Obama’s Approval Rating Matches Two-Year Low, Poll Shows

Abstract: President Obama’s standing with Americans has slumped significantly, as the public remains skeptical about his health care law and unsure about the economy, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Forty-nine percent of the public disapproves of Mr. Obama’s job performance, and 43 percent approves, matching his worst measures in two years, the poll shows. Only 30 percent of Americans believe he cares “a lot” about their needs and problems, a figure that has fallen steadily from early in his first term. Across the board — on foreign policy, including Syria and Iran; the economy; health care; and the federal budget deficit — more Americans disapprove than approve of the president’s performance. Mr. Obama is being hurt by a public that has grown sour in the face of what people see as a stagnating economy: two-thirds of Americans say the country is on the wrong track, the highest number since early in 2012. And with Washington locked in yet another contentious debate over government spending, people are showing signs of exasperation about their elected leaders’ inability to reconcile their differences. Nearly 9 in 10 Americans say they are frustrated about the prospect of the federal government shutting down. With the insurance marketplaces that are part of Mr. Obama’s health overhaul set to go into place next month, approval of the signature domestic initiative of his administration stands at only 39 percent, and it is viewed favorably by just over one in three independents. “I voted for the guy, and I’m just very disappointed in the way things are turning out,” said Richard Ray, 52, an independent from Mitchell, Ind, in a follow-up interview. “I don’t like the health care plan. I’m seeing that it’s costing some of the people I’m working with to get two jobs now. Their hours are being cut back because companies don’t want to be responsible for health care.” Yet even as his health law remains unpopular, Mr. Obama has a majority of the public on his side when it comes to the Republican effort to stop funding for the program. As some Congressional Republicans try to link spending on the health law to the Oct. 1 deadline for keeping the federal government running, 56 percent of Americans say they prefer that Congress uphold what has become known as Obamacare and make it work as well as possible. Just 38 percent of the public wants Congress to stop the law by cutting off funding. And even among those Americans who would prefer to stop funding the program rather than improve it, there is a divide over whether it is worth risking a government shutdown to do so. Nearly half the independents who support cutting off money for the program say it is not worth that risk. On the next fiscal deadline looming in Washington, for raising the federal debt ceiling, over half of Americans believe that doing so should be tied to government spending reductions. But nearly 7 in 10 say they would prefer an agreement they do not fully support rather than for the country to default on its debt. And nearly two-thirds of Americans say that they or members of their immediate family would be affected by government services or programs losing funding because of a failure to raise the ceiling. Image President Obama is being hurt by a public that has grown sour in the face of what it sees as a stagnating economy: two-thirds of Americans say the country is on the wrong track. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Mr. Obama has been adamant that he will not link any other budget issues to the debt ceiling increase, while Congressional Republicans are demanding he compromise with them to raise the ceiling. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said Wednesday in a letter to Speaker John A. Boehner that the debt limit would be reached “no later than” Oct. 17. While Mr. Obama’s ratings sag, he can take some solace in the standing of the Republican opposition in Congress. Nearly three-quarters of Americans disapprove of Congressional Republicans. More of the public supports Mr. Obama than Republicans to make the right decisions on the deficit, health care and the economy. “I would blame the Republicans for a shutdown,” said Barbara Nemeth, 70, an independent in Port Richey, Fla. “It’s not their job to stalemate the government. It’s their job to work cooperatively and compromise. That has been traditionally the American democratic way. They are acting like a bunch of overgrown, spoiled brats.” But there is little doubt that the president is being hurt by questions over his health overhaul. Only one in five Americans say they expect to be positively affected by the law. The survey also suggests that Republicans could pay a political price going into next year’s midterm elections if there is a government shutdown. Eight in 10 Americans find it unacceptable for either the president or members of Congress to shut down the government to achieve their goals during budget negotiations. And while half the country sees Mr. Obama as working with Republicans, only one in four Americans see Congressional Republicans as working with the president to get things done. A plurality say they would blame Congressional Republicans if a shutdown occurred. “It’s bad on both sides,” said Gerald Muller, 86, an independent from Austin, Tex. “President Obama is not checking with experts. He’s a man who has been working alone and he’s isolated himself and now he has no one to turn to, or he won’t turn to them. He has a lot of learning to do, in my opinion. And the Republicans have their own agenda. They are kind of stubborn and don’t seem willing to compromise.” A particularly worrisome sign for Republicans seeking election next year: Even those Americans who live in Republican-held Congressional districts are split about whether the health care law should be upheld and improved, or defunded. “I feel that once the law is passed it should not be revisited unless there is a major uproar by the entire population,” said Jack Burns, 78, an independent who lives in a Republican district in Houston. “I did not see that. Disagreement seemed localized to specific political views and to individual groups that were affected, such as the A.M.A.” Mr. Obama, however, is viewed more negatively than President Bill Clinton was the last time there was a government shutdown, in the fall of 1995. In October of that year, shortly before the federal government partly closed down, 38 percent of Americans disapproved of Mr. Clinton’s job performance — 11 points less than those who disapprove of Mr. Obama now. The national poll was conducted Sept. 19 to 23 by telephone among 1,014 adults with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Barack Obama
Polls
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
US National Debt
US Economy
US Foreign Policy
US Politics


Turkey Cracks Down on Insults to President Erdogan

Abstract: ISTANBUL — Since August 2014, 1,845 criminal cases have been opened against Turks for insulting their president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan , a crime that carries a penalty of up to four years in prison. Among the offenders are journalists, authors, politicians, a famous soccer star, even schoolchildren. That number quantified a growing trend of cracking down on dissent, and was revealed this week by the country’s justice minister, Bekir Bozdag, in response to a question in Parliament. “I don’t think you could read this without blushing,” Mr. Bozdag said late Tuesday, defending the myriad alleged insults subject to judicial scrutiny. “It is not an expression of opinion, it is all swears and insults.” “Nobody should have the freedom to swear,” he added. The crush of insult crimes that have inundated Turkey ’s justice system reflect the president’s authoritarian leadership style, critics say, and his determination to not let any insult, perceived or otherwise, go unanswered. They have also created bizarre legal scenarios. In one of the oddest cases, a doctor lost his job for creating a meme that compared Mr. Erdogan to Gollum, the creature from “The Lord of the Rings,” and a judge ordered expert testimony to determine whether Gollum was good or evil . Hakan Sukur, a beloved soccer star turned politician who was once a member of Mr. Erdogan’s party, has been targeted for posts on Twitter. A 13-year-old boy was charged after posting to Facebook, and a university student was pulled from class because of his social media posts. And a husband presented a recording of his wife, accused of insulting Mr. Erdogan while she watched him on television, to a prosecutor. The insult cases have rarely resulted in jail sentences, although some defendants have received suspended sentences. And many have wound up in pretrial detention. Still, the pursuit of such cases has had a chilling effect on speech, activists and lawyers say. “This is intimidation,” said Ozgur Urfa, a lawyer who has defended more than two dozen people in insult cases. Many cases revolve around slogans chanted at demonstrations, Mr. Urfa said in an interview on Wednesday. He said the most common protest chant that has been subject to prosecution is: “Thief! Murderer! Erdogan!” Kerem Altiparmak of the Ankara University Human Rights Center said that with the prosecution of the insult crimes, the authorities are able to squelch unflattering remarks about the president and general politics. “It creates a chilling effect, and I believe they are very successful at that,” he said. Turkey has never had a wide regard for freedom of expression, and in previous times the judicial system aggressively targeted those who insulted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founding father, as well as those insulting “Turkishness” or the Turkish nation. It has also long had a law on its books making it a crime to insult the president, although it was rarely enforced before Mr. Erdogan became president in 2014. The insult cases, critics say, have become a prominent element of a full-scale assault on freedom of expression. Dozens of journalists have lost their jobs because of coverage considered critical of the government. The state took control of an opposition television channel and newspaper, and the country’s antiterrorism laws have been used to silence critical voices. In one high-profile case, two editors for the newspaper Cumhuriyet — Can Dundar and Erdem Gul — are facing the possibility of life in prison on espionage charges for reports that Turkey’s intelligence service had provided weapons to rebels in Syria. In a rare victory for freedom of expression and judicial independence, Turkey’s highest court recently ordered the release of the two editors from pretrial detention, saying their rights had been violated. The men were freed on Friday. Still, the case will move forward, and Mr. Erdogan, in typically combative style, said, “I don’t obey or respect the decision.”

Turkey
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Freedom of speech
Censorship
News media,journalism
Hakan Sukur
Human Rights


In Breakfast Fight, Taco Bell Presents the ‘Biscuit Taco’

Abstract: Taco Bell is introducing a “biscuit taco” this week and dropping “waffle taco” from its breakfast menu in a continuing assault on the dominant player in the mornings, McDonald’s. In a new ad campaign, Taco Bell plans to paint Egg McMuffins as routine food. Despite the attention the waffle taco initially generated, soon after it appeared, the company’s chief marketing officer, Chris Brandt, said, “Some of the things on our menu might run out of gas.” Taco Bell said the new offering was “a warm, fluffy, buttery biscuit, folded in the shape of a taco.”

Taco Bell
advertising,marketing
McDonald's
Taco
Waffle
Restaurant


Greece Calls for More E.U. Solidarity Over Debt Crisis

Abstract: ATHENS — Greece’s prime minister called on Friday for more solidarity from the European Union over the country’s debt crisis and announced plans to visit Germany, whose backing would be vital for any aid from the bloc. Speaking to parliament, Prime Minister George Papandreou said the “worst fears” about Greece’s economy had been confirmed after an E.U. mission this week said Athens would miss its deficit-reduction targets unless it carried out more spending cuts. Greece is seeking to restore investor confidence in its economic statistics and reassure buyers of its debt after revealing that the previous government had understated its budget deficit by half. The E.U. has offered political support but so far no bailout. “We must do whatever we can now to address the immediate dangers today,” Mr. Papandreou told parliament. “Tomorrow it will be too late, and the consequences will be much more dire. “We ask the E.U. for its solidarity and they ask us to meet our obligations.” He said Greece would meet its obligations, and in return “we will demand European community solidarity and I believe we will get it.” Investors appeared to welcome the comments, pushing down the spreads between Greek bond yields and German 10-year benchmark issues — a key measure of market faith in Greece’s finances — to below 340 basis points, from 365 basis points on Thursday. Greek stocks rose percent and traders granted the euro a brief reprieve after knocking it to a one-year low versus the Japanese yen a day earlier. Still, many in the market expect the single currency to remain under pressure. The euro fell again against the dollar later Friday after preliminary data showed the U.S. economy grew 5.9 percent in the fourth quarter, slightly higher than the government’s first estimate. Mr. Papandreou’s office said the prime minister would visit Berlin on March 5 after an invitation from Chancellor Angela Merkel, but gave no other details. Ms. Merkel’s government has resisted appeals to promise Greece aid. Opinion polls show a majority of Germans oppose a bailout but many economic analysts believe Europe’s largest economy will step in if it believes the stability of the euro is threatened. The perceived lack of support from Germany and hostile German media coverage have upset Greeks and stirred old grievances between Greeks and Germans. In parliament, Mr. Papandreou rejected calls from opposition politicians for him to renew demands for Germany to pay more World War II reparations, stemming from the occupation of Greece. Mr. Papandreou said the issue of reparations was not settled in Greece’s eyes, but that he would not bring it up now. Some of Greece’s E.U. partners fear market volatility caused by Greece will spread to other countries that use the euro and have big deficits to cover, such as Portugal and Spain. Investors who must decide whether to buy more Greek debt when it issues a new 10-year bond in the next few weeks are becoming increasingly anxious. “The prime worry is ‘Will Greeks have access to the sovereign debt market at any tolerable rate?’ and that’s what we remained concerned about,” Chris Pryce, director of sovereign ratings at Fitch told Reuters Insider television. The chief executive of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, met with Mr. Papandreou and Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou on Friday, but a Greek spokesman denied reports the German banking giant was considering buying €15 billion in Greek bonds. Big German lenders including Deutsche Postbank, Eurohypo and Hypo Real Estate have said they would not take on more Greek debt, which could make it harder for Greece to sell bonds to resolve its crisis. Greece shocked its E.U. peers and markets when it revealed after a parliamentary election in October that its deficit would be 12.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, four times the E.U. limit. It has drawn up austerity measures, including tough wage and tax measures and pension reforms, to cut the deficit by 4 percentage points this year, and to get under the 3 percent of G.D.P. limit by 2012. Its plans have caused protests that crippled transport and public services on Wednesday. But on Friday, Mr. Papandreou said: “Past policies make it necessary to proceed to brutal changes.” He could be preparing the ground for a new set of fiscal measures before a mid-March E.U. deadline to show results in cutting the deficit. The E.U. Monetary and Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn will visit Athens this coming week and is due to receive a report from E.U. inspectors who just visited Greece with experts from the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. A Greek finance ministry official said the inspectors anticipated Greece could cut the deficit by about two percentage points, far short of the 4 percentage point target this year. This would mean additional measures aimed at savings of about €4.8 billion. The Greek economy contracted 2 percent last year in its first recession in 16 years.

Greece
Germany
Economic Conditions and Trends
Government Bonds
Budgets and Budgeting


A Review of Lula Trattoria, in Mineola

Abstract: CAN a restaurant earn a rating of Don’t Miss if the reviewer had a bad experience on the first of two visits? It can if I am the reviewer and the restaurant is as good as Lula Trattoria in Mineola. During that first dinner at Lula, after we had enjoyed our appetizers, the dishes suddenly stopped coming. Where were our entrees? Diners at tables nearby finished their meals, paid their bills and departed while we waited. After 40 minutes, we finally flagged a passing hostess (who, we later found out, was Lula Dalipi, an owner) and asked for an explanation. Our waiter had failed to tell the kitchen to fire our entrees. Ms. Dalipi apologized many times, immediately brought us drink refills and offered free desserts. “Tell me what else I can do to make you happy,” she said. (I’m sure I, as a reviewer, was anonymous.) The restaurant handled a bad situation well, but the main reason for its high rating is the wonderful food served here. A secondary but still very important reason is the affordable prices. This is a small-plate restaurant, and dishes range from $3 for a meatball slider to $13 for steak pizzaiola. (A sea bass special, however, was $18.) The restaurant, which opened in early November, is owned by Ms. Dalipi, the managing partner, along with several investors who are experienced restaurateurs. Ms. Dalipi grew up in the restaurant business; her parents owned a coffee shop in Roslyn when she was a child. Her last restaurant post was as assistant manager at Norma’s at Le Parker Meridien Hotel in Manhattan. Lula Trattoria is a large storefront in a strip shopping center on Jericho Turnpike. The space is divided into an attractive bar and three dining areas separated by banquettes and a stone fireplace. Floors are wood; tables are bare; chairs are beige leather. In the center of each table is a pizza stand with a stack of plates underneath for sharing. As soon as diners are seated, a steaming-hot round of bread is placed on that stand. The bread is marvelous: chewy, crusty and glistening, with a slick of herbed olive oil and a touch of sea salt. Though it sounds like too much of a good thing, one of the brick oven pizzette (small pizzas) is a perfect follow-up. We loved the crisp-crusted rectangular pie (cut into eight squares) that we tried. Our choice of sausage with cherry peppers, roasted tomatoes and taleggio cheese was a good one. The master in the kitchen creating these delicious dishes is Thomas Gloster. His last post, from 2010 to 2012, was as executive chef at Rothmann’s Steakhouse in East Norwich. We liked everything we sampled, but the dishes we absolutely loved were both pastas: bucatini (fat spaghetti) in a vibrant amatriciana sauce of tomatoes, sautéed onions and pancetta, and gnocchi Bolognese. The latter were light, fluffy, melt-in-the-mouth morsels. From the appetizer possibilities, standouts include a potato-leek soup garnished with duck prosciutto, grilled octopus atop shaved fennel, a pear salad with julienned pears, mixed greens, crushed walnuts, goat cheese and a pear vinaigrette; and a great bruschetta topped not only with warm baby tomatoes, but also with creamy burrata cheese. Entree hits included the sea bass special, which had been poached then grilled and served atop tomatoes and black olives with asparagus on the plate; sautéed lamb sausage, a spicy treat with white beans and Swiss chard; and an equally tasty nodini di pollo, knots of chicken breast meat sautéed with hot and mild peppers. Desserts are house made, and all delighted. Our two favorites were a silken panna cotta drizzled with a Marsala reduction, and a creamy tiramisù that was the best I have ever had. Lula Trattoria is a spirited place that can be loud on weekends. Still, with food and prices like these, the noise can be overlooked. This is the kind of restaurant you can’t wait to tell your friends about. Lula Trattoria 348 East Jericho Turnpike Mineola (516) 747-5100 lulatrattoria.com DON’T MISS THE SPACE Large, vibrant trattoria with seating for 100 in the restaurant and 20 in the bar. Complete wheelchair access. THE CROWD Lots of small groups, including some children. The staff was a little shaky but very friendly. THE BAR The attractive bar has 12 stools. Full bar service. List of 44 wines by the bottle ($27 to $120) and 13 by the glass ($8 to $12). THE BILL Small plates, $3 to $18 (a special). There is a children’s menu with five entrees ($7.50 each, including ice cream). American Express, MasterCard, Visa and Discover accepted. WHAT WE LIKED Bread, sausage pizza, bucatini amatriciana, gnocchi Bolognese, potato-leek soup, pear salad, grilled octopus, bruschetta, sea bass special, lamb sausage, nodini di pollo, panna cotta, tiramisù. IF YOU GO Open Sunday, 4 to 9 p.m.; Monday to Thursday, 4 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 4 to 11 p.m. Reservations are a must. Parking is in a small lot. RATINGS Don’t Miss, Worth It, O.K., Don’t Bother.

Restaurants
Mineola (NY)
Lula Trattoria (Mineola NY Restaurant)
Long Island (NY)
Lula Trattoria (Mineola NY)


Growth in Options Trading Helps Brokers but Not Small Investors

Abstract: Some of the brokerage firms that helped pique American’s interest in stocks are now luring them into something much riskier: stock options. As the stock market soars to new heights, E*Trade, Ameritrade and Charles Schwab are advertising the potential rewards of options, which give buyers the right to buy or sell stocks at predetermined prices in the future. Options, like their cousins, futures, have traditionally been the domain of Wall Street traders. But the brokerage firms say futures and options can be profitable for ordinary investors, too — a claim that, while true, does not square with many investors’ actual experience. “We’re looking for newcomers who want to get serious,” Schwab says on its Web site. While relatively little research has been done on the success ordinary investors have in trading options, analysis done for The New York Times by SigFig, a company that tracks 200,000 retail investors, showed that people who traded options last year received only about one-fifth the returns of people who did not trade options: 1.1 percent compared to 5.1 percent. The brokerage firms do not release data about customers’ trading, and they are generally hesitant to detail the expansion of this business. But it has clearly been an area of growth. An analysis of scattered data from company filings and presentations indicates that derivatives trading, which includes options, has risen at all the major firms since the financial crisis of 2008, which left many Americans with big losses in their investment portfolios. At Ameritrade, which has been the most aggressive, derivatives trades accounted for about 40 percent of all customer trades last year — more than double what it was just five years ago. A vast majority of those trades were in options. The growth has been a big help for the online brokers at a time when stock trading has fallen. The commission on the average options trade is more than twice that on the average stock trade, according to TD Ameritrade’s former treasurer, Michael Chochon. “We’re looking to continue to drive penetration in” options and futures, Ameritrade’s chief financial officer, Bill Gerber, said in a call with analysts in February. But the results have been less of a clear victory for customers. Renaud Piccinini, who monitored customer accounts for Ameritrade before he left the company last year, said options could be used wisely in some circumstances. But he said he saw investors taking up options trading and “blowing up” on an almost daily basis. He said Ameritrade carefully tracked the risks its customers were taking but did not warn them until they were close to losing it all, if then. “We knew that they were taking risky bets,” Mr. Piccinini said. “We knew inside the firm, but there was resistance to sharing that with the customer.” Mr. Piccinini is now working with Mr. Chochon and two other former TD Ameritrade employees to create a program for retail investors, known as Prairie Smarts, that details the risks a prospective trade adds to a portfolio. Steve Quirk, who oversees active traders at TD Ameritrade, said the former employees were criticizing the company to generate interest for their firm. Mr. Quirk said TD Ameritrade gave investors a wide array of tools to gauge their risks, as well as significant education, before and after they started trading options. Image From left, Renaud Piccinini, Chris Nagy and Michael Chochon of Prairie Smarts. Mr. Piccinini says options trading can be particularly risky for newcomers. Credit Brian Lehmann for The New York Times “We hear from many, many clients that the more they understand about all the products that are available, the better equipped they are to deal with the market in any scenario,” Mr. Quirk said. The companies began their big push into this area after the financial crisis, with the purchase of smaller brokerage houses that focused on options. At E*Trade, filings indicate that options trades rose to 24 percent of all trades last year from about 17 percent in 2010, and the total number of trades also increased. Customers at all the brokers must take a number of steps before they are permitted to begin trading, and they must attest that they have read an official 186-page document laying out the risks of options. But almost anyone can go through this process. And the brokers have broadened the pool of potential customers by allowing investors to trade options in their retirement accounts. E*Trade’s recent marketing material said: “Every investor should learn how options trading could benefit them.” Options generally represent the right to buy or sell 100 shares of a stock at some point in the future — allowing for a small initial investment that can lead to either big gains or big losses. Investors have bought in for a variety of reasons. Some believe they will be able to use the leveraged nature of options to supercharge their returns and make up for losses suffered during the financial crisis. Others see options as a way to insure their stock portfolios against future losses. But academic research suggests that on the whole, options traders do worse than stock traders, who, in turn, have been shown in many studies to underperform buy-and-hold investors. The most comprehensive study looked at 68,000 Dutch retail investors. It found that from 2000 to 2006, retail options traders lost an average of 4.5 percent each month, while people who just traded stocks lost 1.6 percent. Daniel Dorn, a professor at Drexel University who has studied options investors, said studies of American options traders had not found them to be significantly more successful than the Dutch traders. “You can very clearly say in the aggregate, this doesn’t help individual investor portfolios,” he said. The brokers said they guarded against customer losses by allowing only wealthier and more experienced customers to proceed to more complex trading strategies. Joe Vietri, the chief executive of Charles Schwab’s options subsidiary, OptionsXpress, said his company was careful about monitoring clients because Schwab wanted to keep them as customers for other parts of the business. TD Ameritrade gives customer some tools that allow them to analyze the risks of individual trades. But Mr. Chochon, the former Ameritrade treasurer, said this was not enough to stop many customers from burning through the money in their accounts. This put a strain on the company, he said, because it necessitated expensive marketing campaigns to capture new clients. “The churn of those clients was really expensive because you had to bring in a new customer,” he said. Mr. Quirk, at Ameritrade, denied that the company had trouble with clients burning out.

Futures and Options
Charles Schwab
E TRADE Financial
TD Ameritrade Holding
Stockbroker
Personal finance
Stocks,Bonds


Mets Old and New Kick Off Season

Abstract: It was a shade past 9:15 a.m. yesterday when the Mets newcomer Billy Wagner, joining three teammates at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell, showed that he already felt at home in New York. A wad of chewing tobacco was tucked in his lower lip, and he toted a plastic bottle to collect the juice. So began a day in which current and former Mets seemed to take over Manhattan. The 2006 version went from Wall Street to the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue while kicking off the winter caravan, an annual event the Mets use to drum up interest for the coming season. Then, last night, many members of the 1986 world championship team gathered at the Midtown Marriott Marquis for the annual dinner of the Baseball Assistance Team, which gives money to indigent players. When the caravan began in earnest at 1 p.m. at the library, 21 players filed onto a stage. They wore white jerseys on top of their dress clothes, but they probably should have worn "Hello, My Name Is " stickers. Of the 21, 10 were new acquisitions, and John Maine, obtained Saturday from Baltimore with Jorge Julio in exchange for Kris Benson, is so new that his jersey did not have his name or a number on it. "It was like 'Wow,' " said right fielder Xavier Nady, as he reflected on the torrent of trades, which began when he was acquired from San Diego in November. "It seemed like they just kept coming and coming." The tall, lanky player was Chad Bradford. The youthful-looking, blond player was Steve Schmoll, whose sidearm style is similar to Bradford's. The muscular 47-year-old in the 25-year-old's body? That was Julio Franco. The most notable absentee was Pedro Martínez, who has begun throwing in the Dominican Republic while recovering from an injured right foot. Otherwise, all of the principal Mets attended. Their presence, in a way, was merely a tease. They showed up and chatted, but it is still too early to develop the subplots that promise to unfold once pitchers and catchers report to Port St. Lucie, Fla., in three weeks. Still, a portrait is emerging. Among other things, this is a Mets team that, when it heads north to begin the season, will have a 25-man roster in which more than half the players are likely to be Hispanics, reflecting an overall trend in baseball and the success of General Manager Omar Minaya in bringing Hispanics to the Mets. Two of Minaya's top acquisitions -- the longtime friends Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran -- stood together for the first time as Mets yesterday, posing side by side in a team portrait taken outside the library. As 2006 progresses, it will be interesting to see if the older and more vocal Delgado, in his first season in New York, will help provide a comfort zone for the quieter Beltran, who struggled in 2005. It will be interesting to see if Aaron Heilman, a revelation in the bullpen last season, gets his wish to start in 2006. With it becoming increasingly unlikely that the Mets will make a play for the free-agent pitcher Jeff Weaver, it seems that Heilman will replace Benson in the rotation, and it was clear yesterday that he was happy with his new status. "You never like to see your teammates leave, but I'm excited for the opportunity and hope to make the best of it," Heilman said. Heilman may be leaving the bullpen, but others have arrived, including the sidearmers Bradford and Schmoll; the hard throwers Wagner, Julio and Duaner Sanchez; and the Japanese pitcher Yusaku Iriki. All the changes are fine with Rick Peterson, the Mets' pitching coach. "I look at it as a whole, as a group that needs to complete about 1,450 innings a season," he said. "And the 11 or 12 guys who are going to be on that staff are in great shape to do that and do it well." Yesterday's events were mostly for the news media, with players scheduled to visit local schools and a Queens fire department later this week. But on the floor of the exchange, some traders ruminated about Delgado's political opinions, gushed over Wagner's 100-mile-an-hour fastball and wondered if Minaya's off-season changes could spell the end of the Atlanta Braves' dynasty in the National League East. If Minaya's moves do pay off, perhaps this season's Mets will regather 20 years from now to commemorate a championship season. "We had an awful lot of talent on that team," the 1986 shortstop Rafael Santana said last night as he arrived for the dinner. This Mets team has talent, too, but there are 162 games to go.

NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE
NEW YORK METS
WAGNER BILLY
BENSON KRIS
BASEBALL


Russia Says It Has Detained a Terrorist Cell in Moscow

Abstract: MOSCOW — Russia’s main security agency on Monday detained what it said was a terrorist cell operating out of a central Moscow apartment, where, it said, an “explosive device” was found. The Federal Security Service said in an announcement that about 10 people had frequented the apartment, and that a few of those detained had trained with the Islamic State in camps in Syria. Neither the names of detainees nor the number arrested was released. For nearly two weeks, Russia has been bombing opposition groups in Syria to buttress the government of President Bashar al-Assad, depicting its opponents there as terrorists loyal to the Islamic State. While the Federal Security Service says about 2,400 Russians have joined the group in Syria, Islamic State adherents were not known to have any significant presence here. Some on social media were skeptical toward the announcement of the foiled plot. Analysts have said the Syria campaign runs the risk of producing the opposite effect — blowback from Sunni Islamists outraged by the attack on fellow Sunnis who are fighting the Assad government. Those arrested on Monday were in Russia long before the country started its military operations in Syria at the end of September, the security agency said. The agency said they had planned to use a homemade bomb containing more than 10 pounds of explosives to attack Moscow’s transportation system. Russia has suffered a string of terrorist attacks claiming hundreds of lives in the decades since the Soviet Union collapsed. Many of them were connected to a separatist rebellion in the Caucasus region, which President Vladimir V. Putin brutally suppressed after coming to power in 2001.

Federal Security Service
Russia
Bombs
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Syria
Moscow
Terrorism
Vladimir Putin


Kerr’s Record L.P.G.A. Championship Win Earns Her No. 1 Ranking

Abstract: After Lorena Ochoa’s abrupt retirement in May created a vacuum at the top of the world rankings, Michelle Wie was unofficially anointed the heir to Ochoa’s throne. On Monday, an American will ascend to No. 1 for the first time in 16 years, but it will not be Wie. Cristie Kerr, who posted a 12-stroke victory on Sunday at the L.P.G.A. Championship, the year’s second major, will become the first American to hold the No. 1 ranking in women’s golf since Betsy King, who won the money title in 1993. The rankings, which had been based on earnings, formally began in 2006. Kerr’s 72-hole score of 19 under par at Locust Hill Country Club in Pittsford, N.Y., was the most dominating performance in a major this side of Tiger Woods’s 15-stroke victory at the 2000 United States Open at Pebble Beach. With her bogey-free round of 66 on Sunday, Kerr, who began the day with an eight-stroke lead, secured the second major title of her career and nearly lapped the field. Kerr’s 12-stroke margin of victory, ahead of the runner-up Song-Hee Kim, also beat the previous L.P.G.A. Championship record, set by King in 1992, by a stroke. Ai Miyazato, who needed to finish second to remain at No. 1 in the rankings, closed with a 66 and tied for third with Jiyai Shin. “I could imagine winning the tournament but never in the fashion that I did,” Kerr said by phone. “To win by 12 strokes exceeded my expectations.” She added, “And to reach No. 1 is just an amazing feeling.” Kerr, 32, has been the most consistent American player for several years, staying in the top 10 for the past 323 weeks and making 74 consecutive cuts dating to May 2007. After finishing second on the money list in 2009, she accelerated her off-season conditioning routine with an eye toward a run at the top ranking. She came into the L.P.G.A. Championship as the only American player with a victory on the tour in 2010, her 13th L.P.G.A. title coming earlier in the month at the State Farm Classic. And yet, for all her consistency, Kerr was seldom the first American mentioned in the conversation about the No. 1 spot. That burden fell on Wie, who was asked at every stop in the spring if she was prepared to ascend to the top, filled briefly by Shin and then, after she was sidelined with appendicitis, Miyazato. The attention heaped on Wie, who finished in a tie for 19th, enabled Kerr to remain focused on her goal. “I think I’ve always been kind of under the radar a little bit,” Kerr said, adding, “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.” She will have a hard time shaking the spotlight now. “There’s going to be a lot of demands on my time now,” Kerr said. “I’ve just got to learn to manage that.” She added, “It’s great to be No. 1, but now the challenge for me is proving that I belong there.”

Kerr Cristie
Golf
United States Women's Open (Golf)
Ladies Professional Golf Assn


Floyd of Rosedale Trophy Tells Tale of Rivalry and Race

Abstract: Before there was a Floyd of Rosedale Trophy, given annually to the winner of the Iowa-Minnesota college football game, there was a live, snorting prize hog called Floyd of Rosedale, named for the governor of Minnesota and the Iowa farm where the animal once lived. As the University of Iowa president emeritus Willard Lee Boyd recalled last week, the live Floyd was bigger than the bronze one depicted on the trophy — which is about 21 inches long and 15 ½ inches high — and smaller than the genetically engineered monster hogs of today. And Boyd would know. Now 83, Boyd, known as Sandy, saw Floyd for the first time as an 8-year-old in 1935, when Gov. Clyde Herring of Iowa paid off a wager by delivering the Hampshire pig to the Minnesota state capitol in St. Paul. Boyd recalls visiting Floyd at the University of Minnesota ’s school of agriculture, where his father, also named Willard, was a professor. “It was still a great moment in my life,” Boyd, an Iowa law professor, said in a telephone interview from Iowa City. Seventy-five years later, the Hawkeyes and the Gophers renew their border rivalry Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis at TCF Bank Stadium. Iowa has won eight of the last nine meetings, though the Gophers still lead the series, 39-34-2. This game comes without the racially charged tension that prompted Minnesota Gov. Floyd B. Olson to propose the wager that led to the trophy. Back then, Minnesota, coached by Bernie Bierman, was a national power. On its way to the 1934 national championship, the Gophers routed Iowa, 48-12, at Iowa Stadium. More than the lopsided score, the Gophers’ tactics angered some Hawkeyes fans. They claimed the Gophers targeted the star back and safety Ozzie Simmons, nicknamed the Ebony Eel, one of the few black players in the Big Ten. According to Jaime Schultz, who teaches at Penn State and who wrote a research paper about the trophy’s history in 2005, Simmons was knocked unconscious three times before leaving the game in the second quarter. Eleven years earlier, Iowa State’s first black athlete, Jack Trice, died of injuries sustained in a game at Minnesota. (Iowa State’s stadium is named for Trice.) Simmons, who died in 2001, told The Star Tribune of Minneapolis in a 1988 interview that he sustained bruised ribs from late hits and piling on. “I really had the feeling they were after me because I was good,” he said. “Oh, I think me being black added a little oomph to it.” Both teams were undefeated heading into their 1935 game, also in Iowa City. Iowa fans were growing impatient with opponents trying to rough up Simmons. When it happened during a 19-0 victory at Illinois, two Iowa players reportedly approached the Illini huddle and threatened to run them out of the stadium if they didn’t knock it off. (That story was told by the Hawkeyes’ radio announcer, a fellow named Ronald Reagan.) The day before the game, Herring issued a statement that read: “The University of Iowa football team will defeat the University of Minnesota tomorrow. Those Minnesotans will find 10 other top-notch football players besides Ozzie Simmons against them this year. Moreover, if the officials stand for any rough tactics like Minnesota used last year, I’m sure the crowd won’t.” Bierman responded by moving a Gophers practice from Davenport, Iowa, across the state line to Rock Island, Ill. He requested police protection when the team arrived in Iowa City by train and vowed never to play the Hawkeyes again if any threats were carried out. Olson, after reading Herring’s comments in the morning newspapers, sent Herring a telegram. He promised the Gophers would tackle hard but clean, and he wagered a prize Minnesota pig against one from Iowa on the outcome. Herring accepted. The Gophers won without incident, 13-6, and praised Simmons afterward. Floyd came from the Rosedale Farm near Fort Dodge, Iowa. He was the younger brother of the hog Blue Boy that appeared with Will Rogers in the 1933 film “State Fair.” When Floyd and Herring arrived in St. Paul, Boyd said he paid 15 cents — 7.5 cents each way — to ride the streetcar to see the hog. “Because I was a staunch Gopher fan, I was very excited about the game and the pig,” Boyd said. When Floyd took up residence at the Minnesota agriculture campus, Boyd stopped by once or twice. “They kept him in the swine barn,” Boyd said. “He probably had his own pen. He was put in with the other hogs.” One day, Boyd noticed that Floyd was gone. The school sold him for $50 to a farmer in southeast Minnesota, something Boyd still finds hard to believe. Floyd reportedly died of cholera in July 1936 and was buried on that farm, about midway between the two campuses. Olson died of cancer a month later. Boyd switched allegiances from the Gophers to the Hawkeyes after joining the Iowa College of Law faculty in 1954. When he watches his beloved Hawkeyes vie for the bronze Floyd on Saturday, he will remember the real Floyd he saw as a boy, 75 years ago. “He has grown a legend over time,” Boyd said. “And rightfully so.”

University of Iowa
University of Minnesota
Football
Pigs
Big Ten Conference


Time to Wind Down Fannie and Freddie

Abstract: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shouldn’t be allowed to languish in Uncle Sam’s arms. But as the anniversary of their seizure by the government approaches, the mortgage financing giants remain the biggest black holes in the financial firmament. Lawmakers seem content to allow the two companies, whose combined value of holdings and guaranteed securities is $5.4 trillion, to slowly expand. That’s a shame because forcing them to wind down their portfolios of mortgage-backed securities would be a good first step toward eventually deflating them. The Obama administration won’t release its recommendations for what to do with the companies until February. This gives it time to wage battles in areas ranging from climate change to health care. These issues are already drawing heavily on the president’s political capital. That may leave little appetite to tackle the problems at the two companies, which are government sponsored enterprises, or publicly traded entities created by the government. The firms have the popular support of some lawmakers and play an increasingly dominant role in the mortgage market. The United States has already committed up to $400 billion to cover the firms’ losses, providing enough of a cushion to tempt politicians to let the issue slide. The problem arises from the companies’ dual roles. They have a public policy mandate to increase lending to the housing market. And they are supposed to reward shareholders. The conflict between these two goals caused the companies to nearly collapse. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s principal business of guaranteeing mortgages caused economic distortions that helped drive the housing boom. As private mortgage lenders pulled in their horns, the two companies’ share of the market grew from under 50 percent to around 80 percent by the end of last year, despite the fact that their aggregate portfolios have only increased by about 3 percent since their conservatorship. Their success is the sticking point. Society benefits from the efficiency and lower costs derived from the standardization of mortgage pools, which allows them to be easily securitized. The government sponsored enterprises scale this advantage up significantly. Fannie alone has $2.8 trillion of guarantees on mortgage-backed securities. On the other hand, the guarantees have unintended consequences. Since investors always reckoned the government stood behind the two companies, mortgage rates fell below appropriate risk-adjusted market rates. This acted as a subsidy for home buyers at the expense of other taxpayers and contributed to the housing bubble. Solving this problem without throwing the mortgage market into disarray will be difficult. Winding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac down, or splitting them into smaller firms without government backing would get rid of the subsidy, but could reduce the benefits they brings to the mortgage-backed securities market. In any case, this would be a difficult sell politically because of to the firms’ dominant positions. Fannie guaranteed more than half the mortgages for new single-family homes in the second quarter. Policy makers aren’t helpless. They can initially take on the companies’ portfolios of mortgage-backed securities. Fannie alone holds more than $800 billion worth. The figure has grown at an annualized rate of 6 percent in the year to date. The mortgage-backed securities holdings are an arbitrage that benefited the companies’ shareholders at the expense of taxpayers. Their quasi-governmental status means they could borrow more cheaply than others and plow the money into higher-yielding mortgage-backed securities. The resulting profits went to shareholders. Moreover, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac successfully lobbied to be able to hold low levels of capital against their investments, bolstering returns. This also gave them little margin for error. Since the government now runs the show, there’s little reason these holdings can’t be wound down, although this would have to be done gradually. True, the two companies can act as mortgage buyers of last resort during crises, when the mortgage markets would otherwise seize. Yet Fannie didn’t significantly shrink its portfolio of mortgage-backed securities during the easy money years from 2002 to mid-2007. Also, their purchases — as distinct from their guarantees — during this period probably didn’t have much of an effect on mortgage rates, since they represented a relatively small part of the overall market. When housing markets crashed, the direct mortgage portfolios left Fannie and Freddie saddled with avoidable losses. These are now taxpayer’s problem. A quick way to avoid exacerbating this privatization of gains and socialization of losses would be to ban the two firms from buying more mortgage-backed securities and force them to run off their portfolios. Then the government can turn to the more nettlesome issue of their guarantees.

Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)


Artest’s Game Is Inelegant but Effective for Lakers

Abstract: BOSTON — Ray Allen’s jump shot is the essence of basketball grace. Ron Artest ’s game brings to mind the grinding of beef. After the two players collided early in Game 3 of the N.B.A. finals on Tuesday night, Allen was on the floor and suddenly the stunning form that had lifted him to a record eight 3-pointers in Game 2 vanished along with Paul Pierce’s fantasy of having seen the last of Los Angeles. Allen ran into an Artest screen early in the first quarter and took a well-timed knee to the left thigh. “It did hurt, for sure,” Allen said long after Derek Fisher impersonated his good friend Kobe Bryant in the fourth quarter and the Lakers had beaten the Celtics , 91-84 , at the TD Garden to take a 2-1 series lead. Was the injury enough to explain Allen’s 0-for-13 shooting, including 0 for 8 from 3-point range, which left him one miss short of the worst performance in an N.B.A. finals game? “Who knows,” he said. “I’ll watch the film and see how my lift was.” The humbling performance so soon after his 32-point masterpiece in Game 2 reminded Allen that “the game doesn’t owe anything to anybody.” He made sure to give the Lakers their due for quicker rotations, noting how the 7-foot Pau Gasol hustled out to deflect a couple of his shots. But before leaving the locker room with a stiff gait, Allen acknowledged that the thigh bothered him throughout the game “a little bit.” On Wednesday, Allen said that the thigh was still sore and that from watching video of the game it was obvious to him that it was affecting his jump shot. Mission accomplished, in other words, for Artest. Mustache spray-painted on the Celtics’ Mona Lisa. “I played in the East before, so I already know these Boston-Detroit type wars, where it hurts to play, you know what I mean?” Artest said. Affirmative, Allen reluctantly admitted. “He’s definitely a tougher-minded player,” Allen said, when asked if Artest had provided the Lakers a quality they lacked when the teams last met in the finals two years ago. In a move that was deemed high risk and many believe was made against Coach Phil Jackson’s will, Artest was acquired to give the Lakers a lock-down defender and that indispensable element of Eastern Conference inelegance. Artest, 30, grew up in New York watching the rough stuff across the 1990s, when the blue-collar Knicks of Pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy kept the N.B.A. administrative police on high playoff alert in annual rumbles with Miami, Indiana and Chicago. “You know, you want to feel that pain because in the East it’s really that grind-out basketball,” Artest said. Don’t even talk to Artest about who is the champion of wild performance swings. Yes, Allen went game-to-game in breathtaking fashion Tuesday night, from hero to zero in 48 hours. But Artest ridicules the concept called rhythm by being brilliant one possession and absent the next. Sometimes Artest makes Jackson wish he still had his 1970s curls to pull out, as when he launched ill-advised jumpers with the Lakers trying to protect a late lead and kill some clock in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals. Seconds later, he scored a game-winning basket that was pure Artest, off balance and unorthodox to the point of being ugly. After Game 3 of this series, Artest was unaware that Allen had not hit a shot — scoring his only 2 points at the free throw line — and would have tied the finals record for most misses (14) without a make had he not been taken off the hook for a blown layup by an offensive foul call off the screen that freed him. Artest’s lack of awareness of Allen’s perfect nightmare made sense because after doing his damage on Allen, he returned to his primary responsibility, which is making Pierce’s life miserable. The finals opened with Pierce being wrestled to the floor by Artest in the opening seconds of Game 1, and Pierce has yet to be himself, missing 23 of the 36 shots he has taken in the series. He insisted before and after Game 3 that Artest was not the reason, citing missed open looks when he shot 2 for 11 in Game 2 and struggles with fouls in Game 3. But Pierce’s finesse game of head and shoulder feints — not at all predicated on flight or speed — relies on what Artest denies. There will be no rhythm. Nor will there be an 18th Celtics championship if their offense continues to run through Kevin Garnett and not the varied perimeter skills of Pierce, Allen and Rajon Rondo. “Usually, we win these types of games, especially when we shut down the stars,” Pierce said, referring to Bryant’s 10-for-29 shooting and Gasol’s below-average 13 points. Then again, four minutes into the fourth quarter, Allen and Pierce had shot a combined 2 for 20, Artest having significantly affected a game in which he scored only 2 points. He said he used to think he had to score 20 points to justify himself, but now he knows defense can complete him. On that note, he issued fair warning for Game 4: “I haven’t been happy with my defense, so the next game I’m really going to be aggressive — you know, within the rules.” Officials and the N.B.A., take note. It sounds like a tabloid headline waiting to happen: “Eastern Conference Bouncer in Western Conference Lineup.”

Los Angeles Lakers
Basketball
Artest Ron
Boston Celtics
National Basketball Assn


The Great State of Baseball Casts Its Ballot for (Your Name Here)

Abstract: Correction Appended Tony Perez does not understand it either. For most of the 1990's, he was told that his title immemorial had not quite ripened to Hall of Famer. He spent eight years on the Cooperstown ballot before finally being knighted in 2000. "One year you're up, the next year you're down," Perez said recently. "I never know. One year no, then yes. I don't know how they do it." Although a Hall of Famer is known as such forever, many take what seems like forever to have the appellation bestowed. Dozens have spent 5 or 10 years hovering around 50 percent of the annual vote by the Baseball Writers' Association of America -- far short of the required 75 percent -- with the unmistakable message that half the voters consider them unworthy of the Hall of Fame. But without hitting a home run or throwing a shutout for a decade or more, most of these bridesmaids eventually become impressive enough to reach the altar. The voting for this year's class, to be announced Tuesday, could easily become another example of this. Last year's near misses -- like Bruce Sutter (67 percent), Jim Rice (60 percent) and Rich Gossage (55 percent) -- will be happy to learn that history has treated their predecessors extraordinarily well. Sutter is in great company because in this arena, no one forgets who finishes second. Since 1968, of the 28 other players who finished with the highest percentage of the vote without being elected, 21 have been elected eventually, most the next year, and 4 who were in their last year on the ballot were later chosen by the veterans committee. Nowhere else can "Wait till next year!" brim with such confidence. Many players further down the ladder climb to the top. Don Drysdale, Eddie Mathews and Duke Snider are recognized today as Hall of Famers, but they spent an average of eight years outside the gates, often finishing with 40 percent to 50 percent of the vote while nays slowly became yeas. Snider was favored by only 17 percent of voters his first year on the ballot, 1970. Luis Aparicio, who got the nod from 2 percent in 1981, must have mounted one heck of a public relations campaign; he received 84 percent and a plaque only three years later. Over all, a quarter of the players who got 40 percent to 49 percent of the vote eventually rose above the required 75 percent. Getting 50 percent to 59 percent meant subsequent good news two-thirds of the time, and getting 60 percent to 74 percent once meant eventual election 75 percent of the time. Clearly, a decade after retirement, a player's performance on the field can mean less than his performance in the voting; like high schoolers conferring beside their lockers, voters often wait for others' approval before joining in. Jayson Stark, an ESPN.com reporter who has voted in the last 15 elections, said: "I feel as if my job is to look at a player and decide whether he's a Hall of Famer or not, and vote that way every year unless something significant comes along to change my mind. But some people don't look at it that way. They say, 'I want Ozzie Smith to go in alone this year,' or 'This guy doesn't feel like he should get in yet.' Those are the biggest reasons for the zigzagging." As capricious as this appears -- given how enshrinement in Cooperstown is probably the most hallowed individual honor in team sports -- the early history of Hall of Fame voting makes it look downright rational. Back in the 1940's and 50's, when dozens were deserving but writers still preferred choosing only two or three, it became almost impossible to gain the 75 percent consensus. Even Joe DiMaggio got less than half the vote his first year, 1953, and failed again the next year before getting in. Although most worthy candidates -- and many unworthy ones -- have been elected, this wait-your-turn dynamic still exists in lesser form. For example, Carlton Fisk had the misfortune of making his debut on the ballot in 1999, the year for the shoo-ins George Brett, Nolan Ryan and Robin Yount. So he had to wait until 2000, when the crowd had thinned, and he and Perez were invited. Three years later, Ryne Sandberg, the great Cubs second baseman for most of the 1980's and early 1990's, got 49 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot. He rose to 61 percent on his next try, then to 76 percent last year, earning a plaque that hangs with those of all the other Hall of Famers -- among the Seavers and Robinsons, who did not have to wait, as well as the Drysdales and Perezes, who did for years. "I don't think that's it's ever too late, and I don't think it diminishes the honor at all," Sandberg said last January. "You're either in the Hall of Fame or you're not." Eventually. KEEPING SCORE E-mail: keepingscore@nytimes.com Correction: January 11, 2006, Wednesday Because of an editing error, the Keeping Score column on Sunday, about patterns in voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame, misstated the percentage of the vote that Luis Aparicio received in 1981, three years before he was elected. It was 12 percent, not 2 percent.


Ready for Patriots’ Trickery, Eagles Turn Their Focus to an Unlikely Berth

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Seyi Ajirotutu has caught only one pass for 4 yards this year and become a forgotten man in the team’s offense. But if it weren’t for his smart, athletic special-teams performance earlier this month, the Eagles may be wondering how their season went wrong instead of contending for an unlikely playoff berth. Before facing the New England Patriots on the road on Dec. 6, Ajirotutu studied film of the defending Super Bowl champions. He knew the Patriots enjoyed catching their opponents off guard. And so, as the Patriots lined up to kick off after going ahead by 14-0 midway through the second quarter, Ajirotutu remained alert. He positioned himself in the front row of the return team, stood close to the left sideline near midfield and kept his eyes on kicker Stephen Gostkowski. When Gostkowski approached the tee and tossed the ball to his left to safety Nate Ebner, Ajirotutu understood the Patriots’ motives: They wanted to attempt a drop kick, embarrass the Eagles, regain possession and expand their lead. Four weeks earlier, they had successfully executed an onside kick in the first quarter against the Washington Redskins. “You have a light bulb in your head saying, ‘Trick play, trick play,’ ” Ajirotutu said. “We had talked about it all week. They have a tendency to surprise onside kick. We didn’t know how it was going to come, where it was going to come, but we had a feeling that it was going to come eventually sometime. Just stay ready, stay prepared and then make the play.” The 2015 N.F.L. Playoff Picture: Simulate the End of the Season for Any Team How can my team make the N.F.L. playoffs? It’s a simple question, but answering it can be devilishly complicated. This interactive simulator walks you through the scenarios. And that he did. Ajirotutu immediately ran backward, leapt and fell on the ball at the 41-yard line, a moment that in retrospect helped revitalize the Eagles. After Ajirotutu’s recovery, the Eagles scored the next 35 points and held on for a 35-28 victory, ending a three-game losing streak and pulling off one of the biggest upsets this season. They followed that up by defeating the Buffalo Bills, 23-20, last Sunday. Now, entering Sunday night’s home game against the Arizona Cardinals, the Eagles (6-7) are tied with the Giants and the Redskins for first place in the N.F.C. East. Even if the Eagles lose to the Cardinals, they will win the division and advance to the playoffs if they beat the Redskins at home Dec. 26 and the Giants on the road Jan. 3. It is a situation that few could have envisioned just a few weeks ago. On Thanksgiving, the Detroit Lions crushed the Eagles, 45-14, the second time in five days that Philadelphia had been dominated by a sub-.500 team. The previous Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had gone into Lincoln Financial Field and won, 45-17, forcing three turnovers and compiling 521 yards of offense. After the Lions’ loss, Eagles Coach Chip Kelly motivated the team in part through positive reinforcement. Despite their 4-7 record at the time, he showed players highlights of the season and hoped the reel would help them stay positive heading into the Patriots game. Eagles offensive tackle Lane Johnson said he appreciated the gesture, but he realized where they stood. Image Get the latest tweets from @NYTSports , including breaking news, analysis and live updates. “We knew if you go out there and play like you’ve been playing, you’re going to get kicked in the face again, so something’s got to change,” Johnson said. “I just think everybody had internal motivation. Nobody was really pleased with three straight losses and things not going well. We knew it was a do-or-die situation and that people had to be accountable more than ever.” Although the Eagles have improved in their last two games, they are still below .500 and facing one of their most difficult challenges Sunday. The Cardinals (11-2) have won seven consecutive games and already clinched a postseason berth. They lead the N.F.L. with 417.5 yards per game and are second with 31.2 points per game. Quarterback Carson Palmer, who turns 36 on Dec. 27, has recovered from a torn anterior cruciate ligament he sustained last November and returned better than ever. Palmer, the top overall pick in the 2003 draft, is second in the N.F.L. in passing yards (4,003), touchdown passes (31) and passer rating (107.2). He leads the league with 59 completions of at least 20 yards and is completing 64.5 percent of his passes. It helps that he throws to what Kelly refers to as possibly the best group of receivers Philadelphia will see all season: Larry Fitzgerald, John Brown and Michael Floyd. “You’re tied to the hip at your quarterback, no matter where you’re a head coach,” said Cardinals Coach Bruce Arians, who coached at Temple from 1983 to 1988. “That relationship and how well that guy plays pretty much depends on your job. You can coach defense and you can run the football, but if you don’t have a quarterback, you’re not going to go anywhere.” Kelly knows that all too well. Since joining the Eagles in 2013, he has had three starting quarterbacks. In March, the team acquired Sam Bradford from St. Louis in exchange for Nick Foles even though Bradford missed all of last season while recovering from a torn A.C.L. Like his team, Bradford has been inconsistent this season, throwing 14 touchdown passes and 11 interceptions. Still, the Eagles are 6-2 in the last eight games when Bradford has played the entire way. During the third quarter of a 20-19 loss to the Miami Dolphins on Nov. 15, Bradford sustained a concussion and left shoulder injury and sat out the rest of the game. He was then inactive in the blowout losses to the Buccaneers and the Lions, but he returned against the Patriots and threw two touchdown passes. With the game against the Bills tied at 20-20, Bradford completed a 41-yard pass on third-and-3 to tight end Zach Ertz that helped set up Caleb Sturgis’s game-winning field goal. Afterward, several Eagles players wore black T-shirts with “53 Angry Men” in white lettering across the front. They were gifts from the owner Jeffrey Lurie, who had addressed the team before the Patriots game and told them to “play angry,” according to linebacker Brandon Graham. “Next thing you know, we have 53 angry men in our locker room,” Graham said. And, unexpectedly, 53 men whose postseason hopes remain alive.


In Aid Filing, G.M. Reduces Mileage Estimate

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The request from General Motors last week for billions of dollars in additional federal aid included a curious revision from an earlier application. G.M. changed the way it calculated projections for the average fuel economy of its fleet in 2012 in a way that made the mileage numbers worse than if the company had been consistent in its methodology. In its filing to the Treasury Department last week, when it asked for $12 billion more in assistance, G.M. said its cars would average 33.7 miles per gallon in 2012. That is a decline of 3.6 miles from its first filing, in early December. Its estimate for the fuel economy of its light trucks also went down. G.M. said it would average 23.8 m.p.g. in the Feb. 17 filing for its trucks, S.U.V.’s and minivans, compared with an estimate of 27.5 in December. Given that G.M. is trying to impress the Obama administration with its turnaround plan, it would seem an odd move, since the president has often repeated his goal of improving the fuel economy of cars on American roads. G.M. said the reasons were twofold. It changed the way it calculated the numbers, and it also wanted to account for a possible tilt toward sales of bigger vehicles if gas prices remained at current levels in coming years. But critics contend the change may be a signal from G.M. that it may not be able to meet new federal fuel efficiency standards, or those that would be imposed by California if the Environmental Protection Agency grants the state’s petition to impose its own mileage rules. Congress passed a law in December 2007 requiring automakers to achieve an average of 35 m.p.g. across all their vehicles by 2020. While in the Senate, Mr. Obama sponsored legislation requiring the automakers to achieve the equivalent of 40 m.p.g. Environmentalists said they were not happy with any sign that G.M. might be backtracking. “In December they issued a response to the Congress with their first salvation plan and G.M. was very specific, saying they were on track for 37.3 m.p.g. for cars and 27.5 for light trucks by 2012,” said Daniel Becker of the Safe Climate Campaign run by the Center for Auto Safety, and a longtime critic of the auto industry. “Last week they were 3-plus m.p.g. less than that for the same period. Which is true?” Greg Martin, a spokesman for G.M., said the company had based estimates in its first plan on expectations for its cars and trucks during the 2012 calendar year. But in last week’s plan, it used expectations for the 2013 model year, which begins in October 2012 and continues through September 2013. If G.M. had used the model year numbers in its original plan, the overall difference would have also pointed to a drop in fuel economy, but only a decline of 0.5 m.p.g. Mr. Martin said G.M. was striving to achieve better fuel economy across all its vehicles. He also said that interest in small cars fell last fall after gasoline prices declined, another reason that its forecast for fuel economy was not as optimistic. “It’s amazing, with fuel economy, what $4 a gallon can mean,” Mr. Martin said. He said the decline did not have anything to do with G.M.’s decision to discontinue its Saturn brand by 2011, or to sell Saab, the Swedish carmaker, whose lineups are dominated by cars.

Automobiles
Fuel Efficiency
General Motors Corp


Adam Nash, C.E.O. of Wealthfront, on the Value of Metrics

Abstract: This interview with Adam Nash , chief executive of Wealthfront, an online financial management firm, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Tell me about your early years growing up. A. I’m the oldest of four, but I was also usually the youngest in my classes because I was born in January. And then I skipped fifth grade, so I was even younger than everyone else. There was always this funny juxtaposition of both being the oldest and the youngest. It did influence me quite a bit. Sometimes you’re leading, and sometimes you’re following. As a child, I ended up in all of those situations. Q. And what about your parents? Do you see their influence in your leadership style? A. My father is an OB/GYN, and like most doctors of his time, he was in private practice. So there was always that element of running a business. My mother, who’s a psychologist, always gave me a deep appreciation of differences in what success means and what people really feel they want in life. I ended up in an industry where thinking like a business owner is incredibly important, and building a company is about how humans interact with each other. Q. What did you do outside of classes in high school? A. I did a lot of speech and debate. I was afraid of public speaking when I was in junior high, so I did that thing where you confront your fears. I actually did the most nerve-racking event: impromptu speech. I ended up being state-ranked, and going to nationals in extemporaneous speaking. You’re given two minutes on a topic you’re unprepared for, and then you have to give a five-minute speech. It turns out I do this a lot now. When I was in high school, I also did an internship program at NASA Ames Research Center, and I worked there one day a week during my senior year. I was 15, and I couldn’t drive yet, so my mom would drop me off at NASA, and I worked on simulations. I spent a year basically writing software — it was Fortran computer programming back then — to see how good the computer was at simulating what the actual results would be in a wind tunnel. I certainly didn’t fully understand the fluid dynamics that I was modeling, but I could read a math equation. Q. And after college? A. I joined a company called NeXT, which was acquired by Apple before I started. I was a fan of Apple, but it turned out I wasn’t a great fit for a large company at that time. I was too eager to do more, to get my hands dirty. I ended up going to a start-up after about a year and a half, and then I went to business school because I wanted to learn more about how other industries work, and how to think about strategy. Q. And did you have a sense then that you wanted to be a C.E.O. someday? A. The short answer is yes. I have strong opinions about not just software, but also the way people work together, and the type of environments that let people build the kind of life that I think they deserve. I always saw the C.E.O. as a very empowered position to make that kind of difference. Clay Christensen was one of my advisers in business school at Harvard. He’s known for “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and other insights about strategy, but he also talked to us about management as an ethical undertaking. The idea is that we spend so much of our adult lives at work, and work can be a terrible environment or it can be an empowering environment that makes people’s lives phenomenally better. So his proposition to us was really about, “How can you create an environment where you make people’s lives better in that fundamental way?” It really stuck with me. Q. So how do you try to do that now? A. I think it’s a hard problem at multiple levels, but there’s a simple thing that too many leaders don’t get right. In the software industry, you’re used to dealing with very smart people. What they really need out of leadership is very simple. They need to know the game we’re playing and how to keep score. The first one is about making sure everyone understands the company’s core competency and how we’re going to beat competitors. Most leaders get that right. But how you keep score is equally, if not more, important. Because if you don’t give people metrics, smart people will make up their own. In fact, there’s a lot of behavioral psychology around the fact that the smarter you are, the easier it is for you to make up metrics that make you think you’re doing the right thing. We can rationalize anything; it’s the great human gift. So if you have a company where everyone has their own ways of keeping score, you’ll get incessant fighting and arguments, and they’re not even arguing about what to do. They’re arguing about how to keep score. They’re arguing about what game we’re really playing. That’s all counterproductive. Most people think that metrics are something you use to control employees. I take the complete opposite view. I think metrics are actually the way that you can harmonize a large number of people, whether it’s dozens or even thousands, so that when they’re on their own and making their own decisions, they can be empowered to make those decisions, because they know they’re aligned with the rest of the company. I actually see that as a gift. People genuinely hate being micromanaged. They hate being second-guessed. If you, as a leader, can provide an environment where you can simply explain what your business is about, and give them a handful of measures to know how to evaluate things, all of a sudden hundreds of conversations will happen without you, with people reaching decisions that are better than the decisions that you would have come up with, because you don’t have their data and their expertise. I think that’s a great gift that leaders give their companies and organizations. Everyone knows at Wealthfront that there are just a couple things that we have to do to make this business successful. I’ve got it down to two things — we have to acquire clients, and we have to delight them. And there are four metrics that the whole company tracks. They’re up on the wall, literally on a giant screen. And so you hear people debating different ideas, and they’ll say: “Well, wait, is this an idea to do A or is it to do B? How do we measure that?”


Israeli Man Dies in Attack Near West Bank Settlement

Abstract: JERUSALEM — An Israeli man died Tuesday after being shot in the West Bank the night before. Palestinian gunmen are suspected in the attack on the victim, Malakhi Rosenfeld, 26, a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and three other Israelis as they rode in a car near an Israeli settlement. Also Tuesday, Israeli security guards shot and wounded a Palestinian man at the Kalandia crossing between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Israeli police said the man had run at the guards and ignored warnings to stop. Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, blamed a recent wave of attacks on programs on Palestinian television that he said incited violence.

Israel
Palestinians
West Bank
Israeli settlement
Murders and Homicides
Malakhi Rosenfeld


South Korea Sets Independent Inquiry Into Ferry Disaster

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — The South Korean National Assembly passed a bill on Friday initiating an independent investigation into the sinking of the ferry Sewol in April, which killed 304 people in a tragedy that traumatized and polarized the country. The passing of the bill, together with two other bills engendered by the disaster, followed months of political bickering that has pitted President Park Geun-hye’s governing party against the victims’ families and the opposition parties that support them. In May, when Ms. Park tearfully apologized for her government’s failure to prevent the disaster and for its bungling of rescue efforts, she endorsed a new independent inquiry that would supplement an investigation already undertaken by prosecutors. Ms. Park also promised to introduce bills to disband the coast guard and fight corporate and bureaucratic corruption that she said had helped create safety loopholes. But talks on how to form an independent investigative commission proved highly divisive. Victims’ families and opposition lawmakers demanded a panel that would have the right to subpoena and prosecute government officials, saying that the current investigations did not look broadly enough into the government’s failures. But the governing party and its conservative supporters resisted the demand, fearing that the opposition might use such a panel to launch political offensives against Ms. Park. It was only in recent weeks that the rival parties worked out a compromise. The 17-member panel will not have subpoena and indictment powers, but its chairman will be selected from candidates recommended by the families. The families will also have veto power in selecting candidates for the special prosecutor, who will work in parallel with the commission and have subpoena and indictment powers. The commission will operate for up to 18 months and the special prosecutor for up to six months. On Friday, the National Assembly also passed a bill to create a national safety agency. The agency will absorb parts of the functions of the coast guard and national fire department, which will be disbanded in an effort to streamline the country’s emergency response system. Under the new law, the government will also create an agency to fight conflicts of interest involving government officials. Also approved on Friday was a bill that will enable the government to more aggressively search for and confiscate assets owned by people responsible for disasters like the ferry sinking. The 6,825-ton Sewol capsized off southwestern South Korea on April 16, while carrying twice as much cargo as legally allowed. The accident was one of the country’s worst peacetime disasters. The vast majority of the dead were students trapped in the dangerously listing vessel after its crew repeatedly urged them to stay put. A court is scheduled to sentence the ship’s captain and 14 other crew members on Tuesday. Prosecutors have asked for the death penalty for the captain and for life imprisonment for three other senior crew members. The four have been charged with murder. Separately, prosecutors on Thursday asked for four to 15 years in prison for 11 ferry and cargo company officials and shipping inspectors on embezzlement or accidental homicide charges stemming from the disaster. Earlier this week, Yoo Dae-kyoon, the eldest son of the business mogul who controlled the company that ran the Sewol ferry, was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to three years in prison . The authorities accused members of the Yoo family of stealing the equivalent of millions of dollars from the ferry company, money they said could have been used for safety measures that were not put in place on the Sewol.

South Korea
Boat Accidents
Park Geun-hye


Youth Is Wasted on the Generation Y Investor

Abstract: IN today's "do-it-yourself" but "don't know if my pension will be around tomorrow" world of retirement, it's only natural for baby boomers to seek financial advice. What's surprising, though, is the advice they want most. "Our expectation was that it would have to do with Social Security, pensions, or health care," said Craig Brimhall, vice president for retirement wealth strategies at Ameriprise Financial, which recently studied attitudes on retirement. But those topics tied for second and third place in the Ameriprise survey. Instead, a majority of older workers said what they most needed was advice on how to teach their own children about money and finances. These parents may be on to something. For all the mistakes older workers make saving and investing for their own retirement, their kids are doing an even worse job managing their 401(k)'s. Hewitt Associates, an employee benefits consulting firm based in Lincolnshire, Ill., recently studied how the different generations are handling their employer-sponsored retirement assets. Among its findings are these: Only 31 percent of Generation Y workers (those age 18 to 25) eligible to participate in a tax-deferred 401(k) retirement plan are doing so. By comparison, 63 percent of eligible Generation X workers (those age 26 to 41) are using these plans, while 72 percent of baby boomers (age 42 to 59) are doing so. Hewitt forecasts that the average Gen Y worker at a large corporation who doesn't contribute can expect to replace just 43 percent of preretirement income upon retirement, based on current Social Security assumptions. Young workers who do take advantage of 401(k)'s stand a good chance of replacing all of their preretirement income, thanks in large part to the power of compound returns over several decades. Retirement is probably the last thing on the minds of people in their 20's, who are entering the work force with college loans and credit card debt in tow. But what's unsettling is that even though most young workers realize that they're on their own when it comes to saving for retirement, many of those investing in 401(k)'s haven't a clue how to allocate their funds. The average Gen Y worker puts about 35 cents of every investment dollar into fixed-income options like bond funds and so-called stable-value funds, which are bond-like vehicles. This means the youngest workers are investing even more conservatively than their parents, who on average keep only 31.4 percent of their 401(k) money in bonds, according to Hewitt. Richard A. Davies, executive vice president for retirement and college savings at AllianceBernstein Investments, said Gen Y workers were fairly close to having a 60/40 allocation between stocks and bonds. But "a 60/40 balance is about the right asset allocation for a 65-year-old, not a 25-year-old," he said. Why are young workers so conservative? Part of it may have to do with timing, said Ivory Johnson, director of financial planning at the Scarborough Group, an investment advisory firm based in Annapolis, Md. "When the markets went down in 2000 and 2001, that's when these kids were in college," Mr. Johnson said. "So their first impression of the stock market was that it could lose lots of money." Lori Lucas, Hewitt's director of retirement research, said other factors were also at work. Some young workers who sign up for 401(k)'s but fail to select investment options may be placed by their plans into the safest choices, like a money market fund. Many of these workers simply haven't gotten around to shifting money out of the default options. Young investors in their 20's should probably keep 90 percent if not all of 401(k) assets in a diversified mix of equities, said Mr. Davies of AllianceBernstein. Why? There are two basic sets of risks when it comes to investing. The first involves potential short-term losses you can suffer by exposing money to equities. But the second -- and equally important risk -- is that over long periods, the purchasing power of your money will be eaten up by inflation. The younger you are -- and the more time you have to invest -- the more important it is to focus on the latter risk, said Stuart L. Ritter, a financial planner with T. Rowe Price in Baltimore. And since stocks are more effective in outrunning inflation than bonds, you should invest most of your 401(k) money in equities. The fact is, your 20's are an ideal time to be betting on stocks. For starters, when you're young, you have little to lose. The average Generation Y 401(k) investor has only saved $3,200, according to Hewitt. That means if you invested 100 percent of that money in stocks and saw your investments fall by 50 percent -- which is nearly how much the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell from its peak on March 24, 2000, to its trough on Oct. 9, 2002 -- you'd be out $1,600. On the other hand, the typical boomer has nearly $93,200 saved up in their 401(k), according to Hewitt. A similar all-equity position that loses 50 percent would erase $46,600. That's real money. BUT it's not just about potential losses. Between 1956 and 2005, a 100 percent stock allocation has generated average annual returns of 10.44 percent, according to T. Rowe Price. By contrast, a 60 percent stock, 40 percent bond and cash strategy has resulted in average annual gains of 9.09 percent -- or 1.35 percentage points less. While this doesn't sound like a lot, it can make a huge difference over time. AllianceBernstein found that an investor who starts contributing to a 401(k) at 25 and continues saving until 65 could end up with 10 additional years of retirement spending by adding just 1 percentage point to annual returns. A simple choice for younger workers who are unsure how to invest is to put all or most of a 401(k) into a so-called target-date retirement fund. These increasingly popular options, which are also called life-cycle funds, are all-in-one portfolios that invest in a mix of stocks and bonds that are appropriate for an investor's age -- and they automatically adjust that mix over time. Most life-cycle funds suitable for people in their 20's will start off with 80 percent to 100 percent in equities. It is even more important to encourage young workers who aren't currently saving to contribute to their 401(k)'s. Mr. Ritter thinks one reason why people in their 20's aren't participating is because they aren't confident they know enough to invest. "People get concerned about making the wrong decisions," he said. "So they end up making no decisions." But for young workers, the wrong decision is to let your fear of investing -- and your fear of investing aggressively -- dictate your moves. FUNDAMENTALLY Paul J. Lim is a financial writer at U.S. News & World Report. E-mail: fund@nytimes.com.

AMERIPRISE FINANCIAL
HEWITT ASSOCIATES
AGE CHRONOLOGICAL
FINANCES
PENSIONS AND RETIREMENT PLANS
RETIREMENT


Bargain Hunting on Wall Street

Abstract: Holiday shoppers weren’t the only ones seeking bargains yesterday. Investors leapt into the ailing stock market, snapping up discounted shares of financial companies that had been battered by shake-ups and write-downs tied to subprime mortgages. The buy-in pushed the Dow Jones industrials up 181.84 points, a 1.42 percent gain. But the market failed to erase its losses from two 200-point plunges earlier in the week, and cautious investors played down hopes that the rally would continue. “You’ve reached a point where the market, if it’s going to remain a bull market, can’t take a great many more hits,” said William E. Rhodes, chief investment strategist at Rhodes Analytics. “That should leave people erring on the side of caution.” The Dow finished the week down nearly 1.5 percent at 12,980.88. A broader measure of the stock market, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, has fallen 1.2 percent in the last four trading sessions. It is now up only 1.6 percent for the year. The S.&P. gained 1.7 percent yesterday to close at 1,440.70. The day after Thanksgiving attracts fewer trades than any other day of the year, making for a market that can be easily swayed by a small number of investors. Analysts warned against reading too much into yesterday’s rally. “I would assume most of the professionals are at home digesting their turkey dinners,” Mr. Rhodes said. Still, beleaguered banks and mortgage lenders enjoyed a much-needed lift. Shares of Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase and major brokerage companies, which have plummeted in recent weeks, all recorded gains. Retail companies also gained ground, as shares of Circuit City, Target, Wal-Mart and Macy’s all advanced on Black Friday. Shares of Freddie Mac ticked up 1.8 percent, though they ended the week down a whopping 35 percent after the company announced a $2 billion loss from foreclosures tied to subprime mortgage defaults. Shares of its sister firm, Fannie Mae, leaped 10.2 percent yesterday after losing nearly 25 percent on Tuesday. “Having revisited the lows experienced in August, we’re seeing markets bounce from those lows,” said Ian Scott, a global equities strategist at Lehman Brothers. “There is a bargain-hunting mentality around at the moment.” But there is also plenty of fear. The renewed threat of a credit squeeze and a spate of bad news from the housing sector have left investors anxious and uncertain about the state of the broader economy. A record-low dollar and record-high oil rounded out the bleak landscape. That sense of unease was played out in a week of mostly conservative trading. Gold, a traditional hedge in uncertain times, gained 4.8 percent for the week, its strongest 5-day performance since July 2006. It closed yesterday at $823.80, up 2.4 percent. Treasury bills, another perennial safe haven, traded near their lowest yield in two years, a sign that more investors are seeking safety in government debt. The 10-year note rose 2/32, to 102 1/32, and the yield, which moves in the opposite direction of the price, slipped to 4 percent, from 4.01 percent late Wednesday. Concerns about consumer spending remain. Oil futures for delivery in January gained 89 cents, to settle at $98.18 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a record. The high cost of crude has been fueling anxiety on Wall Street, as investors fear that customers forced to spend more on energy will be less willing to open their pocketbooks over the holidays. Oil has flirted with the symbolic $100 mark for several days, though it is still short of the inflation-adjusted high of $102 set in April 1980. Analysts are hoping that next week will bring a clearer picture of the state of the housing sector. Sales of new and existing homes — already near record lows — are expected to have declined again last month. Analysts will also keep an eye on the independent Case-Shiller index of home prices and the Fed’s beige book, a survey of business conditions across the country. Durable goods orders for October, a leading indicator of manufacturing activity and business outlook, will be released on Wednesday. Analysts expect an improvement in sales. “They have been weak for the last couple of months and people will be looking at those for any signs of improved corporate spending,” said Mr. Scott of Lehman.

Stocks and Bonds
Sales
Mortgages
Banks and Banking
Retail Stores and Trade
Credit


Five Steals in One Inning Carry Reds Over Rockies

Abstract: Jorge De La Rosa lost command of his pitches, and his attention to base runners waned. That added up to a bad inning that the Colorado Rockies could not overcome. Jay Bruce had two of the Reds’ five steals in the second — their biggest inning on the bases in roughly a century — and the host Cincinnati Reds held on for a 4-3 victory on Tuesday night. Brandon Phillips had four hits, and Billy Hamilton doubled home two runs during the Reds’ four-run second inning, which included the five steals. De La Rosa was having trouble placing his fastball, so he threw more changeups and ignored the runners, who took off at every opportunity. “I have to do a better job than that,” De La Rosa said. The Reds had not stolen that many bases in an inning since at least the 1920s, according to Elias Sports Bureau. RAYS 3, RED SOX 0 Drew Smyly and Tampa Bay’s bullpen held Boston to one hit, Kevin Kiermaier hit a solo home run in the 10th, and the Rays prevailed at Fenway Park for their third straight victory. Smyly allowed one hit over eight innings and struck out 11. BLUE JAYS 4, ORIOLES 3 Marcus Stroman allowed three runs in seven innings, Troy Tulowitzki drove in two runs, and Toronto won in Baltimore. Jose Bautista had two hits and an R.B.I. for the Blue Jays. BRAVES 8, DODGERS 1 Tyler Flowers went 4 for 4 and drove in three runs, Mallex Smith had three R.B.I., and host Atlanta trounced Los Angeles. Sloppy defense and a poor start by Alex Wood doomed the Dodgers, who had three fielding errors, two hit batters, a wild pitch and a passed ball. ROYALS 8, TIGERS 6 Salvador Perez hit a three-run homer and had a career-high five R.B.I., Yordano Ventura twice escaped bases-loaded jams, and host Kansas City held on against Detroit. NATIONALS 7, MARLINS 0 Bryce Harper hit a grand slam, one of four home runs in a seven-run seventh inning for Washington, and the Nationals won in Miami. The four homers in an inning were a Washington record, as well as a record for Marlins pitchers. WHITE SOX 5, ANGELS 0 Mat Latos did not allow a hit until the fifth inning, Todd Frazier and Jose Abreu hit solo home runs, and host Chicago defeated Los Angeles to halt a three-game skid. Latos allowed two hits in six and a third innings, lowering his E.R.A. to 0.49 in three starts. INDIANS 3, MARINERS 2 Francisco Lindor had three hits, Carlos Carrasco allowed a run in six and a third innings, and host Cleveland survived Seattle. Mike Napoli scored Lindor with a go-ahead double in the third inning, and the Indians took advantage of Mariners starter Wade Miley’s wildness to score twice in the fourth. BREWERS 6, TWINS 5 Scooter Gennett hit a tiebreaking single in the ninth inning, and Milwaukee beat Minnesota in Minneapolis, ending the Twins’ four-game winning streak.

Baseball
Cleveland Indians
Mariners
Reds
Rockies


Fifth Grader Is Convicted in Murder Plot

Abstract: COLVILLE, Wash. — An 11-year-old boy was convicted on Friday of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in a fifth-grade plot against a female classmate. Judge Allen Nielsen of Stevens County Superior Court said on Friday that “simple anger” had fueled the plot, which the boy devised this year with a 10-year-old classmate at Fort Colville Elementary School in northeast Washington. Staff members seized a handgun and a knife that the boys took to school on Feb. 7. The judge, who called the trial “the most serious of my career,” rejected defense efforts to portray the boy as unable to separate fact from fiction. After the verdict, the 11-year-old defendant was led from the courtroom in tears. He is due back in court on Nov. 8 for a sentencing hearing. A defense lawyer said an appeal was planned. “There is no joy in a conviction,” said the Stevens County prosecutor, Tim Rasmussen. A school counselor, Debbie Rogers, testified on Friday about her interview with the boy on the day the weapons were discovered. The boy said that he was planning to stab the girl to death because she was “really annoying” and that the second boy was to point the gun at anyone who tried to intervene, Ms. Rogers said. She said she saw no evidence that the 11-year-old boy was experiencing delusions that day. The younger boy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and other charges. He was sentenced to three to five years in juvenile detention. The authorities discovered the plan when a fourth grader saw one of the boys playing with a knife aboard a school bus and told a school employee. A search of the 10-year-old’s backpack yielded a knife, a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and a full ammunition magazine, court records showed.