A Plan in Branford to Save More of Its Town Green

Abstract: Branford YOU’D need a 19th-century map to locate the town green in many Connecticut communities, as they’ve been smeared with asphalt or lost in a thicket of high-rises. In other places, like Guilford, or Essex, you can make a wrong turn off the main thoroughfare, see the expanse of lawn and the old buildings, and feel like you’ve found the town’s commercial and communal soul. Town greens, first cleared by settlers to graze cattle, drill militia and bury the dead, were later groomed into leafy meeting grounds after the Civil War. They now endure not so much as a matter of luck as stubbornness, as successions of town leaders in many communities have decided the open space is better used for more roads or parking spaces or commercial development. Now comes Anthony DaRos, known as Unk, Branford’s first selectman, who wants to make his town’s green more welcoming to people, and less welcoming to cars, by replacing big chunks of asphalt with grass. But some voters, at least, are suggesting that any change is too much. Branford’s town green is split by roads and occupied by three churches, one ancient assembly house and the Town Hall. The central gathering area along Main Street — what most people would think of as the green — is a meadow roughly the size of a football field, and pinched on one side by roads and driveways approaching the First Congregational Church. The resulting traffic gives Branford’s green more of a transitory feel than, say, the one in neighboring Guilford, where families spend sunny days picnicking, pushing strollers and tossing Frisbees. Mr. DaRos wants to remove much of the pavement in front of the Congregational Church, replace it with an open grassy area, and place a sidewalk on the Green’s opposite side so visitors can walk a 1-kilometer loop if they wish. The result would be a more people-friendly place, as well as a landscape better suited to what he called the nobility of the Town Hall and the Congregational Church. “Look out there yourself,” Mr. DaRos told a reporter during a recent visit to his office, which overlooks the green. “It looks like a giant octopus with all that asphalt going in all directions, cars coming and going with no rhyme or reason.” A few months ago at a public hearing, Mr. DaRos presented his plan, which, at the time, also included a new roundabout and other roadway changes. He says he expected resistance. He was right. “A lot of them said, ‘It ain’t broke, why fix it,’ ” Mr. DaRos said. “To me, it’s broke.” Mr. DaRos dropped the idea of the roundabout and added a new parking lot nearby to placate those who worry about the loss of parking spaces. But two pillars of the original idea, the new grassy area near the church, and the long sidewalk, remain in “Plan B,” which he will unveil next month at another public hearing. Mr. DaRos’s initiative may not threaten to cleave this shoreline town of 29,000 residents. But his effort sheds light on a small-town institution where some of suburbia’s more profound changes are playing out — the disappearance of mom-and-pop stores in the town center, a vaguely weakened sense of community — and raises the question of whether a vibrant town green can perhaps mitigate those changes. Not that such stuff has yet been a prominent part of the debate about Branford’s green. Jane Peterson Bouley, Branford’s town historian, opposes the plan even though it may result in more grass. The new sidewalk is unnecessary, she said, and the entire idea feels forced. “It seems innocent enough,” she said, “but you multiply these little changes through decades, and suddenly you have this mishmash of concrete, blacktop, brick and granite, with no plan.” Merchants around the green are less bothered by the proposal, even if it means the loss of eight precious parking spots. Wendi Streeto, manager of the Towne Pharmacy and a Branford native, watches the Green six days a week through broad storefront windows. She said fewer nearby parking spaces could affect her elderly customers in particular, but she likes the idea of expanding the grassy area and adding a sidewalk, because it could bring more families. “The people that congregate on the Green the most tend to be high school age ne’er-do-wells,” she said. Two major events — the Branford Festival in June and the library book sale in the fall — attract the masses, but otherwise Ms. Streeto said the Green’s most interesting activity is “parallel parking theater,” where drivers struggle mightily to angle into a spot. Instead of heading to the Green’s open space, most drivers end up in the local stores or Town Hall, she said. Not that the Green’s merchants are thriving. Four have closed in the past year, as consumers have fled specialty stores for a Wal-Mart up the street. A few doors away from Ms. Streeto, at Branford Book & Card Shoppe, Sal Esposito, an owner, said changes to the Green may not help local businesses so much during this national recession. “We cherish the Green, and we want to preserve it as much as possible, but when people lose their jobs, they don’t get dressed up and come down here for the paper and cigarettes,” he said. “They’ll just stay at home and read it online.” Mr. DaRos said unless he finds consensus on the plan for the Green, he will not act. Besides, with a tight budget, the town would have to wait for federal or state aid anyway. If it sounds like a long-term project, that would suit Mr. DaRos. A mason by training, he grew up helping his father and uncles pull 24-ton slabs of pink granite from the town’s Stony Creek quarry. Now if he can only persuade voters to hoist his giant slab of an idea, it might eventually be carved into something that will last for generations to come.

Reclamation of Land
Branford (Conn)
Historic Buildings and Sites


Kohl’s Raises Profit Forecast, Citing a Stronger Consumer

Abstract: The retailer Kohl’s raised its full-year profit forecast Thursday, saying exclusive merchandise like a new line of Jennifer Lopez clothing and pent-up demand would increase its sales. Shoppers have also accepted Kohl’s initial price increases, the company’s chief executive, Kevin Mansell, said on a conference call, echoing comments a day earlier by executives of Macy’s. Kohl’s and Macy’s results and forecasts reflected a willingness by consumers to spend again, even in the face of rising gas and clothing prices. The upscale retailer Nordstrom, meanwhile, cut its full-year earnings forecast because of the effect of an acquisition, even as it reported higher first-quarter sales and profits. Nordstrom’s new 2011 forecast calls for earnings of $2.80 to $2.95 a share, down from $2.95 to $3.10 a share previously. First-quarter net income grew 24 percent, to $145 million, or 65 cents a share. Sales were up 12 percent, to $2.23 billion in the first quarter. Kohl’s has raised the prices on some denim items by a high single-digit percentage, leading to fewer items being sold but not cutting total sales, Mr. Mansell said. But he cautioned analysts that the bulk of price increases were to come in the fall. Kohl’s expects same-store sales to rise 2 to 4 percent this quarter, Mr. Mansell said. Kohl’s first-quarter profit rose 6 percent to $211 million, or 73 cents a share, from $199 million, or 64 cents, a year earlier. That was in line with Wall Street estimates. Sales were up 3.1 percent, at $4.16 billion. As previously reported, sales at stores open at least a year rose 1.3 percent during the quarter, which ended on April 30, below the pace of Macy’s and J. C. Penney. Kohl’s, which operates nearly 1,100 department stores, raised its full-year earnings forecast to $4.25 to $4.40 a share. Analysts on average expect $4.36, according to Thomson Reuters. The previous Kohl’s forecast was $4.05 to $4.25. The company said some of the increase stemmed from planned share repurchases during the current quarter. Kohl’s shares rose $2.07, or 3.9 percent, to close at $ 55.68. Nordstrom reported its earnings after the market closed, and its shares were down about 2.1 percent at $48.12 in after-hours trading.


Medvedev Seeks a Little Distance From Putin

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — With the country’s next presidential election scheduled for March, the incumbent, Dmitri A. Medvedev , complicated the riddle at the center of Russian politics by delivering a speech on Friday that implied criticism of his predecessor and presumed rival for the job, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. In the speech, an address to foreign investors and heads of state at an economic forum here, Mr. Medvedev warned of a new era of stagnation if the state continued to control the Russian economy. And he spoke, as he has before, of the inherent risks in a political system built around one man’s personality. “We should say goodbye to bad habits,” Mr. Medvedev said after describing government meddling in the economy when Mr. Putin was president from 2000 until 2008. He did not, however, mention Mr. Putin by name. Throughout the speech, Mr. Medvedev veered repeatedly toward staking out an independent position, but would pull back before making explicit any substantive disagreement with Mr. Putin. Investors like those in attendance on Friday carefully parse Mr. Medvedev’s public comments for just this type of delicate positioning, because he is seen as occupying a politically precarious spot this summer. To emerge from Mr. Putin’s shadow and become a credible candidate in the eyes of urban middle-class voters, his core constituency, Mr. Medvedev needs to demonstrate his independence. But he must take care not to appear openly disloyal to the man who is considered the most powerful in Russia . Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev have said that they will reach an agreement privately on which of them will run for president next year, and Kremlin officials say the announcement will come in September or October. Mr. Medvedev used the occasion of the economic forum to highlight his credentials as a liberal reformer. “If everything starts to work on a signal from the Kremlin — we have all been there, and I know from personal experience — it means the system is unsustainable and must be organized around an individual,” he said. “This is bad. It means the system should be changed.” Remarking on the practice of state companies bulking up on assets, which was common during Mr. Putin’s presidency, Mr. Medvedev said, “There could be another stagnation hiding behind the so-called stability.” “Private entrepreneurs should rule the Russian economy,” he said, adding, “Economies are like parachutes: they only work when they are open.” Internal Kremlin politics have seeped into the public sphere several times this year, often in the form of Mr. Medvedev responding to comments by Mr. Putin with a retort so mild that it might go unnoticed in other countries, but is seized on here as important. Daniel Treisman, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, described Mr. Medvedev’s maneuverings as “a passive-aggressive verbal strategy” for expressing his political views. The divergence in their public positions also suggests that they are trying to appeal to different audiences, Mr. Treisman said. Mr. Medvedev is more popular with Western leaders and foreign investors of the type attending the economic forum, where the president traditionally delivers an economic policy speech. This year, the message seemed mostly that Mr. Medvedev disagreed with Mr. Putin on economic policy. “Medvedev hints he is very upset about something, but nothing ever comes of it,” Mr. Treisman said. There are occasional hints of a more substantive breach. This week, the newspaper Vedemosti reported that Mr. Medvedev had fired Aleksei Anichin, a deputy interior minister and one of Russia’s most senior police officials. Mr. Anichin was a classmate of Mr. Putin’s. The Russian government is trying to sell $30 billion worth of shares in state companies that it intends to privatize. The chief executives of Citigroup and Bank of America, Vikram S. Pandit and Brian T. Moynihan, were among those in St. Petersburg this week to discuss the opportunities. Speaking of his economic agenda, Mr. Medvedev said, “This project should be realized regardless of who occupies which job in our country for the next few years.” He then offered this riddle: “I will guarantee this personally, as the president of the state, together with my colleagues.” It was hard to see how he could do that without winning another term in office.

Medvedev Dmitri A
Russia
Politics and Government


Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Abstract: Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com . In this space recently, I tried to answer a reader’s question about a new Apple commercial for exercise and fitness apps that features a version of the “Chicken Fat” song, promoting physical fitness, that was sung by the actor Robert Preston in the early 1960s. The reader wanted to know who was singing the version in the commercial because it was not Preston . Because Apple and the agency that created the commercial, TBWA/Media Arts Lab, are not divulging the name of the singer, a rather spirited “Who’s That Voice?” guessing game has started. What follows are some suggestions from other readers. ■ That voice in the “Chicken Fat” commercial sounds exactly like the actor Max Showalter , who had a limited career in musical comedy but appeared prominently in the 1971 musical “The Grass Harp” on Broadway. ■ I think it’s Craig Bierko. He was on Broadway a few years ago, in a revival of “The Music Man.” He did a great imitation of Robert Preston . The Apple version is a very close copy of the Preston original. If I was the producer of the commercial, this is who I would have chosen. ■ I believe it is G.W. Bailey of “The Closer” and “Major Crimes” fame. He has been in many other TV shows and movies. ■ When I first heard the “Chicken Fat” commercial, it reminded me of the distinctive voice heard in the Norfolk Southern railroad TV ads of the last year or so . No clue if it’s the same guy, but the voices are similar. I’d never heard “Chicken Fat” before the recent Apple commercial. I guess this generation isn’t the only one that needs some exercise … LOL. ■ I believe it’s Robert Morse, who most recently played Bert Cooper on “Mad Men.” He had a career as a Broadway song-and-dance man before “Mad Men,” most notably in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” ■ I believe that I have the answer. It sounds like Samuel Vincent, the same singer who performed the song in a “My Little Pony” episode known as the “Flim Flam Cider Song.” Thanks, dear readers, for your contributions. I am especially intrigued by the suggestion that it is Mr. Vincent; the “My Little Pony” number has a patter-like quality similar to “Ya Got Trouble,” which was sung by Preston in “The Music Man.” To assist with the sleuthing, I turned to Seth Rudetsky, the theater maven who hosts “Seth’s Big Fat Broadway” show on SiriusXM, and asked him if he had any thoughts about who the singer is. “I listened to it and I did not recognize it,” he writes in an email, adding a typical Rudetsky joke: “It sounds male so it could be Bea Arthur. But the vibrato is too fast.” If anyone else believes he or she has figured out who “Chicken Fat” singer is, please get in touch.

advertising,marketing
Apple
Robert Preston


The Snake That’s Eating Florida

Abstract: Ever since a serpent enticed Eve to munch on that forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, relations between humans and snakes have been at best strained. But at least the gullible Eve and her mate had to cope with just the one snake. In South Florida, wildlife officials have struggled for years with tens of thousands of the creatures: specifically, a species known as the Burmese python, an interloper from Southeast Asia that has taken up what looks like permanent residence in Everglades National Park and other areas of the state. This is some snake. At full maturity, a Burmese python routinely reaches lengths of 12 feet or more. Twenty-footers weighing 250 pounds are not unheard-of. The pythons are prodigious breeders, with voracious appetites to match. They are believed to have eaten their way through the Everglades , bringing about startling changes in the ecosystem. Some mammals native to those marshes, like foxes and rabbits, seem to have disappeared, researchers say. Other species — among them raccoons, deer, opossums and bobcats — are close to being wiped out. Pythons that migrated from the mainland to Key Largo have put indigenous wood rats in mortal peril. Retro Report , a series of video documentaries exploring major news stories of the past, trains its lens on the dawning realization more than a dozen years ago that the Burmese python had the potential to alter Florida’s environment far more than people realized. But the issue is really greater than one breed of Asian snakes that ran wild after being imported into the country as pets. The United States is awash in invasive species exacting a heavy toll on native wildlife and vegetation. The list of intruders is long. To name but a few, they include Argentine tegus, large lizards that feast on sea turtle eggs; venomous lionfish from Asia, which prey on local varieties of fish; Nile monitor lizards from Africa, which love to eat frogs and crocodile eggs; zebra mussels from Russia, which harm waterways and damage water treatment plants; and Asian carp, which threaten the environmental balance of the Great Lakes. Florida draws much of the attention because its swamps and tropical climate provide splendid shelter for all sorts of creatures that are not supposed to call this country home. The state, as more than one person has observed, is the Ellis Island of exotic species. Like many animals previously unknown on the North American continent, the Burmese python arrived through the pet trade. (Language purists might reasonably ask if it is fair to describe these snakes as invasive. It is not as if they barged in on their own. People created the problem.) At least two million constrictor snakes — boas, anacondas and pythons — are believed to have been imported since the 1970s, part of a lucrative market for exotic species. Miami is an important hub for this trafficking. One issue with Burmese pythons is that people cavalierly bought them when they were maybe a foot long. In short order, those little fellows grew to eight feet, 12 feet, 16 feet. Talk about buyer’s remorse. Unable to deal with these giants, owners often dumped them wherever seemed feasible. One way or another, snakes in South Florida found their way to the Everglades. There, they multiplied, again and again. Recent estimates by the National Park Service put the numbers there as high as 100,000. Walter E. Meshaka Jr. was the supervisory curator for national parks in southern Florida from 1995 to 2000. Even back then, Mr. Meshaka told Retro Report, the question was whether the python population would explode. And, he said, “Lo and behold, it did.” Quite possibly, some experts in the field suggest, the local wildlife has been slow to appreciate the menace. “It’s probably a safe assumption that things like raccoons and possums probably don’t associate snakes with being something that really is a major threat to them,” Michael E. Dorcas, a herpetologist at Davidson College in North Carolina, said in a 2012 interview with Yale Environment 360, an online publication of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. “Because,” Mr. Dorcas continued, “there really hasn’t been a snake big enough to eat a raccoon living in Florida for about 18 million years.” While the python is more of a direct threat to native birds and animals than to people, attacks on humans are not unknown. One of the more horrifying instances occurred in 2009 when a 2-year-old girl in northern Florida was strangled by a Burmese python that belonged to her mother’s boyfriend. This eight-foot snake, which was later found to have been severely malnourished, broke free, coiled itself around the girl and squeezed her to death. Both the mother and the boyfriend were held responsible — convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The authorities in Florida have tried getting the unwelcome reptile population under control, but to little avail. A couple of years ago, they organized a Python Challenge , a come-one, come-all snake hunt on state land near Everglades National Park. It put barely a dent in the python population; no more than a few dozen of them were captured. Pythons have shown themselves to be masters of stealth. In a rather glum assessment, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement last month that “scientists have not found any way of eradicating invasive constrictor snakes once they become established in the wild.” Some experts say the best hope to kill these creatures en masse may be a deep and prolonged freeze in southern Florida. Of course, everyone would then worry about the devastating effect on the state’s citrus crop. Should other sections of the country start fretting about possible python incursions of their own? Yes, say some scientists who predict that, in coming decades, the invaders could slither their way across one-third of the United States — perhaps even reaching New York City by 2100. Other experts, however, wave off such fears as overblown. The Obama administration has chosen to take a stand. Three years ago, the Fish and Wildlife Service banned imports and interstate transport of four species of constrictors: Burmese pythons, yellow anacondas and northern and southern African pythons. Last month, the prohibition was extended to four other species: reticulated pythons, DeSchauensee’s anacondas, green anacondas and Beni anacondas. (Boa constrictors, an important component of the pet snake trade, were spared a ban.) Not surprisingly, reptile sellers and breeders are not happy with the restrictions, with slippery slopesters among them warning that all kinds of animals, including more familiar household pets, could become the next government target. Effective or not, the import bans are a recognition that some species labeled invaders were invited in by humans. It is a reality reminiscent of a famous line from no less than a swamp creature: the possum Pogo, whose name was the title of Walt Kelly ’s long-running comic strip. Referring to unwelcome environmental change, Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Invasive species
Fish and Wildlife Service
Everglades
Snake
Florida


A Review of ‘Rich Girl,’ in New Brunswick

Abstract: THE APARTMENT, WITH its marble floors, gratuitously high ceilings and unaffordable modern art, is what you would expect as the Manhattan home of a wealthy author and television financial expert. The expert’s daughter is less glamorous. But that seemingly plain, dull and easily pushed-around daughter finally lashes out. “You wanted me to be unloved forever to teach me a lesson,” Claudine (Crystal Finn) tells her mother, Eve (Dee Hoty), even though Eve’s breast cancer has returned and this is probably not the time for a confrontation. Victoria Stewart’s intriguing “Rich Girl,” now having its world premiere at the George Street Playhouse in association with the Cleveland Play House , asks and answers a timely literary question for fans of Henry James’s 1881 novel, “Washington Square”: What if Victorian parents could have Googled the possible gold diggers wooing their daughters? “Washington Square” was already classic chick-flick material — as a novel; as the 1949 film “The Heiress” with Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift; and as its Broadway adaptations, most recently one starring Jessica Chastain and Dan Stevens. Ms. Stewart’s updated adaptation takes things further by turning the successful, widowed, cruel Dr. Austin Sloper, the father in the novel, into the successful, divorced, cruel Eve Walker. Instead of Lavinia, a sweetly wacky live-in aunt, there is now a brassy, devoted personal assistant, Maggie (the delicious Liz Larsen), offering the heroine romantic encouragement and often staying over in her designated guest room. Morris, the handsome but jobless young suitor, has become Henry (Tony Roach), the handsome young suitor with a struggling theater company that needs money. The plot remains the same: Poor boy pursues rich girl, and parent with purse strings suspects him of being after her money and does everything possible to prevent their marrying. Ms. Finn is painfully sympathetic as Claudine, who has the same complete absence of confidence and physical grace as Lena Dunham’s character on HBO’s “Girls.” It does not seem necessary to make Claudine a klutz as well, but the slapstick begins in her first scene, in which she spills almost everything on a restaurant table onto the floor. At least it is good slapstick. The direction by Michael Bloom, artistic director of the Cleveland Play House , is highly appealing. One of his finest moments, although some credit certainly goes to Ms. Stewart’s script, is the split-stage scene in which Claudine waits stage right, with her bags packed, for Henry to arrive. Henry stands nervously, stage left and two weeks later, leaving her voice mail messages to explain why he never showed up. Mr. Bloom and Ms. Hoty may have gone too far in making the mother unlikable. Eve’s attitudes are true to the original James character, but she seems strangely like Sue Sylvester, Jane Lynch’s character on “Glee,” without the nifty undercurrent of vengeful joy. Most actors fail the Montgomery Clift test, Clift having been the rare actor who made us believe there was some chance that Morris really did love Catherine. The boyishly good-looking Mr. Roach is not really an exception, but he is a charmer. Fans of “The Heiress” cherish its final scene, which has been blatantly toyed with here. Whatever indecision Catherine Sloper has felt in screen and stage incarnations about whether to open her front door to her suitor has had to be read in her eyes and posture. Claudine babbles on about her feelings until the moment the doorbell rings. Let us say only that theatergoers are denied the pleasure of watching our proud heroine walk slowly, deliberately up the stairs. But then Wilson Chin’s elegant set has no stairs. Neither Ms. Stewart’s version of the story nor the era we live in seems to have much use for subtext. People in “Rich Girl” say what they mean — everything they mean. Eve tells her daughter, “Bad enough you ruined my life.” Maggie tells Claudine, “You are loved, but that’s not enough to convince you you are lovable.” Henry enters one scene with “Guys, why are there pictures of my ex-girlfriends on the coffee table?” When there is talk of moving to a new neighborhood, Maggie casually says, “Washington Square is beautiful.” Sometimes a playwright just can’t resist a tip of the hat to her source.

Theater
New Brunswick NJ
George Street Playhouse
Crystal Finn
Dee Hoty
Liz Larsen
Tony Roach


Senate Takes Major Step Toward Repealing Health Care Law

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans took their first major step toward repealing the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, approving a budget blueprint that would allow them to gut the health care law without the threat of a Democratic filibuster. The vote was 51 to 48. During the roll call, Democrats staged a highly unusual protest on the Senate floor to express their dismay and anger at the prospect that millions of Americans could lose health insurance coverage. One by one, Democrats rose to voice their objections. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington said that Republicans were “stealing health care from Americans.” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said he was voting no “because health care should not just be for the healthy and wealthy.” The presiding officer, Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, repeatedly banged his gavel and said the Democrats were out of order because “debate is not allowed during a vote.” The final vote, which ended just before 1:30 a.m., followed a marathon session in which senators took back-to-back roll call votes on numerous amendments, an arduous exercise known as a vote-a-rama . The approval of the budget blueprint, coming even before President-elect Donald J. Trump is inaugurated, shows the speed with which Republican leaders are moving to fulfill their promise to repeal President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement — a goal they believe can now be accomplished after Mr. Trump’s election. The action by the Senate is essentially procedural, setting the stage for a special kind of legislation called a reconciliation bill. Such a bill can be used to repeal significant parts of the health law and, critically, is immune from being filibustered. Congress appears to be at least weeks away from voting on legislation repealing the law. Republicans say the 2016 elections gave them a mandate to roll back the health care law. “The Obamacare bridge is collapsing, and we’re sending in a rescue team,” said Senator Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming and the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “Then we’ll build new bridges to better health care, and finally, when these new bridges are finished, we’ll close the old bridge.” How Republicans Can Repeal Obamacare Piece by Piece Peeling away pieces of the law could lead to market chaos. Republican leaders say they will work closely with Mr. Trump developing legislation to repeal and replace the health care law, but it is unclear exactly how his team will participate in that effort. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he would offer his own plan to repeal and replace the law “essentially simultaneously.” He said he would put forth the plan as soon as his nominee for secretary of health and human services , Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia, is confirmed. The Affordable Care Act has become ingrained in the American health care system, and unwinding it will be a formidable challenge for Republicans. More than 20 million people have gained coverage under the law, though premiums have risen sharply in many states and some insurers have fled the law’s health exchanges. The budget blueprint instructs House and Senate committees to come up with repeal legislation by Jan. 27. Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, and four other Republicans had sought to extend that deadline by five weeks, to March 3. But late Wednesday night, Mr. Corker withdrew an amendment that would have changed the date. “We understand that everyone here understands the importance of doing it right,” he said. He described the Jan. 27 date in the budget blueprint as a placeholder. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, another Republican who sought to delay the deadline, said: “This date is not a date that is set in stone. In fact, it is the earliest we could do it. But it could take longer, and we believe that it might.” The House was planning to take up the budget blueprint once the Senate approved it, though some House Republicans have expressed discomfort with voting on the blueprint this week because of lingering questions over how and when the health care law would be replaced. A vote on the measure in the House could come on Friday. In its lengthy series of votes, the Senate rejected amendments proposed by Democrats that were intended to allow imports of prescription drugs from Canada, protect rural hospitals and ensure continued access to coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, among other causes. In the parlance of Capitol Hill, many of the Democrats’ proposals were “messaging amendments,” intended to put Republicans on record as opposing popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The budget blueprint is for the guidance of Congress; it is not presented to the president for a signature or veto and does not become law. As the Senate plowed through its work on Wednesday, Republicans explained why they were determined to dismantle the health care law, and they tried to assuage concerns about the future of coverage for millions of Americans. “This is our opportunity to keep our campaign promise,” said Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi. “This is our opportunity to help the president-elect and the vice president-elect keep their campaign promises and show to the American people that elections have consequences.” Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, said that while working to repeal the health care law, “we must also talk about what we replace it with, because repealing it without a replacement is an unacceptable solution.” Republicans do not have an agreement even among themselves on the content of legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act, the timetable for votes on such legislation or its effective date. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said on Wednesday that she agreed with Mr. Trump that Congress should repeal the health law and adopt a replacement plan at about the same time. “But I don’t see any possibility of our being able to come up with a comprehensive reform bill that would replace Obamacare by the end of this month,” she said. “I just don’t see that as being feasible.” (Ms. Collins also supported pushing back the deadline to come up with repeal legislation.) As Republicans pursue repealing the law, Democrats contend that Republicans are trying to rip insurance away from millions of Americans with no idea of what to do next. The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, called the Republicans’ repeal plan “irresponsible and rushed” and urged them to halt their push to unravel the law. “Don’t put chaos in place of affordable care,” he said.

Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Health Insurance
Legislation
Senate
Congress
Republicans


Dead Shot Mary, Pistol-Packing Trailblazer, Returns in One-Policewoman Show

Abstract: Armed with her trusty .32-caliber revolver and a bottle of Irish whiskey, Dead Shot Mary is back in town. Her real name was Mary Shanley, and she was nicknamed for her skill at pulling a pistol from her handbag and compelling fleeing pickpockets to halt in their tracks, even on the crowded streets of Manhattan. She was credited with more than 1,000 arrests during her 26-year career with the New York Police Department, from 1931 to 1957, and as one of the earliest female first-grade detectives was considered a trailblazer. She died in 1989 at age 93, but here she was, portrayed by Rachel McPhee, at a rehearsal for “Dead Shot Mary,” a one-woman show that opened recently. Although the production is a modest one — the Bridge Theater at Shetler Studios, on West 54th Street in Midtown, seats only 30, and the monthlong run will end on Oct. 15 — it serves to revive a larger-than-life New York figure who has been all but forgotten today. The show portrays the poignant side of a woman defined by the hard-edge language of the crime blotter; during a rehearsal, Ms. McPhee paced in front of a backdrop of enlarged news clippings, reflecting on the ups and downs of her character’s career as a tough plainclotheswoman. In her monologue she lamented that, even with all the laurels she had received as a crime fighter, “I’m always the freak at the zoo.” Detective Shanley was the star of the pickpocket squad, and dressed to match the crowd she was disappearing into, at a department store, a fancy Fifth Avenue boutique or a large theater on Broadway. Though she never married or had children, she would sometimes pose as an innocent mother by bringing her young niece along with her, recalled a relative, Patrick Mullins. In an interview, Mr. Mullins said that his mother, Mary Shanley Mullins, was that very niece. She used to tell him that Detective Shanley “had this sixth sense, that she could smell a crook,” he recalled. “She could go into a crowd and know who to tail.” Image Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia called Detective Shanley “a credit to the Police Department of the city,” and said that women on the force “can be used for very effective police and detective work.” Credit via Library of Congress Detective Shanley grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, with little money but plenty of street savvy, he said. She was a spirited storyteller and loved cocktails and big cars, and often showed up unexpectedly with presents for his family. “She was a more-than-life-size figure, and a lot of fun,” said Mr. Mullins, 64, a filmmaker and film editor who has made a short documentary, “ Sleuthing Mary Shanley ,” about his great-aunt. “She was a good-time gal.” According to articles published in The New York Times, Officer Shanley was promoted in 1935, earning a third-grade detective’s shield, then rose steadily until she earned the first-grade rank in 1939, at age 43. She was the fourth woman in the Police Department’s history to do so. She was also perhaps the first policewoman in New York to use a gun in the capture and arrest of a suspect. One article in The Times called her an “Annie Oakley” of the department, and quoted her as saying, “You have the gun to use, and you may just as well use it.” One early arrest, in 1931, involved a fortuneteller who feigned telepathy by keeping a phone hidden in her headdress. There was the time she collared one Chinatown Charlie, a notorious pickpocket who preyed on shoppers along Fifth Avenue. Then there was the arrest during a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Dressed as any other worshiper in a black suit, black jeweled hat and glasses, Detective Shanley saw a female pickpocket take cash from a woman kneeling in prayer. She fired two shots to stop the woman from fleeing. In 1935, she was hospitalized after being thrown down a flight of stairs by a “ masher ” she was trying to apprehend at the Savoy Theater, The Times said. In 1937, she arrested two stickup men by firing a warning shot in the air, and was promoted to second-grade detective . During the ceremony, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia told her he considered it an honor to be “pinning a badge on you,” The Times reported. La Guardia called Detective Shanley “a credit to the Police Department of the city,” and said that women on the force “can be used for very effective police and detective work.” There were shootouts. An article in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle in June 1937 described Detective Shanley “nabbing two hardened criminals, after a hot pursuit through subway trains and a volley of pistol shots in the Times Square area.” She was on patrol in a smart gray wide-brimmed hat and polka-dot green dress in June 1938 when she confronted a suspect outside Macy’s in Herald Square. He pushed her in the face and ran, but was felled by a swing of her leather pocketbook, The Times reported. By the time two nearby officers arrived to help, she had her badge in one hand and was holding the suspect by the collar in the other. Image Detective Shanley was credited with more than 1,000 arrests during her 26-year career in the Police Department, from 1931 to 1957 Credit via Library of Congress “Well, I got him,” she told them. “I can take him in myself.” A Daily Eagle story from 1950 described Detective Shanley, at age 54, apprehending a 22-year-old man “evidently embarked on a homicidal jaunt” inside a Macy’s store in Jamaica, Queens. Revolver raised, she sneaked up behind him and said, “Drop that gun, boy,” the paper reported. A 1955 article in The Times described her firing a shot while pursuing a “seat tipper” — a criminal who tips back a folding seat to nab a purse — in a theater. Wearing a pale blue hat and light earrings, she was punched by the man, but he was apprehended anyway. Once, having spied a crowd in pursuit of Grace Kelly while the actress was out shopping, Detective Shanley broke up the crowd. Then she escorted Ms. Kelly for two hours. Part of the play touches on a scandal that enveloped Detective Shanley in 1941, which began with a barroom altercation near her apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. According to a Times article, Detective Shanley and her bulldog, Jiggs, had dropped in to the Spanish Rail saloon around 3 a.m., but the barman refused to serve her, even after she displayed her detective’s shield. A man, drinking at the end of the bar with some friends, insulted Detective Shanley and her Irish ethnicity. She brandished her gun and shot in his direction, narrowly missing him. She was arrested and charged with “conduct unbecoming an officer and overindulgence in intoxicants,” The Times reported . She was hospitalized, perhaps for a mental breakdown, and temporarily demoted back down to the rank of policewoman. Detective Shanley retired in 1957, at age 61, after 26 years on the job. “Nemesis of 1,000 Criminals, Will Retire to Log Cabin,” a Times headline read . She spent some time in Florida but eventually returned to New York, where she died. Onstage, Ms. McPhee is a dead ringer for Detective Shanley. The show was written by Ms. McPhee’s husband, Robert K. Benson, who said he discovered the detective’s story while browsing online and immediately recognized it as a perfect role for Ms. McPhee, who could portray the grit of “a tough old broad married to the job,” but also “go under that veneer and find out who this person was, what was she like at home.” Ms. McPhee, who grew up in Wisconsin, said she arrived at the ideal New York accent by mixing a bit of Rosie O’Donnell with the Queens accent that Carroll O’Connor brought to Archie Bunker on “All in the Family.” The show, directed by Stephen Kaliski, has attracted the interest of law enforcement groups. One performance will be held for members of the Policewomen’s Endowment Association, a group that represents active and retired female officers. “They’re bringing attention to what this woman did as a trailblazer in the department, and it’s great to see that brought to life,” Sgt. Nora Ahmed, president of the association, said. “She’s a phenomenal story, especially in a male-dominated profession.”

Theater
NYPD
NYC
Hell's Kitchen Manhattan
Murders and Homicides
Police
Women and Girls


Invoking Zimmerman, Thompson Seizes New York Frisking as Campaign Issue

Abstract: William C. Thompson Jr., the sole African-American in this year’s New York City mayoral contest, rarely talks about race. In a city of flame-throwing orators, he has long favored a political path of conciliation over confrontation. But on Sunday, Mr. Thompson arrived before a mostly black congregation in a storefront church and issued a fierce denunciation of the policies of the New York Police Department, saying they are drawn from the same racial suspicions that drove George Zimmerman to hunt down Trayvon Martin. “Here in New York City, we have institutionalized Mr. Zimmerman’s suspicion with a policy that all but requires our police officers to treat young black and Latino men with suspicion, to stop them and frisk them because of the color of their skin,” Mr. Thompson said at the Abundant Life Church in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn. The remarks, which were unusually soaring, provocative and personal, arrived at a crucial moment in the campaign: despite Mr. Thompson’s presence in the race, black voters, sounding notes of forgiveness, have been strikingly receptive to the candidacy of former Congressman Anthony D. Weiner. With Mr. Weiner’s campaign now reeling from new revelations about his online sexual encounters with women, Mr. Thompson needs to win over those African-Americans and turn them out in large numbers to prevail in the race to succeed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Advisers to Mr. Thompson have suggested that voters in minority neighborhoods may make up their minds late in a campaign, and, in the final stretch of the race, he will make a major push to secure their embrace. When Mr. Thompson first took the plexiglass lectern at the squat church filled with folding chairs shortly after 11 a.m., he acknowledged that delving into the sensitive subject of race was “not my first or natural instinct.” But he proceeded to put forth the most assertive address of the campaign on the polarizing issue of stop and frisk, a tactic heralded by the city’s police as a lifesaving deterrent and assailed by a generation of black and Latino men as overused and abusive. Of what Mr. Thompson said were the 600,000 blacks and Latinos stopped by the New York police in 2011, a vast majority were innocent, he said — “profiled as Trayvon was profiled.” “If our government profiles people because of skin color and treats them as potential criminals, how can we expect citizens to do any less?” Mr. Thompson asked, as church members loudly applauded and occasionally interrupted with cries of “amen.” For black voters unsettled by the Bloomberg era of law enforcement, Mr. Thompson occupies an intriguing place in the campaign. He has defended elements of the stop-and-frisk policy as effective and stops short of the call to abolish it advocated by a Democratic rival, John C. Liu, the city comptroller, positions that have earned Mr. Thompson the support of major police unions. But he has made clear he would replace the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly , overhaul the stop-and-frisk strategy to ban racial profiling, and limit reliance on the practice by hiring 2,000 more officers and putting more experienced ones in high-crime areas. On Sunday, though, he talked about the issues in human terms, as a father and a husband. Mr. Thompson, the son of a Democratic judge in State Supreme Court and a schoolteacher, acknowledged that his biography did not put him in the same shoes as many black and Latino men across the city. “I am the son of the struggle before me,” he said. “And although it has not ended, I have lived in the blessing of its success so far.” But, invoking the “dreams of our fathers” and “dreams for our sons,” he said he felt compelled to speak out after the acquittal of Mr. Zimmerman. “When the rules of society — that we call and honor as the law — allow even one of those dreams to be snuffed out in anger and fear without consequence or action, those rules fail us all,” he said. Inside the church, where the mostly black congregants said they had anticipated a tepid speech from another politician, there was a mixture of surprise and admiration. “I wasn’t expecting that at all,” said Karen Khan, 52, who teaches middle school in Brooklyn, and had never known Mr. Thompson to talk about race. “I thought it was going to be one of those speeches designed to pacify the issue. Sweep it under the rug — O.K., let’s move on.” Several said in interviews that the speech had compelled them to re-evaluate his candidacy. “He would get my vote based on the passion in his speech today,” said Khalid Douglas, 33, a structural engineer. “It improved my opinion of him.” For Mr. Thompson the speech was a departure not just in tone, but in style. He spoke about “a chorus of common dreams” and “the stubborn stain of enduring racism.” He described the emotional experience of watching President Obama discuss the George Zimmerman verdict, “stripped of that power, not as president, but as the black man he is, I am, and we will always be.” He wondered what moved this “dignified, calm, thoughtful man” to speak, almost sounding as if he could be referring to himself. Mr. Thompson said he had endured criticism “from people I know and trust and respect” for declaring, after Mr. Zimmerman’s acquittal, that Mr. Martin was killed because of his skin color. But he reiterated that belief again on Sunday. “Trayvon Martin did die because he was black. Of that, there is no doubt,” Mr. Thompson said, adding, “The verdict in Florida was a verdict — but it was not the verdict.” The 20-minute address will not be the last appeal to minorities, who, for the first time, are expected to make up a majority of the New York City electorate this season, starting with the Sept. 10 primary. Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, has showcased his interracial family (he married an African-American) while Christine C. Quinn is targeting black and Latino women, and the city’s comptroller, Mr. Liu, is talking up his immigrant roots. In a Democratic field where substantive differences can seem reed-thin, voters are especially attuned to the candidates’ passion and message. Leaving church on Sunday, Ms. Khan said Mr. Thompson’s thoughtfulness “pushed me closer to saying ‘Hmm, now it’s a tossup between him and Bill de Blasio, because Bill de Blasio is very outspoken, too.’ ”

Police
Mayoral races
William C Thompson Jr
NYC
Race and Ethnicity
NYPD
Search and seizure
Black People,African-Americans


Lux Capital Raises $350 Million Fund to Back Science Start-Ups

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — So much of the money pouring into venture capital nowadays has come from investors hoping to get a piece of the next Uber or Dropbox. But one investment firm has found supporters by looking for start-ups with a decidedly more scientific bent. Lux Capital plans to announce on Thursday that it has closed its latest investment fund at $350 million, more than its initial target of $245 million. The new fund, which was nearly doubly oversubscribed, will bring the firm’s assets under management to $700 million. The new fund will help the 15-year-old Lux continue its strategy of finding start-ups further away from the allure of smartphone apps and consumer services and in something decidedly less sexy: those rooted in hard sciences like materials and health care. “When you think about the next generation of industrial titans, it’s not going to be app developers,” Josh Wolfe, a Lux co-founder and managing partner, said. Referring to his firm’s investments, he added, “In many ways, they’re challenging the laws of physics.” Among the start-ups that Lux has invested in are Kymeta, which produces ultrathin satellite antennas and which has also drawn Bill Gates as a backer; Shapeways, a 3D printing company; and Kurion, a specialist in cleaning up nuclear waste at sites like Fukushima in Japan. Other current areas of interest, according to Mr. Wolfe, include robots used for surgery that are controlled by video game devices and advanced but cheap satellite cameras. Finding attractive investments in these fields is often difficult, said Peter Hébert, a co-founder and managing partner, in part because there are far fewer choices than there are in other fields, like e-commerce. Many traditional venture capitalists, the two executives contend, are momentum investors who are chasing trends. “Because it’s hard, there are fewer entrepreneurs willing to go into these areas,” Mr. Hébert said. “Then there are fewer investors willing to take on some of these challenges.” Though Mr. Wolfe declined to discuss Lux’s performance, he said that several of the firm’s portfolio companies have seen their valuation rise to between 50 times and 100 times their original level. That may not quite yield the kind of home runs that a lucky bet on, say, Facebook or WhatsApp could yield. But Mr. Wolfe said that his firm was happy to back more unusual companies that are developing durable businesses. “We have an enormous sense of pride in the more eclectic, bold entrepreneurs that we’re backing,” he said.


Villages Cleared of Taliban, Afghan and NATO Officials Say

Abstract: ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — Afghan and NATO forces cleared Taliban guerrillas from a cluster of villages outside Kandahar on Thursday, removing for the moment any threat that they might try to move into their former stronghold in the southern part of the country. The Taliban fighters, who had infiltrated as many as 18 villages here, largely retreated before a force of about 1,100 Afghan soldiers that began moving into the area on Wednesday, Afghan and NATO officials said. NATO planes and helicopters supported their advance. Afghan and NATO officials took slightly different views of the operation, with the Afghans trumpeting it as a great success. Afghan soldiers killed 56 Taliban fighters during the operation, including a number of foreigners, Gen. Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said at a news conference. The operation involved no loss of civilian life, and the Afghan Army suffered no casualties beyond two reported on Wednesday. NATO officers offered a more measured view: they said fighting had been minimal with the Taliban, who they said had not been so numerous to begin with. Still, no one disagreed that, for the moment, the Taliban had been dispersed. “Arghandab is totally cleared out of the enemies,” General Azimi said at his news conference, in Kandahar. But he conceded that a number of Taliban fighters appeared to have slipped away. By Thursday evening, NATO’s force in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force, was urging the roughly 4,000 Afghans who had fled their homes to return. The quick response of the Afghan Army, and the apparent success of the operation, represented a bit of good news here after a run of gloomy events. Last week, Taliban fighters mounted a brazen assault on the main prison in Kandahar, blowing up the mud walls, killing 15 guards and freeing about 1,200 inmates, including several hundred Taliban fighters. Then came the reports that Taliban fighters — numbering 400 in some reports — were infiltrating the villages around Arghandab, a river valley about 10 miles northwest of the city that is critical to its defense. The situation raised the prospect of a possible Taliban move into Kandahar itself, which has been the capital of the Taliban since the movement was founded in a village near here in 1994. The events around Arghandab have unfolded amid a growing recognition that the sanctuaries enjoyed by the Taliban across the border in nearby Pakistan are posing a serious threat to the NATO-backed Afghan government. This week, President Hamid Karzai threatened to send troops across the border into Pakistan if Islamabad continued to allow the sanctuaries to flourish. On Thursday, Asadullah Khaled, the governor of Kandahar Province, accused Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader based in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan, of responsibility for cross-border attacks. Yet exactly how significant the Taliban threat in Arghandab was — and how impressive the Afghan operation was to dispel it — remained murky on Thursday. On Wednesday, helicopters flying over Arghandab Valley could be seen firing rockets at Taliban positions, suggesting that the militants had moved quite close to the district center. After the operation, Governor Khalid declared that “hundreds of militants had been killed and wounded.” Other Afghans were more restrained in their assessments. NATO officials said the Taliban infiltration of Arghandab was not that significant, nor was the Taliban resistance. Some officials suggested that the reports of Taliban infiltrations had been spread by the Taliban themselves, with the aim of exaggerating their strength, a tactic used by guerrilla armies throughout history. The NATO officials said that however many Taliban fighters were in the area, they failed to put up much of a fight against the Afghan Army. That suggested that the guerrillas had fled, were never there in great numbers to begin with, or had disappeared into the local population. “We have not seen major concentrations of Taliban,” said Brig. Gen. Carlos Branco, spokesman for the NATO force. “The contact we had were very small skirmishes,” General Branco said. “We used artillery fire.” Still, the speed with which Afghan forces moved into the area, and the air power deployed to support them, suggested that military and political leaders viewed the crushing of the Taliban in Arghandab as an urgent matter. General Branco said there were two positive aspects of this week’s operation: no civilians had been killed or wounded, and the Afghan Army, which has sometimes struggled in its effort to develop into an effective fighting force, had deployed 1,100 troops in 24 hours and done most of the work on the ground. On Friday morning, a suicide bomber killed 10 civilians in southern Afghanistan, The Associated Press reported. Police Chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal of Helmand Province said the attacker detonated his explosives as a convoy of foreign troops was passing through the town of Gereshk.

Afghanistan
Taliban
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Armament Defense and Military Forces
Kandahar (Afghanistan)


Newark Schools to Test Pupils for Lead as Officials Cite Longstanding Problem

Abstract: As they prepared to begin testing young children for lead poisoning this week, school officials in Newark on Wednesday acknowledged that water in the city’s schools had contained elevated levels of lead for years. Reports from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to be released on Thursday showed that levels of lead above 15 parts per billion, the threshold at which the federal Environmental Protection Agency suggests taking action, had been found in about 250 samples of water in the schools in the past four years. Similar levels of lead had been found in the tests taken over the past few months, which led officials to shut off the faucets and drinking fountains at 30 of the city’s 67 schools and immediately bring in bottled water. “As a parent, I too find the fact that the district has identified elevated levels of lead in water in each of these past years extremely concerning,” Christopher Cerf, the superintendent of Newark Public Schools, said in an interview. Mr. Cerf said the school district was working with the state environmental department to develop a plan for testing and retesting the water in the schools, starting on Saturday. He said that samples would be taken from school buildings that had not previously been tested, and that the 30 schools where high levels of lead had been found most recently would be tested again. Mr. Cerf was appointed superintendent in July by the state, which controls the schools in Newark, the largest city in New Jersey. He said that when he became aware last week of the high levels of lead in the most recent tests, he reviewed reports from earlier years. He said he could not explain why his predecessors had not reacted to the results as he did last week, saying he had “decided to address the situation differently.” But Mr. Cerf said the discovery of dangerously high levels of lead in the public water system in Flint, Mich., had changed the way people responded to the issue. “Our national consciousness has been raised by other national events,” he said. “I think the way the world would receive these data is different after Flint.” Schools are not required to test their water, but the Newark schools have been having it tested for more than a decade, Mr. Cerf said. The Newark schools have had a protocol of flushing pipes and replacing filters since 2004, he said. From 2004 through 2011, different companies collected the samples, and those reports will be released when they are available, the district said. About 12 percent of 2,067 samples taken in the schools since 2012 had lead above the “federal action level” of 15 parts per billion, the school district said. Health officials say that there is no safe amount of lead in drinking water and that it poses the most danger to young children, potentially causing behavior problems and learning disabilities. Testing of children for lead poisoning is being offered first, starting on Thursday, at two of the affected schools that have early-childhood programs. School officials hope to allay parents’ worries about the levels of lead that have been found, but on Wednesday afternoon word of the testing was having the opposite effect. “It seems a lot more serious,” said Sahmara Brown, who picked up her 3-year-old daughter, Myasia Brown, from prekindergarten at Early Childhood School West. Like other parents, Ms. Brown was holding a sheet of paper that provided details about the testing that would be offered at the school on Friday. On Tuesday, Mayor Ras J. Baraka said that 17,000 children were potentially affected and that “parents have the opportunity to go get tested.” But Mr. Cerf said the immediate plan was to offer testing for about 330 children who attend the two early-childhood programs among the 30 schools. He added that the city’s health department already offered free testing of children for lead poisoning. Hassan Banks said he grew more fearful for his 4-year-old son, Aljaquan Briller, who is in prekindergarten, when he learned lead tests would be offered. “I’m worried that they feel the need to do it,” he said. “He’s been drinking water in the school all year.” Nakia Mickel said that before learning about the contaminated water in the school, she already had her daughter, Aubrey St. Jean, 4, checked twice by a doctor for lead. Aubrey’s levels were a little high, the doctor said, but not yet dangerously so. Ms. Mickel said she would bring Aubrey, who is in prekindergarten, to her school on Friday to be tested for lead a third time. “I’m going for testing because she was still drinking the water,” Ms. Mickel said. “You figure that would have been checked before your kids came to school.” In response to the findings in the schools, the Newark Housing Authority this week began testing the water in its older buildings that house families with children, said Gloria Wright, a spokeswoman for the authority. She said it hoped to have the results of those tests next week. Terrell Jones, who lives in public housing in Newark, said he worried what would happen if his building’s water tests positive for unhealthy levels of lead. “Low-income people, they’re not going to buy water all day,” Mr. Jones, a janitor, said. “Can’t afford it.”

Lead
Water
K-12 Education
HazMat
Newark NJ


Men in Suits Rob Manhattan Watch Store, Police Say

Abstract: The New York police were pursuing several men who they said robbed a luxury watch store in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday. Around 1:19 p.m., three or four men wearing suits smashed a display case at the Tourneau store at 510 Madison Avenue, at 53rd Street, possibly with hammers, the police said. They took some items, though it was not immediately clear how valuable they were. Then they fled east toward Park Avenue, the police said. An hour after the crime, a police spokesman said that investigators were still canvassing the area and that the search had expanded to nearby precincts. One suspect has been taken into custody, the spokesman said. The police said they had received 911 calls from people who reported hearing shots fired, though investigators had not yet confirmed that. Robert Ferrari, 31, the manager of a clothing store across the street from the Tourneau store, which is an official Rolex retailer, said he saw three people running away from the store shortly before 1:30 p.m. Mr. Ferrari said he did not hear any gunshots or alarms. The floor in the watch store was littered with glass on Tuesday afternoon, and the display case in the center of the room was smashed. The police said there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Robbery
Tourneau
Watches and Clocks
Madison Avenue Manhattan
Midtown Area Manhattan


F.B.I. Arrests Florida Man Accused of Threatening to Kill Gays

Abstract: A Florida man who posted a Facebook rant threatening to kill gay people on Labor Day in a style he compared to the massacre at an Orlando nightclub and the killing of African-Americans by police officers has been arrested and charged with a federal crime, the F.B.I. said in a statement. According to a criminal complaint released on Sunday by the F.B.I., Craig Allen Jungwirth, 50, a party promoter in Wilton Manors, Fla., wrote in a Facebook post early last week that his events were “selling out” because gay people were “total patsies.” “None of you deserve to live,” he wrote, according to the complaint. “If you losers thought the Pulse nightclub shooting was bad, wait till you see what I’m planning for Labor Day.” In other posts, using homophobic and racist slurs, he wrote that he had a “solution to exterminate you losers,” the complaint said. Efforts on Sunday to contact Mr. Jungwirth or his lawyer for comment were unsuccessful. Mr. Jungwirth was arrested on Saturday by the Florida Highway Patrol in Osceola County, south of Orlando, on a charge of driving with a suspended license, an unrelated episode, according to Michael D. Leverock, a spokesman for the F.B.I. in Miami. Mr. Jungwirth has been charged with using interstate commerce to make threats, according to the federal complaint. He will appear in court on Tuesday, Mr. Leverock said. The criminal complaint said Mr. Jungwirth had been the subject of complaints to the police in Wilton Manors, a small city with a large gay population roughly 30 miles north of Miami. The accusations against Mr. Jungwirth come less than three months after Omar Mateen, 29, an Islamic State sympathizer, opened fire at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando , killing 49 people and injuring 53 more. It was the largest mass killing of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in American history and the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

Hate crime
Gay and Lesbian LGBT
Threat
Orlando Shooting
Florida
Facebook
FBI


Tiger Woods Cards a 76 at Torrey Pines in Tour Return

Abstract: SAN DIEGO — Tiger Woods has made more momentous putts on the 18th hole of Torrey Pines’ South course, but he has probably appreciated few more than the 9-footer he rolled in for a birdie on Thursday. The stroke capped off his first official round in 17 months and put a positive spin on a trying round of four-over-par 76. “I was fighting out there trying to get my ball around the golf course and score,” said Woods, who bogeyed the first hole at the Farmers Insurance Open and played a stretch of six holes on the back nine in six over. Woods’s caddie, Joe LaCava, kept counseling patience, advice that Woods accepted through gritted teeth. “I didn’t quite smile at him a few of those times he said that,” Woods said. Before Woods made his birdie putt, the other players in his group, Dustin Johnson and Jason Day, rolled in birdie attempts, ratcheting up the pressure. Johnson, who is third in the world rankings, shot an even-par 72. The top-ranked Day carded a 73. Day, who has been No. 1 for 48 nonconsecutive weeks, was No. 3 when Woods played his last official 72-hole PGA Tour event, at the Wyndham Championship in August 2015. “I was excited to see how he was going to play,” Day said. “Having 17 months off is a very long time. I think everyone was kind of anticipating what the comeback would look like.” He added: “You can’t break down everything he did today, because it’s been 17 months. Let him play and go from there. You can’t panic too much at the start of the year.” Image Top-ranked Jason Day, left, who shot a 73, and Woods, who stumbled to a 39 on the back nine. Credit Donald Miralle/Getty Images A flock of fans followed Woods’s group from hole to hole. The crowd included the retired N.B.A. journeyman Tracy Murray, whose 6-foot-7 height allowed him to track the flight of Woods’s shots better than most. Murray, a native of Los Angeles who is a radio color analyst for men’s basketball at U.C.L.A., his alma mater, worked the Bruins’ game against their crosstown rival Southern California on Wednesday night. Early Thursday, he made the two-hour drive, arriving in time to watch Woods’s front nine. “I’m a supporter, a fan,” Murray said. “He’s means so much to the game. It’s good for the rest of the field to have him out here.” The excitement at the course, which rippled through Woods’s gallery at the start of his round and produced percussive booms when he recorded birdies at 10 and 11, reminded Murray of the Sunday round of the 2008 United States Open, also played on Torrey Pines’ South course. Murray, who walked the 18 holes as a member of Woods’s gargantuan gallery, said he would never forget the roar when Woods drained a downhill 20-foot birdie putt at 18 to force a Monday playoff against Rocco Mediate, which Woods won for the last of his 14 major titles. Murray, whose 12-season playing career ended in 2007, was not surprised Thursday when Woods, 41, chased his two birdies with three consecutive bogeys and a double bogey. Speaking from experience, Murray said the challenge after an extended injury-related layoff was in finding one’s rhythm and managing one’s emotions. “It takes a lot of mental toughness to push through thoughts and things when you haven’t been in the competitive arena for a while,” Murray said. Day, who grew up idolizing Woods and now views him as a mentor, has had no such layoff recently. Early on Thursday, though, it appeared as if Day, the one-time student, was straining to impress Woods, the teacher. On Day’s second swing of the day, he stared down someone who had distracted him. Day was two over after three holes and looked tight. But after birdies on five and six, he settled down. From outside the ropes, Murray said he could also relate to Day. It reminded Murray of a summer that he had spent playing pickup basketball with Michael Jordan while Jordan was in Los Angeles shooting the 1996 movie “Space Jam.” “He’s the greatest player of your era,” Murray said, “and you want to show that you deserve his respect.” The players were not the only ones who needed a while to adjust to the return of Woods and his followers. The volunteer marshals were slow on the first few holes to corral the crowds, which were bigger than on any day at the tournament since Woods’s seventh victory in the event, in 2013. At the par-5 sixth, two spotters failed to track Woods’s errant second shot. Two dozen people, including Day’s caddie, Colin Swatton, hunted for Woods’s ball, which was found nestled in the rough. Woods said on Wednesday that how he would fare on shots out of the rough was one of the great unknowns that he would confront this week. “The last time I think I played high rough was probably Whistling Straits,” Woods said, referring to the 2015 P.G.A. Championship, won by Day. After chipping out of the rough on No. 6 and over a greenside bunker, Woods had his first legitimate birdie putt of the round, from 16 feet, which he hit two feet past the hole. “I fought my tail off out there,” Woods said, adding, “I just kept compounding problems and mistakes.”


Washington State Revisits Rules on Use of Marijuana as Medicine

Abstract: OLYMPIA, Wash. — Nearly two decades after voters passed a medical marijuana law that often left the police, prosecutors and even patients confused about what was allowed, Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill on Friday that attempts to clean up that largely unregulated system and to bring it in line with Washington’s new recreational marijuana market. Among the law’s many provisions, it creates a voluntary registry of patients and, beginning next year, eliminates what have become in some cases large, legally dubious “collective gardens” providing cannabis to thousands of people. Instead, those patients will be able to buy medical-grade products at legal recreational marijuana stores that obtain an endorsement to sell medical marijuana, or they will be able to participate in cooperatives of up to four patients. And those big medical marijuana gardens will be given a path to legitimacy: The state will grant priority in licensing to those who have been good proprietors. The proliferation of medical dispensaries has long been a concern for the police and other officials who denounce them as a cover for black-market sales. Washington in 1998 became one of the first states to approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes, but the initiative passed by voters did not allow commercial sales. Medical marijuana growers repeatedly sought legislation that would validate their businesses, coming closest in 2011, when the Legislature approved a bill to create a licensing framework for medical dispensaries. But Gov. Chris Gregoire vetoed much of the measure. This time, with the state seeking to support its nascent recreational marijuana industry after the passage of Initiative 502 in 2012, there was a financial impetus to pull the medical users into the recreational system. Under the new law, patients who join the voluntary registry will be allowed to possess three ounces dry, 48 ounces of marijuana-infused solids, 216 ounces liquid and 21 grams of concentrates.

Medical Marijuana
Washington
Marijuana,Pot,Weed
Legislation


The New York Times Company Reports a Profit

Abstract: The New York Times Company continued to attract paying subscribers to its flagship Web site in the third quarter, bolstering a new revenue stream that has helped offset a decline in advertising revenue. The company, which reported its earnings for July through September on Thursday, posted a profit of $15.7 million , compared with a loss of $4.3 million during the third quarter last year. That translated to earnings of 10 cents a diluted share versus a loss of 3 cents a share a year ago. Costs decreased during the quarter, falling 3.6 percent to $504.2 million. Circulation revenue grew by 3.4 percent to $237 million. Total advertising revenue, meanwhile, slipped 8.8 percent, to $262 million, as national and classified advertising and the company’s About.com group proved particularly weak. Revenue in every advertising category was down, a sign of the challenges the industry faces in a stagnant economy. And in a further sign of the financial uncertainty newspapers are facing, overall digital revenue, which has typically posted double-digit growth, fell 4.5 percent, to $74.8 million. That decline, in part, is because of weakness at About, which once was an engine of growth at the company but is now suffering from a change in the way Google directs traffic to informational sites. Digital revenue at Times Company newspapers increased, but at a rate of only 6.2 percent to $50.3 million. The company said it did not see any reason to be concerned about the overall strength of its digital advertising business in those numbers, calling it a lull that it hoped to reverse once the economy picked up. “As the economy has gotten more squirrely, advertisers are pulling back a little bit,” said Martin A. Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations at the Times Company. “We don’t think there’s anything fundamental about that. It’s just simply a question of some of the very significant economic issues that have faced us.” The company benefited from a $65.3 million pretax gain from the sale of part of its stake in the Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox. It also recorded a $46.4 million charge related to a repayment of the $250 million it borrowed from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú. The repayment in August came three and a half years before it was due. Operating profit for the quarter was $33 million, compared with $9 million a year ago. Excluding special items, operating profit grew 5.5 percent, to $65.5 million. In the most closely watched metric of The Times’s well being — its new online subscription business — the company reported continued growth. The Times now has 324,000 paid subscribers to the various digital editions of the paper, including e-readers and its Web site, compared with 281,000 at the end of the second quarter. Those figures do not include the 100,000 users who receive access to NYTimes.com free through a sponsorship by the Ford Motor Company. One key question about the success of The Times’s digital strategy — whether subscribers would renew at full price once their low introductory rates expired — was answered in part on Thursday. Janet L. Robinson, president and chief executive of the Times Company, said during a conference call with analysts that the company was seeing encouraging signs. “The large majority of these subscribers have now advanced to paying full rates to access the Times’s digital content,” she said, though she declined to offer a percentage. “If our experience with print subscribers is any indication, now that these subscribers have converted to full payment, it is highly likely that they will become loyal users.” The Times said that about 800,000 home delivery customers had linked their accounts to NYTimes.com and now received access free. New orders for print subscriptions continued to increase, the company said, a rise it attributed to the free Web access that accompanies the subscriptions. Despite charging for online access — a move many media analysts thought would choke off Web traffic — NYTimes.com remained the most-visited newspaper site in the world.


In James Nares’s ‘STREET,’ Taming the Galloping City

Abstract: THERE are moments in history when everything interesting seems to take place indoors: clandestine meetings, documents being signed, objects and discoveries being made in private studios and ateliers. The past year, however, saw a different moment, in which plazas were occupied and protests and revolutions unfolded in the streets. Public space was activated — which might partially explain why James Nares’s “STREET,” at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, feels particularly relevant at this moment. Mr. Nares’s 61-minute video sits in a curious place, somewhere between still and moving images. It has the uncanny look of a 3-D slide show or some hybrid of photography and film; it also calls to mind the stereographic viewers that were popular in the 19th century. Shown in slow motion, the people Mr. Nares filmed on the streets of Manhattan look like cutouts placed into deep pockets of space. Mr. Nares filmed the video with a high-definition Phantom Flex camera (using an Angenieux Optimo 17-80 millimeter T2.2 zoom lens, for those who need to know). The edited footage is shown in slow motion, but the video employs another trick: the Phantom Flex is usually used in a stationary position to film fast-moving subjects, but Mr. Nares’s camera reversed this. It was positioned in the back of a sport utility vehicle that was driven through Manhattan at 30 to 40 miles per hour. Using the device of the familiar made unfamiliar — or the uncanny — ordinary street vignettes become noteworthy occasions. A man stares into the camera on 125th Street, seemingly communicating something to the viewer. People waiting on street corners seem assembled for an event, and individuals hailing cabs look as if they are raising their arms to speak or to testify. Lovers hug, and the slow-motion release of their embrace makes them look as if they are parting for the last time. A man beseeches a woman outside a church. Some people ignore the camera, but for those who acknowledge it, their gazes feel like coded bits of communication. Occasionally, you will see someone “famous” on the streets of New York, like the Naked Cowboy, a performer who plays the acoustic guitar in his underwear. But mostly the video is a reminder of how cities are filled with strangers — what modern artists like T. S. Eliot and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner identified as the strangely novel sensation of being alone in a crowd (although one wonders if ancient Romans ever felt the same way). Some of the most fascinating moments involve animals and insects. Watching a pigeon fly in 3-D slow motion takes you back to the photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge, who captured “animal locomotion.” Muybridge’s first subject, famously, was a galloping horse. Here, the movements of the pigeon become an updated supplement to that narrative. Similarly, a fly moving through the frame at a faster rate than the walking humans underscores how the animals and insects that live among us experience reality — time, gravity and motion — in an entirely different way. Unlike in photography, with its singular moment, people here are caught in the process of having an expression. And there are other effects: streetlights pulse at an unfamiliar rate; a cigarette butt tossed from a hand flies erratically through the air; falling rain looks, because of the slower speed and greater volume of 3-D, like snow. “STREET” feels like a silent movie, except it is accompanied by a jangling, sometimes droning acoustic guitar soundtrack composed and performed by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. The alternate tuning of the guitar, at once dissonant and unfamiliar, has all the markings of a Sonic Youth instrumental. Mr. Nares himself was in a downtown New York band in the 1970s and made Super 8 films that served as a kind of visual complement to the No Wave and punk scene of that moment, and there is the vague sense of overlap with the past and the present. But Mr. Nares’s film is an eon away from the rough street aesthetic of the ’70s. Instead, it feels — and particularly because it is exhibited in a museum — linked more to a whole art history of street art, which is like a genre of its own within the field. There is, of course, the bold graffiti made with spray-paint cans starting in the 1970s, often cited as America’s most widely known and globally circulated aesthetic. But the earliest photographs often focused on the street: an 1839 daguerreotype by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre featured a view of the Rue du Temple in Paris, and another French photographer, Eugène Atget, took thousands of photographs documenting spookily depopulated Parisian streets. In the 1960s, Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus offered oblique critiques of America during the Vietnam War era by focusing on people on the street, and more recent artists like Jeff Wall, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Beat Streuli and Paul Graham and videographers like Kim Sooja use a combination of documentation and manipulation to create contemporary visions of urban streets. Mr. Nares’s video isn’t explicitly political, and yet there are, at all times, distinct markers of how cities are divided along class, race and economic lines. Although he keeps the camera trained at street level — generally below the second floors of buildings — you can often tell where you are, based on a knowledge of where tourists go and where different populations live. New York looks a little more battered in Mr. Nares’s representation than in many recent street-art works that highlight the Bloomberg era of gentrification and development. “STREET” also makes you aware, however, of how technology can radically change perception. It is a new representation of the city in which the still and the moving images are blurred, in which everything is stationary but shifting, and in which nothing is happening and, at the same time, there is too much to comprehend.

Art
Hartford (Conn)
Nares James
Manhattan (NYC)
Wadsworth Atheneum


White House Tries to Regroup as Criticism Mounts Over Leak

Abstract: This article is by Clifford Kraus s , John M. Broder and Jackie Calmes . HOUSTON — The Obama administration scrambled to respond on Sunday after the failure of the latest effort to kill the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. But administration officials acknowledged the possibility that tens of thousands of barrels of oil might continue pouring out until August, when two relief wells are scheduled to be completed. “We are prepared for the worst,” said Carol M. Browner , President Obama ’s climate change and energy policy adviser. “We have been prepared from the beginning.” Even as the White House sought to demonstrate that it was taking a more direct hand in trying to solve the problem, senior officials acknowledged that the new technique BP will use to try to cap the leak — severing the riser pipe and placing a containment dome over the cut riser — could temporarily result in as much as 20 percent more oil flowing into the water during the three days to a week before the new device could be in place. “This is obviously a difficult situation,” Ms. Browner said on NBC ’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “but it’s important for people to understand that from the beginning, the government has been in charge.” “We have been directing BP to take important steps,” including the drilling of a second relief well, she added. The White House said that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar would make his eighth trip to the region and that the number of government and contract employees sent to work in areas affected by the spill would be tripled. But despite the White House efforts, the criticism also intensified. Colin L. Powell , who served as secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , told ABC’s “This Week” that the administration must move in quickly with “decisive force and demonstrate that it’s doing everything that it can do.” Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana , appearing on ABC's “This Week,” again criticized the administration’s efforts, saying: “We need our federal government exactly for this kind of crisis. I think there could have been a greater sense of urgency.” The administration has left to BP most decisions about how to move forward with efforts to contain the leak. But Ms. Browner made a point of saying that the administration, led by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu , had told BP that the company should stop the top kill. Government officials thought it was too dangerous to keep pumping drilling mud into the well because they worried it was putting too much pressure on it. BP announced Saturday evening that it was ending that effort. BP engineers are now working on several containment plans, with the first being implemented over the next few days. “According to BP, the riser cutting will likely start Monday or Tuesday,” the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs , said in a statement on Sunday. Using submarine robots, technicians intend to sever the riser pipe on top of the blowout preventer, the five-story-high stack of pipes above the well that failed to shut off the leak when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. A funnel-like containment device will be fitted above the cut riser to draw the escaping oil through tubing attached to a drilling ship. But BP officials acknowledged that there was no certainty that this attempt would work. Robert Dudley, BP’s managing director, appearing on “This Week,” also said that if it did work, some oil would still seep out until relief wells provided “an end point” in August. The failure of the most recent effort — known as a top kill, which BP officials expressed great optimism about before trying it — has underlined the gaps in knowledge and science about the spill and its potential remedies. Ever since the explosion and the resulting leak, estimates of how much oil is escaping have differed by thousands of barrels a day. Both government and BP officials said on Sunday that they had no accurate idea of how much oil was spilling into the gulf. “We honestly do not know,” Mr. Dudley said on “Meet the Press.” “We’ve always found this a difficult oil to measure because of the huge amounts of gas in the oil.” “The one thing about this method that we’re about to go into — it will and should measure the majority of the flow,” he said. Mr. Dudley said that the original estimates by the government and BP officials of 5,000 barrels a day were based on satellite pictures and that the current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels was “issued without an actual flow measurement.” If the leak is not contained or slowed and continues at the higher estimated flow rate of 19,000 barrels a day until Aug. 20 — four months after the accident — it could amount to close to 2.3 million barrels spilled into the gulf. After more than a month of diagnostic tests and the pumping of tens of thousands of barrels of drilling fluids — and everything from golf balls to shards of rubber — into the broken blowout preventer, engineers are still debating about what they think may be the inner contours of the five-story stack of pipes and how to best contain its leaking gashes. In the end, all the mysteries of what went wrong and caused one of the greatest environmental calamities of history may not be known until the well is finally killed and the ill-fated blowout preventer is brought up from the bottom of the sea. The final plugging of the well will have to wait until August, when the two relief wells are scheduled be completed. Those wells are being drilled diagonally to intersect with the runaway well and inject it with heavy liquids and cement. Work could be slowed by storms in what is expected to be an active summer hurricane season. Officials from BP and the administration announced on Saturday that the top kill was a failure and had been abandoned, and that engineers were once again trying to solve the problem with a containment cap. A similar operation was tried nearly four weeks ago, but it failed because a slush of icy water and gas, known as hydrates, filled the large containment device, blocking the escaping oil from entering it. This time, engineers will pump hot sea water around the new, smaller device to keep hydrates from forming, and there will be far less space between the cap and the well for any hydrates that do form to flow in. BP officials expressed optimism on Sunday about the new operation, though one technician working on the project warned that there were concerns that hydrates could again stymie the containment effort. The technician and outside experts also warned that by cutting the riser, the engineers may increase the flow of escaping oil. Donald Van Nieuwenhuise, director of petroleum geoscience programs at the University of Houston , said that he thought BP’s next plan had a good chance of succeeding, but that there was also a risk of increasing the flow of escaping oil by 10 percent. “Then it just makes the situation worse for longer,” he said, unless the containment cap succeeds in collecting a substantial amount of oil.

BP
Offshore drilling
Oil and Gasoline
Environment
Carol M Browner
Gulf of Mexico
Transocean
Accidents and Safety


Another Throwback Night for the Spurs

Abstract: If you are feeling a bit of neck strain trying to follow the trajectory of the N.B.A. finals, you are in good company. As the series took its latest superball-worthy bounce to a 3-2 San Antonio Spurs lead Sunday night, the league should consider running a Groupon for chiropractor visits so we do not come down with a nationwide case of vertigo. For those who decided to take a nap earlier in the series, let’s recap how it has gone: Game 1: Old, venerable champion Spurs will not go away, and gosh, Tony Parker is still great. Game 2: Heat and LeBron James have too much talent; spent, creaky Spurs have no chance. Game 3: Old, venerable champion Spurs will not go away, and gosh, isn’t Tim Duncan still great? Game 4: Heat and LeBron James have too much talent; spent, creaky Spurs have no chance. Game 5: Old, venerable champion Spurs will not go away, and gosh, Manu Ginobili still rocks! O.K., that does not quite cover everything because someone still needs to explain this whole Danny Green thing , but let’s not quibble with the lovely symmetry here. Instead, just hop on the Ginobili party bus and prepare to transfer back to the Heatmobile on Tuesday. Yes, Game 5 produced the grand reappearance of Ginobili, who dialed back the clock for old time’s sake and played like a superstar again, Ian Thomsen writes on SI.com . Yes, this truly did come out of nowhere, as Adrian Wojnarowski writes on Yahoo.com , with Ginobili’s star having spent much of this season fading rapidly. But the grumpy genius that is Gregg Popovich played a hunch and voilà, we have another throwback hero, Ken Berger writes on CBSSports.com . Conversely, the Heat took their turn playing the clueless young(er) guns, baring all their flaws at the worst possible time, writes Dave Hyde in The Sun-Sentinel , and now return home for a nervous walk on the brink in Game 6, Greg Cote writes in The Miami Herald , while everyone prepares to again indict James for lack of heart/leadership/ability to solve Syria’s crisis/whatever. If the Spurs-Heat series has seemed to follow a script, it has nothing on the finish of the United States Open Sunday. Because how else can you explain Phil Mickelson finishing second in an Open — again — after a series of awesome shots everybody thought was going to pull him through, followed by gut-wrenching misfires that derailed his hopes again. No, this was not 1999 at Pinehurst, 2002 at Bethpage, 2004 at Shinnecock Hills, 2006 at Winged Foot or 2009 at Bethpage. This was 2013 at Merion Golf Club, where another try at his Open dream fell by the wayside, Gene Wojciechowski writes on ESPN.com . Sure, it was heartwarming enough to end up with another truly likable champion in Justin Rose, as Brian Murphy writes on Yahoo.com , but it was hard not to keep focusing on Mickelson’s derailment because there is always some heart-rending story line involved, Sam Donnellon writes in The Philadelphia Daily News . Not that everyone was feeling terribly sorry for Mickelson. Steve Stricker has not won a major in 59 career tries, his hopes coming undone at this one on a disastrous second hole , and Luke Donald is going to have a hard time breaking through if he keeps hitting tee shots like the one that whacked a volunteer in the head Sunday. Hey, at least a little known PGA Tour rookie got to celebrate a great moment on his way to finishing 19 over par: the first hole-in-one at an Open at Merion, which he celebrated in awesome fashion . The rest of the sports news lacks that jump-for-joy quality, particularly if you are the Oakland A’s or the Seattle Mariners, forced to share the showers in the Raiders’ dressing room at the Oakland Coliseum because of raw sewage in both clubhouses . There was a somewhat similar stench coming from the bizarre exchange between the New England Patriots’ owner, Robert K. Kraft, and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, over whether Putin stole a Super Bowl ring from Kraft. Hint: the smell is mostly wafting from Kraft’s side of this one. And there is enough reason to turn up your nose at the former N.F.L. receiver Chad Johnson’s landing in jail on domestic violence charges, where he got a jailhouse visit from none other than Terrell Owens . Unlike the pattern of the N.B.A. finals, you probably did not see that one coming. Follow Leading Off on Twitter: twitter.com/zinsernyt

Basketball
Manu Ginobili
Gregg Popovich
Danny Green
US Open Golf
Justin Rose
Phil Mickelson
Terrell Owens
Vladimir Putin
Robert K Kraft


Selig Echoes Owner and Urges Matthews to Clear the Air

Abstract: TEMPE, Ariz., March 10 — The Los Angeles Angels closed their clubhouse at 10 a.m. on Saturday so the players could watch a videotape that was produced by Major League Baseball and is required viewing for each team. The subject of the 15-minute tape was baseball’s drug program. The Angels said it was merely coincidental that the tape was shown on the same day that Commissioner Bud Selig visited the camp and met with Arte Moreno, the club’s owner. Moreno has been disappointed with center fielder Gary Matthews Jr.’s silence regarding his reported link to an investigation into a drug distribution ring. After Selig and Moreno met for about 30 minutes, Selig said he supported Moreno’s desire to have Matthews explain himself and get at least some resolution to the matter. Since it was reported on Feb. 27 that Matthews was a client of an online pharmacy and had been sent human growth hormone, he has not discussed the case. Moreno’s feelings about the matter may have led the usually cautious Selig to express himself forcefully, too. “A statement would be very, very helpful, to say the least,” Selig said. Earlier, Selig compared Matthews to himself and to others who have been in sensitive situations by implying that Matthews had a duty to speak. “From an institutional standpoint, when we have something like this that comes up, I can’t hide,” Selig said. “Nor should I, nor should anyone else.” But Matthews does not seem ready to say anything. He hired Robert Shapiro, a criminal attorney who is best known for representing O. J. Simpson. Matthews consented to a brief interview Saturday before the Angels opposed the Seattle Mariners, as long as the questions were about baseball. Matthews said he was attracted to signing a five-year, $50 million deal with the Angels as a free agent because they always impressed him when he was playing with the Texas Rangers. Since Matthews was signed to provide reliable defense in center field, he said that “just doing what I do” should boost the Angels. For a few minutes, Matthews stood near his corner locker and was affable and chatty. That changed when he was asked if he had been able to concentrate fully on baseball this spring. “That,” Matthews said, “is not a baseball question.” Selig said that he had no interest in speaking to Matthews because he believed the Angels could handle the matter. Moreno, who took a one-day hiatus from discussing Matthews, has said that he wants the situation resolved before the season opener on April 2. Without offering any evidence as to how or why Matthews’s involvement in the affair could be settled by then, Selig called Moreno’s deadline “very fair.” The Angels are investigating if there are grounds to void Matthews’s contract, or if the team can discipline him. Selig refused to say if baseball would attempt to punish Matthews. Any of those actions would most likely be challenged by the players union. “This is an ongoing investigation,” Selig said. “I don’t want to do anything that gets in the way of it.” For Selig, who has a home in nearby Scottsdale, the chance to enjoy a picturesque afternoon at Temple Diablo Stadium would have been enough to draw him here. But, in this instance, Selig was acting as a commissioner, not a fan, in meeting with and supporting Moreno. When Selig was home last weekend, he attended a San Francisco Giants game and fielded questions about Barry Bonds. Bonds needs 22 homers to break Hank Aaron’s home run record of 755, but there have been suspicions that he has used performance-enhancing substances. Eventually, Selig may go see the Texas Rangers, where Sammy Sosa, who has been suspected of artificially boosting his home run totals, is making a comeback. While Selig is choosy with his words, he was feisty in discussing Matthews and what was hovering over the Angels and all of baseball. “I hate doing this,” Selig said. “We got so many good things to talk about. So what are we doing? We’re spending 15 minutes talking about this. On the other hand, though, there’s no repression going on here. We’re not making believe this isn’t happening.” Neither are the Angels. Manager Mike Scioscia said the Angels have not yet been distracted on the field. But if the concerns about Matthews linger with no comment from him, Scioscia said the silence itself could become a distraction. “I know that, on Gary’s end of it, he’s got something to say,” Scioscia said. “And we just hope that he’ll be able to say it soon.” After The San Francisco Chronicle reported in December 2004 that Jason Giambi testified before a federal grand jury about using steroids, he apologized to the Yankees and the fans. Moreno has mentioned Giambi’s action in citing what Matthews could do. But Giambi’s comments came two months after the testimony was first leaked. Matthews has been mum for less than two weeks. As a reporter started to ask Selig if it made sense for Matthews to offer an apology as opaque as Giambi’s, Selig interceded and said, “Why don’t we let him make the statement?”

Baseball
Matthews Gary Jr
Selig Bud
Human Growth Hormone
Los Angeles Angels
Major League Baseball