to share with reporters information from a National Intelligence Estimate in June and July 2003. The intelligence estimate, a classified report about Iraq's nuclear capability, was used to rebut growing public concern about the rationale for invading Iraq. The letter from the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was disclosed in a filing by Mr. Libby's lawyers. Mr. Fitzgerald said in the letter that he was going to use the testimony to show that Mr. Libby was directly engaged in the Bush administration effort to discredit its critics by conferring with reporters. The letter said that Mr. Libby testified that he spoke with reporters about the "N.I.E.," as the intelligence estimate is called. "We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the N.I.E. to the press by his superiors," Mr. Fitzgerald wrote. He also wrote that Mr. Libby discussed the contents of the classified report in a July 8 meeting -- 10 days before much of it was declassified -- with Judith Miller, then a reporter at The New York Times. Ms. Miller, who spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify in the leak case, has told the grand jury that Mr. Libby told her about Ms. Wilson at the same meeting. The disclosure of portions of the intelligence estimate before it was declassified -- even if it did not deal with Ms. Wilson -- produced other criticism. Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, described more precisely than did Mr. Dean the nature of last week's news reports in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." "I think it's inappropriate. I think it's wrong," Mr. Reed said. He added that the disclosure of the intelligence report should be part of Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation.

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
WILSON VALERIE
DEAN HOWARD
CHENEY DICK


Vote at Atomic Agency Officially Ends Inquiry Into Iran’s Nuclear Past

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The nations controlling the world’s nuclear inspection agency voted on Tuesday to close its decade-long investigation into the work it suspected Iran of conducting to design a nuclear weapon, and instead to move ahead with fulfilling the deal signed in July to limit Iran’s production of atomic material for at least 15 years. The unanimous vote by the International Atomic Energy Agency ’s board of governors ends the agency’s long-running, and largely unsuccessful, effort to get Iran to fully answer a series of questions about suspected activities. “This closes the board’s consideration of this item,” said the resolution, which was drafted by the United States and its five partners in the negotiations with Iran — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. In a report issued nearly two weeks ago, the agency concluded that until 2003 Iran had conducted what Yukiya Amano, the agency’s director general, called on Tuesday “a coordinated effort” on “a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” Iran continued with some activities through 2009, Mr. Amano said, but after that there have been “no credible indications” of continued weapons development. Iranian officials immediately hailed the vote and said it would allow implementation of the July accord, including the release, perhaps as early as January, of about $100 billion in frozen funds and an end to oil and financial sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy. “The fabricated issue of the so-called military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program is now history,” Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and its chief negotiator on the nuclear deal, said on Tuesday, according to the Tasnim News Agency, a semiofficial government news outlet in Tehran. The report left almost no one satisfied. Senate Republicans who voted against the nuclear accord — and all of them did — along with some Democrats who voted for it said the Obama administration had erred when it decided to close the books on the past in the interest of focusing the atomic agency on inspections that will ensure the new agreement is fully carried out. The Obama administration has been relatively quiet about the resolution, but officials have said in background conversations that Secretary of State John Kerry did not want to give hard-liners in Iran an excuse to walk away from the nuclear deal. Mr. Kerry said in a statement that the resolution allows the atomic energy agency “to turn its focus now to the full implementation and verification” of the new deal, “which prohibits the resumption of such nuclear weapons -related activities and provides comprehensive tools for deterring and detecting any renewed nuclear weapons work.” He argued that the resolution would “in no way preclude the I.A.E.A. from investigation if there is a reason to believe Iran is pursuing any covert nuclear activities in the future, as it had in the past.” Behind the scenes, there was significant debate inside the administration over whether to try to force Iran to conduct a serious excavation of its past. Some officials feared that if Iran was given a pass, it would send a signal to other nations — including North Korea — that their obligations to respond to international investigators could be negotiated away in a political deal. President Obama eventually concluded that the larger goal of halting Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon for the next decade-and-a-half was more valuable than setting a precedent about the integrity of inspections. Outside experts were also largely unsatisfied. David Albright, the nuclear expert who founded the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington research group, concluded in a report last week that “Iran did not provide the I.A.E.A. with anywhere near a full declaration about its past nuclear weapons-related activities, and it did not provide the kind of transparency and cooperation required for the I.A.E.A. to conclude its investigation.” Michael Singh, a critic of the nuclear deal who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush and is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued that allowing Iran to leave doubts about the history of its nuclear effort was a fundamental mistake. “By protecting its nuclear secrets, accepting only temporary constraints” on its production of nuclear material and “advancing its missile program, Iran is keeping its nuclear options open for the future,” Mr. Singh said in an op-ed article Monday in The Wall Street Journal, written with Simond de Galbert, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The decision not to pursue more details on Iran’s alleged bomb-design work came as another United Nations group reported that Iran’s launching of a ballistic missile in October was a clear violation of United Nations sanctions. Iran apparently conducted a similar test in November, though the United States has declined to discuss its evidence in detail, perhaps to protect the sources of its intelligence. The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, has accused Iran of violating the weapons and travel bans “with impunity” and has said the United States would press the Security Council to take action. The report by a group of experts who monitor violations of the United Nations sanctions was vague about the nature of some of the violations. The Spanish ambassador, Román Oyarzun Marchesi, who is chairman of the Iran sanctions committee, told the Council on Tuesday afternoon that in addition to the missile launch, there was an attempt by Iran to procure bars of plutonium this year. But the report was inconclusive, he said, on the question of whether the attempt was a “willful violation.” The council took no action on Tuesday. But Ms. Power’s comments seemed to suggest that the Obama administration’s strategy was to focus on current and future violations. Some members of Congress say that effort was not public enough. Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who voted for the Iran agreement, told the Senate that the atomic agency’s report this month “details just how determined Iran has been to develop a nuclear weapons capability.” “I fear the Iranians are taking action after action in this area and others to demonstrate that they are willing to flout international rules, regulations and restrictions,” said Mr. Coons, who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “In the absence of our decisive action, these misdeeds by the Iranians will simply continue and escalate.”

Iran
Nuclear weapon
International Atomic Energy Agency
Arms control
US


Richard J. Schwartz, Who Expanded Jonathan Logan’s Dress Empire, Dies at 77

Abstract: Richard J. Schwartz, who at 25 took over the dressmaker Jonathan Logan from his father and built it into an even more successful enterprise, died on Monday in Upper Nyack, N.Y. He was 77. His wife, Sheila Schwartz, said the cause was complications of pancreatic cancer. He had homes in Upper Nyack, in Rockland County, and in Nassau, the Bahamas. In later years Mr. Schwartz turned to philanthropy and the arts, serving as chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts for almost a decade. Mr. Schwartz joined Jonathan Logan, which was owned by his father, David, shortly after graduating from college in 1960 — the same year the company became the first devoted exclusively to the dress business to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. He became the company’s president in 1964, and later its chief executive, and built it into an even larger women’s clothing concern over the next 20 years or so, selling moderately priced dresses and handbags at department and specialty stores under labels like Etienne Aigner and Modern Juniors. Jonathan Logan, based in Manhattan, was best known for selling juniors’ dresses, marketed to young women. It also employed the designer Liz Claiborne for more than a decade before she created her own brand. “Every issue of Seventeen magazine, you’d open the cover, and there would be a Jonathan Logan dress,” Ms. Schwartz said in an interview. “All over America, young women were wearing them.” Richard Jay Schwartz was born in Manhattan on Dec. 29, 1938. His mother, the former Irene Krugman, was a homemaker. He received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, where he studied government. Mr. Schwartz’s father, who had grown up among Jewish and Italian immigrants in Harlem, entered the apparel manufacturing business in the early 1920s after leaving school to help support his family. By the time Richard Schwartz became president of Jonathan Logan after three decades of his father’s leadership, the company was reporting more than $100 million in sales a year. By the early 1980s, that figure had grown to more than $400 million. Ms. Schwartz said her husband had been part of a generation of businessmen whose success with their public companies gave more respectability to the garment industry. “They used to call it the rag trade,” she said. The industry drew unwanted attention, however, during a period of corporate raiding on Wall Street in the 1980s. In 1984, a company called United Merchants and Manufacturers Inc. seized control of Jonathan Logan after a monthslong fight, buying it for about $168 million. By then, the company was moving away from juniors’ dresses and toward women’s sportswear and the mass merchandise market. Mr. Schwartz resigned in 1985. His father died later that year. In addition to his wife, Mr. Schwartz is survived by a son, John Stephen; a daughter, Jenny Schwartz Stone; a sister, Lois Zenkel; and two grandchildren. Mr. Schwartz went on to have a second career as a private investor and philanthropist. He cultivated a passion for American art, particularly from the early 20th century. He was a longtime member of the New York State Council on the Arts, a government agency that distributes grants to arts organizations, and was its chairman from 1999 through 2007. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he was part of an advisory committee charged with dispensing grants to arts groups as part of a revival of Lower Manhattan . He was also a trustee of Lincoln Center and Cornell University and served on the boards of many cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo.

Obituary
Fashion
Richard J Schwartz
New York State Council on the Arts


2 Americans Among 23 New Cardinals

Abstract: ROME, Oct. 17 — Pope Benedict XVI named 23 new cardinals on Wednesday, 18 of them under 80 years of age, which qualifies them to take part in an election for a new pope. Of those 18, 10 are from Europe and 2 are from the United States. Daniel N. DiNardo, the 58-year-old archbishop of Galveston-Houston, was the more surprising of the American selections. He previously worked at the Vatican ’s Congregation for Bishops and was named archbishop last year. He is the first cardinal to be named in Texas. There had been speculation that the pope might elevate a bishop in the American Southwest to acknowledge the growing importance of Hispanics, who now make up about one-third of American Catholics. Benedict passed over the archbishops of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore — important archdioceses previously led by cardinals. The other American, Archbishop John Patrick Foley, is a former journalist. He had been considered a longtime candidate and was active in the communications department under Pope John Paul II. Archbishop Foley, 72, was also recently named grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, a lay religious community created to protect the rights of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land. The 23 are to be installed on Nov. 24 at a ceremony known as the consistory, the second such ceremony held under Pope Benedict. The first was in March 2006 when he installed 15 cardinals. Ten of the younger new “cardinal electors” are from Europe — four from Italy, two from Spain and one each from Poland, Germany, France and Ireland. Others were appointed from Senegal, India, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Kenya. Benedict named five prelates over the age of 80. Included in that list is the Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad, Emmanuel III Delly. He has been outspoken about the need to protect minority Christians from persecution and violence in Iraq, and his appointment highlights the pope’s focus on this problem. Two of the 18 younger prelates are Msgr. Paul Joseph Cordes, a German who leads the Vatican’s charitable works as president of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum,” and Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, an Italian who is the former Vatican foreign minister and the current governor of Vatican City. Two close aides to John Paul were also chosen: Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko of Poland, who is president of the Pontifical Council for Laity and was present at John Paul’s bedside at his death in 2005, and Archbishop Leonardo Sandri of Argentina, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Eastern Churches. He delivered speeches on behalf of John Paul in the waning days of his pontificate. Most cardinals, but not all, lead dioceses; are the pope’s closest aides; and elect new popes.

Rome (Italy)
Benedict XVI
Cardinals (Roman Catholic Prelates)
Roman Catholic Church
Appointments and Executive Changes


Alex Gordon, Leader of Royals’ Title Run, Signs 4-Year Deal

Abstract: When the Mets and the Kansas City Royals meet on opening night in a rematch of the 2015 World Series, many of the faces across the field from the Mets will look familiar, and the group will include Alex Gordon, the face of the franchise. On Wednesday, Gordon unexpectedly re-signed with the team for four years and $68 million, with a $23 million mutual option for a fifth year or a $4 million buyout. Gordon now has much in common with George Brett, the high Royals draft pick who won a World Series title and played his entire career in Kansas City. Gordon may not match the individual success of Brett, a Hall of Famer, but Gordon is considered the best of the current Royals. In his nine-year career, Gordon has made three All-Star teams, won four Gold Gloves and been lauded for his leadership. When the Royals lost Game 7 of the 2014 World Series, the game ended with Gordon, the tying run, stranded at third base. In that off-season, fans asked Gordon if he would have been safe had the third-base coach waved him home as Gregor Blanco, playing for the San Francisco Giants, made an error in the outfield. Gordon, who is known for his professionalism, always seemed to take the question in stride. “Last postseason happened so quick; it felt like it was a blur,” Gordon said at media day for the 2015 World Series. “I really didn’t get to enjoy it as much as I thought I could. This year has really gone a lot slower. I’ve actually gotten to enjoy it a lot more.” Then, in the first tense moment of the 2015 World Series, in the ninth inning of Game 1, Gordon smacked a game-tying solo home run off the Mets’ closer, Jeurys Familia, setting up the Royals’ 5-4 victory in the 14th. The Mets never seemed to recover emotionally.

Baseball
Alex Gordon
Free agent
Kansas City Royals